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Techno Babble: Difference between revisions
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When technobabble is used to justify a plot development, it is [[Scotch Tape]]. When it is used to solve a problem, it is a [[Reverse Polarity|Polarity Reversal.]] When it is used to add to the genre feel, it is [[Narrative Filigree]]. Due to its historical use and abuse by sci-fi writers, Technobabble is nowadays played more and more often for laughs or parodied in some way.
The difference between jargon and technobabble is that, while jargon may seem incomprehensible to anyone not part of that particular field, it does indeed make sense to anyone familiar with the terms involved, for the simple reason that jargon is meant to allow for clear, unambiguous communication between specialists: if an average computer user says "I can only connect to one network, and even then, I don't have Web or storage," a trained engineer would report this as "User can associate their NIC with only one SSID, and does not seems to be receiving an IP address from the DHCP server." This part also applies to a good degree to non-science fields, where people may not know, for example, what a "1/4 flexible elbow" is, but if you're a plumber or A/C technician, you'd get it right away. Also, notice that technobabble is sometimes [[Truth in Television]], as dishonest technicians sometimes resort to vague, senseless "technical" jargon to make up "serious problems" in the inner workings of a machine and offer to "fix" them for a high price. There is also an element of [[Reality Is Unrealistic]] in the concept of the trope: it is only to be ''expected'', if you really think about it, that like all language scientific jargon will evolve over the course of a few centuries, with new words being coined and existing words changing their meaning. As a result, 24th century scientific lingo would naturally ''sound'' like complete nonsense to someone in the present in much the same way that modern day scientific lingo would no doubt sound to an inventor of the 1700's. The reverse is also true, if earlier science fictions are any guide.
Compare to [[Applied Phlebotinum]] and [[Green Rocks]]. When technobabble contradicts itself, well, [[A Wizard Did It]]. See also [[Blah Blah Blah]] and [[Technology Porn]]. [[Magi Babble]] for the fantasy version of this trope. Often the source of an [[Expospeak Gag]] and [[Layman's Terms]]; may be [[Sophisticated As Hell]]. Particularly ridiculous technobabble may appear to someone with actual expertise as being a technical form of [[Delusions of Eloquence]].
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== Fanfiction ==
* In the ''[[Firefly]]'' fanfic ''[[Forward]]'', Kaylee actually uses technobabble to scare off a group of suspicious federal marshals who are poking around the ship's engine room, by warning them that poking or moving anything will result in a horrific death via painful-sounding technobabble. They eventually back off and leave.
== Films ==
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* ''Sev Trek: Puss in Boots'' (an Australian CGI spoof of ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]''). Lt. Gaudy Regurge gives a highly-technical explanation of how they'll defeat the alien vessel. Captain Pinchhard gestures Commander Piker over and says quietly, "I didn't understand a word of that." Piker responds, "Sounds good to me!"
* ''[[Red Dawn]]''. Colonel Tanner lays out a plan to attack a Cuban base using military terminology like "flanking manoeuvre" and "grazing fire on this defilade". Unfortunately none of the guerrillas, a group of civilian [[Child Soldiers]], can understand what he's going on about, so he just mutters "[[I Need a Freaking Drink]]" and starts over.
* ''Airport'': Capt. Vernon Demerest, played by Dean Martin, stops a know-it-all kid from broadcasting the fact that the plane is turning around: "You have a young navigator here! Well, I'll tell you son... Due to a Cetcil wind, Dystor's vectored us into a 360-tarson of slow air traffic. Now we'll maintain this Borden hold until we get the Forta Magnus clearance from Melnics."
* ''[[I, Robot (film)|I Robot]]'' had Susan Calvin talk about how robotic brains work using a lot of this.
* The 2009 ''[[Star Trek (film)|Star Trek]]'' movie, according to [[Word of God]], deliberately tries to avoid the technobabble tendencies of its predecessors, in order to make it more accessible for newcomers. On the other hand, we have also learned that Scotty was often using technobabble to intentionally confuse Kirk, and Bones once used medical technobabble to bluff his way past a security guard.
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* If the Technobabble of ''[[The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension|Buckaroo Bonzai]]'' wasn't ludicrous enough, it became moreso in context of the ludicrous non-technobabble dialog and character names. [[Special Effects Failure|But the special effects]] [[Sarcasm Mode|more than made up for it]].
* ''[[And You Thought Your Parents Were Weird]]'', about kids making a fully sentient robot, has a lot of technobabble.
* This is how [[Iron Man|Tony Stark]] and [[The Incredible Hulk|Bruce Banner]] first start to bond during ''[[The Avengers (film)|The Avengers]]'', much to everyone else's confusion:
{{quote|'''Bruce''': He'd have to heat the cube to 120,000,000 Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier.
'''Tony''': Unless Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunneling effect.
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** Also seen with the Smoking GNU in ''[[Discworld/Going Postal|Going Postal]]'', who are to the mechanical telegraph system known as the "clacks" what RL hackers are to the Internet. When Moist listens to their explanation of ...''the Woodpecker'', about the only words he recognizes are things like "chain", "disengage", and "the".
* One of [[E. E. "Doc" Smith]]'s ''[[Lensman]]'' books, ''Galactic Patrol'', includes a very amusing technobabble explanation for the unlikely properties of one of his favorite inventions, Duodecpylatimate, AKA Duodec, the ultimate chemical explosive, though you do have to understand scientific notation to figure out the joke. Duodecpylatimate is described as "the quintessence of atomic destruction," whose power is second only than a nuclear explosion and has few of the drawbacks of atomics. No radiation danger, easy to handle, simple to use, powerful and easy to detonate. "Duodec" is a solid chemical explosive composed of 324 atoms of heptavalent nitrogen combined in 12 linked molecules of 27 atoms each.
* Parodied in Alan Dean Foster's ''[[Spellsinger]]'' series, where wizards incorporate technical terms from science and engineering into their arcane rituals. Lampshaded in that Jon-Tom immediately spots the connection, but turtle wizard Clothahump merely comments that the wizards in his (our) world must simply use comparable formulae for their spells.
* The titular ''[[Bastard Operator From Hell]]'' is a master of coming up with what an informed reader can tell is nonsense, but which the boss will consider to be very impressive.
** The BOFH also uses a technobabble overload to force lusers into Dummy Mode, where [[Bavarian Fire Drill|they will do whatever he tells them]] without thinking about it.
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** Lampshaded and parodied in all incarnations by the Trek-themed Voltaire filk "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2v6rXs5J9M U.S.S. Make Shit Up]".
** ''TNG'' also loved to use the "inverse tachyon pulse" routed through the "main deflector dish" which managed to do completely contradictory things like work as a sensor and be an unstoppable death ray.
** Humorously Lampshaded and subverted in the ''TNG'' episode "Clues", where Data, [[Beware the Honest Ones|trying to lie through his teeth for the safety of the ship]], tries to use technobabble to explain away why some moss growth proved [[Year Inside, Hour Outside|the crew was out for far longer than the couple of seconds he claims they were]]. After he left, Picard asked Geordi if he believed the explanation; turns out, he didn't, and was even shocked that Data would try to bluff them like that.
** Funnily enough, this was [[Early Installment Weirdness|usually avoided]] in ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series|TOS]]'', which rarely explained things beyond "Some part of the ship is damaged/malfunctioning, [[Mr. Fixit|Scotty]] and/or [[The Spock|Spock]] have to fix it, and then they do in the nick of time." An example of a technobabble-heavy episode by TOS standards is "The Doomsday Machine", which throws around terms like "anti-proton" and "inverse phasing", but in execution is still very straightforward when compared to the more modern ''Trek'' shows.
*** In its first two or three seasons, TNG also avoided technobabble. It didn't turn into the quantum-phase-modulating-fest we all know and love until two things happened: (1) Gene Roddenberry stepped down, and (2) the ''Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual'' was published, which contained more technobabble than you could shake a 9-Cochrane warp nacelle at.
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** Ronald D. Moore has gone on record several times saying that he hates using technobabble. In fact, the avoidance level is so high that it takes four seasons to show the Galactica's engine room. Most of the basic tech remains a [[Black Box]].
** ''[[Battlestar Galactica]]'''s attitude to technobabble can be summed up by one particular incident in the season two episode "The Captain's Hand": the battlestar ''Pegasus''' FTL is offline and engineer-turned-commander Barry Garner has to quickly fix it. Not by [[Doctor Who|reversing the polarity of the neutron flow]], but [[Percussive Maintenance|hitting a valve with a sledgehammer]].
** That said, some of BG's aversion to technobabble goes a little bit too far to the point where sometimes you just don't know how anything works, and it ends up becoming more [[A Wizard Did It]]. Especially when it comes to suddenly moving through vast reaches of space with no explanation (and no, I'm not talking about the FTL drive).
** It really came back to bite them when the writers actually came up with a real scientific explanation for why stem cells from the human/Cylon hybrid Hera would cure cancer. Moore was worried that it would just ''sound'' like gibberish, and the final episode largely glosses over why it works (something about some blood cells being square while others are hexagonal, as far as we can tell). And the end result was many viewers upset that such a huge game-changing moment was given no real explanation.
* Very common in ''[[24]]'', where most of Chloe O'Brien's lines involve nothing but meaningless technobabble, including incredible abuse of the word "subnet".
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* ''[[NCIS]]'': [[Perky Goth]] Abby frequently has to shoot out ten-syllable words without the slightest break in her speech. During an interview, Pauley Perrette said that just ''learning'' all the words is the hardest part about playing Abby. Then we have Timothy McGee...
* Subverted on ''[[30 Rock|Thirty Rock]]'' when Liz and Pete make their presentation about taking the team to Miami -- Liz just says a few Buzz Words and nothing else while Pete holds up a sign that says "Miami = Synergy." Jack says it's the best presentation he's ever seen.
* The ''[[Farscape]]'' episode "Nerve" name-drops this trope.
{{quote|'''Gilina Renaez:''' "This should bypass the grid, and hook us directly with main control."
'''Chiana:''' "Spare me the [[Techno Babble]], Gadget Girl, let's just get on with it." }}
** Like most other things in ''[[Farscape]]'' technobabble is not only lamp-shaded and name-dropped more than once, but is even deconstructed by [[Genre Savvy]] John Crichton.
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** A lot of the [[Fan Nickname|Engineer Duo]]'s talks are this. Lampshaded when Engineer Daniels yells at Donnelly for "boring the Commander with tech".
** Even more so would be [[Deadly Doctor|Mordin]] [[Badass Bookworm|Solus]], who combines this with being a [[Motor Mouth]] and a [[Terse Talker]].
* This is done ''once'' in the first ''[[Command
{{quote|Molecularly, Tiberium is a non-carbon-based element, that appears to have strong ferrous qualities, with non-resonating reversible energy! Which has a tendency to disrupt carbon-based molecular structures, with inconsequential and unequal positrons orbiting on the first, second and ninth quadrings!}}
*** This would translate to "It's not carbon, it is ironish, and it kills people." Plus it's at least partly antimatter, even if the positrons are "inconsequent". (At least they're not ''incontinent''; it's so annoying when your sole resource leaves little puddles of antimatter pee everywhere.)
** For ''Command and Conquer 3'', EA took things up a notch and commissioned scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to "provide a white paper describing the biophysics of Tiberium, its atomic structure, its method of transmutation, the form of the radiation that it emits, and the way to harness it for powering machinery and weapons -- giving it the same treatment as would be suitable for a scientific journal article on a real substance." Actually, an [http://pc.ign.com/articles/721/721138p1.html interesting read.]
* Dr. Judith Mossman in ''[[Half-Life]] 2'' has the tendency to speak in technobabble which your character is supposed to understand, and likely does. ''You'' however, are not, and likely don't.
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* ''[[Narbonic]]'', which featured such gems as [http://www.webcomicsnation.com/users/narbonic/narbonic/httpdocs/011702.jpg this], [http://www.webcomicsnation.com/users/narbonic/091703uncounted.jpg this], and [http://www.webcomicsnation.com/memberimages/092702.jpg this].
* ''[[Gunnerkrigg Court]]'': [[Lampshade Hanging|"Jargon]] [[Magical Computer|computers]] [[Magic From Technology|technical wizardry]] [[Blah Blah Blah|babble]] [http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=519 jargon."]
* Lampshaded in [http://www.airshipentertainment.com/buckcomic.php?date=20090303 this] ''[[Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire]]'' strip. "Ready to begin speaking in technobabble, sir." "Oh shut up, it's just us. Turn it on!"
* Shown in [http://www.bobandgeorge.com/archives/index.php?date=041204 these] [http://www.bobandgeorge.com/archives/index.php?date=041205 two] ''[[Bob and George]]'' comics.
** Keep reading -- a few comics later it culminates nicely with a character exploding due to technobabble overload.
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== Web Original ==
* The ''[[Whateley Universe]]'' runs on Technobabble, since it's a universe of mutant superheroes and supervillains, with a [[Cosmic Horror]] backstory. All the major power classifications have their own Technobabble for how they work. There are even rival Technobabble factions: most Psi researchers think that "magic" is just a form of psionics; most magical adepts think that "psi" is just a form of magic; etc.
** One mutant power in particular ''literally'' runs on Technobabble: so-called "devisors" make up a Technobabble explanation on how the piece of wondertech they're building would work, and then impose new physical laws on the device so that it actually does work.
* Used copiously in animated sci-fi epic ''[[Broken Saints]]'', particularly by [[The Smart Guy|computer genius]] Raimi, which makes some of his stints as [[Mr. Exposition]] difficult to follow. Sometimes various field-specific jargon is thrown in just so we know writer Brooke Burgess has [[Shown Their Work|done the research]].
* The writers at ''[[Orion's Arm]]'' put a lot of work into producing plausible technobabble, the effect of this is that determining what parts they made up is pretty hard.
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{{quote|'''[[Attila the Hun]]:''' Stop! Don't shoot fire stick in space canoe! Cause explosive decompression!
'''Zap Brannigan:''' Spare me your space-age techno-babble, Attila the Hun! }}
** Really, they use (and [[Parody]]) this all the time, in a variety of different ways.
{{quote|'''[[The Professor|Professor Farnsworth]]:''' [[As You Know|I'm sure I don't need to explain]] that all dark matter in the universe is linked in the form of a single non-local meta-particle.<br />
'''[[Genius Ditz|Amy]]:''' ''[[Future Slang|Guh]]!'' Stop patronizing us. }}
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