Techno Babble: Difference between revisions

{{Quote|The trouble with the pivoted model is that in the hootnanny position, the gadget interferes with the thingamajig, and that throws the doohickey out of line. The only way to prevent this is to parallax the gimmick, and ''that'' keeps the thingumbob from equalizing. So whichever way we approach the problem, the result is always the same: it doesn't work. You follow me, don't you, sir?}}

 

** Scripts for ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'' were usually written with "[Tech]" as a placeholder; a second set of writers would come in and replace the placeholders with actual Techno Babble, referring to the right [[Applied Phlebotinum]] for the job.

** [[Lampshaded]] in the following exchange from the ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'' episode "Battle Lines":

'''O'Brien:''' Mm-hmm.

'''Dax:''' I've never heard of a differential magnetomer. How does it work?

** Another ''Deep Space Nine'' episode, "Q-Less", plays it more blatantly. As they're busily attempting to solve the cause of repeating (and intensifying) power drains and graviton bursts, [[A God Am I|Q]] is harassing the crew, and pops in with the statement, "Picard and his lackeys would've solved all this technobabble hours ago!"

** Parodied on ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]'' "Message in a Bottle".

'''EMH2:''' The secondary gyrodyne relays in the propulsion field intermatrix have depolarised.

'''EMH:''' ''(rolling eyes)'' In English!

*** For all its overuse of technobabble generally, ''Voyager'' did manage to have fun with this at times. From the season 3 finale:

{{quote|'''B'elanna''':Perhaps I can [beam Chakotay, Tuvok and Kim] out if I get a skeletal lock on them...

'''B'elanna''': You know, lock on to the mineral concentration in their bones.

'''Janeway''': ... I didn't know you could do that.

** And then, there is the episode "Rascals", where Riker plays with this trope in a very interesting way. He reads verbatim from the [[Real Life]] ''TNG Technical Manual'' to distract a hostile Ferengi while he secretly taps out a coded message. Just watch [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTUVPd-tyQY this clip] from 2:00 onwards.

*** The [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwu2C91YMT4 same episode] also has examples of "archeology babble" and "biology babble" in the beginning.

** The TNG episode "Where No One Has Gone Before" involves Kosinski, a warp drive "expert" who applies nonsensical adjustments (Riker describes his paper as gibberish) to the warp engines of star ships; they only appear to work because his "assistant" is secretly a Traveller who in some way manipulates warp fields with his mind. It is clear from the start that Kosinski does not know what he is talking about because he mostly brags about his excellence instead of speaking fluid technobabble. When he does attempt technobabble, his audience appears unimpressed (and are utterly baffled, at first, that the in-universe gibberish he's spouting seems to work anyway).

** ''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.

* ''[[Andromeda]]'' actually averts this most of the time, using particles, materials and weapons that exist in "hard" sci-fi, with the exception of the Slipstream Drive and the Energy Beings in later episodes.

'''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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