Techno Babble: Difference between revisions

 

{{quote|'''Sid Phillips:''' No one has ever attempted a double bypass brain transplant before!

 

[[Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness|Any impressive- and scientific-sounding]], but ultimately nonsensical utterance.

* Recent bottled water ads have been boasting its high pH level. Which is great, until you realize that lye has a pH of 13. (Pure water's pH is 7.)

 

* Played to death and [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] in ''[[Haruhi Suzumiya]]''.

{{quote|'''Yuki Nagato:''' A localized, non-corrosive amalgamation of asynchronous space is independently occurring in restricted condition mode.

'''Technician:''' Opening another false entry!

'''Makoto:''' No human's capable of this!

* ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]]'' gets some in the second half with the bio-computer. The only person who can understand a word of it is Leeron, and then only half. The show doesn't even try taking it seriously-generally, the ultra-dense technobabble spouted by the bio-computer is either ignored or boils down to "All this I'm saying doesn't really even matter because [[Beyond the Impossible|you're just going to break physics anyway]], you jackasses."

* ''[[Hayate the Combat Butler]]'': Even [[Tsundere|Nagi]] is accused of doing this by Isumi:

{{quote|'''Isumi:''' Nagi uses such complicated words. When she's trying to deceive someone.}}

* ''[[Guilty Crown]]'' takes after ''Evangelion'' in that it uses a lot of biology-themed Techno Babble, most of it misapplied or completely nonsensical (intron-RAM, anyone?). Unlike in ''Evangelion'' it's uncertain if the trope was being subverted or parodied or played entirely straight.

 

* 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 ==

* ''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.

'''Wilbur:''' Ah! One of ''those''. }}

** Further lampshaded in ''One Of Our Thursdays Is Missing'', which reveals that any technological object in the Bookworld more advanced than a toaster is built by Techno Babble Industries.

* 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.

{{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.

** Baltar had previously used reams of technobabble on Tigh to demonstrate his fake Amazing Cylon Detector. Lucky that his hapless victim turned out to be a real Cylon. Ironically, the equally-technobabbly but functional detector later built by Baltar is currently considered fake.

** 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]].

** 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".

'''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.

 

== Newspaper Comics ==

{{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.)

* 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.

** In ''[[Half-Life (series)/Fanfic Recs|Welcome To City 17]]'', he doesn't understand it either, because that is technobabble [[Science Marches On|from twenty years in the future]] to him.

== Web Comics ==

* Subverted in ''[[Kid Radd]]'', where the otherwise brilliant [[Mad Scientist]] has a huge blind spot for technobabble. "The sensors are picking up some '''stuff!'''"

* Parodied as well in [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/1503.html this] ''[[Irregular Webcomic]]'' strip; see also the notes at the bottom.

* ''[[8-Bit Theater]]'' features a technobabble dialogue in [http://www.nuklearpower.com/2003/09/25/episode-334-car-talk-and-retribution/ this strip].

* ''[[Intragalactic]]'' did a parody of technobabble in a footnote [http://intragalacticcomic.com/2008/11/21/021-magic-2d-space-map/ here]: "It wouldn't seem like you could chart space on a two-dimensional screen like this. Until you remember that at large distances space functions as a flat surface due to the exponentially increasing effects of gravity as we near the Planck time. Subspace anomaly nanoprobes wormhole."

** Also in ''Muertitos'' by the same author [http://muertitos.comicgenesis.com/d/20080306.html here]: "The trauma has rendered her catatonic, clinically vegetative, and medicine saline doctor viral!"

* Lampshaded in ''[[The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob]]'' when Jean Poule tries to [http://bobadventures.comicgenesis.com/d/20071204.html explain the experiment which produced Molly.]

** And again when Molly [http://bobadventures.comicgenesis.com/d/20100713.html tries to explain her newest invention.]

{{quote|'''Scientist:''' [[Negative Space Wedgie|Shiny]] [[Hell Gate|void]] [[Another Dimension|rift]] [[X Meets Y|plus]] [[Kill Sat|big]] [[BFG|space]] [[Wave Motion Gun|gun]] [[Oh Crap|make]] [[Earthshattering Kaboom|world]] [[The End of the World as We Know It|go]] [[Apocalypse How|'splody.]]}}

** And [http://exterminatusnow.comicgenesis.com/d/20100926.html here], where they use some of the more well known ones. Don't miss the labels on the other switches.

* [http://www.sandraandwoo.com/2010/10/28/0212-techno-babble/ Completely inverted] by ''[[Sandra and Woo]]''.

* Technobabble in ''[[Girl Genius]]'' tends to run afoul of the [[Unspoken Plan Guarantee]]; if any use of technology is described it will fail or be foiled, necessitating [[Indy Ploy|on-the-spot improvisation]] that involves [[Percussive Maintenance]], [[Frickin' Laser Beams]], or [[A Wizard Did It|just science that happens to be weird]]. The entire three-way poison cure between Agatha, Gil and Tavrek is a good example, as it was full of babbling Sparks getting owned by [[Finagle's Law]].

 

 

* Essentially every product or idea sold on the basis of the word "quantum", or to put it another way, the entire woo-woo industry. Woo which predates quantum mechanics—homeopathy, for example—has been retooled to include a lot of convincing-sounding, but utterly nonsensical, jibber-jabber about superposition and parallel dimensions. To make yourself an idea, watch the second half of ''What the <BLEEP> Do We Know''.

* Attempts to use technobabble to lend a veneer of plausibility to pseudoscience often have the opposite effect on people who actually know anything about the scientific disciplines being abused. [https://web.archive.org/web/20120306055402/http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/08/your_friday_dose_of_woo_just_what_your_w.php One hilarious example]—apparently the ills of the world are caused by the ''bond angle in water changing''; not only would this not happen without a change in the fundamental constants of the universe, but it's something everyone would notice because it would affect the freezing and boiling points of water. The same people then go on to talk about how boiling water drives off the electrons because its natural state is electrically charged, at which point anyone who hasn't completely forgotten GCSE chemistry and physics should smell the bullshit clearly and anyone who actually has a degree in either subject will be laughing uncontrollably, facepalming or both. Most people don't, which is why it's so popular to use.

** Here's a challenge: try to find ''any'' New Agey pseudoscience or fakery which the charlatan behind it at no point ever describes or explains using meaningless misapplications of the words "energy" or "vibration".

* The ICAO Accident Prevention Manual mentions an incident where a private pilot once wrote the authorities asking if he could save money by mixing kerosene with his aircraft fuel. They sent back a letter stating: ''Utilization of motor fuel involves major uncertainties/probabilities respecting shaft output and metal longevity where application pertains to aeronautical internal combustion power plants.'' Pilot's reply: "Thanks for the information. Will start using kerosene next week." Answering by cable this time, the authorities responded: ''Regrettably decision involves uncertainties. Kerosene utilization consequences questionable, with respect to metalloferrous components and power production.'' Cable reply from the pilot: "Thanks again. It will sure cut my fuel bill." Response by telex within the hour: DON'T USE KEROSENE. IT COULD KILL THE ENGINE, AND YOU TOO!

** A great example of why you should avoid [[Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness|uselessly long words]]. (Regrettably decision involves uncertainties -> Actually, we're not sure about that decision.)

I started collecting MP3s in about 2001, and if I try to play any of the tracks I downloaded back then, even the stuff I grabbed at 320kbps, they just sound like crap. The bass is terrible, the midrange...well don't get me started. Some of those albums have degraded down to 32 or even 16kbps. FLAC rips from the same period still sound great, even if they weren't stored correctly, in a cool, dry place. Seriously, stick to FLAC, you may not be able to hear the difference now, but in a year or two, you'll be glad you did. }}

* Physicist Alan Sokal wrote an article in the journal ''Social Text'' that was essentially this, emphasis on "babble". He did so to prove that the humanities division would accept anything.

* A number of supplements talk about how wonderful it is that they contain DNA. As does every life form on Earth.

 

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