Ron Moore Decries Star Trek Technobabble October 14, 2009
by TrekMovie.com Staff , Filed under: Science/Technology, TNG, TOS , trackback
The Star Trek franchise, especially in the TNG era, is well known for its scientific and engineering dialiog, often referred to as ‘technobabble’. Recently when speaking at the New York Television Festival, veteran Star Trek writer/producer and Battlestar Galactica co-creator, Ron Moore spoke about how he became “frustrated” with this aspect of Trek. Watch video of Moore talking tech below.
Moore Techs the Tech
video courtesy of SyFy.com
Trek’s Top 10 Technobabbles
Here is a tongue-in-cheek (with adult language) compilation of Trek’s top 10 technobabbles from JamesNintendoNerd (aka The Angry Video Game Nerd).
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Comments»
i dont know how some of those TNG era actors (esp Spiner) managed to memorise all the Treknobabble…
technobabble is an integral part, though can be quite funny.
Gotta love the flux capacitor :)
I always loved technobabble.
I don´t see a problem with the Technobabble. By the way, the new movie has technobabble.
They certainly learned how to sell it!
Apart from a fondness for my moniker, I hated all that technobabble… especially when it simply invented a solution to a problem, taking all the “wind” out of the danger. To me, this was always lazy writing, and it never impressed me…
By the way, I was watching the TNG episode “Conspiracy” last night and heard the following exchange between Riker & Geordi:
Riker: “Increase to warp 6.”
Geordi: “Yes sir, full impulse.”
WTF? Geordi was out of frame so I suspect they just added his voice in editing but got the response wrong… or am I misunderstanding the technobabble. I just never noticed this before.
Gene Roddenberry said it best “John Wayne never explains how the gun works, he just shoots it” (or something like that) Technobable is an easy way out for writers. Its ” Lets push the purple button twice and the yellow once and wait for the beep”. Problem solved. Its nonsense. I love RDM he has an impressive imagination that he shared with us countless times especially post Star Trek….however, I feel he is the biggest vioaltor when it came to technobablenonsense. Star Trek Generations anyone? (Specifically, how to get the Lakul out of the NExus and so forth.)
#7 Thats what happens when you put a blind man in the drivers seat.
#7 thats hilarious
I loved the Technobabble in Star Trek. I always found it cool.
True that Voyager over did it but it never ruined the shows for me.
By the way the scene from Rascals Riker is purposely confusing the Ferengi to aid Picard and crew retake the ship. So Riker’s technobabble was meant to do as it sounded.
I loved the Technobabble and I am sorry the new movie has done away with a lot of it.
I like it. It makes Trek feel more real than other SciFi series.
i see no problem,
if a person from 1830 walked into a 2009 high school astronomy class talking about nuclear fusion in a sun, the 1830 person would say its nothing but technobabble!
I am disappointed that the video doesn’t include the worst scene of technobabble in Trek. In Enterprise when Archer is describing quantum engineering recovered from the future to Trip. The scene goes on and on with no purpose to the technobabble. Normally, it has some kind of point like a “like a balloon that gets over inflated’ translation, but this had none.
I don’t understand how any top 10 technobabble countdown can leave out at least some of the over 9000 examples from Voyager.
13.
I think the issue is that most people don’t talk about nuclear physics on an everyday basis. I doubt even naval personnel on a USN carrier like the Enterprise or the Nimitz go into the details unless they’re an engineer. What concerns them is that it works, not HOW it works.
Not to mention that all of that would actually make sense, whereas in Star Trek and most other science fiction it’s just nonsense thrown out to sound intelligent (to a point that people actually versed in the sciences can easily spot the errors).
I don’t really mind technobabble all that much, but I can see the roots of the complaints.
# 2 “technobabble is an integral part, though can be quite funny.”
Was an integral part of the 24th century perhaps. But it had little exposure in the 23rd century. While Geordi would literally waste 5 minutes explaining some cock-eyed technobabblefied solution on how to repair the problem, Scotty would simply fix the problem. Kirk didn’t want to hear how he was going to fix it, he just wanted it fixed. The spin-offs wasted way too much precious story time with that useless mumbo jumbo. I’m thrilled to see it stripped down for the new movie.
Here’s a question…
Is there less technobabble in TOS compared to TNG because…
1) …there was very little of it?
2)… because we’re a more technologically savvy society now and we’re looking from hindsight?
Discuss and give examples.
I like the on-line techobabble generators, like the one at
http://ds10.org/Database/babble.html
My favorite technobabble generator is at
http://hyotynen.kapsi.fi/trekfailure
@16:
You probably never heard two computer experts talking to each other.
That is even thousand times worse than ST Technobabble, because the computer experts don’t only use technical terms, they also use thousands of abbreviations.
Technobabble – when it makes scientifical sense and isn’t used as deus ex machina – is great. But you have to use it in the right dose and at the right point of time.
No Captain would ever use technobabble or allow his science officer to use technobabble when talking to him.
However two engineers talking to each other would not do without technobabble, they would not talk in stupid simplifications as if they didn’t know the corrct technical terms, as if they only completed a crash course for dummies.
Technobabble is nasty pseudo-science and is part of what makes TNG a joke. TOS, beyond the conveniences of (di-)lithium-powered FTL travel, energy/matter conversion/reconversion for teleportation and futuristic zap guns, didn’t need to lie.
When Dr McCoy found a vaccine in Miri, he simply worked out a vaccine. We didn’t need lies to make it sound more believable: the man’s a doctor and he gets on with his job!
Technobabble was part of what led modern Star Trek to seem like some kind of smug self-contained fantasy universe unrelated to ours. Really, most TNG technobabble solutions are no better than the Valeyard trying to blow up a Time Lord jury in Doctor Who with a ‘Megabyte Modem!’
I loved the technobabble, I had no trouble remembering it, it made sense to me, and I used to have fun picking out flaws in the technobabble they sometimes used.
god i was a loser then
Scotty on tos did use some technobabble. But when he did it it was never over done. It was there for that scene. Like in The Doomsday machine or Elan of Troyus. On Tng I think they always took it a little to far. But when they get it right it was gold. Case in point The best of both worlds 1 and 2 and Q Who.
Number 3 doesn’t count, that wasn’t real technobabble, Riker just was fooling the Ferengi.
Anyone notice on the Top 10 Technobabble video the text under the first clip reads “That Witch Survives” instead of “That Which Survives”? I thought that was pretty amusing — has the guy who compiled all these clips always thought the title was refering to “That Witch” Losira? Or just a typo?
@21 Dom
The TNG era shows used more techno-babble because they were more thoroughly done than TOS. Also, people in the 60s were less educated, and would have gotten a head-ache of all that information. TOS was simply made for less educated people than TNG was.
And how the frak can you call TNG a joke? Believe me, if you ask a non-trekker, then I guarantee you that TOS will be the ST show that they will think is the most ridiculous…
I love ‘em all though. I sincerely wish people like you could let go of all your hatred/prejudice and feel the same.
It’s really too bad Ron feels that way. The terminology we came up with wasn’t meaningless; it’s only babble if it doesn’t make any sense. As I’ve been discussing with folks over on John Scalzi’s blog WHATEVER, those of us who understood the science and technology (both present day and 24th century), who helped the writers and producers make sense of the “super science” of Star Trek, tried our damnedest to have it all make sense and be internally consistent. It was up to the writers to make it into drama; was somebody -forcing- them to over-tech it? Not me. Naren Shankar got it; Jeri Taylor could make sense of it and work it in. Even the Stargate folks figured out how to do it, regardless of how many times they took us to the Renaissance Faire planet. Maybe we should have used smaller words in our memos. And just so’s you know, if you heard words like “isogenic” and “metaphasic,” that -wasn’t- us.
There’s a disturbing backlash going on with media SF, where the folks making what are clearly science fiction productions are distancing themselves from the field, proclaiming that their products aren’t SF. Science and technology should be intelligently addressed in SF films and television in the same way that med tech is handled in med shows like House, M.D. or political tech was handled in The West Wing. If you take the science out of SF, you end up with the SF equivalent of Scrubs and not House. It’s time folks treated the source material with a little respect.
It’s “technobabble” when it’s a substitute for good story writing, as when
1. the plot hinges on made up technology, and/or
2. the resolution hinges on made up technology
You get an unengaging story since the writer can basically invent whatever is needed to get from A to B. De-polarize the subspace deflectors? Ah, of course. We learned something today.
Ron’s BSG still had its moments of technobabble, like the cancer curing properties of Cylon fetal blood, or Leoben’s de-jamming box of blinky lights.
Paramount should hire James Rolfe (AVGN) to make Star Trek XII
Welcome Rick. Any thoughts on something I’ve heard floating around about how SF should be split into Science Fiction and Science Fantasy?
#27 Great to see you here Mr Sternbach. We posted at the same time but my post sort of makes a reply to yours. I don’t think there’s an objection to imaginative technology or a detailed future mythos. It just feels like a cheat when the story is resolved by a fictional ad lib, no matter how consistently crafted. It could be based on the Technology, or on Spock suddenly having a useful Vulcan ability like a forgotten inner eyelid.
It’s like if episodes of a Harry Potter series concluded with someone suddenly remembering or inventing a perfect spell.
I would love to see a Harr Potter movie end with someone holding a wand aloft and crying in a loud voice “DEUS EX MAAAAAAAACHINAAAAAAA”. I assume most of the audience wouldn’t get it, but a handful of people would be dying with laughter.
#30 – I didn’t know there was a governing body that controlled such things. :) Actually, since there isn’t, you can make up your own mind as to what a particular work is.
I’ve always thought of the “field” as the two major parts, science fiction and fantasy. Or fantasy and science fiction; not taking sides as to which is more important. There are plenty of sub-categories, and I’m speaking mainly about literary works, though the umbrella fits to cover comics, art, film/tv, etc. There’s a lot being done and there’s something out there for pretty much every taste. Thanks goodness.
In 100% agreement with Rick. Trek has always had science advisors on board, and while at times the ideas used in the shows have pushed the limit of credulity, at least they TRIED to make sense.
I have to say that Ron Moore seems to have this chip on his shoulder when it comes to Trek. For years while extoling the wonderfulness that is BSG he has also taken time to lambast Trek, in all forms. I have lost a lot of respect for Mr. Moore over the last few years because of these rants.
If you have a problem with “technobabble” then books like Niven’s Ringworld might not be for you. I had to look up some of the stuff in those books to understand some of the concepts that were being discussed and explained and used as plot points. And a lot of it was theoretical and highly entertaining.
Point of fact is that you don’t have science fiction without science. And for the science fiction to be compelling you will have to go beyond modern science and venture off into theoretical sciences. Read some Asimov or Heinlein. You could call a lot of that “technobabble”. Heck, read Jules Verne.
Rick Sternbach explained it perfectly.
#31 – Right. It all depends on how well the story is crafted. Some episodic TV writers can weave the tech into the story, some can’t. I agree that pulling the tech rabbit out of the hat to solve the problem of the week was unsatisfying; it’s sometimes difficult to tell a story of a genuine last-minute brain-spark before the ship gets blown up. I’m the first guy to say that (tech) isn’t the most important thing in a story, and I live and breathe this stuff all the time. But if you’re writing about a space faring civilization that relies on machines and unusual processes (compared to what your average viewer experiences daily), you’d better be prepared to talk about the gizmos as well as who Lt. Jane Doe is dating.
Technobabble is mostly a good sign when used intelligently.
It musn’t be used as deus ex machina, but you may create a consistent technological future and you can discuss technology in a SF show. SF always included the hopes and fears people have towards technological progress and therefore some “science” between all the “fiction” is welcome.
Actually I have to say BSG wasn’t enough SF for me. Big parts of the first two season could also have taken place on a US Submarine. And season three & four became too much fantasy (God, Angels…). Either it was a character drama or fantasy, Real Science Fiction episodes were very rare.
That YouTube video is obnoxious.
I have always found it strange how Moore bashes Trek the way he does. First it’s canon that’s the problem, next it’s technobabble.
I think his issue is called “writer’s block.” He was a major contributor to latter-day Star Trek. It was probably the peak of his career in terms of working in corporate TV. So far, anyway.
Jezzzzzz….
He’s not dissing trek.
Can our favorite things in life not have flaws?
@33 Rick Sternbach:
I agree, I see no reason for sci/fi to be dumbed down simply because some are afraid to actually learn some things while being entertained.
I know you’ve put a lot of care and effort in the technology of (the golden era of) Star Trek and I salute you for that.
Finally, RDM said it. The mountains of venom spewed because die hards didn’t like the new Enterprise overlooked the obvious – no amount of techno babble will ever wish the image on the screen into real life…ever. I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that the decline in viewership in Star Trek was correlated to the rise of techno-speak. Most people will watch Sci-Fi when the tech is in support of the story, as the latest Trek flick demonstrated. When the story supports the techno babble, you lose your audience…fast, because it’s bad story telling.
19 – Thanks for the hilarious technobabble generator link.
How’s this for one? “Unresolvable Plotpoints Resolverator.
#40 – Thanks for that. We tried. A lot of the Trek 24th century science and technology was really established as a set of basic rules, so that we had limits on what we (read Starfleet) could do, and hopefully the drama would have to deal with those limits to make the story interesting and exciting. We strongly recommended that, for instance, one could not use the transport buffer to bring back dead folks. Some of these limits were bent and others completely broken, but our intent with the tech memos and handbooks was to create a foundation for the writers to work from, so that they understood how warp worked, how the transporter worked, how much the Enterprise massed, etc. and could create compelling stories with -some- of that in mind. We said all along it wasn’t all required reading, but it was nice to know it was there if required. If the writers needed a rule to be broken, we’d help make it at least sound plausible. It seemed better, though, when aliens broke the rules, so that we could be suitably impressed and boggled. :)
#40
I completely agree with you. That’s what I was getting at in my post #35. I sought out the concepts that were being presented to me in the science fiction I read.
Science Fiction is for thinkers. Ask yourself: Is it the so-called technobabble that you don’t like or the fact that you can’t wrap your head around an advanced scientific concept that you don’t like?
And #41 I think your assertion is off base. Trek enjoyed it’s greatest popularity during a time in which so-called technobabble flourished. Trek’s popularity waned because there had been a glut of it on TV and that the property had become stale and mis-managed.
#41 Finally? Heck, he’s had the opportunity to say it before. As in… almost 20 years ago when he was on the staff of TNG. Yes, he voted with his feet out from the Voyager staff… but he could have been more vociferous and saw to it changing rather than leaving… He’s as much to blame as any of the TNG staff.
Worse, that’s a lazy YouTube compilation, as one of the babbles is from an alternate universe Data, another is *purposely* Riker doing doublespeak in “Rascals” to confuse a Ferengi, and another is purposely written to show Riker’s frustration with Barclay. Sometimes technobabble has a purpose.
RDM is quite the “oracle” 20 years later. Yeah. Hey! Watch out! in 2000 George Bush gets elected! Wow.
Anybody talk to a computer tech lately? There’s plenty of realworld technobabble in everyday life.
Thanks Rick! I have to say, the technobable of the TNG era was something that everyone loved. Here was a show that actually had some science going on. I couldn’t believe the show actually didn’t stick to comfortable metaphors to explain the science! lol! Those of us who enjoy science loved how TNG was an understandable universe scientifically, even if the science was fiction. Heck, even my little sister and everyone else who watched reruns of TNG on basic cable got to understand the tech so well everyone just started to ‘get it’. Really, you’d be surprised how many people know what a ‘warp coil’ is. And I think that goes to show just how great that technobabble was!
After all, TNG was a super popular show. Technobabble and all!
I guess it’s just that, as the shows piled up, the technobabble became a crutch. Even a deux ex machina at times, though that’s not automatically a bad thing.
20.
I have, and you’re right.
My point is that there’s no reason everyone on Star Trek should be as versed in the sciences as they are. I think the Enterprise (IMHO) is more similar to a naval vessel than a room fool of computer scientists.
One of the things many writing instructors have talked about in story is the “life-line.” This is something you plant early in your story, which comes back later to help the hero, or is something the hero can rely on. But because you already presented it in the story, it is believable, it makes sense, and there is a logic to it. On the other hand, technobabble solutions appear seemingly out of nowhere, at the last moment, to save the day. Someone just happens to have an idea, or remembers something at the last moment, or offers some cutting-edge suggestion — presenting information the audience had no prior knowledge of. This is akin to watching a mystery show where the detective reveals the solution but the audience was never given any prior clue as to how he deduced that. If the detective’s solution is based on a conversation he had with the victim’s landlord, for example, we should have seen something about that conversation take place earlier in the story. Otherwise, I think it’s called “cheating.”
If you folks want some real technospeak (I’m officially changing the term), go back and read the LENSMAN series by Edward E. “Doc” Smith. Or listen to the audiobook versions. Begun in the late 1920s, the story of the Galactic Patrol and Civilization vs. the Boskonians and the Eddorians is the source of all we know in space opera, including Star Trek, Star Wars, and a lot of other franchises. The Bergenholm was the warp drive of the day, the DeLameter was the phaser, and duodec was the explosive that just -had- to have led to the photon torpedo. It’s a whole different style of SF entertainment, and very dated, but tons of fun. “Hey Worsel, you old snake! Tell Haynes I’ve got to flit!”
40. DJ Neelix: ‘I see no reason for sci/fi to be dumbed down simply because some are afraid to actually learn some things while being entertained.’
Far from it. But tell me anything of TNG technobabble that teaches us anything. It’s essentially – when it makes what little sense it does – a nuclear physicist talking jargon down to a class of five-year-olds. It’s dirty and dishonest. The best science fiction is scientifically genuine and is explained to its audience. It was for these reasons that the likes of Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke and so on captured the imaginations of so many readers in the 40s, 50s and beyond.
And I’d certainly argue with the patronising assertion that people in the 1960s were ill-educated. We’ve never had a darker age than now where reading and general knowledge are next to non-existent across huge swathes of the population.
Good Star Trek by science fiction writers such as Theodore Sturgeon managed to look at both science and philosophy in a clear, well-thought-out manner. Bad science fiction is exemplified in the above video. The technobabble of TNG is the work of ivory tower pseudo-intellectuals looking down on the viewership and not bothering to explain themselves. It’s high-minded, dishonest and nothing more than an excuse for bad and lazy writing (which Berman’s era exemplifies!) It’s a classic emperor’s new clothes tactic.
The Youtube video was spot on. A pity it didn’t flag up Picard and his goons committing genocide in Homeward as well!
Ron Moore saw the foolishness in TNG’s Soviet Union-esque disrespect for its viewing public and turned around to make the best, most thoughtful science fiction series in years, one which addressed similar questions to those brought up in TOS.
Intellectually and philosophically, Battlestar Galactica is the true sequel to Star Trek TOS.
Get this straight, I think TNG is a pretty ok series in its own right. I just loathe it as a purported sequel to Star Trek and I loathe its revisionist misunderstanding of the original show.
Hey Rick. I also loved the old Flash Gorden SeriesThey had some kool stuff for the day in that and as well as the rest. Thank you for all your contibutions to all things Trek and you are realy appreaciated here on Trek Movie and thank you for coming here and blogging with us crazy Trek Fans.
#50: “Ron Moore [...] turned around to make the best, most thoughtful science fiction series in years, one which addressed similar questions to those brought up in TOS.”
For the first two seasons, anyway (the first two seasons were absolutely brilliant, IMO). After that, it was dumbed-down and gimmicked-out to the college-kid coffeehouse level and may as well been a puppet show about people slapping each other while citing Charles Sanders Peirce and painting each others’ nipples.
“Get this straight, I think TNG is a pretty ok series in its own right. I just loathe it as a purported sequel to Star Trek and I loathe its revisionist misunderstanding of the original show.”
I’m pretty much with you on that.
50:
“Ron Moore saw the foolishness in TNG’s Soviet Union-esque disrespect for its viewing public and turned around to make the best, most thoughtful science fiction series in years, one which addressed similar questions to those brought up in TOS.”
LOL
Just what is “Soviet Union-esque?” The endlessly positive crop reports?
“Tech the tech!” Phrase of the day. Possible band name.
As much as I love TNG, the excessive technobabble and technobabble solutions to every problem was not a good thing. For no better reason than it isn’t dramatic. It’s the one thing I shake my head at in shame as I watch the show now. I wish Ron had rebelled sooner. Maybe subsequent shows would’ve been better off.
Yeah sadly TNG went a bit far with the techno babble, it maybe have been its main detractor. What got me the most, though, is when somebody like me actually tried to make some sense of how things worked, they went and changed it around. I think Enterprise was the worst with that. For the most part they seemed to keep their technobabble somewhat feasible in whats now theoretical science, yet when it came to things in Engineering they couldnt get it right. Antimatter injectors were in the wrong places, sometimes the ship had a bunch of EPS manifolds, sometimes only one, and then there was that season 3 episode where they stole a single warp coil and that somehow made the difference between not having any warp power and having it back to nearly full. I think that’s the main thing they need to watch now. They’ve gotten the level down to something workable, but they just need to keep their facts right (like the Enterprise doesnt run on beer).
TOS knew that technobabble wasn’t about people. TNG/etc forgot that.
A little technobabble now and then is a good thing.
But, I swear, if I ever hear that a tachyon pulse saves the day one more time that i’ll turn in my secret Trek decoder ring!
53. AJ
TNG’s universe was virtually a love song to the Soviet Union. Berman and his team blamed the fans for not liking their shows and films. It was a perfect case of the people in charge being so closeted that they disrespected their viewers and assumed they knew better than those who deigned to watch their show and therefore pay their wages!
Effectively the nanny state knows best. Long live Abrams films with their Nokia phones, corporations, Tricorder as a manufacturer’s name and so on!
# 50
“Intellectually and philosophically, Battlestar Galactica is the true sequel to Star Trek TOS.”
You can’t be serious!
BSG shows us a pessimistic future, with a democracy on the edge of tyranny where death penalties and turture are common practices. Terror, war, suspection and mistrust at any time. No, there is no optimistic vision in BSG, it’s a hard and dark future and no one tries to make it better.
In so far, TOS has no real sucessor. No series ever came close to that light, entertaining and mostly clever feeling the show had. TNG tried to create a more adult and serious version of Star Trek (what allways was Roddenberry’s true version. See The Cage for example). Sometimes they nailed it very well down, sometimes they stepped over the line. I think your hate for a single TNG-episode blinds your judgment about everything else concerning TNG.
I think DS9 found the best balance. Yeah O’Brien would often throw out some technobabble explanation for something, but it was usually quick and to the point.
TNG, while I had no problem understanding what they were describing, definitely went overboard with it. There were some episodes where the dialogue seemed to consist of nothing BUT technobabble, or they would pile one technobabble explanation on top of another.
#60. Moors Bsg was set 150,000 years ago. So it is possible that Bsg was a Prequel to Star Trek.
Typical Next Gen episode…
Someone is going to attack our ship and we may have a really cool space battle…but first, lets all go and sit round a table and discuss matters and attempt a boring, technobabble laden, peaceful solution that drains all the drama…
…hated technobabble, if i wanted to listen to a bunch of dam science geeks I would have majored in computer science at uni. However I released that i didnt want to be a virgin at 30 so i did marketing/advertising.
Next Gen gave Star Trek it’s GEEK tag more than any other facet of Trek, cause it was only the science nerds that related to it. The cast were a bunch of fuglies and geeks if I even did seem them.
That the new Trek appealed to the masses and they left most of the babble behind.
Truly, the TNG hate is a lot of horse shit.
#60 Captain Rickover states it correctly for my money.
“I think your hate for a single TNG-episode blinds your judgment about everything else concerning TNG.”
… which is why Doctor Who is so great:
“Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey”
i rest my case
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vY_Ry8J_jdw
“real” scifi is an acquired taste, hence the reason why the new Trek was such a success (and Star Wars), it stayed, WAY, WAY away from the ‘big bang theory” fan base.
If they take trek further into fantasy, ala Empire Strikes Back, it will make even more money and be even more culturally accepted.
I will say it again, the Next Gen gave Star Tek it’s Geek tag more than anything, it was a nerds wet dream.
Creative words are a poor excuse for creative storytelling. Sadly, most of TNG failed to recognise that.
60. Captain Rickover: ‘You can’t be serious!’
Yes I can. Other times I can be quite funny!
‘BSG shows us a pessimistic future, with a democracy on the edge of tyranny where death penalties and turture are common practices.’
No, BSG shows humans who live in a believable society where democracy is something to be fought for and earned: it’s not an automatic right. TOS was the same. The Federation of TNG is little more than a communist dictatorship. The death penalty still exists in TOS for mutiny, going to Talos IV and so on.
‘Terror, war, suspection and mistrust at any time.’
The Dominion, the Parasites, the Romulans, the Founders, most of Starfleet’s Admiralty. TNG’s ‘utopia’ was a big fat lie and the likes of Picard the biggest hypocrites of the lot for supporting it.
‘No, there is no optimistic vision in BSG, it’s a hard and dark future and no one tries to make it better.’
Except for Laura Roslin and her search for Earth, Baltar’s redemption, Adama’s sheer bloody-minded will to keep everyone going against all odds . . . BSG was extremely positive. It simply showed real people who had flaws put into extreme situations no human being should have to go through. TNG’s ‘humans’ were less human than the Cylons. That the most emotional character in TNG was an unemotional android is the most obvious condemnation of its characters!
‘In so far, TOS has no real sucessor. No series ever came close to that light, entertaining and mostly clever feeling the show had.’
At least the new movie is going in the right direction!
‘TNG tried to create a more adult and serious version of Star Trek (what allways was Roddenberry’s true version. See The Cage for example)’
No, TOS was the work of many people. Gene Roddenberry later claimed all the credit and marketed himself as some sort of humanist prophet at the expense of the contributions of Herb Solow, Robert Justman, David Gerrold, DC Fontana, Theodore Stugeon, Gene Coon, Harlan Ellison, Leonard Nimoy, Harve Bennett, Nick Meyer and countless others to his ‘Vision’. The Cage was bound to fail: it’s a 1950s pulp movie with pretensions above its station. It even felt dated when it was made. At least the rest of TOS looked like it came from the 1960s! TMP similarly was a pulp movie with pretensions above its station. Roddenberry really ceased to have any relevance to Trek after season two.
‘Sometimes they nailed it very well down, sometimes they stepped over the line. I think your hate for a single TNG-episode blinds your judgment about everything else concerning TNG.’
No, I think Homeward sums up what a terrifying future TNG represents. It’s the death of humanity as a decent race. The Federation deserved to fall after the events of many episodes, but none more so than Homeward!
Forget the techno-babble, God did it!
I’ve heard him (Moore) make this point before about post TOS shows use of technobabble. It’s definitely true. The early seasons of TNG (before Moore) didn’t have loads of technobabble in them. By the time they hit season 5 every show they did bathed in it. Hell, it didn’t even feel like the same show at that point. The later shows…….UGH. Sometimes I would just look at the screen when I watched them and say, “Oh, for love of God, shut up!”
I remember seeing Generations in the theater. The scene at the beginning where Scotty says “Captain, it may be possible to simulate a resonance burst using the main deflector dish.” is the most painful, out of character moment EVER.
Can you imagine “The Doomsday Machine” translated into a “TNG, DS9 et al.” script? How unbelievably boring that would have been.
i hate the TNG bashing on this site. its one of the best shows.
it actually sicken s me
TNG technobabble was pretty bad, I suppose, but it never bothered me.
Now, VOYAGER was lousy with the stuff….
Oh, and one comment about the YouTube clip: They list the first episode as “That WITCH Survives”???
And “The 9TH Degree”???
OMG….
Don’t get me wrong. I watched/taped TNG religiously when it was on and saw every movie on its’ opening night. But they went overboard in the later years with the made up science jargon to ridiculous proportions.
There was very little technobabble in TOS.
Technobabble, that is kind of an error, because about a third of the tech words used in TNG come from Quantum Mechanics. And as far as I know that science was not given the full science encouragement until 1987 by all fields of science, which by the way is the year that TNG was started, at least the Pilot Movie the series hit syndication in 1989.
Thay may be why some of the many words were not known or even understood by by fools that thought science was how the zipper in their pants worked. And Mr. Moore is not expected to know the words or that they can actually be words from sciences they never herd of because they are not really out of the labs they were invented in
Give Mr. Moore a book to educate himself on the Quantum World and he will most likely treat it just as our nations lawmakers are treating health care today, they say it’s a waste of paper convert it into TP so I can really be able to use it and what was on it will be amoung it’s brothers.
And then Sci-Fi is not meant to be total truth, were did the word fiction come from and what does it mean. Sci-Fi is meant to expand the minds views in to new never before thought of. In 1943 Arther C Clark’s Sci-Fi books on Satellites orbiting the Earth for Communications, most likely sounded like Technobabble at the time. But today with out his visions, there would be no cell phones so there goes about half your contacts in Hollyweed.
The better question is will these words ever become real when such talk become reality. Ans Star Trek has far better odds at that than most others do. This is because those words start people thinking and dreaming of who to make those dreams become real.
It would be nice to herd Mr. Moore’s counter statement to those points of disagreement, but he most likely has far better things in his world than to argue with your average public. Some of his works I even admire like BSG (not at first but over time it grew on me). And is that not one of the purposes of Sci-Fi, not arguing over Technobabble.
#78) John from Cincinnati, do you know why there is little Technobabble in TOS. At the time some of it was, but in the last 40 or so years much of the Technobabble has been converted into reality or at least our lexicon of speech.
If you want proof just watch the 2 hour History Channel special ‘25 ways that William Shatner changed the World” and in mine and most others views, for the better.
One of the reasons I love ENT so much is that they made a herculean effort to limit technobabble in the dialogue as much as was possible in a Trek series.
All my favorite Trek episodes are about people, story, and drama. Time spent talking about reversing the phase of an inverse tachyon beam is time not spent doing people, story, and drama. Trek’s a sci-fi franchise, so there’s gotta be SOME future tech involved, but in the 24th century shows it really became invasive to me, and WAY too often a deus ex machina or a simple crutch to cover lazy writing.
All it does for a actor, series, show or whatever, is a very simple reason. It acts as a tool to make the person seem smarter then the rest. While Kirk may have known all about the tech involved in ship, he was more of a man of action. Picard was not that much on action and so he was always the one to figure it out if Data was not around or Wesley. Janway had to work both sides and Sisco was more on action. Archer knew what is going on but relied on his staff (as any good commanding officer does) to get things done. However, he was not afraid of getting mixed up in a fight if need berather then let some crewman take a fall.
Bottomline is that you have to have some thing to explain what just happened, human beings always want an answer, even if we don’t understand it.
I think some of those “Top Ten Technobabble” moments are nonsense. It’s one thing if the writers are deliberately trying to explain what’s going on and go too far off the tech deep end, but another when the tech talk is there for other purposes. I’d prefer the examples have been genuine attempts by the writers to tell the audience what’s going on, but some of those “Top Ten” were not.
The “First Contact” example was cut off before the Borg Queen could say “Do you ALWAYS talk this much?” which tells the audience that the scene isn’t about the tech, but Data biding his time with the Borg. Riker in “Rascals” isn’t technobabbling, he’s deliberately trying to confuse the hapless Ferengi, it doesn’t matter that the audience doesn’t understand what he’s saying, we’re not supposed to and neither was the Ferengi. And Data in “Brothers” isn’t using technobabble at all, he’s just setting an incredibly complex password. There are a lot worse technobabble examples in Trek than those. Start with the nonsense in “Force of Nature”, which overtuned everything we thought we knew about warp speed in the previous 25 years just to give us a Global Warming analogy.
Sorry to hear Ron Moore didn’t appreciate the importance of the technobabble… Because you know what I loved ?? In the new star trek movie, where if you blinked — because of one of the camera flares catching you in the eye — then you missed entirely the half-sentence, or two or three words, explaining what has happened as the basic sci-fi premise of the film. How much would I have paid for someone to have the balls to explain the alternate timeline and the parallel universe theory of time travel! It’s all nice and dandy for Orci to sit here and answer fans as they bombard him with questions on that — AND the red frickin’ matter– but how about explaining it for the rest of the world and in the context of the story?? Give me a break.
I am a huge supporter of intelligent sci-fi, and if you can construct words using basic roots in conjunction with the terminology we recognize, like “temporal” then good on ya.
Sorry to hear Moore decrying this. A sad day. Now we can go to Star Wars for our sci-fi… yo, what’s the force? “It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds all living things.” Yeah. That’ll do. :P
Disappointed.
I disagree with Mr. Moore. I think that the technobabble is helpful and makes the show more realistic.
One poster commented that most people don’t use technical terms in every day conversations. Really? Well, how about this:
DVD, LCD, Satellite, PDA, Internet, HD, Plasma, 1080p, etc.
If you went back in time, even 50 years, most of these terms wouldn’t be understood and would be “technobabble;” go back 100 years and even more terms we use every day would be “technobabble.” Further, Starfleet officers are NOT most people. They have graduated from Starfleet Academy which is portrayed to be the Starfleet version of the Naval Academy; both in its elite status and its toughness; it’s nearly impossable to get into the Naval Academy and just as tough to get through. Since SFA is supposed to be similar to the USNA, then Starfleet officers are not most people as most people couldn’t make it through one of the military academies.
Another thing to consider is that they are in outer space and therefore would have to deal with stellar phenomenon. Further, science is an integral part of science fiction, hence the name. And, most of the “technobabble” used in Star Trek were scientifically accurate; yes some was made up for the show but descriptions of wormholes and other stellar phenomenon were straight from science textbooks.
Therefore, while Star Trek did occasionally go over the top and overuse the technobabble, especially on Voyager, for the most part the use of technobabble was appropriate and made the show more realistic.
Anyway, that’s my opinion.
#84
yo, what’s the force? “It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds all living things.”
That’s what I used to think. Turns out it’s little bugs in your blood.
As for Ronald D. Moore, I think that his best writing days were on Star Trek. He did many great things for Star Trek but his BSG was too over the top with its darkness and grittiness for me. Again, IMO.
#86 – yeah, like I said. That’s crappy sci-fi. That’s an example of poor writing and incomplete comprehension. Star Trek may have used big words and joined different terminology to create new words, but NONE of it was complete horsepoop like in Star Wars.
Star Trek did it well. In a way that demonstrated they knew what the root words meant. To me, at least 8 of those 10 examples in the youtube video are perfectly all right. The commentator’s funny, sure, but besides geordi’s discussion about warp it all makes sense with real terminology. Especially the one in first contact. You basically have to be a dullard at biology not to understand what data’s saying there… seriously..
Man this irks me. Sorry.
You could say that climax of Best of Both Worlds Part 2 hinges upon a “technobabble” solution, using the Borg’s sci-fi interdependency against them. But, on the flipside, it comes from a place of character, by having Picard being the true human he was, and not a Borg automaton. And it’s ironic that the Big Bad Borg are, in effect, put to sleep easily. So that’s how you can use a tech-based solution, but it comes from a place of character.
Anybody watch “House” lately? The “technobabble” on there can rival the worst cases on Trek but as countless have observed (just a quick skim of all the previous post anyhow) there is a balance between using the technical language one would expect between colleagues in a profession (doctors, spacemen, lawyers, etc.) and conveying enough plain talk for the viewer to understand what is going on and how it relates to the story (which is what it is all about). When properly used in support of the story then it is not lazy writing but conveys a realistic texture to the show.
Ron Moore’s interview was funny, he must have been talking about Voyager. They did things on that show that made my head explode.
Moore + babble = redundant
Aww poor Ron Moore was frustrated with technobable well guess what?
Battlestar fans were infurious about his cheap, sopranos finale-inspired, lazy-ass ending to BSG!
90. Schiefy… “Anybody watch “House” lately?”
Every week, they seem to think its Amyloidosis.
It makes me happy to see people actually call out the faults of TNG for once. The “technobabble” bullsh*t is really what set Star Trek apart from “normal people” and made it “for nerds.” “Normal people” aren’t interested in fake, made-up magic words – they want drama, action, characters, story, and plot. Like TOS, Star Wars never had much technobabble, and enjoying Star Wars is somehow less nerdy and more socially acceptable than being a fan of Star Trek. It was okay to be a fan of TOS when it was new, and the fans were normal people…until somehow Star Trek turned into something super-nerdy – all thanks to that damn technobabble, which has really warped (no pun intended) people’s perceptions of the franchise. It’s the kind of sh*t that Abrams was trying to erase from people’s heads when he made his movie. A good idea, but poorly executed. Anyway…
I blame the technobabble for taking the life out of Star Trek. I consider it (and the other poor, lazy writing that went along with it) to be responsible for the franchise’s near-death experience.
#65: ” … which is why Doctor Who is so great:
“Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey”
i rest my case”
Amen, brother. My favorite was in the first episode of the reboot, with the single line “Anti-plastic!” Fastest technobabble exposition in the history of ever :)
The thing I love most about Doctor Who is that it wears its heart on its sleeve and never pretends to be anything it isn’t.
#71: “Forget the techno-babble, God did it!”
Given that a lot of technobabble is “deus ex machina” (god from the machine), it’s the same thing :)
#93: “Battlestar fans were infurious about his cheap, sopranos finale-inspired, lazy-ass ending to BSG!”
And not just the fans, either. When Katie Sackhoff spoke at a con here in town shortly after the finale, she gave the cop-out ending both barrels :)
#26, DJ Neelix says:
“Also, people in the 60s were less educated, and would have gotten a head-ache of all that information. TOS was simply made for less educated people than TNG was.”
And then:
“I sincerely wish people like you could let go of all your hatred/prejudice and feel the same.”
Just found it a funny juxtaposition.
#95
Show me one example of a magic made up word.
95,
While I love all of Star Trek, including TOS, I must say that TOS has some of the most stupid, corny, cheesy episodes I’ve ever seen. Some examples:
“Miri,”
“And the Children Shall Lead,”
“The Apple.”
I could go on but I won’t. Let’s also not forget that TOS was canceled after 3 seasons because of low ratings. Every show, including ENT, has a better track record. The only reason Star Trek was resurrected was because of the success of Star Wars and Paramount felt that they could make Star Trek popular, which they did. I will also point out that TNG got better ratings than any other Star Trek show could ever dream of. Of course, to be fair to TOS, there were also some excellent episodes that stand up with the best of television like “Errand of Mercy,” “Balance of Terror,” “The Enterprise Incident” and several others. Further, TOS is responsible for launching a 40+ year long franchise and was, overall, a great show. However, I feel that with the success of the latest movie and the remastering of TOS, people forget TOS’s shortfalls. Granted it was made in the 1960’s but there is simply no excuse for POS like “Miri.”
Finally, 95, “technobabble” is not lazy writing, it is a way to make the show more realistic as I described in my post #85.
Technobable was crappy writing. It was used for filler. I’ve hated it since TNG made it a centerpiece for almost every episode. One of the reasons “Inner Light” was one of the few TNG episodes I cared for was they didn’t try to explain what was happening with a bunch of pseudo science BS.
TOS was about telling stories first, telling sci-fi stories second.
Star Wars: “Hand me the hydrospanner” was as close as it ever got.
Those two got it right. TNG probably wasted about two full seasons with of time if you string all the meaningless, horrific technobabble together into contiguous 45m segments.
I’m considering writing a big long reply wherein I go through one or more of the examples from that video and translate it so even the Angry Nintendo Nerd can understand it.
For example, the scene of Data interpreting the old starcharts, or whatever they were, was completely grounded science, with almost no fiction. It was entirely understandable to anyone with an ounce of intellect, a reasonable vocabulary, and a mind open to a little challenge.
One of the things that I revelled in throughout TNG was it’s internal consistency, because, if you were open to it, the tech talk made SENSE! For the most part, anyway.
Even if it was pseudo science, week to week, it was consistent with itself, and generally reasonably respectful to modern science (Fermat’s last theorum notwithstanding).
Perhaps Mr.Sternbach *genuflects* could shed some light on the evolution of the writing department after the end of TNG? As Voyager continued, the science in the show lost cohesiveness (that wasn’t all, character development, plot direction and originality all suffered). Did the rate of scientific consultation drop, or did the writers take it upon themselves to fill in the (tech) blanks? I assume that’s where Isogenics, metaphasics, and “Interferometric particles”(GAH!) came from?
All I’ll say about Enterprise is that I won’t even bother talking about it.
In the new movie, the role of Carolyn Porco has been given much airtime. But beyond providing pretty pictures of Saturn from the wrong angle and not explaining friction, gravity, or the scale of space to the filmmakers, I can’t tell what her input into the flick was.
Any time criticism of the new movie’s wishy-washy approach to scientific credulity is tackled, someone comes up with myriad examples of previous trek science gaffs. The problem is that most of the time they’re either minor scenes, minor gaffs, or easily ignored as part of terrible episodes (Hello, Threshold!).
In Star Trek XI, THE PLOT HINGES ON HOKUM SCIENCE! Black holes are not time portals, no matter what way you look at it. The anomaly in the film looked and acted more like the anomaly from which the Enterprise-C emerged in “Yesterday’s Enterprise”. (gravimetric fluctuations, previously unseen
That was possibly a formation of a Curr loop (presumably a type of extradimensional loop construct theorised by someone named Curr at some point in the future) from superstring material (modern quantum mechanics). It would require high energy interaction in the vicinity for such a structure to be formed (such as, perhaps, a RED matter detonation near a star or warp core).
BTW, is it ok with everyone if I posit (again) that RED matter stands for Refined Enhanced Decalithium? I’ll leave it up to someone else to explain decalithium.
Oh Darn! I’ve just made Star Trek XI a little more enjoyable by enabling suspension of disbelief through the judicious use of technical dialogue.
My point is that sometimes, technobabble is desirable in place of gaping holes in plot. And sometimes, technobabble can serve to enhance a good plot.
I noticed the smattering of mostly well-placed and semi-coherent tech talk in Star Trek XI, and was glad it was there.
I know this is getting tl;dr, but I’d like to address Ron Moore for a moment.
I have the utmost respect for him and the work he’s done, for the most part. However, if he thinks closing gaps in a science fiction story with science is bad storytelling, what about (-Spoilers-):
1.Forgetting how many Cylon models there are (New Caprica), and coming up with a two-season-long story arc about the final five to cover your ass instead of something more measured, subtle, planned, and, well, Cylon.
2.Setting up myriad prophetic storylines which intermingle coherently for four seasons, building huge momentum until finally, the big reveal: “Go to the CIC, you know, where you were going anyway?”
3.After covering your ass for a season and a half because of #1, you finally seem to get the show back on the rails with an awesome 2 parter about a mutiny. Which amounts to diddly-squat. Even the reason for the mutiny (outfitting the fleet with cylon FTL tech) is utterly dropped afterwards. What’s worse is that this built faith for a coherent finalè, in the vein of season one and two.
4.KILLING a character because the actress has to go work on another show, then bringing her back, without explanation, to have her fail utterly to fulfill her destiny, and then succeed with relatively little fanfare, and then literally disappear with no explanation.
5.Promoting a subtle and compelling religious component to become the uninvestigably literal Deus Ex Machina of the show. (or should that be Machina Ex Deus?) Shall we solve this mystery? Nah, God did it.
6.”Visible constellations are a match.”
Those are all issues I have with season 3 and 4, really. The finalè in particular was poor. The quality of the show divebombed literally the moment Roslin lost the election. It’s still my favourite TV show this millenium. I nitpick because I adore. DS9 is probably my favourite from the last.
Before people start flaming this post, I want to state that I love DS9, TNG, and BSG, I like very much Star Trek XI, TOS and Voyager, and that I guess I liked season 3 of BSG. Again, I won’t waste words on Enterprise.
Wow. This has turned into something close to a rant. Apologies, it’s 4am, I’m tired. Commence wild mood swings!
*Shares a bottle of Vodka with Comrade Dom*
Nice post, #100 LoyalStarTrekFan, very good points that I thought about making while I was typing the above monster.
Most of the time on TNG, the technobabble wasn’t the solution to the problem, it was a description of the problem, or an analysis of something, like an anomaly.
Voyager solved so many problems with the main deflector that even Naomi Wildman suggested tying the sensors into it to try to find her mother. That was Deus Ex Machina writing, but at least it was veiled.
Moore has officially lost the right to bash anything for Deusing since he wrote that finalè.
I know I’m multiposting, but I’m tired, lazy, and only reading the recent posts since my megapost above was fueled by the earlier part of this debate.
I wish there was an edit function here. I just want to chime in with Skylark.
Label me “irked” too.
#105 Bren – next thing you know, the handful of travelers that may never have read or heard someone say “irked” before will be labeling us as technobabbblers! :P
Just watched the top ten technobabble video now that I’m home from work.
Holy crap, there was some horrible dialogue in TNG.
I found it interesting watching Genevieve Bujold read her lines with this resigned “what the hell am I saying?” look — and it wasn’t because she’s from Quebec.
Mr. Sternbach’s views on this are really interesting. I get wanting it to be as convincing a picture of the future as possible — but there were times when how it worked really didn’t matter and detracted from the stories — they’re not really a bunch of people on a spaceship in 400+ years being filmed for a documentary… and even if they were, an editor would probably edit out a lot of the tech terms… detail for detail’s sake alone can be boring. Listening to the IT guys or a bunch of medical students talk shop for 40 minutes may not make for compelling drama.
But really, and no disrespect to Mr. Sternbach — this is made up technology, I assume it works (or may not work, depending on the story). In Harry Potter, I know the made-up magic works and know (well, my 7-year-old does) which spells do what, but do I need a detailed explanation of why?
For me, Voyager overdid it with the solve-the-problem tachyon pulses/beams and phase variances… and with the DNA resequencing. There didn’t seem to be a lot of limits — the tech would do whatever the story required….
I’ll take technobabble any day over ‘They’re Angels’, ‘God did it’, and ‘All our protaganists and all their descendants will die young and meaninglessly’.
Ron Moore is dead to me. I will NEVER SPEND ONE MINUTE watching any show he has any part of.
#102 – “Perhaps Mr.Sternbach *genuflects* could shed some light on the evolution of the writing department after the end of TNG?”
Rise, and spread the word of Technospeak across the land. :)
I can’t say that I remember much of the writing staff configuration after the third season or so of TNG. I seem to recall that the early seasons had problems attracting writers, and especially at the very beginning, there was some kind of contentious situation between the studio and the SFWA, so were not about to get any big names from literate SF to at least contribute stories, if not complete scripts. Melinda Snodgrass was probably the best thing to happen to TNG after David Gerrold and Dorothy Fontana left, but I don’t believe the producers understood what she could have contributed had they kept her on. The only other thing I can tell you is to go back through the Trek wikis and look up your favorite episodes, and see who wrote them and when.
It’s really a shame that some folks associated with the show talked about burnout and running out of stories. With or without the tech bits, there are still Star Trek stories to tell.
I turned the video off.
Look, anyone that understands what science is and COULD BE, likes this stuff.
There are times they went over the top, yes, but for the most part it was believable and understandable in the context of the show.
#108 – We gave TPTB the tech bits; it was up to them to do smart and dramatic things with them. I would have been perfectly satisfied if they had simplified the lines but kept the essential concepts intact.
Star Trek is not a ‘love it or leave it’ proposition. There is so much to love, but there is also much to not love. Ron Moore loves Star Trek, I have talked to him about it personally, you can tell he still loves it and his time with it.
But he didn’t like technobabble. I am a big scifi fan and like some good science, but I do not like tech solutions to dilemmas either. Actually I think TNG wasn’t too bad with this, at least not compared to VOYAGER, which turned the technobabble dial to 11.
Does saying that make me a hater, even on VOY, no! I love a lot of other things about Voyager.
I really dont undertand these extreme positions and find the ‘your trek sucks, mine is better’ arguments kind of silly
113, I agree when you say that the arguments about, to quote you “‘your trek sucks, mine is better’” is not a good argument to make and I wasn’t trying to make it in my posts. I was simply trying to explain that technobabble can be used to enrich the plot and shouldn’t be called “lazy writing.” My points about TOS, which I said in my post that I love TOS and my screenname is meant to indicate that I love ALL of STAR TREK (TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT, and TMP-XI), were simply meant to indicate that if you look at the numbers TOS did poorly when compared to the other shows and that there are more episodes of TOS that I personally don’t like than on any other Trek series. By the same token, there are plenty of episodes that I love from TOS like “Amok Time” and “Trouble With Tribbles.” In short, I was defending the “technobabble” but I will say that VOY sure loved it and sometimes went over the top with technobabble, but not always. As for my comment about “Miri,” well, I just really, really didn’t like that episode.
I hope that clarifies my points. If not, I am willing to attempt to clarify further.
110, I agree with you. There will always be more Star Trek stories to tell.
More on Ron Moore dising technobabble. Almost half the points he point to a Technobabble are not and if he knew the story line behind what and why things that had been said, he would no longer have any wonder about the expressed topic. If you just look at single episodes you will never understand the story, thus with out understanding things it will look to you as just words not as thoughts.
But fans take the time to learn the reasoning behind those thoughts, they may have no idea as for the technology, but their minds can and will in time understand what the technobabble meant. How long until the technobabble is comprehended if ever at least their minds ventured in that field. And if they are ever in such an area in life again their mind will not be totally spazed out with stuff they will hardly ever understand otherwise.
For example lets say UFO’s are 100% real and this person is abducted by UFO people. If this person never tried to comprehend technobabble before. They may never be able to comprehend the now reality of Some thing not from this Earth. Many that can deal with technobabble wonder why these abducties from the Ozark mountains in most cases end up in a padded room because their mind can not comprehend some thing new and centuries more advanced.
Think of it this way technobabble is a precursor to help some (mostly Sci-Fi fans) be able to understand and cope with what Mr Corn pipe smoking grandpa will be pulling his little hair he’s cot from his head trying to cope or deal with.
And how many sci-fi fans that deal with technobabble report UFO’s. I have no idea but their minds will have that much better understanding of totally new type of things, that a strange light in the night sky being Aliens from Space.
“The only thing I didn’t like [about TNG] was all the technical terms… I talked to Michael Pillar about that after the fact, and I said ‘that’s just too much. That’s not the way engineers would talk to each other’….
“Engineers talk plainly to each other. They don’t show their expertise by using every damned word in the dictionary” – James Doohan in ‘Beam me up Scotty’
(and he’d spent time with the engineers at NASA, so he had some idea what he was talking about)
To #114) LoyalStarTrekFan, Miri is not one of the best TOS’s I agree but the story is the concept of the creation of life in the Universe is abundant out there, what would happen if some where out there life formed the same way as on Earth, And it was so similar it Mirrored Earths development like a mirror, but there is no way it is 100% the same all it takes to be different is one sub atomic particle being spinning left mot right. And in this happening someone said yes not no or even one test tube had a crack in it and as a result the scientific testing in the 1930’s created a germ that made mature people sterile, crazy, and really slowed down the aging process, and the mature chemicals as they form when you age creates poisons that form insane grups. And the process of the Trek stars go through is the process of understanding and solving some thing totally new to their minds.
For those that care more for a fist fight or photon torpedo destruction more than what the science of comprehending and solving things, may say that they are not dumb or stupid because they are npt entertained by means that they may not make prime science type people.
The process may bore me in real life also but if you wish to solve problems the story of how it can be done may really entertain you. The future is a big unknown and if we do not have the ones that wish to solve over the tediousness of solving the problems humanity will never make it into the vastness of Space.
Rick Sternbach — you have my absolute support with your views. I agree with you 100%. Everything that Tech team did on TNG was always genuine and never once a cheap cop-out or gibberish that hadn’t clearly been thought over. A lot of people that took the time to understand how you put your technobabble together might be pleasantly surprised by how meaningful it actually is.
Honestly, one of my favorite moments in all of TOS was when they tried to explain the Universal Translators to Abraham Lincoln… that stuff makes sci-fi feel real. TNG made that a weekly pleasure. Your work was invaluable, Mr. Sternbach. Thank you for all of it.
118, very nicely said.
I especially like “TNG made that a weekly pleasure.” TNG was a pleasure to watch, wasn’t it?
I think I’ll watch some TNG eps on DVD tomorrow to relive some of the great moments.
#116) Chasco it is true that people that are not on the cutting edge of technology do not use fancy new words, but if using one word that may get labeled as technobabble rather that spending 5 minutes to teach what you mean so it’s comprehend able. They will use the technobabble word. Just talk to my brother who works as an electrical engineer at Lockheed Martian designing the Orion capsule for the Ares Rocket to return us to the moon and later take us to mars. It’s not that they will not use new works, they rarely do but if it saves time and makes things faster and smother they will use them. Even at times if their is no word for such a thing, they invent one, and Star Trek Technobabble lexicon is in the basics of inventing new technical words.
This becomes known as you talk to them in person and as you express to them that your’re a Trekkie. Also many of them are and as most working for NASA projects will say Star Trek is what inspired them to go there in the first place.
Mr Sternbach
You have my support as well.
TNG made STAR TREK for geeks/nerds/dweebs/science geeks only and alienated the average person.
Trek was actually kewl around the time of Khan/Spock and Voyage home, but it all went downhill when the science geeks took creative control and turned it into a…”if you have never been kissed by a girl then this show is for you”…program
TNG took ST down the slippery path of geekdom, JJ has managed to bring it back somewhat to normality.
Next Trek film..no technobabble at all, huge battles, awesome action, more fantasy..amp it up to top gear.
What #122) jamesplopp is saying indirectly is do not try to inspire higher education so onw day we may be able to make the movies come true. but aim the movie to us Grunts (aka Red Shirts) so those that love to play in the mud can have fun and understand thus not need to become smarter to comprehend any thing more than one Syllable words.
Some of us out here want to have high tech stuff so it will inspire others that want to get us their in person.
With out High Tech we’d still be in stone caves dragging our reproductive mates by their hair so we survive.
and geeks/nerds/dweebs/science geeks are common insults used by those that think
2x^2 + 3y = 4z is not math but impossible garbage. And they only curve formulas they like are in 18+ year olds magazines.
TNG had manageable technobabble. It was never as bad as Voyager or Enterprise. TNG’s babble I could deal with.
They even [inadvertently] made fun of themselves in TNG’s “Clues”. Data says some absolutely ridiculous technobabble in the conference room and then leaves. And everyone basically says, “that was the biggest load of horseshit I’d ever heard.” I know, they were accusing him of lying–but it always hit me like they were accusing him of technobabble. :)
102 “In Star Trek XI, THE PLOT HINGES ON HOKUM SCIENCE! ”
You can also say the “random subspace anomaly” plots of Yesterday’s Enterprise, Parallels, Cause and Effect, etc. etc. were also Hokum science, if you’re going to accuse “Star Trek” of having bad science. how does anyone really know if a black hole (an artificial one at that) doesn’t work as a time portal?
the TNG bashing is getting annoying
yet JJ Can do no wrong. I love the new movie but it did have its flaws.
why are we bashing the show we love, TNG is a great show show and it still is a lot better than a lot of shows on these days.
STOP BASHING ONE OF THE GREATEST SHOWS IN SCI FI
Most of the attacks on the ending of BSG come from atheist bigots: the new aggressive style of atheism extolled by the likes of Richard “worship me, not God” Dawkins. The anger from these atheists, the sheer nastiness is shocking to behold. It’s actually the same kind of fanatical rage that extremist elements of some religions subscribe to. Ironically, most people who believe in God are perfectly normal and quietly get on with their lives without bothering anyone.
BSG’s ending fitted perfectly with everything seen since the start of the show and with the 1970s show. The 1970s version had a ship of angels following the fleet, guiding them. The new version had a woman who looked like Caprica Six who claimed to be angel . . . and was an angel. In the original series, Starbuck was supposed to end up living on the Ship of Lights; in the new show she leaves to go ’somewhere else.’ Count Iblis (Iblis being the Devil in Islam) never showed up this time (unless he was Tom Zarek!)
Also, where the Cylon Plan is concerned there’s a film coming up called . . . Gasp! . . . ‘The PLAN!’ I wonder what that could be about?
127. captain_neill
We aren’t bashing it to death. But TNG was perceived as ‘teflon’ for too many years and the misconceptions and misunderstandings of Star Trek that it introduced, the contempt for TOS that oozed from its every pore, deserve a good kicking. It is pure pretentiousness to claim, as DJ Neelix does, that TOS was dumbed down because people born in the 1950s and earlier were stupid and ill-educated. Theo only thing I learned from TNG was that I had to work hard to make sure the human race never ends up like the one in TNG!
The obsessive worship of the non-existent ‘Gene’s Vision’(TM) certainly deserves burying because that was a myth brought about by someone who chose to overwrite out of existence the arguably more important work done on Star Trek by the likes of Dorothy Fontana, Gene Coon, John Meredyth Lucas, Robert Justman, Herb Solow and others. Gene Roddenberry had the spark of an idea, brought to fruition by many other talented people. I don’t subscribe to auteur theory and Trek fans used not to!
I don’t expect to have to agree with every decision made by a character in a drama. Bill Adama and Laura Roslin treated Sharon Agathon terribly at times in BSG, when we knew better. But BSG forced us to have our own opinions about what was going on. TNG was always finger-wagging, claiming to be so right and so perfect. Everything Starfleet officers, especially the lead cast, did was, according to Rodders, the whiter-than-white perfect thing to do.
I’m perfectly willing to see main characters commit genocide in a show when I’m not necessarily from the same moral sphere as them: The Doctor in Doctor Who destroyed Skaro and wiped out billions of Daleks again recently. Jack Harkness killed an innnocent child. Admiral Cain oversaw the rape and torture of her lover. But these aren’t people we’re expected to relate to on every level. TNG was unequivocal about its morals and that was its biggest failing.
Dom
Guess we dont have the same opinions but you do make valid points.
122
thanks for giving me a negative stigma for loving TNG
What is all this hoo-ha about TNG destroying Star Trek? It was a revolutionary show for its time, paving the way for quality first-run TV via syndication. Many, many people watched it, and it served as an introduction to Trek to many new fans overseas due to its formidable European Captain and his decidedly non-cowboy way of getting things done (a reaction to 8 years of Ronald Reagan and 4 years of Bush)
I watched the show with many an “average person” and no one ever felt that it pandered to some sort of geek mentality. In fact, it was sometimes dumbed down. I didn’t need Riker to blurt out “Time Travel!” when Data said the Borg are creating a ‘temporal vortex’ in FC.
I always found the stories to still be character driven in the best Trek tradition.
Picard: Can you fix it?
Geordi: I thnk so Captain, if I reverse the flux co-combobulation frequency and keep the tachyon field to 30% linear projection, it should stabilize the pillar waves.
Picard: Do it.
Kirk: Scotty, I need those engines now!
Scotty: Aye.
These characters live in a fictional world, they know what they are doing within this fictional world. We know this and understand this. The shouldn’t have to stop and explain it in detail, especially when you only have a very lmited 45 minutes to tell a story.
Don’t tell me about the labor pains, just show me the baby!
131
Agreed
I am definitely among those who feel that TNG was saturated in technobabble. But it’s really its (over)application in TNG with which I had an issue.
Instead of Kirk battling with an alien foe, or simply talking Nomad into destroying itself, we have Geordi reversing the polarity on the tacyon emmitter and rerouting the electro plasma system with a pair of self-sealing stembolts to solve the problem?
It was as if the writers could cheat their way out of anything with a completely fake tech-based solution. It’s not that the TNG-era had too many funny sounding tech names for things—-but that it was sometimes abused in a storytelling capacity.
And it’s not as if TOS had no technobabble. It’s just that it was more often used to make clear that a rather obvious or more convenient solution by previously established means wasn’t available…For example, Scotty might spout off some technobabblish (?) reasoning as to why the transporters aren’t functioning, or why the warp drive is down—–or Spock may use it to explain why the Enterprise is unable to break free of an alien’s grasp by engine power or other conveniently tech-driven means. In other words, it was utilized to force the characters into a situation where they must rely upon their own wits (or fists, diplomatic skills, or even sexuality) rather than futuristic technology alone, in order to solve a problem.
I think therein lies the key difference in the application of Trek technobabble between the Original Series and the TNG-era spinoffs.
131. AJ: ‘What is all this hoo-ha about TNG destroying Star Trek? It was a revolutionary show for its time, paving the way for quality first-run TV via syndication.’
Maybe, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t badly dated!
‘Many, many people watched it, and it served as an introduction to Trek to many new fans overseas due to its formidable European Captain and his decidedly non-cowboy way of getting things done (a reaction to 8 years of Ronald Reagan and 4 years of Bush)’
That depends on your politics: I think TOS appeals to everyone across the political spectrum and treats both sides with respect. TNG had the naive politics of a Californian hippie commune. It’s also wrong-headed (and pisses me off regularly) when the TOS crew are dismissed as cowboys in the 24th Century Treks. They were anything but, as stories like The Corbomite Maneuver, Balance of Terror and so on regularly prove.
If the show having a British Shakespearian ac-TOR playing the captain appealed to an element of snobbery in America it didn’t over here: hammy Shakespearian actors a ten-a-penny in the UK and we recognise Stewart for plenty of better work than he did in the US. Patrick Stewart’s best TV performance, for my money was as Agent Karla in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. He never said a word, yet we knew everything we needed to from his performance. TNG’s writers and actors, unfortunately, cottoned on to Patrick Stewart’s rather individual reading of his lines, leading to some appallingly verbose, clunky dialogue and terrible delivery of those lines.
‘I watched the show with many an “average person” and no one ever felt that it pandered to some sort of geek mentality.’
‘Watched’ being the key word. TNG wouldn’t wash now. After lots of bad spin-off series and movies TNG seems rather silly now: pompous, overly-verbose and weighed down with meaningless technobabble that you’d need a PhD in nuclear physics to realise was probably gibberish. ‘A Megabyte Modem!’ indeed! ;)
‘In fact, it was sometimes dumbed down. I didn’t need Riker to blurt out “Time Travel!” when Data said the Borg are creating a ‘temporal vortex’ in FC.’
I liked the Cat’s line in Red Dwarf: ‘You mean a Magic Door?’
‘I always found the stories to still be character driven in the best Trek tradition.’
Actually, I’d argue TOS was plot-driven, but had strong characters as well. When TOS was ‘character-driven’ we ended up with Star Trek V: TFF. There’s way to much talk out there in favour of ‘character-driven’ drama.
# 131 “What is all this hoo-ha about TNG destroying Star Trek?”
It didn’t destroy it, it just failed to recreate it. A lot of people enjoyed this new “thing” that had Star Trek in the title. Fine. But don’t ever mistake TNG and TOS for being one and the same. Different animals completely, in inception and execution, which is exactly why I like one and loath the other. It wasn’t what I expected or liked, plain and simple.
The heavy handed technobabble notwithstanding, it wasn’t bad TV. It just didn’t encompass or resemble what I had come to expect with the precendent set by the Star Trek original series.
I feel some people who are all for technobabble are still missing the point about the technobabble issue.
Good storytelling has the hero solving his/her dilemma by means of their own efforts — their own courage, their own ingenuity, etc. When the hero solves the problem by means of technobabble, the solution comes off more like a miracle. When the heat is on and someone suddenly realizes, or remembers, some quantum theory which just might save the day — and then the day is saved just in the nick of time — this, for me at least, is a completely unsatisfying ending. As soon as Data or Geordi or Tuvok or whoever says, “We could try….,” we already know it’s going to work, because the show is on again next week. Where is the drama in that?
I think the difference between TOS technobabble and TNG-era technobabble can best be exemplified in the TNG episode “Relics,” and the TNG movie “Generations,” when Scotty is offering his options to solve their problems. His dialogue sounds out of place, IMO. He doesn’t sound like Scotty when he is talking TNG tech. He sounds like one of the TNG crew. I’m not saying this is bad, but you would never have heard Scotty talk that way in TOS. No one ever talked that way in TOS.
Technobabble has its place, and I am not completely anti-technobabble. The main thing for me is that technobabble should not be used as the total solution to a problem.
I really hate the anti TNG vibe on this site
It is sad
TNG is one of the greatest shows ever made and better than some shows today IMHO.
Every Star Trek series had good things and bad things about them. The best thing about all of the Trek series were the casts, IMO. Following that, there were some great episodes from each of the series.
No single series was completely perfect, no single series was completely bad. Nothing is black and white in the world of Star Trek.
Moore is essentially right, but the responsibility for the problem lay with producers and writers.
Eliminating or reducing “technobabble” in scripts has nothing to do per se with eliminating the science or technological extrapolation.
It has everything to do with the fact that telling a story in a limited amount of time and with dramatic focus means deciding what the characters are going to spend their screen time talking about – are they going to focus on the drama of the situation, the emotions of the characters, or the *imaginary* (if scientifically accurate) details of the problem?
Put another way, calling something a “sensor” instead of a multi-syllabic term doesn’t mean that there’s less scientific thinking behind the sensor than the more involved or specific term (there may or may not be). The original Star Trek used relatively simple, generic terminology to describe most things, and the fact that modern Trek made the terminology of, say, the warp FTL drive a lot more specific didn’t make the newer version more scientifically accurate. It really couldn’t, since the behavior and parameters of the warp drive had already been established and any new terminology had to be tailored to support an already-existing part of the tech rather than develop one based on any currently supported physics theory.
The primary problem, though, was definitely with the stories themselves – if the producers didn’t insist on concepts that revolved around flat-out magic (”Picard, Guinan and the rest beam aboard the ship and have been de-aged to 12 years old) and then turn to technical advisors to justify that, then the problem of technical words which did *mean* something as phrases being used as the equivalent of “abracadabra” to explain events which were themselves nonsense would not have occurred.
@128: Dom I agree with you sir. I am not a religious person but nor am I an atheist. Personally I believe anyone who claims to know the answers about God without any shred of doubt are arrogant and close minded. They have every right to their opinion but I don’t believe in that kind of absolutism.
I love philosophy and I thought BSG was just about the biggest Sci-Fi philosophical gold mine I had ever seen. I loved the way the show wrapped up. Personally I enjoyed not having all the answers, going on line, doing some reading, and making up my own mind as to what the conclusion really meant to me.
I also don’t mind technobabble in the least. As a person I have found that I like to seek commonality with the things I like as opposed what divides and separates them. It’s possible that is why I enjoy the whole realm of Star Trek and not in the party of “this is Trek and this isn’t Trek” like some people are.
Dom
You make valid points but I happen to be a huge fan of TNG
BSG is a totally diff show to Trek.
Don’t get me wrong. I am a big TOS fan. And I agree that TNG has dated itself. These days, I am not looking to Star Trek to set my trends, but as an old friend, warts and all.
But I also think that different folks have different strokes as far as ‘technobabble’ is concerned. Scotty was over the top already by “Naked Time” with his intermix formula, and by the films, we had re-routed phaser power through the warp drive. In TWOK, we had “pre-animate matter caught in the matrix” and overloaded Chambers coil emissions. TVH had the calculations of the return to the 23rd century where velocity is no longer a constant and the recrystallization of dilithium. I think TNG just took the baton in that regard.
Here’s what’s annoying: The way Geordi says it: “Data! If we re-route the plasma injectors through the warp coil manifolds, we can create a sub-space field around the warp core!”
Imagine Geordi saying it, and you just wanna throttle the guy (all my respect to LeVar Burton).
Look, the following kind of thing works just fine (from “The Naked Time”):
SCOTT: He’s turned the engines off. Completely cold. It will take thirty minutes to regenerate them.
UHURA [OC]: Ship’s outer skin is beginning to heat, Captain. Orbit plot shows we have about eight minutes left.
KIRK: Scotty!
SCOTT: I can’t change the laws of physics. I’ve got to have thirty minutes…
.
.
.
SCOTT: Maybe twenty two, twenty three minutes.
KIRK: Scotty, we’ve got six.
SCOTT: Captain, you can’t mix matter and antimatter cold. We’d go up in the biggest explosion since
KIRK: We can balance our engines into a controlled implosion.
SCOTT: That’s only a theory. It’s never been done.
That dialogue is focused on what’s happening to the characters – what their problem is and what the consequences will be – and works as drama. Rarely is there a need for dialogue in a show like “Star Trek” to be any more specifically technical than that. Writers calling for [TECH] to justify a story point generally means that the point hasn’t been well thought-out to begin with.
#144—-Agreed.
For whatever reason, it works.
With TNG, I think it was more a feeling of, “Oh boy, here comes the technobabble resolution….”
Once again, what I recall being the most successful use of TOS technobabble was its establishment that something was happening which prevented the characters from “taking the easy way out” by overcoming every problem by technological means….”X” is causing the transpoters to be inoperative, the warp drive is down due to “Z”, a “Y” field is interfering with our communication devices and weazpons, etc.
143. AJ
Thing is though, what you’re pointing to amounts to minor detail related to something else:
Dennis has already dealt with The Naked Time.
‘by the films, we had re-routed phaser power through the warp drive.’
The only reason for that was to show Kirk’s unfamiliarity with the Enterprise refit.
‘In TWOK, we had “pre-animate matter caught in the matrix”’
No, they theorised that was what it might be, but that was merely a detail in a ’something’s weird on the planet as we’d better go down there’ scenario
‘overloaded Chambers coil emissions.’
An excuse provided by the Reliant to trick the Enterprise into allowing them to get closer. It was a minor background remark, which barely notices in the context of the scene. It was as meaningless and excuse to the crew as it was to us!
‘TVH had the calculations of the return to the 23rd century where velocity is no longer a constant’
Well that makes sense even to me!
‘and the recrystallization of dilithium.’
An excuse to visit the Enterprise aircraft carrier. It’s also obvious that the ship’s ‘batteries are dead’. Also, Scotty rambling incoherently about dilithium crystals was by then something of a cultural cliche and the film was poking fun at it.
‘I think TNG just took the baton in that regard.’
Hmm . . . nah! TNG took the biscuit in that regard. ;) Technobabble is very much TNG’s contribution to modern Star Trek.
“Captain, that hit knocked out the transporter. It’ll take forty minutes to fix,”
versus
“Captain, the EM surge from their weapons caused a depolarization of the pattern buffer. It’ll take at least forty minutes to reconfigure the multiplexer array and reset the phased matter rectifier.”
The main point isn’t whether the second example is gibberish or whether the words mean something – it’s that the first version is short, to the point, plain English and accomplishes what the dialogue needs to accomplish.
On the other hand, if I decide to tell a story where a runabout and all of the people on it are shrunk to a couple of millimeters tall by some spatial phenomenon then I’m going to need a *lot* of technobabble – but then, why do I want to tell such a nonsensical story?
‘Oh my God! A shrinking ray!’ ought to do it! ;)
Then again, there’s no level of [tech] that can save the TNG episode Genesis!
I wish that Ron Moore would just shut the hell up. Frankly, I see no reason to pay any attention to a man who managed to screw up the last two seasons of his own series.
@147: That one gets a pass cause it was kind of funny, otherwise I agree. :)
Well, the TNG episode about the crew becoming kids and the DS9 episode about the shrunken runabout are essentially the *same* episode in important respects.
In each, the magical gimmick is the only real point of the story – a generic plot is constructed around it, in both cases consisting of “while they figure out how to return to normal, the affected crewmembers will thwart an enemy scheme.” But that plot is just something to fill the time between “OHMIGOD WE’RE TINY!” and “Thank goodness everything’s back to normal.”
“Let’s turn ‘em into children” and “Let’s shrink the crew” were the entire premises of those shows.
And before anyone says otherwise – no, “Mirror, Mirror” is not the same thing. LOL
#149 “Frankly, I see no reason to pay any attention to a man who managed to screw up the last two seasons of his own series.”
Well, I’ll pay attention to him because his “screwed up series” was more entertaining and intelligent from beginning to end than 90 percent of “Star Trek.” What more reason does one need. ;-)
152. Dennis Bailey
Hear hear!
Make no mistake, I love TNG — just in the way adults love each other — recognizing flaws and loving anyway.
Technobabble was the big flaw to me. There’ve been some really excellent examples of how TOS (and to a lesser degree ENT) handled those sort of problems better. Doesn’t mean TNG wasn’t great!
Just had some bad habits.
#145:
Absolutely.
#154:
I agree, and while I’m not a huge fan of TNG as Star Trek, I think TNG was a groovy and laudable show (and in fairness, while TNG abused technobabble often and memorably, it’s not like it happened every episode, or even in MOST episodes … I think only Voyager had it that bad).
The actors hated it. A lot of fans, including myself, hated it. As noted by someone above, it reflected lazy writing. It always reminded me of the original Batman series when some new gadget always appeared at the right time to save him and Robin from a perilous situation. But that was camp. Star Trek should not be camp. Human ingenuity should solve problems; not techno-filler made up as they went along. TOS and the new film had some of it, but not very much. TNG was drenched with it!
Well if Ron Moore (or any other writer) didn’t like the technobabble, then all they had to do was craft a story that didn’t include it. Nobody held a gun to their head and told them to write a story that had to have a detailed, technical solution.
By the way, I just finished watching season 4.0 of BSG. I’m enjoying it more because I am not fighting high expectations like I had the first time through. But that being said, the show was overdone with psychobabble and mystibabble.
Just as bad.
#157: “Well if Ron Moore (or any other writer) didn’t like the technobabble, then all they had to do was craft a story that didn’t include it. Nobody held a gun to their head and told them to write a story that had to have a detailed, technical solution.”
Exactly. That is the crux of the matter – the problem is in the story itself. Although the extent to which the folks in the writers’ room were always the masters of their own fates in regard to what stories were approved and how they were handled. I’m not, personally, a DS9 fan, but I’ll gladly note that at least there was less technobabble problem-solving on that series than, say, “Voyager.”
Uh, that should be “Although the extent to which the folks in the writers’ room were always the masters of their own fates in regard to what stories were approved and how they were handled is a tricky question.”
#27 Rick, I agree with your comment 100%.
The “Technobabble” used in TNG actually did have roots in science.
Some of the technobabble (as i saw it) had its roots in current scientific theory, i.e. mentioning elusive theoretical particles like “tachyons and gravitons, etc.”, and I remember the episode dealing with Dark Matter…
TNG also did a GREAT job of explaining how a warp engine could work.
Trek’s method of warping space is very similary to real life physicist Miguel Alcubierre’s theory of faster than light travel: compress the space-time in front of the ship while expanding the region behind the vessel to achieve FTL.
I think that Ron’s BSG didn’t have enough science and that’s why the show made frequent SCIENCE errors… some dealing with galactic distances, and others with the inconsistent technologies used by the humans. Ron also made several science errors in his new show Virtuosity, but we won’t go there for now.
After all, knowing something about future trends in the 60’s helped to inspire people to create the Cell Phone, Computers and other devices we now take for granted.
I think that good scifi uses of mix of technobabble routed in scientific theory, along with GREAT PLOT!
In short, THANK YOU RICK FOR BASING TREK TECH IN REAL SCIENCE! You did your homework, and this is inspiring real scientists and engineers to create! :-)
You know, I actually enjoy the technobabble and as strange as it sounds… It always seems to make sense to me. Perhaps it’s the Trek nerd inside me, who knows. By the way, if he really wanted to grab some funny clips of technobabble, Voyager would have definitely been the show to check out.
#160:”BSG didn’t have enough science and that’s why the show made frequent SCIENCE errors… some dealing with galactic distances, and others with the inconsistent technologies used by the humans.”
The same kinds of errors that “Star Trek” frequently made, in fact.
Braga and Moore seemed to joke about the hatred to technobabble in “All Good Things” when old Geordi meets old Picard and starts going on about the “phase inducers!” Though the ep goes right on into a wonderful TB-filled story.
New TREK is cool and the public loves it, TNG was for geeks only, who would discuss the merits of “good science” after every episode whilst contemplating their 3rd geek ridding PhD (on some obscure thing that no-one gives a toss about), oh they are probably STILL virgins.
And that is a FACT. I was one of those PhD students and it was a sad, sad scene. So sad that I knew I had to get out fast, luckily I aint bad looking so I had my cherry was popped well before uni, however some of my classmates, very scary and they will never, ever get some, unless they pay for it, oh and they lllloooveeeedd TNG’s science and geek babble.
Apologies for the grammatical errors, have you ever tried typing on your Blackberry whilst driving, it ain’t easy. Naughty, naughty.
Another reason i didn’t like TNG!
166:
Well played.
#164
Hate to contradict you (well, no, actually I don’t) but during the late 80’s my friends and I who were tremendous TNG fans also were working musicians in our early 20’s. The only thing I can truly point to as being geeky about ourselves (aside from our love of sci-fi and genre entertainment in general) was our music theory knowledge. We were adept at classical and jazz composition for our age and since we played live in clubs and concerts had no trouble with the opposite sex. We loved the whole TNG thing and bought into it. Every version of Star Trek has it’s pluses and minuses. So many people on this website have such a tendency to look at TNG or the rest of the following series as crap and TOS as this pinnacle of sci-fi achievement. Really rose-colored glasses and all.
The constant bagging on TNG is getting old and too many people paint that period of Trek with broad strokes that it tends to fly in the face of the reality that it was a great TV show. And tremendously successful and loved by the fans to boot. TOS was great, too. Liking all of the series for what they were and on their own merits is what I wish Trek fans could try to do. TNG perhaps got caught up in too much of it’s technology. TOS was inhibited by it’s lack of technology and production value that sometimes seriously lagged behind it’s vision. All versions of Trek have suffered from bad writing. Some people like broccolli. Some people hate veggies. Some people are omnivores. We all have different tastes. I think this is the real issue.
Why? Because it made peter Surf And Drive?
Is the TNG fanbase all that different from the SG-1 fanbase?
SG-1 has noticeably less technobabble, is still very entertaining, and commanded an equally large viewership.
But is the demographic of that fanbase any different? Are they exempt from the “Basement-dweller geek” clichè? I don’t think so. Perhaps they are more socially accepted now, because the show is still popular in the mainstream, but back in the TNG days, it wasn’t uncommon to hear people talking about the last episode in public. (OK, here in ireland, it was)
That demographic has generally never been good with the opposite sex. To lay that at the feet of TNG’s apparent cerebral inaccessibility is a little harsh.
I wonder if participants in this debate were broken down by age, would it reveal something interesting? I grew up on TNG, it IS Star Trek to me. TOS was the foreign territory as far as I was concerned. Territory I took a very long time to warm to and pay any heed.
I’d say the older generation, in general, are the ones to whom TOS, as it logically should, defined Trek.
But something this new film has taught many of us who hold TNG as the exemplar of the Star Trek formula is that Star Trek is Star Trek, in it’s many incarnations, and every installment is part of a larger whole, whether you like the style or not. Change is something we are learning to deal with now. Many TOS fans in the 1980’s came to accept and embrace similar change with TNG.
I’m now fond of TOS, but, as Skylark mentioned, there were a lot of utter stinkers.
Even so, one shouldn’t choose a favourite and erase the others from their conception of Trek just because they don’t agree with your personal interpretation of the franchise. And if you feel strongly enough about it to do that (as I often do about Enterprise), please don’t insult my viewpoint because I enjoyed figuring out what they were talking about.
The first sentence was intended to be a whimsical reaction to #166, I’m still not clear on the meaning, though.
So basically the consensus on this group is that JJ Abrams can do no wrong?
Im sorry I love TNG a lot, I love all the shows. I still love watching them, yet all I am getting when I come onto this site are people bitching about all Trek except the new movie.
I am sorry but as much as I loved the new movie it was far from being the best.
I re watched First Contact last night and it is a great film, I consider First Contact a much better film. It has a better story, the Borg were a cooler villain than Nero ever could be. The characters mentione dto both Cochrane and Lily how First Contact will usher in the new era that leads to the ‘Roddenberry vision’.
I am sure that the anti TNG mob on this site will somehow say nasty and negative things and how JJ’s movie is so much better.
But remember this TNG was a mainstream show, at its peak TNG got ratings of 12-14 million, no TV genre show gets these high ratings any more.
It seems to me that TNG bashing is allowed on this site but if anyone dare criticise the new movie then they are accused of not being a true Star Trek fan?
This is pathetic. We all love Star Trek but not all fans are in love with the new movie as the best ever.
I love it but I have gripes with the new film.
#169: sez “That demographic has generally never been good with the opposite sex.”
By some accounts, Star Trek fandom, through the 70s into the early 80s, was noted as being largely (and by some counts, predominantly) female. I can’t say if this was myth or not, but most of the big-time Trek fans I knew as a kid were women … and myth or not, that notion seemed to evaporate in the TNG years.
Personally, I don’t blame technobabble for that; I just think TNG lacked a certain energy that TOS simmered with.
“To lay that at the feet of TNG’s apparent cerebral inaccessibility is a little harsh.”
Some of us who use the term “technobabble” without irony _disagree_ that it’s cerebral (hence “babble”), and prefer the term “nonsensical” or just “lazy.”
“I’d say the older generation, in general, are the ones to whom TOS, as it logically should, defined Trek. ”
Probably, generally. I’m not entirely sure where I fall since my formative years were the TNG years (and I did enjoy TNG for what it was) but I still feel that TOS defines Star Trek and that TNG fell short of it in many critical ways. On the other hand, as an even _smaller_ child I watched TOS reruns, so I dunno … I’m sure there’s some kind of baby-bird bonding thing going on :)
Hmmm. I wonder if any of the fans who -started- on Voyager are posting here? What would that even be like, to have Voyager be “your” version of Star Trek?
#171: “So basically the consensus on this group is that JJ Abrams can do no wrong?”
If there’s one thing this group _doesn’t_ have (and bless ‘em for it) it’s consensus ;)
#171—-”So basically the consensus on this group is that JJ Abrams can do no wrong?”
I’ve yet to see anyone here post such an opinion.
I’m not sure how Ron Moore’s (and some of the fans) criticisms of certain aspects of TNG have anything to do with Abrams, much less suggest that his work is in any way infallible.
What I see on this thread is generally a comparison of the degrees and applications of “technobabble” between TOS and TNG-eras, and a debate as to whether the latter suffered from its overuse. This has very little, if anything, to do with Mr. Abrams here….
“I am sure that the anti TNG mob on this site will somehow say nasty and negative things and how JJ’s movie is so much better.”
Anti-TNG mob? That’s a bit extreme, no? I’ll be the first to say that I never liked TNG or (for the most part) its brethren of 24th Century spinoffs, but most fans here did (and still do)——even if they are willing to point out its warts.
I love TOS, but I am certainly also willing to acknowledge its flaws. That doesn’t make me part of any “mob”, and it certainly doesn’t make me less of a fan. And although ST09 really has nothing to do with this, since its popularity apparently bugs you, I will say that I find flaws in that film too. It’s still okay to like it anyway, just as it is okay to like TNG, TOS, or any other incarnation (even VOY) of Star Trek. But it’s also okay to point out the flaws of things you generally like.
Ron Moore happens to feel that there were things which could have made TNG a better show, namely a bit less reliance on “Technobabble”. I happen to agree.
Its popularity does not bug me, I am glad it allows Star Trek to have a future. I am just hoping the new fans will se the other Treks as a result of this film.
When I saw the film I was relieved that it had the spirit of the Star Trek that I love.
All I am saying is that it not my favourite Trek movie. I gave Trek XI an 8 of 10
agreed
I read too much it to negatives I get carried away.
True, There are flaws we can acknowledge but it does not ruin my enjoyment.
It’s worth pointing out that internet debates seem to amplify the percieved emotion attached to anyone’s given argument.
I’d say a majority of the people here deriding TNG’s tech talk would still gladly sit down and watch a few episodes, and thoroughly enjoy them.
To give myself as an example, even though I’d be the first to label myself and Enteprise hater, I’ve probably seen about 15 episodes, and would watch more, if I had to. I’ve seen the Abrams film, which I love and hate in equal measure, about 12 times.
Just because someone is arguing against some aspect of one or other incarnation of Trek doesn’t mean that they are part of a “TNG hate mob”, so let’s reel that kind of talk in, it’s a friendly debate, people.
I remember Ron Moore complaining about tech-speak over 10 years ago on the old “Ask Ron Moore” boards on AOL. I argued with him back then on its importance and on staying within the rules of the universe and everything, he just wasn’t a fan. He did realize it’s importance, but felt there was too much of it in TNG and Voyager so that is why the tech was much simpler on DS9. (and why it only takes an Orb to travel through time.)
The prophets have been shown to repair the timeline in a way that violates causality. Kira could remember reading incomplete poems that were now complete when that Emmissary guy was returned to his own time. It’s fair to say that influence must extend to the orb of time, considering the amount of impact Kira had on her mother and Dukat’s life.
I enjoyed the more restrained approach on DS9, having recently reviewed almost the entire series, I do find it more satisfying than TNG. But that doesn’t have a lot to do with the tech talk, it’s more to do with the week-to-week coherence of the show. Even between unrelated stories, the details are preserved, and referring back to last week is no longer a capital crime.
I’m glad to realise Ron saw the importance of that textured futuristic reality, it’s nice to be reminded that it’s the excess of tech talk he’s complaining about, not it’s existence.
Moore does a decent impression of the TNG crew :D.
TNG is practically unwatchable these days by anyone who isn’t a Trekkie…
181
I dis agree. To this day TNG is still one of the best TV sci fi shows, It is still in top 5 charts. Sure in one chart it was nearly at the top, only beaten by BSG.
TNG is still a better show but BSG is an awesome showas well.
In fact I am tired of the TNG bashing, can we stop the TNG Bashing
God I read this site and wonder if the trekkies like any Trek.
#181 – TNG is much like any other episodic SF series. There are a handful of really primo episodes, maybe 10%; another 30% or so that are very good, another 40% that are acceptable to eh, and the final 20% that really don’t measure up. And this is regardless of the proportion of (tech) in them. In going back to some of the tech memos I contributed, I’m a bit surprised at the number of times I said “…or you could simply say…” and gave a much shorter bit of dialogue than what the script originally called for. Maybe the producers wanted that stuff to be a mouthful, maybe the writers just got into a pattern. I know we gave TPTB some three-word combinations that I wish I could erase from the continuum, but that’s history.
“go back and read the LENSMAN series by Edward E. “Doc” Smith”
I’ll add that the Arcot, Morey & Wade novels by John W Campbell Jr are now available on gutenberg.net.
(Two feet of cosmium does not give way.)
Those who live in glass houses….
In 5-10 years I am sure we will hear the laments about writing on BSG. That is, if the show is still relevant enough that anyone will care to reflect about it.
BSG is fantastic. It will definitely be relevant. I think it was the best damn drama on TV and if it hadn’t been sci fi it would have been “Mad Men” come award time.
Technobabble was okay in small doses, but in heaping helpings it was too often lame deus ex machina that sucked all the dramatic heft from the story.
There were a couple lines of technobabble on a TNG episode, at the most. Why Ron Moore continues to bring this subject up year after year I don’t know? I will credit him for the Klingon stories in TNG and DS9 and the success of BSG, although I cannot watch it. It’s a soap opera in space, and bores the hell out of me.
I’m guessing you joined at season 3 then? I think that’s when he put up the sign in the writing room saying “It’s the characters, stupid”, and subsequently allowed the show to unravel to a laughable degree in the name of character development.
RDM obviously took this to the other extreme. “We’ll just let some angels drive a series closure and forget about the plethora of unclosed foreshadowing we gave the audience over the previous 5 years”. No one will ever invest in his series’ again after the audience betrayal he pulled of on BSG