What do you think are some of the worst examples of Treknobabble in the franchise?
And what series do you think does it poorly the most often?
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I think Discovery had the worst. It isn’t the technobabbke it self that was the problem, it was how it was delivered.
Everyone seemed to be needed to be the most intelligent person in the room. So one person would start with some sudden realisation and solution, and then another would interrupt them and pick up the idea and then either back to the first person, or yet another person would interrupt. Between then all they’d build a tower of technobabble and deus ex machina, and self congratulatory nonsense. It was just so silly.
Person 1 “wait if we reveresed the polarity of the neutron projector…”
Person 2 “yes! It’d cause a build of tachyons and we’d be able to resonate the electron confabulaotr! Oh but there wouldn’t be enough plasma.”
Person 3: “no wait, that might work! We’d have to recomboulate the manifolds and…”
Person 1: "…that would allow us to recrystallise the warp matrix! Of course!’
Whose a genius? Everyone in the room is a genius! Let’s all give ourselves a round of applause.
That and all the space kung fu.
I mean, as an engineer, I can tell you that sort of group solving DOES happen in meetings sometimes, but it’s the speed they do it at in the show that’s unrealistic. At the same time, slowing it down would make for bad television so idk
Disconnected nacelles and programmable matter were complete turn offs for me.
Is this example actually real or is it made up?
The text is not really, but the situation is.
OP asked for examples and the comment in question (along with your reply) gives the appearance that you’re both just making up nonexistent situations in order to complain about a TV show.
I think you commented to the wrong person.
Apologies I see how you got that impression, I edited my comment for clarity.
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reversing polarity is the solution to all of your woes.
When switching from flux core wire to regular wire with shielding gas on my welder it calls to reverse the polarity of the electricity to the welding gun. You have to open it up and swap two wires around. It always cracks me up inside when I’m telling people I had to reverse the polarity of the welder to get a better weld.
A few months ago I bought some old (quite good) speakers. My first step, of course, was to use a calibrated mic to measure them. One measured way better than the other. Took them apart and realized at some point someone had connected wires incorrectly on one of the tweeters causing it to be out of phase. Do you know what this means?
I REVERSED THE POLARITY AND FIXED MY AUDIO PROBLEM. That day I became a Starfleet Engineer.
That, or inaprovaline
I thought it was an inverse tachyon beam from the main deflector array
JJ-Trek, hands down. From “red matter” to interstellar transporter beams to Khan’s magic blood.
The reason it’s so bad is that it’s fucking plot holes galore. By the end of Star Trek (2009), starships are obsolete. By the end of Into Darkness, everyone should be immortal.
Treknobabble is supposed to serve the plot, but this shit undermines the entire premise instead. It’s ridiculous!
Meh, Trek is always terrible at following up after the big movie action. Aging is reversible if Insurrection is canon. Literal resurrection has been possible since at least Khan. Time travel is routine in Voyage Home. None of it makes sense outside of the context of the movie, they’re basically their own canon even before JJ.
Let’s not forget the “cold” fusion bomb that froze lava.
What blew my mind about that whole intro is they hid the entire ship UNDERWATER AT THE SHORELINE with a severe risk of damage to the local terrain and sea life instead of, you know, being in orbit.
“I can’t stop the heterocyclic declination!” (TNG: “Samaritan Snare”)
The writers: We are smart.
I’ll try extrapolating the verteron exovector (or something like that)
Harry Kim Voyager S1E1
Thanks, that sent me Googling. “KIM: I’ll try extrapolating the verteron exit vector. No, I can’t get it. There’s a strange phase variance in the radiation stream. We’ll have to wait until the probe exits.” Episode 6 (another wormhole?!) http://www.chakoteya.net/Voyager/106.htm
exit vector
Thanks, couldn’t remember the exact line
at least there’s only one word in there that makes it complete nonsense, “extrapolating a vector” sounds vaguely sensible, technobabble for “i’ll have a guess at where it’s headed”
I’m going through Voyager now and I feel like they do this nonsense more than any of the other Treks thus far.
The thing is that while the technobabble is just that, the process represents how engineering gets done better than most other ‘serious’ SF, albeit at compressed speed.
Voyager did a better job than any at showing how the thinking and problem-solving work gets done - which to me is more the point.
All this criticism seems to come from folks who’ve never seen nerds working in teams being nerds. They seem to want science FICTION to be locked down to concepts that someone with a mid 20th bachelor’s degree in science would know.
Whereas the real life scientists and engineers in my circle react more like Erin Macdonald did when she was working on her physics PhD and saw Voyager. She recognized the process and thought it was cool that some of the newer concepts in gravimetrics were referenced but didn’t sweat the small stuff.
Almost anything involving the space-magic Enterprise D dish between the engine nacels:
Need more power? Modify the main deflector and divert power from shields.
Space anomoly? Bombard it with tachyon particles from the main deflector.
Need to modulate frequency of phaser array because a borg cube adapted to your weapons? Use the main deflector to send a resonance pulse and overwhelm their shields with a flood of positronic particles.
Don’t forget to bounce a graviton particle beam off the main detector dish.
It’s charged with antiprotons, you’ll blow up half the ship.
That’s the way we do things lads, we’re making shit up as we wish!
I’m so glad at least one person got the reference.
now you are star trekking across the universe
On the starship Enterprise, under Captain Kirk!
“Polarize the hull plating!”
What.
I don’t think this one is so bad. Polarized plating reduced the effectiveness of energy weapons the same way polarized sunglasses reduce the glare from the sun.
If anything a vague “shields up” makes even less sense.
pipe fox news through the PA system along the outer sections of the ship
technobbabble is only bad when it solves the point of the story the only one that was bad about that in classic trek was voyager. In nutrek technobbable is the least of it’s worries and that comes from a disdain and lack of respect for the audience. At best it is Star Wars with Star Trek Redskin Mod installed.
At worst incoherent and telling the same story and yes one story over one season every season. We found a MacGuffin now let’s go on hunt. look at JJs sequel Trilogy and Star Wars and discovery season 1, 2,3 of discovery it’s all the same. i think Ronald D Moore once said the amazing part about Star Trek was you could tell and genre of story in Star Trek.
Im not just talk episodic versus Cereal cuz look at DS9 you had a war story and right in the middle of it you had a love story with Kira and Odo and a heist movie. Im very sad that doesn’t happen anymore.
SNW’s scientific accuracy and technobabble are so bad, it often pulls me right out of the story. I feel like Next Gen era at least tried a little bit. Yeah, it was awful, but it was watchable. I’ve gone back and watched some to verify it’s not just in my head. It’s not. Does SNW have science and technology consultants? If so, if the problem is them they should be fired, but I suspect the problem is the writers / directors not giving two fucks what the consultants have to say. Be better guys.
The topic was asking for examples; got any?
It’s not so much technobabble, but from mid-TNG on through DS9 and VOY it seemed that, at least once per episode, “Some kind of…” was used to describe anything new.
Prolly Lower Decks, though I don’t watch it, I’d be rather surprised if’n they don’t have the worst technobabble when it’d be funny
That just means Lower Decks has the best treknobabble!
Kind of the point…. LD makes fun of trek a lot
The scene where Picard needs a heart transplant around season 2 of TNG was pretty bad. You can’t just make up words for a procedure we already have. My girlfriend still isn’t over it.
