RDM says technobabble was gibberish
- Thread starter Mach5
- Start date
Less is often more!
Ron is right on target as usual. I love hearing his writing stories. He is so open and honest.
Yeah, but it's lazy writing for the same reason as using incoherent technobabble. In point of fact, it would have been a bit more honest if Tom had said, "I'd love to, Captain, but we still have forty nine minutes to kill."
A better way to handle that would have been Tom saying, "Cutting power now... that did it!" then looks at monitor and says "Aw, crap..." just as he's beamed out of his seat.
I think both ways would have rocked. Two good ideas for the price of one post!
I disagree.
Well, I'll be watching the whole thing anyway. If nothing else at least I can be indignant at the ending, and if not, well, that's even better. Either way I need my space opera fix.
Personally, the Season 4.5 stuff is some of my favorite in the series. I'd go so far as to say I hope that another full-lengther is made after The Plan, and that it's set in the Season 4.5 timeframe.
Diff'rent strokes...
Concededly, it's not a universally shared opinion. Some people really enjoyed Daybreak.
Um no. Something doesn't suddenly become technobabble just because you don't know what it means. It is just actual scientific theory that you don't happen to understand.
Oh come on, it's not like Michael Bay made a great movie before he got large budgets. He's a director who knows how to make movies with pretty explosions, so he makes large budget movies with pretty explosions. The budget itself didn't make the movie superficial. Do you think Transformers would have been better with a smaller budget but no other changes?
Maybe. Having a smaller FX budget, and thereby not being able to rely on the visual "wow" factor, might have forced him to work with the actors and story more. Irony of irony, George Lucas relied on FX to make the SW PT when he himself said in 1983 during production of Return Of The Jedi "The story isn't the effects it's the story, the plot. A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing."
I've seen that happen. It's called Transformers.
No, really, there's a long stretch of that movie without the titular robots, where he has to focus with actors and story. This long stretch is, well, not good.
I think there was also a promotional thing TPM did mocking the American Godzilla's lack of story.
While it's true that some directors can become so enamoured of SFX they prioritise them over the plot, it doesn't follow that taking away the SFX would force them to tell a better story. I suspect the PT would be pretty weak even on a much tighter budget, honestly, and unlike the PT we got it wouldn't be a gorgeous menagerie of space opera images.
Excuse me, I was imprecise there. Mitochondrial Eve is technobabble when the writer does not know what Mitochondrial Eve is.
Actually, this is a better example of theobabble. mtDNA is neat, and as I understand it the projected existence of Mito Eve is an important piece of evidence for the out-of-Africa hypothesis. It's not a particularly solid plank in the out-of-Caprica hypothesis, however.
Mito Eve is also an absolutely unimportant role in the big scheme. Any woman could have filled this part. We got a great big build up for Hera. Our payoff is that she was Mito Eve (technically, I suppose this was not directly stated; the alternative is that a scene in the last few minutes of the last episode of a work of cinema was meaningless--so pick your poison carefully).
So, at best, we all have the Cylon mitogenome--or, alternatively, we have a deep mystical connection to the Cylons and Colonials. Well, 1)no we don't and 2)so what if we did?
Interestingly, even on BSG's own terms, Hera isn't the Mito Eve. Athena is. The Cylon Model Number 8 mitogenome is the mitochondrial template that we all share.
Going back to point number 2), I'm actually pretty sure RDM doesn't actually know what a mitochondrion is, since otherwise he probably would not have had the Cylons be superstrong one minute and indistinguishable from a human the next. Phosphorylate my glucose with what now?
^ 
Yes. Even if you've got to have the science in there, at least research it, and make it sound authentic. 'If we fire a polaron pulse at the anomaly, it should reverse the duonetic field' makes my ears bleed.
Not all technobabble is just babble. I don't know about other series, but as far as TNG was concerned I heard they put as much science fact behind the science in the series.
But you guys gotta remember, when you're creating your own "universe" and I mean a series that takes place in a time other than the present time, there is going to be some variation in language, and in an advanced culture like TNG, a difference in the science. It only makes sense.
Remember, science fiction takes the science of today and says "but what could this become?"
But you guys gotta remember, when you're creating your own "universe" and I mean a series that takes place in a time other than the present time, there is going to be some variation in language, and in an advanced culture like TNG, a difference in the science. It only makes sense.
Remember, science fiction takes the science of today and says "but what could this become?"