24th Century Technobabble in the 23rd Century
- Thread starter Flogiston
- Start date
I am not understanding where the passive-aggression is coming from here. If you disagree with me, you can just say it outright, it's fine; you don't need to make these veiled jabs like "I care about the story" or "I don't overthink it", just be upfront. It's hard to have a discussion in response to things like that.
I suspect that's the point of what he is saying.
Actually TOS used those interchangeably, and usually used "deflector shield" instead of just "shield."
You must be thinking of Dayton & Kevin's "Things Fall Apart." Mine was set in the span between TMP and TWOK.
Not surprising, since those lines were supposed to be done by Spock.
(Leonard Nimoy was asked to appear but said no, so Scotty got all the lines that Spock would have. Same reason why Chekov is in sickbay: all of HIS lines were supposed to be McCoy.)
I definitely prefer that the books use the era specific terminology. I can be a bit more forgiving if it's something like Vanguard which is kind of it's own thing, but if it's a TOS novel that is specifically trying to capture the feel of that era, then really should try to keep to the terminology and stuff from that series. It's not something that totally ruins a story for me, but I definitely prefer it.
I actually realized I might've been anachronistic by defaulting to "shields" in The Face of the Unknown, so I used the script search tool to check the frequency of "shields" vs. "deflector shields" vs. "deflectors" and added more usages of the latter two to the manuscript.
Bizarre that you think of the TNG term as the "correct" one, instead of just a different one.
Exactly. If you can use those details to more clearly set your story in its proper place and time, why wouldn't you?
I know. But my point was that the TNG-style technobabble sounds wrong coming from any TOS character, since that's not how they talked. Braga & Moore "rewriting" the scene just by changing the character names and not bothering to change the dialogue itself is a whole other issue.
Oh, you're right, whoops.
I think the "simulate a torpedo blast with a resonance burst" technobabble would've sounded just as TNG coming from Spock as Scotty, even considering that Spock was the TOS character most likely to use technical jargon. The "I do have a theory/I thought you might" exchange was definitely meant for Spock.
And to be fair, it's not like they just changed the names in the script. The "I was never that young" and "Keep things together until I get back" exchanges had to have been written for Chekov and Scotty, respectively.
Or that. That is a distinct possibility...Or there wasn't a biofilter in the 23rd century and that one single reference to it in that one story just screwed up.
I was thinking the other day how much I hate that they couldn't be bothered to write new dialogue when they changed which characters they were using. That's just really low standards.
Side note: Right before Chekov says to the reporters "You and you, you've just become nurses, let's go", he says something in Russian. Can anyone translate?
He said "This is obviously a McCoy line! Lazy screenwriters..."
I agree with Johnny and Idran. When I read a book, with few exceptions, I am immersed and "in" the world of the story. Referring to people, places and things using proper, expected terminology and referent points is very important to my enjoyment of it. It is ok that not everyone experience it that way, but that is what is important to me.
You're talking about if a story is enjoyable or not, we're talking about the aspects of a story that make a story enjoyable or not for a given person. Different levels of analysis, it's the difference between saying "I like this story" and "I like this story because..."
No one just likes a story full stop, independent of any of the underlying aspects of the story; there are things about a story that make someone like it, even if it's not something explicitly considered by the reader.Even if someone isn't interested in analyzing their opinion on a work, that doesn't mean it emerged based on nothing whatsoever. Maybe it might as well have emerged based on nothing to you, but that's something entirely different.
