best and worst of Treknobabble

To me, it's interchangeable, reverse the polarity of the chronotron frazzleblaster up the yinyang. But are there actual quotes of Treknobabble that you like better than others, or quotes that disrupt your internal cranial matrix and result in a subspace expulsion of last night's gagh?

 

I don't like the neew Federation's phasers on TNG, DS9, and Voy at all. I'd never undertand why they made it like that.

 

"Get the cheese to sickbay."

 

^And neither of those was Treknobabble.

A couple that made me laugh were particles of the week: Warp Particles and Chroniton particles.

And of course when they'd throw the prefix "iso" in front of a random word just to make it sound important.

 

certainly not the worst, but

CHAKOTAY: Chaotic space intersects ours at the eighteenth dimensional gradient. Voyager entered through A trimetric fracture.

BASHIR: I was running a neural scan and noticed some anomalous protein readings. I thought there must be some mistake, so I ran an at the Journal and amino acid sequence to be sure. But there it was again, the prion mutation rate had spiked. I couldn't believe it. It meant the anomalous proteins had to have a strong quantum resonance.

O'BRIEN: The temporal surge we detected was caused by an explosion of a microscopic singularity passing through this solar system. Somehow, the energy emitted by the singularity shifted the chroniton particles in our hull into a high state of temporal polarisation.

DATA: It appears to be a highly focused aperture in the space-time continuum. Its energy signature matches that of the temporal fragments we observed earlier. However, it is approximately one point two million times as intense. I believe this may be the origin of the temporal fragmentation.

 

And the scary part is I know exactly which episodes those are from, and what circumstances were in that part where those lines were said...

But to be fair to the Chak, he was merely parroting an alien's explanation, he didn't understand that crap either.

 

all from one ep. VOY, "Shattered", and that's not nearly all there is

EMH: Fortunately, I was able to create a chronoton-infused serum that brought you back into temporal alignment.

SEVEN: When a Borg cube travels trough a transwarp corridor, the temporal stresses are extreme. To keep the different sections of the Cube in temporal sync, we project a chronoton field throughout the vessel.

SEVEN: Each Cube has specially designed conduits. If we install similar conduits throughout this vessel, then generate a sufficiently powerful field, we may be able to force Voyager back into temporal sync.
CHAKOTAY: Temporal sync with what?
SEVEN: The vessel will return to the moment of the original chrono-kinetic surge. Since the surge will last for six or seven seconds, Commander Chakotay will have a short time in which he could try to counteract the warp core reaction.
CHAKOTAY: Even if we could replicate these conduits, we'd have no way to get them through the temporal barriers.
JANEWAY: Bioneural circuitry.
CHAKOTAY: Captain?
JANEWAY: It runs through every section of the ship, almost like a nervous system. If we could inject the gel packs with your serum, we could use them to transmit the chronoton field.
SEVEN: The warp core could be recalibrated to generate that field.

 

I can only imagine what the actors must think, having to learn those lines. "Are they really going to believe this technobabble? Heck, I can barely pronounce it, much less understand what it means."

 

"Shattered", as in smashed the final barrier to the utmost ridiculous stream of technobabble ever in Star Trek.

 

The last examples gave me a headache

This is a casual conversation between Geordi and Data, believe it or not:

It's like speaking another language....

 

reverse the polarity of the neutron flow!

oh wait.

 

Would that be an anti-neutron field? Or a isoneutronic pulse wave carrier?

 

from DS9, "Rejoined".

BEJAL: After we launch our target drone, the Defiant will have to generate a subspace tensor matrix in the twenty five to thirty thousand Cochrane range. Then the drone will send out a magneton pulse which should react with the matrix to create an opening in the space-time continuum.

O'BRIEN: We'll have to reroute the pre-ignition plasma from the impulse deck down to the auxiliary intake to get that much power. But I think we can do it.

DAX: The backup navigation programme is still showing some calibration drift. I think some data may have been lost in the startup routine.
LENARA: Possibly.
PREN: Well, that explains the seven percent falloff in AFR ratios I keep seeing. Must be a problem with diagnostic sub-routines. I have a recalibration unit in my quarters that might solve the problem.

DAX: Our best guess is that the tetryon field reacted to the probe's shielding, producing a massive graviton wave

LENARA: Energise the focal array and stand by to initiate the subspace tensor matrix.
(Dax goes over to Lenara's console.)
DAX: This AQF sequencer, it's always causing me problems.
BEJAL: The plasma coil interlocks are in place. Deflector grid is charged and standing by.

BEJAL: The tensor matrix is forming.
LENARA: Activate the drone.
DAX: The drone is sending out the magneton pulse. It's reached the matrix.
PREN: I'm picking up a subspace distortion.
BEJAL: The distortion's becoming coherent. It's working.
DAX: The magneton pulse is causing a feedback loop. It'll destroy the drone in a few seconds.

 

Those quotes go perfectly with your avatar.

I think EMH's "chronoton-infused serum" is my favorite so far...

 

I am STUNNED that nobody's given any examples of "good" technobabble yet!

 

I was curious whether there's anyone who likes it. At times, it does make me laugh, but that's not quite the same thing.

 

I'm not going to say I actively like it, but it seems to make sense that in 400 years, there will be technological discussions that primitives like us couldn't make heads or tails out of. I mean, if folks from the 1700s were listening to us discuss computers or something, wouldn't it sound like technobabble to them?

 

I see your point, but nuBSG and a number of Sci-fi movies, hell, even TOS, have proved that you can have a futuristic and technologically advanced vision of a show with a minimum of technobabble.

 

True that, sbk1234.

20th century guy: "Boot up your computer. Log onto the Internet. Go to this website here, and click on the link."
18th century guy: "Ahem, you want me to kick this metal box with a few tiny lights on it, write a log entry in a journal called 'Internet', go over to a site with a spider web on it, and then click off one of its connecting strands? I think you are totally out of your mind, sir."

 

Thanks to BSG and Ronald 'freaking' Moore I've noticed the technobabble a lot more in Star Trek which is kind of annoying. However, on the plus side I've been re-writing the technobabble in my head with stuff that makes sense. One example of this would be in the TNG episode Cost Of Living when Worf tells Deanna that Alexander didn't put his clothes in the garment reprocessor.

It really annoyed me that they had to make up some stupid term instead of just saying "He didn't do his laundry like I told him to"