Biggest problem with "Voyager" is that they didn't really take any chances.

[Crazy Eddie]

? I don't get your complaint. Are you pissed they DID explain stuff or that they didn't?

"Explanations," or lack thereof, isn't the problem, because technobabble isn't an explanation.

Because you're complaining that they give explanations for everything.

No, I'm complaining that their made-up gibberish attempts at explanations are being used as a substitute for character development.

Using your own example: What's the more interesting reason that Tom Paris can't stop the hacker from taking over their transporters?
a) The hacker used a multi-modal encryption scheme to lock out his controls
b) The hacker is using a quantum resonance interface with a refresh rate of seven billion megahertz, much faster than Starfleet computers can achieve
c) "Whoever this guy is, he's good."

Or are you not liking that they give fancy future-talk explanations instead of banal, straightforward ones?

"Future talk explanations" are just fine, so long as they're just props and not actual story elements.

Take "Search for Spock" as an example. I don't need a word salad about how the Klingon torpedo hit the starboard power coupling and disrupted the primary ODN junction on deck 47. The important things are "Can't control the ship anymore" and "We're fucked." If you don't need a technogibberish song and dance number to get that point across, then adding it is just a distraction.

 

[Anwar]

No, I'm complaining that their made-up gibberish attempts at explanations are being used as a substitute for character development.

Using your own example: What's the more interesting reason that Tom Paris can't stop the hacker from taking over their transporters?
a) The hacker used a multi-modal encryption scheme to lock out his controls
b) The hacker is using a quantum resonance interface with a refresh rate of seven billion megahertz, much faster than Starfleet computers can achieve
c) "Whoever this guy is, he's good."

Saying "His tech is better than ours, I'm locked out" is fine by me. It's better than just saying "He's good."

No offense, but you sounds like the complainers about the torpedoes on Voyager. They say they can't make more, and we're just supposed to accept it at face value.

WHY can't they make more exactly? You can't just say "We can't" and leave it at that.

 

[Prax]

as a substitute for character development.

How would you know that, if you've only watched the first season?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Saying "His tech is better than ours, I'm locked out" is fine by me. It's better than just saying "He's good."

Agreed. And if they'd simply left it at that, Voyager would have been a much more watchable show.

Instead, the flashy technobabble just comes off as the verbal equivalent of Jar Jar Binks: you keep trying to ignore it, but you can't.

No offense, but you sounds like the complainers about the torpedoes on Voyager. They say they can't make more, and we're just supposed to accept it at face value.

Yes. We are. Because ultimately nobody really cares WHY they can't make more; casual viewers won't think about it and hardcore fans will speculate on it endlessly and come up with whatever theory they like.

But then if the writers suddenly decide "You know what? Running out of torpedoes is stupid. We should find a way to make more," what should probably happen is an episode where TORRES goes to Janeway and says "You know what? Running out of torpedoes is stupid. We should find a way to make more."

 

[Anwar]

Agreed. And if they'd simply left it at that, Voyager would have been a much more watchable show.

Instead, the flashy technobabble just comes off as the verbal equivalent of Jar Jar Binks: you keep trying to ignore it, but you can't.

Or, you just accept it's the future and things aren't 100% the same and they'll use funny future words sometimes. Roll with it. I mean, I don't get plenty of the legal babble lawyer shows use and I don't care.

Yes. We are. Because ultimately nobody really cares WHY they can't make more.

I always did. I thought it was silly how they never addressed this important matter.

But then if the writers suddenly decide "You know what? Running out of torpedoes is stupid. We should find a way to make more," what should probably happen is an episode where TORRES goes to Janeway and says "You know what? Running out of torpedoes is stupid. We should find a way to make more."

And I'm left thinking "Why didn't she ever do that?"

Sorry, but sometimes you can't just take stuff as face value and you have to wonder "Why?".

 

[Crazy Eddie]

How would you know that, if you've only watched the first season?

Netflix is a thing

 

[MacLeod]

They can replicate bulkheads. They also mention replicating hull plates for the Delta flyer, and what materials to "add to the ingredients." Building torpedoes wouldn't be an issue at all. I think it's the Matter/antimatter warhead that was the issue.

But if they can't replicate a torpedeo which as you say is basically a M/AM warhead with a small warp drive. How can they do something bigger say like a shuttlecraft?

Now maybe they didn't realise that would be the logical consequence of that line but it was. Now why have the line in the first place surely it was to highlight limited resources. Then we have the crazy idea of the holodecks having incompatable power system, indpendent I can buy but incompatable it doesn't make much sense, its adding more complexity to a ships design. Besides don't you think they would design a transformer if it had a different power system i.e DC vs AC. You know in case life support systems fail and the only power system left working on the ship is the holodeck.

They wrote themselves into a corner and rather than write themselves out of it they simply decided to ingore it and hoped the audiance wouldn't notice or care.

And I think it was more like S4 when they gave up counting torpedeos.

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[Crazy Eddie]

Or, you just accept it's the future and things aren't 100% the same and they'll use funny future words sometimes. Roll with it. I mean, I don't get plenty of the legal babble lawyer shows use and I don't care.

And yet lawyer shows, like cop procedural dramas and military dramas, are only as watchable as the characters and dialog are relatable. In that sense, lawyer and cop shows are actually far LESS realistic than the actual experience, because if they were realistic, nobody would understand what the hell anyone was talking about.

I always did. I thought it was silly how they never addressed this important matter.

How important was it if they completely forgot it was an issue anyway?

And I'm left thinking "Why didn't she ever do that?"

Sorry, but sometimes you can't just take stuff as face value and you have to wonder "Why?".

Indeed. But I'm a lot less interested in what the problem is than I am in how they're going to solve it, even if the problem turns out to be pretty interesting in itself.

But if the problem is un-interesting, and the solution is un-interesting why am I still watching this show?

(Well, that's a rhetorical question, but in Voyager's case the answer is usually "boredom")

 

[Anwar]

And yet lawyer shows, like cop procedural dramas and military dramas, are only as watchable as the characters and dialog are relatable. In that sense, lawyer and cop shows are actually far LESS realistic than the actual experience, because if they were realistic, nobody would understand what the hell anyone was talking about.

If that's the case, then it's the stuff that happens between the court scenes then because the court scenes themselves are just plot devices.

How important was it if they completely forgot it was an issue anyway?

Seeing how people still complain about it, pretty important.

Indeed. But I'm a lot less interested in what the problem is than I am in how they're going to solve it, even if the problem turns out to be pretty interesting in itself.

And like your hacking example, apparently the best explanation is "It just happened. No explanation."

But if the problem is un-interesting, and the solution is un-interesting why am I still watching this show?

(Well, that's a rhetorical question, but in Voyager's case the answer is usually "boredom")

You must have loved the Prophet Ex Machina in DS9 then. It was literally just a magical solution with little to no consequences.

 

[Nightdiamond]

They would never have Voyager have the dirty, tarnished, damaged look throughout the series. It just isn't Star Trek's style. It would have made sense. In Star Wars the ships often look dirty or rusty. But then, like I said, the ship is the main feature, so it has to look presentable for all those promotions and such.

Sometimes I think Trek in general spent more time working on technobabble than they did other things. There was that episode where they found a colony of Talaxians thousands of light years away from their home world, pretty much where Voyager first started. Ahead of them. There was no explanation at all.

Things like this are sometimes forgivable, but I don't know if they could make those same mistakes in a new show today. Things like that can more easily sink a show now than it could before.

 

[Tracy Trek]

Did TNG and DS9 not have lots of technobabble as well?

 

[MacLeod]

Things like this are sometimes forgivable, but I don't know if they could make those same mistakes in a new show today. Things like that can more easily sink a show now than it could before.

But what's changed between now and then? Has audiance expectations been raised overall in the intervening years? Or is it more a case of overall audiance expectations have been raised. i.e 20 years ago only 20% of the audiance cared about such as things but now its more like 50%.

 

[Voth commando1]

They would never have Voyager have the dirty, tarnished, damaged look throughout the series. It just isn't Star Trek's style. It would have made sense. In Star Wars the ships often look dirty or rusty. But then, like I said, the ship is the main feature, so it has to look presentable for all those promotions and such.

Sometimes I think Trek in general spent more time working on technobabble than they did other things. There was that episode where they found a colony of Talaxians thousands of light years away from their home world, pretty much where Voyager first started. Ahead of them. There was no explanation at all.

Things like this are sometimes forgivable, but I don't know if they could make those same mistakes in a new show today. Things like that can more easily sink a show now than it could before.

The talaxians had lost their home world to a haakonian occupation it was stated in that very episode they were a group of refugees constantly be kicked out and moving.

 

[Prax]

Sometimes I think Trek in general spent more time working on technobabble than they did other things. There was that episode where they found a colony of Talaxians thousands of light years away from their home world, pretty much where Voyager first started. Ahead of them. There was no explanation at all.

Things like this are sometimes forgivable, but I don't know if they could make those same mistakes in a new show today. Things like that can more easily sink a show now than it could before.

They probably had a twenty year headstart? The only time indicator given is that they left sometime in Dexa's lifetime, as she has memories of her home planet. So this isn't a mistake, but even if it was, it's so peripheral that 99.9% of the audience wouldn't even conceive of it. TV shows haven't changed much. They are still procedural. I saw an interview with Ira S. Behr where he was talking about about his show "crash" (about 7 years ago now) and the interviewer asked him if the show was "serialized." He said no, TV is episodic. there's a continuity of characters and themes, buy each episode has a beginning and end. I saw another interview of Manny Corp from 4-5 years ago, where he is asked a similar question, and he said no, Network execs don't want to do serialized stories, so most shows aren't.

It's not a fair comparison to throw Star Trek against today's HBO series/miniseries or some of the new straight to streaming shows that are coming out, but I'm sure they have just as many of what you term "errors" in them. In fact, every show has its' segment of cynical nitpickers that have huge laundry list of problems with, be it Game of Thrones, The Sopranos, Battlestar Galactica, or whatever...lost? It may even be worse for some of those, than for Trek shows.

But if they can't replicate a torpedeo which as you say is basically a M/AM warhead with a small warp drive. How can they do something bigger say like a shuttlecraft?

Now maybe they didn't realise that would be the logical consequence of that line but it was. Now why have the line in the first place surely it was to highlight limited resources. Then we have the crazy idea of the holodecks having incompatable power system, indpendent I can buy but incompatable it doesn't make much sense, its adding more complexity to a ships design. Besides don't you think they would design a transformer if it had a different power system i.e DC vs AC. You know in case life support systems fail and the only power system left working on the ship is the holodeck.

They wrote themselves into a corner and rather than write themselves out of it they simply decided to ingore it and hoped the audiance wouldn't notice or care.

And I think it was more like S4 when they gave up counting torpedeos.

In Scorpion they had 32 torpedoes. Various episodes mention various types of torpedoes Voyager had. Another season four episode shows them purchasing armaments for the ship, and building the Delta flyer in episode 5 shows that they have the capabilities to build shuttles or torpedoes. They may not have envisioned developing that ability when they were still in the mindset of season 1 episode 1 or 2 or whatever, but that doesn't exclude them from acquiring it along the way(by necessity actually) Season 5'a "night" and "dark frontier" is where they use a lot of torpedoes.

I do agree that some line of dialogue would have been nice, but only important to a tiny fraction of the fans.

BTW they do mention building the Borg torpedoes for the Delta flyer.

 

[MacLeod]

The talaxians had lost their home world to a haakonian occupation it was stated in that very episode they were a group of refugees constantly be kicked out and moving.

I think the point is that the Haakonian-Talaxian war occured sometime around 2340s-2350s. The episode where they find the Talaxian , colony is set in 2378 so we are lloking in the region of 25-35 years. Bear in mindVoyager had done some big jumps totravel from Talax in "Jetrel" to that Talaxian colony of at least 40 000ly. Which could indicate even the advanced engines of VOY might struggle to traverse that distance in 35 years. The Talaxian ship would also have to go through Borg space. Now it is possible that they found a wormhole to go through to shorten the distance but the numbers stretch believablity.

 

[MacLeod]

They probably had a twenty year headstart? The only time indicator given is that they left sometime in Dexa's lifetime, as she has memories of her home planet. So this isn't a mistake, but even if it was, it's so peripheral that 99.9% of the audience wouldn't even conceive of it. TV shows haven't changed much. They are still procedural. I saw an interview with Ira S. Behr where he was talking about about his show "crash" (about 7 years ago now) and the interviewer asked him if the show was "serialized." He said no, TV is episodic. there's a continuity of characters and themes, buy each episode has a beginning and end. I saw another interview of Manny Corp from 4-5 years ago, where he is asked a similar question, and he said no, Network execs don't want to do serialized stories, so most shows aren't.

It's not a fair comparison to throw Star Trek against today's HBO series/miniseries or some of the new straight to streaming shows that are coming out, but I'm sure they have just as many of what you term "errors" in them. In fact, every show has its' segment of cynical nitpickers that have huge laundry list of problems with, be it Game of Thrones, The Sopranos, Battlestar Galactica, or whatever...lost? It may even be worse for some of those, than for Trek shows.
In Scorpion they had 32 torpedoes. Various episodes mention various types of torpedoes Voyager had. Another season four episode shows them purchasing armaments for the ship, and building the Delta flyer in episode 5 shows that they have the capabilities to build shuttles or torpedoes. They may not have envisioned developing that ability when they were still in the mindset of season 1 episode 1 or 2 or whatever, but that doesn't exclude them from acquiring it along the way(by necessity actually) Season 5'a "night" and "dark frontier" is where they use a lot of torpedoes.

I do agree that some line of dialogue would have been nice, but only important to a tiny fraction of the fans.

BTW they do mention building the Borg torpedoes for the Delta flyer.

There are various levels of serialisation, there are the season long serialised shows such as 24, and the more semi-serialised shows such as B5, DW, The West Wing. Where each episode (some might be muli parters) is self contained but add to the overal tory and are best watched in sequence. Episodic shows tend to aim for any episode can be watched in any sequence. Though this might be at a season level rather than series level.

 

[Prax]

Did TNG and DS9 not have lots of technobabble as well?

TNG had considerably more. Especially from Data and Geordi. DS9 had a fair bit as well, but they did hand wave some things like "Captain, I want to time travel and see if Dukat was lying about my mom being an adulterer. Can I borrow that Orb of Time?"

BTW raise your hand if your an Enterprise fan, because it seems to me that Braga had heard your grievances, because Enterprise had a strong continuity between episodes. And when the ship was damaged in one episode, it was still there in the next, like season 2's minefield, and season 3's Azati Prime, and others.

Will Braga get any credit for this? Hell No. At least I've never seen it.

 

[Prax]

There are various levels of serialisation, there are the season long serialised shows such as 24, and the more semi-serialised shows such as B5, DW, The West Wing. Where each episode (some might be muli parters) is self contained but add to the overal tory and are best watched in sequence. Episodic shows tend to aim for any episode can be watched in any sequence. Though this might be at a season level rather than series level.

Well, I've heard Star Trek(TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT) referred to as a "serialized procedural" Both here and elsewhere, and I think the description works. "Episodic" (and any order) I think fits the original series(Which might be my first love)

 

[Crazy Eddie]

If that's the case, then it's the stuff that happens between the court scenes then because the court scenes themselves are just plot devices.

Technobabble and jargon are plot devices too. But producers of court shows know that the court scenes have to be sufficiently dramatized so that they are at least INTERESTING plot devices. This is why court shows treat the courtroom scenes as being very dramatic and emotional, with lots of staredowns, forceful tones, a witness might stutter or raise her voice, etc.

In reality, a jury trial is pretty much the most boring thing you can possibly experience. It's like watching Congress hold a debate on the relaxation of environmental deregulation of fossil fuel emissions: you know, on an intellectual level, that what they're talking about is actually pretty important, but you ALSO know that ninety nine percent of what is said is just procedural jargon and doesn't really matter.

Voyager, in other words, is the equivalent of a lawyer show that includes all of the extraneous legal steps that most shows edit out of the process... except that writers, who have no idea what those steps actually are, simply MAKE UP a bunch of extra steps in a way that is stupendously obvious.

It's a pretentiousness that makes Voyager somewhat difficult (not impossible, just difficult) to really enjoy.

Seeing how people still complain about it, pretty important.

People have been complaining about unimportant things since the invention of complaining. That's why every one of these threads has at least one person who actually starts complaining about all the complaints...

And now I'm complaining about the people complaining about the complaints...

And like your hacking example, apparently the best explanation is "It just happened. No explanation."

For storytelling purposes, the best explanation, to put it simply, is "He did it."
The worst explanation, to put it equally simply, is "That thing did it."

This is because good stories are character-driven, not device-driven. When, on the other hand, all a character has to do is recite some techno gibberish and then quietly push a button that makes the gibberish happen, the characters are irrelevant.

Again, the really good Voyager episodes were the ones that most effectively broke out of this pattern (Basics Pt 1 and 2 were like this), but then you have entire scenes in season 4 and 5 where Tuvok and Kim could have literally switched lines and nobody would have even noticed.

You must have loved the Prophet Ex Machina in DS9 then.

I loved many things about DS9, but pulling shit out of the Prophets' asses was not one of them.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

BTW raise your hand if your an Enterprise fan, because it seems to me that Braga had heard your grievances, because Enterprise had a strong continuity between episodes. And when the ship was damaged in one episode, it was still there in the next, like season 2's minefield, and season 3's Azati Prime, and others.

Will Braga get any credit for this? Hell No. At least I've never seen it.

I don't know that Braga specifically deserves or doesn't deserve credit for it (would have to research that a little) but it was one of the more interesting things about Enterprise. With "Minefield" acting as part of the premise for "Dead Stop," it immediately brought back memories of the way Voyager never seemed to retain damage from one episode to the next even when aliens blasted the crap out of it.

it also occurs to me that this sort of thing is ALOT easier to sell these days; you miss an episode of, say, "The Expanse" and go "Shit, lots of stuff happened last episode and I missed it and now I'm lost... Amazon prime to the rescue!"