Techno Babble Help Please!

[KobayashiMaru13]

I figure this is the place to go for Treknian technology sooo.... well, i write fanfic and i always get stumped when i need to get technical. is there anyone or anymultiple peoples i could PM when i am in need of some techno babble? thanks!

Sydney Australia

 

[Plecostomus]

I figure this is the place to go for Treknian technology sooo.... well, i write fanfic and i always get stumped when i need to get technical. is there anyone or anymultiple peoples i could PM when i am in need of some techno babble? thanks!

Sydney Australia

I'm "down with" reactor, warp-core, drive and weapons technobabble, and hull-and-frame babble. Pure science, medical and that kind not so much.

PM me as needed I'm on at least once a day!

 

[Alpha_Geek]

Just use the...

LaForge Technobabble Matrix!

Pick a random number from 1 to four, then pick that many words, one from each colum

Field________Reconfigure______ Transducer______ Coil
Dispersion__ Phased__________ Resonance______ Sub-Space
Tachyon____ Induction________ Pulse__________ Matrix
Baryon_____ Conduit__________Wave-Guide_____ Re-route
Lepton_____ Discriminator_____ Polarize_________ Amplify
E-M_______ Frequency________ Bandwidth______ Antimatter
Diagnostic__ Mode___________ Plasma_________ Spectrum

GRRRRR! WHY DOSEN'T THIS BOARD HAVE A NON PROPORTINAL SPACE FONT OPTION FOR TABLES???

 

[Plecostomus]

Yeah but then you end up with pure shit-babble. I provide value-added technobabble based on real engineering and science principles that not only sounds cool... it sounds PLAUSIBLE.

Believe me, no fucking way that I'll accept a baryon conduit waveguide rerouter from no silly-ass chart.

 

[Alpha_Geek]

.... You want plausible?

I got nothin. LOL

 

[nx1701g]

Just use the...

LaForge Technobabble Matrix!

Pick a random number from 1 to four, then pick that many words, one from each colum

Field________Reconfigure______ Transducer______ Coil
Dispersion__ Phased__________ Resonance______ Sub-Space
Tachyon____ Induction________ Pulse__________ Matrix
Baryon_____ Conduit__________Wave-Guide_____ Re-route
Lepton_____ Discriminator_____ Polarize_________ Amplify
E-M_______ Frequency________ Bandwidth______ Antimatter
Diagnostic__ Mode___________ Plasma_________ Spectrum

GRRRRR! WHY DOSEN'T THIS BOARD HAVE A NON PROPORTINAL SPACE FONT OPTION FOR TABLES???

That's what I use.

 

[Myasishchev]

Hell, it's what the screenwriters from TNG on out used.

 

[Maurice]

*sigh* It's better to figure out what you need to happen in the story and then figure out what tech, if any, you need to make it happen.

 

[sojourner]

^maybe he wants it to read like an authentic TNG/Voyager piece?

 

[Plecostomus]

^maybe he wants it to read like an authentic TNG/Voyager piece?

Then the only babble you need to know is "Deflector Dish" and "fill in the blank Particles/Waves/Beams."

Remember kids! Thermogenic particles are the elementry particles of heat and Croutons are the elementary particle of crunch (often found in salads).

 

[T'Girl]

Data: " Captain, the hyper array trans dimensh dish read-out ... "

Picard: "This is all too much for me, Wesley just fix it."

Wesley: "Yes Captain."

 

[Vance]

I figure this is the place to go for Treknian technology sooo.... well, i write fanfic and i always get stumped when i need to get technical. is there anyone or anymultiple peoples i could PM when i am in need of some techno babble? thanks!

Well, my first main suggestion is to write the word 'Technobabble' whenever you refer to a part you don't know. If your story works even with that word in place, then you're fine. If your story falls apart because the 'technobabble' is suddenly neccessary to make it work, you need to rethink your story.

There are plenty of people around who know Trek technobabble, though, but be warned: there are many here who know they are Right (TM) even when they strongly disagree on points. Your mileage on how useful what you hear here will vary greatly.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I say just make stuff up that sounds good for your story. I've written fanfic before and I learned very early on to use the TOS approach to technobabble--keep it simple and consider that time is of the essence in most circumstances.

ENGINEER: Warp drive is out, Captain.

(Straight to the point, no need to go into detail about the matter and antimatter injectors being offline or the magnetic constrictors being fused).

SCIENCE OFFICER: Detecting a massive space disruption, Captain...

(Once again, straight to the point rather than a lengthy dissertation on subspace field density fluctuations and abnormal gravimetric distortions).

 

[B.J.]

GRRRRR! WHY DOSEN'T THIS BOARD HAVE A NON PROPORTINAL SPACE FONT OPTION FOR TABLES???

It does. You just have to wrap the "code" tag around the text.

Field       Reconfigure    Transducer  Coil
Dispersion  Phased         Resonance   Sub-Space
Tachyon     Induction      Pulse       Matrix
Baryon      Conduit        Wave-Guide  Re-route
Lepton      Discriminator  Polarize    Amplify
E-M         Frequency      Bandwidth   Antimatter
Diagnostic  Mode           Plasma      Spectrum

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I figure this is the place to go for Treknian technology sooo.... well, i write fanfic and i always get stumped when i need to get technical. is there anyone or anymultiple peoples i could PM when i am in need of some techno babble? thanks!

Well, my first main suggestion is to write the word 'Technobabble' whenever you refer to a part you don't know. If your story works even with that word in place, then you're fine.

Not to be crude, but I despise this method, since it is literally the application of random technology as a convenient and unsophisticated plot device.

It may be just that I spent most of my life writing non-trek fanfiction, but I make it a point never to introduce any piece of jargon or technology that isn't itself indispensable to a particular plot element. So if there is a time in Scene VI where a character needs to fix a leaking plasma conduit, I create a moment in Scene II where that character is taught how to use a device that will fix a leaking plasma conduit. If a fighter pilot is going to be shot down in Scene VII, I describe the workings of the ejection system in Scene III. Etc etc.

But can't just suddenly drop in word salads as an all-purpose solution to whatever the problem happens to be; that's retarded. Real engineers don't pull new inventions out of their ass to solve their day to day problems, they either find a novel use for an old invention (B'elanna's "Skeletal Lock" for transporter beams) or they take the time to invent something ahead of time and then suddenly pull it out of their bag of tricks on the day it comes in handy.

That's the technobabble I rely on: You don't have to "modify the deflector dish to emit a [tech]." You just concede that there's a device somewhere on the ship that was always designed to do whatever it is you're trying to do (preferably something familiar; say, a specific phaser setting that can disable enemy shields/sensors/computers without damaging the hull).

If your story falls apart because the 'technobabble' is suddenly neccessary to make it work, you need to rethink your story.

Or get one of your characters to develop the necessary technobabble before it gets to that part. The technology is supposed to be a tool the characters use to solve their problems; all you have to do is put it in their hands.

 

[Doran]

Well, my first main suggestion is to write the word 'Technobabble' whenever you refer to a part you don't know. If your story works even with that word in place, then you're fine. If your story falls apart because the 'technobabble' is suddenly neccessary to make it work, you need to rethink your story.

This is great advice and it is the way the writing staff of TNG handled the same problem.

 

[Maurice]

Well, my first main suggestion is to write the word 'Technobabble' whenever you refer to a part you don't know. If your story works even with that word in place, then you're fine. If your story falls apart because the 'technobabble' is suddenly neccessary to make it work, you need to rethink your story.

This is great advice and it is the way the writing staff of TNG handled the same problem.

Unless, of course, technobabble is used like "Well, if I TECH the TECH we might escape!" where said tech might as well be "magic".

 

[SilentP]

You 'could' do the [insert technobabble] solution, but what might be good is if you can assemble list of at least plausible 'techbuzzwords' to use for different contexts. I.e, when it comes to cloaking, remember to use words like 'tachyon' and 'anti-proton'. That way you can at least stay consistent with what gets used for what.

 

[Myasishchev]

Try to have a good idea in mind about the properties of whatever you use, even if it's made-up. If it's not made-up, try to stay consistent with the real-life properties thereof.

To take SilentP's examples, ascribing funny things to tachyons is more-or-less okay, since they (probably) don't exist.

Antiprotons, by contrast, are very real, and have well-defined, experimentally-verified properties. A word of advice: I'm not sure it's a good idea to use antiprotons for medical procedures!

Using them to pierce a cloak, however, I always thought was a good touch, whether intended or not. Any antimatter getting past the cloak would spit gamma rays out, which would seem to me to be easy to detect above the general noise even in a star system, and like a flashlight in the dark in interstellar space. And the better the cloak, fewer antiprotons in, and fewer gammas and neutrinos out.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Well, my first main suggestion is to write the word 'Technobabble' whenever you refer to a part you don't know. If your story works even with that word in place, then you're fine. If your story falls apart because the 'technobabble' is suddenly neccessary to make it work, you need to rethink your story.

This is great advice and it is the way the writing staff of TNG handled the same problem.

And I respectfully disagree, citing some of the more ghastly abuses of technobabble in TNG and Voyager.

I reiterate: follow the old rule of stage production continuity: if you introduce a cup in Scene I, it has to be used by Scene IV; if you use a cup in Scene IV, you have to introduce it in Scene II at the latest.

If you're not creative enough figure out the details (and are therefore reduced to writing stories formulaically) then at least use an annotation: introduce [tech1] in an earlier chapter and makes sure it's the same [tech1] that saves the day in the final chapter. This at least gives you some authenticity and avoids the trap of throwing random science-sounding words together just to fill the [tech] gap because the situation just happens to call for some technobabble. Anything you introduce that isn't staged in the same production should have been staged in previous episodes; so if the thing that saves the day is the stun setting on a phaser, you don't need to mention that phasers have a stun setting in a throwaway line, unless you're in the very first moment of the first episode, in which case that works as precedent for the rest of the story.