So tell me - what are some examples of "here's what we ought to do", "here's how it works", and "here's what's wrong" lines sans technobabble? How would they sound?
Trek minus technobabble
- Thread starter Laura Cynthia Chambers
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"The engines can't take it anymore, Captain! They're going to blow!"
Or, from TUC:
Lieutenant Valeris: A Bird-of-Prey?
Captain Spock: A Bird-of-Prey.
Commander Pavel Chekov: Cloaked?
Captain Montgomery 'Scotty' Scott: A Bird-of-Prey cannot open fire when she's cloaked!
Captain Spock: All things being equal, Mr. Scott, I would agree with you. However, all things are not equal. This one can.
Also from TUC:
"She'll fly apart".
"Fly her apart then!"
Or, from TUC:
Lieutenant Valeris: A Bird-of-Prey?
Captain Spock: A Bird-of-Prey.
Commander Pavel Chekov: Cloaked?
Captain Montgomery 'Scotty' Scott: A Bird-of-Prey cannot open fire when she's cloaked!
Captain Spock: All things being equal, Mr. Scott, I would agree with you. However, all things are not equal. This one can.
Also from TUC:
"She'll fly apart".
"Fly her apart then!"
A good example, to be sure. Do you have any examples from less-catastrophic scenarios? In crisis mode, people speak more simply.
I've noticed a lot of fans from TNG onward expect technobabble, but it was rarely used (if at all) in TOS.
How about Spock's instructions to McCoy in "Patterns of Force" when he was having trouble figuring out how to get his boots on? No technobabble there.
Lines which could have been written with it (reasonably) but weren't. Or how could highly technical lines have been alternately written for the layman audience member?
At this point, you might want to watch Babylon 5 then.
Yeah. The whole "Re-modulate the tachyon particles through the secondary lateral transceiver array" business was more of a latter-day TREK thing. TOS was generally blunter and more to the point, thank goodness.
Maybe the bit in "Devil in the Dark" where McCoy uses the fancy silicon plaster to patch up the Horta, or when Scotty explains that his jury-rigged pump gadget isn't going to keep the life-support working for much longer?
Oh, also from TUC: "The damn thing's gotta have an exhaust pipe."
As I recall, McCoy basically made a poultice out of some kind of cement, spread it over the wound, and everything was fine. It didn't sound like technobabble to me.
In universe, I can easily imagine that cross-trained disciplines were taught from a hands-on perspective (you know what to do in a pinch but only a cliffs notes version of the theories behind it), whereas terminology learned by those who specialized in a field now comes naturally to them, and they use it regularly.
There were a few lines of dialogue explaining what the silicon plaster was ordinarily used for and why it might be compatible with the Horta's biology, but, yeah, they didn't waste time on technobabble. McCoy explained what the stuff was, why it was available, and how he was going to use it. Simple exposition, sans any unnecessary techno-gibberish, as the OP requested..
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McCoy's line is just good writing. We get a peek at the kind of things starships are tasked to do.
So, in addition to being prepared to build shelters, Starfleet officers also know how to make do with what they have. Scotty's lines--and Doohan's delivery--is priceless deadpan gung ho:
That's not technobabble. That's solid, character-developing dialog that advances the plot. Best of all, it's just fun to watch, which is why I say:
Technobabble: "They're still using duotronic bi-phase deflector shields that Starfleet stopped using way back in 2292. If we remodulate the deflector dish to generate coaxial anti-lepton chrono particles, we can create small, temporary gaps. If we time it just right, we can beam an away team through one of these gaps. Simultaneously, we'll flood subspace with inverted tachyon particles on the isometric axis, which will create a kind of subspace 'white noise' that will temporarily blind their sensors. It will have to be a small team, to prevent the transporters annular confinement beam from interacting with the phase induced transgenic hadron particles."
Sans technobabble: "Their shields aren't as advanced as ours. I can get an away team through undetected. It would have to be a small team, though."
Sans technobabble: "Their shields aren't as advanced as ours. I can get an away team through undetected. It would have to be a small team, though."
I don't mind technobabble at all so long as it's used as decoration and not used to propel the story.
Sell the solution based on the wits and cleverness of the characters, add a few made up words, totally fine. Sell the solution entirely based on made up words, not fine.
Sell the solution based on the wits and cleverness of the characters, add a few made up words, totally fine. Sell the solution entirely based on made up words, not fine.
Original scene (TNG's Disaster):
Same scene minus technobable:
Technobabble is window dressing; neither good nor bad in itself but it can be used in both and good ways. If used properly, it can add a feel that these people are a highly trained crew that need to communicate complicated and technical information under exacting standards and time pressure. If used badly, it only obfuscates the story, or tries to hide that the plot doesn't go terribly deep.
If you check out Ron Moore's first draft of "The Pegasus", you'll notice that (TECH) is littered around the script a lot, particularly around the latter stages of the story when they're talking about how to get the phase cloak working with the Enterprise. This seems to be one of those rare instances where instead of inserting tecnobabble into the script as appropriate, they just deleted most of the instances of (TECH), and the whole thing flows a lot better as a result.
I expect a high-level of technical sophistication in Star Trek. And, while it can go to extremes, I do appreciate a certain level of technobabble. It lets you know that these are characters who are good at their jobs. Any job has technical language which is incomprehensible to those who are not in the field. Why should Starfleet be any different? For example, doctors. They often use terms that are technical. Of course, as a patient, I would want them to explain it in layman's terms, but I would not expect them to do so with each other, especially not in an operating room.
Indeed - translate for the layman, throw techspeak around when you all know what you're talking about. Speak simply and quickly when you have no time, speak complicatedly and methodically when you have a bit, or the scene needs to be longer to allow for gorgeous special effect scenery shots or non-verbal conversations between characters using their body language/characters moving slowly or taking a long time to arrive where they need to (crawling slowly while injured, for example, or running down a looooong corridor to the thing you need to access)
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