What do you think are some of the worst examples of Treknobabble in the franchise?
And what series do you think does it poorly the most often?
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JJ-Trek, hands down. From “red matter” to interstellar transporter beams to Khan’s magic blood.
The reason it’s so bad is that it’s fucking plot holes galore. By the end of Star Trek (2009), starships are obsolete. By the end of Into Darkness, everyone should be immortal.
Treknobabble is supposed to serve the plot, but this shit undermines the entire premise instead. It’s ridiculous!
Let’s not forget the “cold” fusion bomb that froze lava.
What blew my mind about that whole intro is they hid the entire ship UNDERWATER AT THE SHORELINE with a severe risk of damage to the local terrain and sea life instead of, you know, being in orbit.
“I can’t stop the heterocyclic declination!” (TNG: “Samaritan Snare”)
The writers: We are smart.
reversing polarity is the solution to all of your woes.
That, or inaprovaline
I thought it was an inverse tachyon beam from the main deflector array
I think Discovery had the worst. It isn’t the technobabbke it self that was the problem, it was how it was delivered.
Everyone seemed to be needed to be the most intelligent person in the room. So one person would start with some sudden realisation and solution, and then another would interrupt them and pick up the idea and then either back to the first person, or yet another person would interrupt. Between then all they’d build a tower of technobabble and deus ex machina, and self congratulatory nonsense. It was just so silly.
Person 1 “wait if we reveresed the polarity of the neutron projector…”
Person 2 “yes! It’d cause a build of tachyons and we’d be able to resonate the electron confabulaotr! Oh but there wouldn’t be enough plasma.”
Person 3: “no wait, that might work! We’d have to recomboulate the manifolds and…”
Person 1: "…that would allow us to recrystallise the warp matrix! Of course!’
Whose a genius? Everyone in the room is a genius! Let’s all give ourselves a round of applause.
That and all the space kung fu.
Disconnected nacelles and programmable matter were complete turn offs for me.
I mean, as an engineer, I can tell you that sort of group solving DOES happen in meetings sometimes, but it’s the speed they do it at in the show that’s unrealistic. At the same time, slowing it down would make for bad television so idk
Is this example actually real or is it made up?
The text is not really, but the situation is.
technobbabble is only bad when it solves the point of the story the only one that was bad about that in classic trek was voyager. In nutrek technobbable is the least of it’s worries and that comes from a disdain and lack of respect for the audience. At best it is Star Wars with Star Trek Redskin Mod installed.
At worst incoherent and telling the same story and yes one story over one season every season. We found a MacGuffin now let’s go on hunt. look at JJs sequel Trilogy and Star Wars and discovery season 1, 2,3 of discovery it’s all the same. i think Ronald D Moore once said the amazing part about Star Trek was you could tell and genre of story in Star Trek.
Im not just talk episodic versus Cereal cuz look at DS9 you had a war story and right in the middle of it you had a love story with Kira and Odo and a heist movie. Im very sad that doesn’t happen anymore.
The scene where Picard needs a heart transplant around season 2 of TNG was pretty bad. You can’t just make up words for a procedure we already have. My girlfriend still isn’t over it.
I’ll try extrapolating the verteron exovector (or something like that)
Harry Kim Voyager S1E1
Thanks, that sent me Googling. “KIM: I’ll try extrapolating the verteron exit vector. No, I can’t get it. There’s a strange phase variance in the radiation stream. We’ll have to wait until the probe exits.” Episode 6 (another wormhole?!) http://www.chakoteya.net/Voyager/106.htm
exit vector
Thanks, couldn’t remember the exact line
“Polarize the hull plating!”
What.
SNW’s scientific accuracy and technobabble are so bad, it often pulls me right out of the story. I feel like Next Gen era at least tried a little bit. Yeah, it was awful, but it was watchable. I’ve gone back and watched some to verify it’s not just in my head. It’s not. Does SNW have science and technology consultants? If so, if the problem is them they should be fired, but I suspect the problem is the writers / directors not giving two fucks what the consultants have to say. Be better guys.
The topic was asking for examples; got any?
Prolly Lower Decks, though I don’t watch it, I’d be rather surprised if’n they don’t have the worst technobabble when it’d be funny
That just means Lower Decks has the best treknobabble!
Kind of the point…. LD makes fun of trek a lot
Almost anything involving the space-magic Enterprise D dish between the engine nacels:
Need more power? Modify the main deflector and divert power from shields.
Space anomoly? Bombard it with tachyon particles from the main deflector.
Need to modulate frequency of phaser array because a borg cube adapted to your weapons? Use the main deflector to send a resonance pulse and overwhelm their shields with a flood of positronic particles.
Don’t forget to bounce a graviton particle beam off the main detector dish.
