TECHNOBABBLE: see Sevtrek cartoon below
According to the extremely hilarious 'The CompleteLY USELESS UNAUTHORISED Star Trek Encyclopedia', technobabble is:
"A term coined by Trekkies which refers, rather over-fondly we feel, to those parts of the show which we prefer to call 'the complete and total bollocks bits'. You know the sort of thing we mean: the ship/station is at the mercy of some grotesque and powerful man with a lump on his forehead, when suddenly Scotty/Geordi/O'Brien/Torres gets onto the old intercom and announces that they've tought of a brilliant new, never-before-imagined, completely incomprehensible scheme to get them out of this mess. No doubt it will have something to do with the phase transition coils or the warp plasma relays, or perhaps it'll involve the creation of some tetrion emissions or a tachyon funnel. It's some comfort to know, though, that a technical adviser (currently Michael Okuda) is employed to make sure that, when the characters must talk such unmitigated crap, they can at least do so with consistency. But isn't this just giving the writers an excuse to be lazy? Apparently, they're all prone to sticking [TECH] in their scripts in the sure knowledge that Okuda will fill in the gaps for them. This leads us to suspect that some unscrupulous hacks have taken advantage of the system, and that many of their manuscripts conclude thus:
Picard : 'Oh no, we're being sucked into a black hole, Q is about to carry out his threat to destroy us all and the entire crew is on the verge of dying from a lethal virus, except for Doctor Crusher and myself as usual. Oh mèrde, mèrde, mèrde. What on earth can we do?'
Geordi : 'I've had an idea, Captain. Why don't we just [TECH]?'
[AND THEY DO]
Picard : 'Phew, that was close, wasn't it?'
Groovy, huh? And that very same Encyclopedia also has a nice definition for 'Treknichians'. Read this:
TREKNICHIANS:
"Label applied by Star Trek fandom to that subsection of itself which is enthralled beyond reason by the scientific implications of the programme. Treknichians spend their time figuring out how warp engines might actually work, or what the practical repercussions of the Romulans' cloaking technology would be, with a view to being able to proclaim that the events of their favourite show really could happen. There's no denying that they are intelligent people, often physics graduates with a strong understanding of the theoretic principles. The depth and complexity of their calculations is frequently beyond the abilities of laymen such as ourselves to comprehend, though we have no doubt that it is usually accurate. It is perhaps unfortunate then (for them) that, beyond the realms of fanzines and the internet, the 'Treknichian' label is mostly eschewed in favour of the less respectful but equally applicable 'nerd'.
back to
Sevtrek Corner next story