Star Trek wasn't always so full of "technobabble". In TOS episodes and movies Kirk generally shouted something vaguely navyish at the crew. They would respond in kind and that is about as far as it went. Oh, some dylithium crystals might burn out but they could just toss more in the hopper and be good to go. It wasn't until later (Moore's era in fact) that all of the long explanations started. Sometime all of that detail made the stories more interesting, but sometime a big space ameba is just a big space ameba.
Will he ever stop comparing Galactica to Star Trek? Maybe if the Trek writers were more creative, they could have turned an alleged disadvantage into gold.
I liked the technobable, to a point. It was the iso-grams of this and the iso-metric of that that made it so redundant. couldn't those people picked up a reference book and gotten some new pre-fixes? And would a spaceship really have a manifold?
If they could make a few key technological ideas and build on those slowly until the audience is as familiar with them as the writers are, then it could work. But how weird is that half way through the second season, we finally see the engine room? did they not have one until then?
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There Are Six Pillars...Star Trek, Star Wars, Red Dwarf, Doctor Who, Quantum Leap, And Aliens. And the greatest of these is Star Trek !
The technobabble is what completely turned me off to Voyager. The "Its 3 minutes to the end of the episode, the whole univer is about to explode, but wait we can *insert technobabble* and save the universe again" formula of writing episodes just got really old. The suspense they were trying to gather from it, just stopped being interesting.
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Only Nixon could go to China
Technobabble is a crutch for lazy writers, like Brannon Braga. Most of the time, it's total bullshit and the audience knows it, which undermines whatever respect the show is trying to earn. It insults the audience, especially when you use it to resolve the story, the way Braga has often done. How exciting is it to watch the good guys beat the bad guys through some technobabble trick? Kudos to Ron Moore for recognizing how lame this kind of writing can be.
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"Maybe in another thousand years, we'll have teleportation and all that other Star Trek stuff. But with our current technology, we can't even make William Shatner's hair look real." --- Bill Maher
I don't think, technobabble is the most interesting kind of dialogue. Perhaps it can be MADE interesting but I got tired of it during VOY's run. Its kind of sad. Now, my mind just shuts off during an emergency on the bridge of Voyager, Defiant, Enterprise or whatever. Because I see no reason to listen to the dialogue at that point. Its just the usual technobabble.
On the other hand I prefer a realistic representation of the future. The more realistic the better. And people in the future, on a starship, WILL be highly dependant on the technology, in order to survive and in the case of Star Trek, deal with hostile aliens. That IS what they're going to talk about! It will be technobabble all over the place.
I'm a technology freak. I always have been. Its one of the reasons why I fell for TNG. Indeed, technology is an integral part of science fiction! I think my allergic reaction to technobabble in Star Trek (possible OUR allergic reaction) is mostly a result of sloppy writing in VOY. Perhaps it can be MADE interesting. Again.
At the same time, I realise that Star Trek's technology is largely based on pseudo-science. It certainly is rooted in todays (and yesterdays) scientific theories (most of which it just confirms) but some of these theories will turn out false. With it goes some of Star Trek's credibility.
Although I'm sure it is not his intention to do so, Mr. Moore presents a good argument for rebooting Star Trek to some degree. We don't have to forget about TNG and everything that followed, but a return to the basic Star Trek is in order and I would love to see Moore involved with such a project. I imagine that Galactica would be wrapping up production at just about the right time for a new Trek set during Kirk's era.
I believe that the technobabble was the direct offspring of the Starfleet Technical Manual that was published in the 1970s. I had the vinylbound edition of it as a kid and I loved it. I loved it for the detail within, and while it served Star Trek on one level, it worked against Star Trek in the long run. But instead of focusing on the workings of the technology (which is what Star Trek became in VOY), it really needs to become that which it started out as, a simple story about people in the future with technology that outstrips ours. The technology isn't the subject of Star Trek, people are. People who are like us, except for the fact that they've had experiences that we will never have. The best Star Trek allows us to suspend reality temporarily and muse upon "what ifs" for a time. Escapism that makes you think, that's what real Star Trek is all about.
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We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.
-- Gene Roddenberry
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