Treknology

[Doomriser]

We all know how compared to Star Wars, Star Trek writers love to use the most convoluted term necessary to explain an object. How do you think they would design and describe everyday, mundane objects? I made a couple of examples:

E.g. Fork

The handle would undoubtedly have 4 LEDs and a touch-screen (which would, of course, not interfere in the operation of the fork). And it would be called a "manual nutrient transfer device" and require 4 years of training at
Starfleet Academy to qualify on properly.

Set MNTDs to "maximum skewer"
"I can't, sir, there's a grease field preventing metallic interaction!"


E.g. TOILET

"Captain's Log, reported the computer aboard the Enterprise-E,
"has been flushed." "Oh, thank heavens" said Picard, sitting aboard the
Tachyon Operated Icky Log Expulsion Tube, or hydraulic waste-dispenser
for short, "I was beginning to get worried it would never happen."

[I'm sorry for putting that image in your head. The latter example was of the calibre of jokes from little boys. Try to flush it out of your mind. It was crap.]

Can you make up better examples of possible Treknology?

[SCVN 2812]

You try writing for and working on a series set hundreds of years into the future and see if you don't resort to impressive sounding but fictional terms and concepts and futuristic looking props to fit the time period and try to allow for a greater understanding of science while yourself being forced to just speculate what life will be like in several centuries.

Star Wars is a series of movies, you just have to make the audience believe they are being shown a futuristic society for 2 hours. The teams behind Star Trek have to do 45 minutes 20 times over.

So the next time you see fit to mock plot and setting enhancing inventions perhaps you should try doing their jobs for a while, say over the course of an entire series.....

[Robert Treder]

You try writing for and working on a series set hundreds of years into the future and see if you don't resort to impressive sounding but fictional terms and concepts and futuristic looking props to fit the time period and try to allow for a greater understanding of science while yourself being forced to just speculate what life will be like in several centuries.

Star Wars is a series of movies, you just have to make the audience believe they are being shown a futuristic society for 2 hours. The teams behind Star Trek have to do 45 minutes 20 times over.

So the next time you see fit to mock plot and setting enhancing inventions perhaps you should try doing their jobs for a while, say over the course of an entire series.....

Oh, the poor writers. They really have it tough, you're right. We should be ashamed of making fun of them.
What is the world coming to when a bunch of decent guys hit rock bottom and have to write TV shows for a living? There just isn't any justice left in this world...

[Robert Treder]

By the way, I was being sarcastic.

[Howedar]

You try writing for and working on a series set hundreds of years into the future and see if you don't resort to impressive sounding but fictional terms and concepts and futuristic looking props to fit the time period and try to allow for a greater understanding of science while yourself being forced to just speculate what life will be like in several centuries.

Star Wars is a series of movies, you just have to make the audience believe they are being shown a futuristic society for 2 hours. The teams behind Star Trek have to do 45 minutes 20 times over.

So the next time you see fit to mock plot and setting enhancing inventions perhaps you should try doing their jobs for a while, say over the course of an entire series.....

This is no excuse at all for having dumbbells with freakin' touchscreens.

[SCVN 2812]

You're exaggerating. Forks and other silverware have actually been featured in Star Trek and at least in the Federation have not changed much in basic design in the last 300 years.

And you missed the point of my previous post entirely. I'll and get it across again, you try predicting and designing the future on an ongoing basis.

[Robert Treder]

you try predicting and designing the future on an ongoing basis.

*Puts on predicting cap* Ok...here we go...I see...I see...OH NO! *gasp* Exercise weights with TOUCHSCREENS!

*takes off predicting cap* Man...I guess you were right. I'll never doubt writers again.

[John Clark]

Star Wars "Retardobabble", anyone?

Turbolasers. Not particularly Turbo. Definitely not Lasers of any kind... who named these things? Reverse of the Fork example -- Turboturnip.

Toilet? Why, that's the Hypertwinkie. Not particularly hyper. Has, well, very little to do with twinkies, but hey! Who cares? This is Star Wars! We don't even have to TRY to make it sound convincingly technical!

[Robert Treder]

And I assume your Phaser Rifle has rifling for some reason?

This is what we call a 'misnomer,' and they exist in real life, too. Nothing to get too hung up about...especially if you're not interested in identifying everything in exceedingly technical terms.

[SirNitram]

The Holy Roman Empire.

Not Holy.
Not Roman.
Not an Empire.

Discuss.

*runs like HELL*

[VF5SS]

You're exaggerating. Forks and other silverware have actually been featured in Star Trek and at least in the Federation have not changed much in basic design in the last 300 years.

And you missed the point of my previous post entirely. I'll and get it across again, you try predicting and designing the future on an ongoing basis.

Well who took the jam outta your donut?

[John Clark]

Hey, I'm just sick of everybody bitching about "Technobabble".

Yes, it's often taken to sickening extremes. But apparently, the bitching has also been taken to sickening extremes.

Technical shit comes with technical terminology. Obviously, the technology the characters is discussing is fake. Naturally, the terminology is going to be fake. In less-than-perfect circumstances, the fakeness becomes obvious.

Now SW, on the other hand, has exactly the opposite problem, which is just as bad. They don't use technical terminology EVEN WHEN IT'S APPROPRIATE. So instead of pocket-protector Ph.D.s like on Trek, we have, what? Faster-than-Light garage-monkeys who give every indication of computer illiteracy. Yeah... that's SO much more convincing.

[Robert Treder]

It is pretty convincing...just for a different effect than the one I guess you had in mind. In SW, the technology is supposed to be mundane, taken for granted.
I mean, I'm a good driver, but does that mean I refer to the parts of my car's engine by the terms the engineers who designed them used? No, not at all.

Similarly, Han and the other characters treat space travel colloquially, rather than technically. In SW, the technology is so ancient and accessible that you don't need a Ph.D. or Academy training to use it. It's not really necessary for the vernacular to treat it as though it's some grand affair.

[John Clark]

Okay, granted. But still, shouldn't there be at least a GRAIN of accuracy in the terminology they use, as if to suggest that at some point in the past, the colloquialism had at least SOMETHING to do with what it refers to?

[Enlightenment]

Technical shit comes with technical terminology. Obviously, the technology the characters is discussing is fake. Naturally, the terminology is going to be fake. In less-than-perfect circumstances, the fakeness becomes obvious.

Technobabble is not fake terminology used to talk about technology that doesn't exist. Technobabble is words strung together seemingly at random to create phrases that sound like tech talk but are in actual fact utterly meaningless.

For example, "LOSLINK your NIU to mine" is perfectly meaningful techtalk once you know that LOSLINK means 'line of sight microwave data link,' NIU means 'neural interface unit,' and the phrase is said by one cyborg to another. The key here is that the phrase has meaning (in this case, 'make a telapathic link with me') once given a proper context.

In contrast, "reverse the polarity of the quantum neutron flow" is a collection of words strung together at random. There is no meaning here other than 'plot device' as none of the objects and actions described have any relation to eachother. There is simply no context basis from which this line of nonsense can be rationalized into something meaningful.

[SPOOFE]

Turbolasers. Not particularly Turbo. Definitely not Lasers of any kind... who named these things?

Turbolasers: The whole thing starts with a powerful laser initiating a blast that creates the familiar beam. So the "laser" part is the kick-starter... but it can't simply be called a "laser", because that's not what it ultimately is. So they attached a prefix to the front of "laser" to differentiate the two.

Simple.

Technobabble, on the other hand, often refers to (as Enlightenment hinted at) terms that are used once, maybe twice, and never used again. The purpose of these terms is to make the universe seem more well-rounded.

However, in Star Trek, these terms are often blatant "cookie-cutter" phrases... take a word from Column A, a word from Column B, and a word from Column C, and you suddenly have "Binary Quantum Ionizer" (a hypotehtical example). Of course, what IS a "Binary Quantum Ionizer"? If I were a Star Trek writer, I wouldn't know... I just strung a few words together without giving the slightest thought to what the piece of technology IS.

The problem is that this is passed on to the audience. ST writers make the fatal mistake of assuming that their audience is stupid, a big no-no in the creative arts. They don't think that the audience will notice that the ST universe is filled with lots of fancy-shmancy names, LCD's mounted on every surface (from barbells to hamburgers), but utterly devoid of substance.

[Mr Bean]

At least LCD's are cheap in ST
That is if they had or used money.,..

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

Star Wars "Retardobabble", anyone?

Turbolasers. Not particularly Turbo. Definitely not Lasers of any kind... who named these things? Reverse of the Fork example -- Turboturnip.

Actually, it is sorta of a laser. Turbo is added because it's stronger then a normal laser cannon. And the fork is called that. A fork.

Toilet? Why, that's the Hypertwinkie. Not particularly hyper. Has, well, very little to do with twinkies, but hey! Who cares? This is Star Wars! We don't even have to TRY to make it sound convincingly technical!

A bathroom is called a refresher.

[Zoink]

Now SW, on the other hand, has exactly the opposite problem, which is just as bad. They don't use technical terminology EVEN WHEN IT'S APPROPRIATE. So instead of pocket-protector Ph.D.s like on Trek, we have, what? Faster-than-Light garage-monkeys who give every indication of computer illiteracy. Yeah... that's SO much more convincing.

Why would Solo or anyone have to be "computer literate"? Its not like he goes out to buy the latest version of Windows every 2 years.

Solo (who obviously knows alot about ship components) finds that something is broken, so he takes the broken part out, plugs a new one in, the two components talk to each other and start working. No "driver" installation, no "you need to install windows media player".., What you should have instead is seamless intergration of "smart" parts that can be used by a common tech who doesn't require a PhD.

When Solo does need some computer help, what does he do? He gets R2 or C3P0. Why would Solo spend years becoming a expert on every single minor detail of every single system on his ship? He's a pilot. He has droids (and chewie) for most of the technical work.

[Gil Hamilton]

Also, while this doesn't apply to Han Solo and Chewbacca, in a sufficently advanced society like StarWars, I would very much expect to find people who fly spaceships that know very little about how their ship actually works. Look at cars today. Your average 16 year old is old enough to get his/her liscense to operate a car. This doe not mean that they know the first thing about how the car works. Sure, they will pick up basic things just by operating it, but they probably couldn't even name half the parts under the hood, let along describe their function.
This would be true of StarWars and spaceships. Ships are so commonplace that Luke commented that he could practically buy a starship on the procedes from selling his beat up landspeeder. It's expected that they'd be made so that you didn't have to spend a decade learn how all the systems work to operate it. Probably more likely getting certified to operate a certain class of starship. Pay attention to Luke and Hans dialogue in the Cantina (paraphrasing):

Luke: We could practically buy our own starship for that much!
Han: And who's gonna fly it, kid? You?
Luke: You bet I will! I'm a great pilot. Come on, Ben, we don't need to deal with him.

This indicates that Luke, who lived on a backwater world for most of his life, could operate a starship. This wasn't idle boasting. He flew an X-Wing with practically no practice. The question is, where did he get training? The only way I can conceive of is if the controls were standardized. He mentioned using aircraft for recreation on Tatooine (those finned aircraft which name slips my mind) along with Wedge. Perhaps this is what carried over and before he was required to launch, he was given an overview of an X-Wings particular systems and performance.
It should be noted that at the beginning of ANH, Luke and Uncle Owen were discussing how Luke couldn't go to the Imperial Academy, and since Luke was hankerin' to be a pilot like his dad, I'm assuming he was going for flight school. If this is true, Luke did all of this before going to a dedicated flight school.

[SirNitram]

People are looking at it wrong.

Star Wars operates on a different level entirely: Luke hopping into an X-wing and flying isn't like a farm boy hopping into a F-16, but closer to a farm boy, trained on jeeps, hopping into a military humvee and causing damage to the opposition.

Starships are like cars, with Luke's T-16 and his Wampa Rat bullseyes being nothing big, and Han Solo's hotrod being like the guy who smuggles drugs in a truck that'll pull 110 if he floors it. Droids are so common and the general level of technology so high they can be built from scrap.

Why should there be technobabble? Do you use it when working on your car? How about when your toaster burns out?

Star Trek still has technological infancy.. Only those with training can operate or build it. Star Wars has crossed the hurdle to another level, and we can see the levels higher in other literature(The Culture, anyone, where infinite technology seems to be simple and common?).

[Howedar]

Actually Gil, I believe Luke says: "...I'm not such a bad pilot myself..."

[Doomriser]

In the EU literature (possibly the EGTVV, I'll check if necessary) it is stated that the T-16 skyhopper is built by Incom (X-Wing manufacturer) and the controls are so similar to the X-wing's that the Alliance used T-16s to train pilots on X-Wings.

In fact, in the canon SW ANH novel IIRC, Luke or Biggs mentions that he will be fine in an X-wing directly because Luke has put so many hours into the T-16 that he should be able to fly the similarly-controlled X-Wing.

[Isolder74]

I have Electronics experiance and the most blaitent Treknobabble violation I've seen was in the Episode where Data's head gets found in an archeology site. In part 2 of this episode Jeiordi Laforge was diagnosing Data's head. He asks the computer why its not working and it tells him "there is intermitent contact in the imput polerizers" he then removes a iron filing from data's head. In electronics we call this a short. engineers wouldn't come up with some fancy new term for something when the old stanby workes just fine. We still "debug" computers even though computer no longer use relays or vacume tubes for insects to get caught in and short out which is where the term came from.

[Howedar]

Whoa.