Treknobabble from Star Trek, explained

Key recommendations

• Star Trek maintained scientific accuracy by hiring consultants to revise scripts and add technical jargon.
• The jargon added to the scripts made the show more realistic for viewers, even if they didn't understand everything.
• Fans and writers alike accepted the jargon as proof of the show's credibility and coined the term “Treknobabble”.

When Star Trek creator, Gene Roddenberry, was working on Star Trek: The Original Serieshe was well aware of the fine line science fiction walks between fantasy and reality. He was doing a show about exploring the galaxy in a giant spaceship years before the first men set foot on the moon. Obviously, Roddenberry knew he was going to create a fantasy world. But he wanted to Star Trek fantasy to be as realistic and based on real science as possible.

That american scientist Roddenberry achieved this goal by hiring scientists to help him make his fantasy believable. A physicist named Harvey P. Lynn, Jr. was one of the first scientific consultants for Star Trek. He revised the scripts for Cough pilot, “The Cage,” and worked with the writers to make them more accurate. Once the series was finally picked up, the producers hired scientists Joan Pearce and Peter Sloman of De Forest Research to review all the scripts.

The language of scientific accuracy

Whenever Pearce or Sloman found something inconsistent with the scientific facts, they worked with the writers to come up with changes that made sense for the story and maintained accuracy. This often meant adding highly technical language to the scriptures, and soon Star Trek became infamous for its technical jargon.

The large amount of jargon in Cough sometimes made it difficult for the average viewer to follow. However, because it was science fiction, the jargon actually made the show more realistic for viewers. They accepted that they wouldn't understand all the talk about “light years” and “parsecs” and “gondos” because they weren't scientists, so the jargon had the effect of convincing viewers that the characters knew what they were talking about.

However, the dedication to scientific accuracy had its drawbacks. Fans who were scientists, academics and researchers themselves started writing letters to Star Trek staff requesting clarification on certain facts included in an episode and highlighting inconsistencies and errors. Despite their annoyance, the writers and consultants began to accept these letters as proof that their show was believable enough that people wanted to flesh out the details rather than condemn the entire premise as wild fantasy.

The birth of Treknobabble

When Roddenberry and his creative team began development Star Trek: The Next Generationwere still committed to maintaining the same level of scientific accuracy as Cough. As they had done before, the producers hired consultants to help the writers with the technical stuff. However, the writers had a lot of trouble walking the line between good science and good-sounding science that worked for their stories.

Naren Shankar, one of the science consultants for the last seasons of TNG told the authors of The Fifty Year Mission: The Next 25 Yearsthat his job:

…it wasn't about science, it was about maintaining fake science a
Star Trek
world.

He went on to say that the previous science advisor was adamant about scientific accuracy, and Shankar got the impression that the writers were annoyed by this. So Shankar did the job they asked him to do: pad the script with jargon that sounded good and wasn't so inaccurate as to negate any scientific merit.

In fact, filling in the blanks in the script was literally how scientific jargon made its way into each episode. When the writers were working on a new episode, they would write “[TECH]” wherever they needed semi-believable technical language. From there, scientific advisors filled in the blanks. Actors often received scripts before the jargon was added and rehearsed scenes that said “technology” whenever it appeared in their lines. As usual, the Trek actors had to memorize complicated lines of jargon the day the scenes were set to be shot, stick to jargon and concepts that were at least plausible, they created in later a whole language Star Trek-specific jargon that persisted throughout the franchise.

Although the term “technobabble” did not enter the collective consciousness because Star Trekthe franchise has become famous (or perhaps infamous) for its use of technobabble – scientific or technical dialogue that doesn't really mean anything in the real world. right Oxford English Dictionarythe term was coined by Wall Street Journal in 1981, long before its premiere TNG. But the term has become so associated with Star Trek that fans of the show, and later the general public, began using the word “Treknobabble” to refer to star trek-specific technobabble.

The internet phenomenon of Treknobabble

As the internet grew in popularity, so did the same nerds and nerds who loved Star Trek since they were children they began to bring their love for Star Trek on the Internet. In star trek-specific bulletin board systems and subsequent forums, Trekkies discussed, analyzed, complained, and poked fun at Treknobabble.

Fast forward Trek decades, and now the internet is full of Treknobabble generators, Treknobabble memes, and even Treknobabble rap. That Star TrekTreknobabble is now part of the mainstream.

Sources: american scientist, The Fifty Year Mission: The Next 25 Years, Oxford English Dictionary