Star Trek's Treknobabble, explained

Key insights

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

When Star Trek Creator Gene Roddenberry worked on it Star Trek: The Original Serieshe was aware of the fine line that science fiction walks between fantasy and reality. He made a show about exploring the galaxy in a giant spaceship years before the first humans set foot on the moon. Apparently Roddenberry knew he was creating a fantasy world. But he wanted to Star Trek Fantasy should be as realistic and based on actual scientific findings as possible.

As Scientific American Roddenberry reportedly achieved this goal by hiring real scientists to help him make his fantasy believable. A physicist named Harvey P. Lynn Jr. was one of the first scientific advisors for Star Trek. He reviewed the scripts for Terms and Conditions pilot “The Cage” and worked with the writers to make it more accurate. When the series was finally picked up, the producers hired scientists Joan Pearce and Peter Sloman from De Forest Research to review all the scripts.

The language of scientific accuracy

Whenever Pearce or Sloman found something that didn't agree with the scientific facts, they worked with the writers to find changes that made sense for the story and maintained accuracy. This often meant adding very technical language to the scripts, and soon Star Trek became notorious for his jargon.

The sheer amount of jargon Terms and Conditions At times it was difficult for the average viewer to follow. However, since it was science fiction, the jargon actually made the show more realistic for viewers. They accepted that because they weren't scientists they wouldn't understand all the talk about “light years” and “parsecs” and “gondolas” and so the jargon had the effect of convincing viewers that the characters knew what they spoke.

However, the pursuit of scientific accuracy also had its downsides. Fans who were themselves scientists, academics and researchers began writing letters to the Star Trek Staff ask for clarification on specific facts contained in an episode and point out inconsistencies and errors. Despite their irritation, writers and consultants began to accept these letters as evidence that their show was so believable that people wanted to poke fun at the details rather than condemn the entire premise as a wild fantasy.

The birth of Treknobabble

When Roddenberry and his creative team began development Star Trek: The Next Generationthey were still committed to maintaining the same level of scientific rigor as Terms and Conditions. As before, the producers hired consultants to help the writers with the technical stuff. However, the authors had great difficulty drawing the line between good science and good-sounding science that worked for their stories.

Naren Shankar, one of the scientific advisors for the final 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 perpetuating false science
Star Trek
World.

He went on to say that the former scientific advisor was strict about scientific accuracy, and Shankar got the impression that the authors were upset about this. So Shankar did the job they asked of him: he supplemented the script with jargon that sounded good and wasn't so vague that it lost all scientific value.

By filling in the gaps in the script, the scientific jargon actually made its way into every episode. When the writers were working on a new episode, they would write: “[TECH]Wherever they needed halfway credible technical language. From there, the scientific advisors filled in the gaps. The actors were often given scripts before the jargon was added and would rehearse the scenes with “Tech” written on them whenever it appeared in their lines. Periodically, the actors had to rehearse complicated jargon lines on the day the scenes were filmed imprint. Although the series' scientific advisors did their best to stick to the jargon and concepts that were at least plausible, they eventually created an entire language of Star Trek-specific jargon that ran throughout the entire franchise.

Although the term “technobabble” did not enter the collective consciousness as a result Star TrekThe franchise became famous (or perhaps infamous) for its use of technobabble – scientific or technical-sounding dialogue that actually has no meaning in the real world. According to the Oxford English Dictionarythe term was coined by the Wall Street Journal in 1981, long before the premiere of TNG. But the term became associated that way Star Trek that fans of the show and later the general public began to refer to the word “Treknobabble”. Star Trekspecific technobabble.

The internet phenomenon Treknobabble

As the Internet became more popular, the same nerds and geeks who loved it started showing up Star Trek Even as children, they brought their love of the subject with them Star Trek to the Internet. In Star TrekIn certain bulletin board systems and later forums, Trekkies discussed, analyzed, complained, and made fun of Treknobabble.

Three decades later, the internet is full of Treknobabble generators, Treknobabble memes, and even Treknobabble rap. How Star TrekTreknobabble is now part of the mainstream.

Sources: Scientific American, The Fifty Year Mission: The Next 25 Years, Oxford English Dictionary