Treknobabble Kills Brain Cells

I love Star Trek, as a concept. But really. I can’t take much more of their treknobabble in their script. I don’t mind having technical jargon spewed at me as part of the ambience of the Trek universe. But the trend of having it act as a deux ex machina in lieu of actual dramatic storytelling in almost every other episode can be very frustrating. Even the webmaster of Star Trek review website st-hypertext.com Jamal Epsicokhan agrees with this viewpoint, I discovered.

What’s the point of the rant in the above paragraph, you ask? Is it a beginning of long tirade about how Trek needs a swift kick in the rear to rise above the mediocrity that has plagued its franchise for the last 10 years?

Not actually. Just wanted to give you guys a primer before I tell you that the boys at Penny Arcade has never made me laugh so hard this morning.

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Comments

Ha!  I love how the episode “Rascals” has Riker inventing treknobabble to confuse a Ferengi who took over the ship.  Treknobabble is bad.  Treknobabble that’s supposed to actually be technobabble even within that universe of treknobabble is even worse.

Riker: “The Enterprise computer system is controlled by three primary main processor cores...crosslinked with a redundant Melaquartz Rammostat 14 kilokwatt interface modules.  The core element...is based on an FTL nanoprocessor with 25 bilateral kellalactrals, with 20 of those...being slaved into the primary...Heissenfram terminal.  Now you DO know what a bilateral kellalactral is, right?”

Ferengi: “Wa..uh..of course I do...human...I am not stupid!”

[Ed: No, I’m not a Trekker or whatever.  I had a vague memory of that scene, and it took me nearly 30 minutes of Googling just to figure out which episode it was.  Uh...what’s that make me if I’m not a Trekkie but I wasted 30 minutes of my day Googling for a specific episode in order to then go find a quote?

Ya, I really liked that one too. The Penny Arcade was great too! It kind of reminds me of the setup my father had for their TV back in the day. He’s lost a lot of that complexity now-a-days. It’s a shame really. Goes to show what alcohol can do to a person.

I stopped reading PA last year. I was getting board with it along with most of the web based strips that are out there. Interstingly, there is a new one that has a few good lines in it just starting. Bug Bash is it’s name and it’s located at: http://www.bugbash.net/

Nice pick on the PA comic. I agree totally, The problem is that Star Trek got so stuck on “Treknobabble” that it started to become a major plot device unto itself and robbed the universe from that extra bit of realism we see in shows today like BattleStar Galactica and other more “gritty” sci fi.

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