Star Trek's Treknobabble, explained

Important takeaways

• Star Trek maintained its scientific rigor by hiring consultants to review scripts and add technical jargon.
• Jargon added to the script 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, coining the term “Treknobabble”.

When Star Trek's creator, Gene Roddenberry, worked on Star Trek: The Original Serieshe was very aware of the fine line that science fiction walks between fantasy and reality. He did a show about exploring the galaxy in a giant spacecraft years before the first men walked on the moon. Obviously, Roddenberry knew he was going to create a fantasy world. But he wanted to Star Trek's the fantasy should be as realistic and based on actual science as possible.

As Scientific American reported, Roddenberry achieved that 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 consultants for Star Trek. He reviewed the script to TOS pilot, “The Cage,” and worked with the writers to make them more accurate. When the series was finally picked up, the producers hired researchers 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 scientific fact, 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 scripts, and soon, Star Trek became notorious for their technical jargon.

The large amount of jargon in the TOS at times it made it 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 they wouldn't understand all the talk about “light years” and “parsecs” and “nacelles” 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 downsides. Fans who were themselves scientists, academics and researchers started writing letters to Star Trek staff asking for clarification of certain facts included in a section and pointing out 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 nitpick the details, rather than condemning the entire premise as a wild fantasy.

The Birth of Treenobabble

As Roddenberry and his creative team began to develop further Star Trek: The Next Generationthey were still committed to maintaining the same level of scientific rigor as TOS. Just as they had done before, the producers hired consultants to help the writers with the technical stuff. However, the writers had great trouble walking the line between good science and sound science that worked for their stories.

Naren Shankar, one of the science consultants for the later seasons of TNG the authors told The fifty-year mission: The next 25 yearsthat his job:

…wasn't about science, it was about perpetuating the fake science
Star Trek
world.

He went on to say that the former science adviser was adamant about scientific accuracy, and Shankar got the impression that the authors were irritated by that. So Shankar did the job they asked him to do: fill in the script with some jargon that sounded good and wasn't so inaccurate as to abandon all scientific merit.

In fact, filling in the blanks in the script was literally how the scientific jargon made its way into every episode. When the writers were working on a new episode, they wrote “[TECH]” everywhere they needed some half-believable technical language. From there, the science advisors filled in the blanks. The actors were often given scripts before the jargon had been added, and rehearsed the scenes saying “tech” whenever it appeared in their lines. On a semi-regular basis, Trek actors were had to memorize complicated jargon on the day the scenes were to be shot advisers did their best to stick to jargon and concepts that were at least reasonable, they eventually created a whole language of Star Trek-specific jargon that persisted throughout the franchise.

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

Internet phenomenon Treknobabble

As the internet grew in popularity, the same geeks and nerds who had loved Star Trek since they were children began to bring their love to Star Trek to the Internet. IN Star Trek-specific message board systems and later forums, Trekkies discussed, analyzed, complained about and engaged in Treknobabble.

Fast forward three decades, and now the Internet is full of Treknobabble generators, Treknobabble memes, and even Treknobabble raps. As Star TrekTreknobabble is now part of the mainstream.

Sources: Scientific American, The fifty-year mission: The next 25 years, Oxford English Dictionary