Treknobabble

David Landon looks at the difference in technobabble between the NCIS and Star Trek franchises:

You see, even though the crime procedural scene had plenty of nonsensical technobabble, there were still recognizable character types with an easily understandable problem that could plausibly exist in the real world. The Law Enforcement Officer was trying to catch some criminals, and the Lab Tech gave him some information to help with that. But what the heck is going on in the Star Trek scene? The character types and situation are familiar enough to sci-fi fans, but to the average viewer it's nigh-incomprehensible. And here's a fun tidbit from Television Writing 101: if your show makes no sense to 85% of the viewing public, you have a problem.

He notes, of course, that the Trek franchise has a bit of a ranking of technobabble BS brought out of nowhere (though this specific list is mine)

1. Star Trek The Animated Series
2. Star Trek
3. Star Trek Picard
4. Star Trek Deep Space Nne
5. Star Trek The Next Generation
6. Enterprise
7. Star Trek Strange New Worlds
   
8. Star Trek Lower Decks
9. Star Trek Discovery
10. Star Trek Voyager

The beloved and quality series (at least in the more nuanced and understood fan circles) generally respects the franchises with the least technobabble and is equally frustrated with the most: NuTrek obviously the giant exception to the rule, and the Animated Series was sort of it's own thing (I've heard it argued it was essentially a fantasy kiddie cartoon show). In the crowded 90s Trek universe of course, you had Deep Space Nine with the least and Voyager with the most. DS9 in particular would use technobabble on occasion for brief periods but the audience was generally allowed to get what they were doing. Let's look, as Landon does, at two brief scenes to illustrate the point. First, from DS9:

O'BRIEN: Maybe we can't destroy that power generator, but I bet those weapon platforms could.

KIRA: Why would they fire on their own power source?

GARAK: We'd have to fool the platforms' targeting systems into thinking the generator's an enemy ship.

O'BRIEN: We can use our deflector array to imprint a Federation warp signature on the generator's energy matrix.

WORF: It is worth a try.

KIRA: Evasive manoeuvres, Mister Nog. Pattern Theta.

(The Klingon ship goes KaBOOM.)

O'BRIEN: Induction stabilisers set. Booster modulators synchronised. Ready to activate deflector.

KIRA: Do it.

And now from Voyager:

EMH: The tricorder readings Commander Chakotay took at the shrine revealed traces of iridium ions, which we could have known about sooner if we'd been permitted to take those readings in the first place.

KES: And iridium ions are significant?

EMH: They caused a temporary dielectric effect in the outer epidermal layers which neutralised some of the biogenic energy. Not much, but enough to make the Captain's altered biochemistry an effective defence.

KES: Then how was I cured?

EMH: The metabolic treatment I administered protected you against the full impact of exposure to the field when the Captain took you through. That exposure functioned like a natural cortical stimulator and reactivated your synaptic pathways.

Voyager remember is the show that SFDebris once translated the technobabble (I think for the episode "Threshold") and discovered that the ship was going to be literally powered by rainbows ("multi-spectrum emissions" or something). In the DS9 script they explain that they're going to fool the bad guy's sensors: the scifi equivalent of repainting your van so it no longer matches the description filed by all those witnesses. You may not know what the induction stabilisers or booster modulators are anymore than you understand what a couple components of your car is when the mechanic tells you how he's going to fix your problem: but you at least know that your brakes squeaked because the pads are worn and he's going to replace the pads and also some other things near the pads that also took damage.

But what the hell was wrong with Kes and/or Janeway? Your guess is as good as mine. That was just a whole bunch of meaningless babble. The distinction between the Voyager and Deep Space Nine approaches is subtle but also vital. While DS9 isn't innocent and often similarly fell into the technobabble trap (particularly in the first season), Voyager and from what I understand Discovery just swim in technobabble without grounding it in reality.

The classic DS9 avoidance of that comes from Improbable Cause, the third season episode where we are investigating a possible bombing attack on the shop belonging to Garak, who is believed to be a former Cardassian super-spy forced into exhile (Khashoggi style) for angering the current regime. Odo performs a little innocent (as it so often is) racial profiling: one of the compounds in the bombing is tied to the Flaxian race and a Flaxian recently came to the eponymous station. Odo questions him, he claims to be a perfume merchant, but our favourite dogged investigator knows a little chemistry and has figured out that three particular perfumes can be combined to create a deadly poison that would be difficult to detect in an autopsy. This particular Flaxian, who has been a person of interest in other murder cases, is looking more and more guilty (and he himself is killed, possibly in response to his failure). Later in the episode, in one of the iconic DS9 moments, Odo questions the bombing victim Garak and in a moment of frustration reveals that he has discovered the identity of the bomber:

ODO: I've had enough of your dissembling, Garak! I am not Doctor Bashir and we are not sparring amiably over lunch. Now, you dragged me into this investigation and you are now going to cooperate with me.

GARAK: Dragged you in? I don't know what you're talking

ODO: You blew up your own shop, Garak! Well, I don't think I've ever seen that particular expression on your face. Is it surprise?

GARAK: Yes, Constable, it is. I'm surprised that you could come this unlikely conclusion.

ODO: Drop the pretence. I knew as soon as I spoke with the Flaxian. Assassins don't like varying their methods. He planned to poison you. I think you spotted him on the station and then blew up your own shop so that I'd begin an investigation.

GARAK: That seems like a very elaborate way to get you involved. If I needed your help I could have just asked.

ODO: But you couldn't be sure that I'd take you seriously. Or that I'd help you. Besides, I think you secretly enjoyed destroying your own shop.

It's a beautiful scene and here's the important thing about it: the audience could figure this out ourselves, because this exact same scene could have taken place on CSI or NCIS or Castle or Bones or any other police procedural. Unlike so many Voyager plots the solution doesn't depend on a magic piece of technology we don't know about because we've never heard of it before and we wouldn't encounter it in 1998 (or even 2022). Instead, it comes down to a fundamental character thing we have seen and heard in media before: we don't know anything about Flaxians, but the idea of a killer with an "MO" is baked into our understanding of the world. So it goes back to the "Television Writing 101" from above: just because it takes place in a world that isn't ours doesn't mean it has to take place in a world incomprehensible from ours.

Now in fairness to Landon he does note that the technobabble didn't come out of nowhere. Star Trek fans were technically minded people by and large: they watched the 79 episodes and were hungry for more:

A lot of these fans didn’t just see these technical details for what they were: necessary window-dressing to make the Star Trek universe feel like a real place. These details were, in themselves, the main reason they watched the show. I’m not saying they were enjoying Star Trek wrong; part of the show’s genius is that it can be enjoyed simultaneously by different people on different levels. But I believe that their passion for the technical details for Star Trek affected how the spinoffs were produced.

These more technically-minded fans peppered Gene Roddenberry (and sometimes even James Doohan, the actor who played Scotty) with technical questions about the Enterprise and how it worked, both in person and through letters. And they were quick to point out any mistakes and inconsistencies. So when work started on Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1986, the production staff was keenly aware that their work was going to be endlessly scrutinized and freeze-framed, and any little mistake that might be made in the rush of television production would be instantly noticed. So if there was a throwaway line of dialogue referring to the main Hydroponics Lab on Deck 25, then that piece of information had to be preserved and added to some kind of a knowledge base so a future writer wouldn’t mess up and mention the main Hydroponics Lab being located on Deck 11.

He is, however, being a little disingenuous: nobody got upset by technobabble being used when somebody told us what floor of a building somebody worked on. The continuity error discussed would be no less ridiculous if, after endless references to Abigail Sciuto working in "the basement" on NCIS an episode in the 4th season featured Gibbs and McGee climbing up the stairs but instead of entering MTAC entering Abby's lab.

For example, in the sixth-season episode “Second Chances” we meet a transporter-created duplicate of Will Riker. Something similar happened in the Original Series episode “The Enemy Within” and the technical explanation was basically “a guy beamed up with some weird alien dirt on his clothes and it made the transporter act all funny”. But on TNG we had to sit through a wordy, complex explanation involving annular confinement beams, pattern buffers, distortion fields, and phase differentials. Why? Because the transporter was no longer the “black box” it had been on the Original Series. The Technical Manual explained its inner workings in great detail, and therefore those details had to be present in the obligatory “where Riker’s duplicate came from” scene. Because the fans would notice (and complain) if they weren’t.

Let's apply this equally to our NCIS analogy (and by "us" I mean the one that Landon started with and I'm rolling with). Is "Major Mass Spec" a "black box"? Fans of House don't get upset when the doctors (briefly) describe the medicine in "great detail" either: and that encapsulates every scene of the Scoobies or whatever cutesy term House fandom (spoiler alert: doesn't include me) uses to describe all those doctors in a room. Watching Foreman and Taub suggest wacky diseases that match the symptoms isn't that much different than the explanation of where Riker's duplicate came from. Most critically, unlike Voyager, that The Next Generation episode used technobabble to explain the crazy scifi premise but the resolution of the story had nothing to do with the science of how it happened to begin with: it was just two men who 7 years ago were the same dude having to deal with each other.

Technobabble is just internal lingo. It can work well (ie. DS9 or House) style or poorly. It's important for our suspension of disbelief that the characters understand how this stuff works. If Gibbs asks Abby what the analysis of a piece of mold on a rope said and she responds with a nontechnical answer, then we lose faith in her. If LaForge can't explain the technical fix he's doing to a warp drive, we're just as suspicious as when the mechanic can't explain the technical fix he's doing to your car. It's not dramatic and its not in and of itself a story but it is the answer to the question all art has to convey to its audience: what the hell is happening and why do the characters (so, by extension, us) care?