I’ll Explain Later
“Sony has a futuristic sci-fi movie they’re looking to make.”
“Cigarettes in space?”
“It’s the final frontier, Nick.”
“But wouldn’t they blow up in an all oxygen environment?”
“Probably. But it’s an easy fix. One line of dialogue. ‘Thank God we invented the… you know, whatever device.'”— Thank You For Smoking
Ah, technobabble. Also known as ‘phlebotonin’ if you’re a writer on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I’m sure that to the casual viewer, all technobabble is equal. I know that when I watch House, I have no idea what they’re talking about half of the time, and it doesn’t bother me at all. As long as they don’t go on too long about it.
A big discussion blew up about technobabble, and Samantha Carter’s propensity for it, earlier in the year when we saw Stargate SG-1‘s wannabe epic, ‘Ripple Effect’. Interviews such as this one with Claudia Black have revealed that the SG-1 creative team are more focused on making sure that the plot is well-established than putting character moments into stories; not a bad thing in itself, but sometimes it feels like the show has become hyper-focussed on trying to make ultimately nonsensical science make complete, unassailable sense. Why bother?
‘Ripple Effect’ is a good case in point. For a parallel-universe episode to spend a quarter of its length on making sure that their universe jumping plan was explained to the letter seems peculiar for a show clearly targeted at regular science fiction viewers. On occasions, like in this season’s ‘Insiders’, it almost feels like background characters are there to say what the writers think internet fans are going to pick holes in. “But what about that device in season four that did this?” “Doesn’t that contradict season six, episode twelve?” If the characters are going to have mind-numbing debates on the internal continuity of the show on screen, what does that leave the fans to do?
Compare this to Doctor Who, which cops a lot of flak amongst its fans for doing exactly the opposite. In ‘The Idiot’s Lantern’, an alien intelligence went about through televisions, sucking the faces off people. The Doctor’s plan involves taping the consciousness on a videotape, but because it isn’t divulged until later, the climactic scenes become rather confusing. Oh no! Random thing has gone wrong! Oh yay! Random thing has been fixed! Phew!
This sort of thing would probably be over the head of Joe Normal regardless, just like the big, dramatic arguments about potential cures in House are only exciting to me because everyone’s acting like they should be, rather than because I understand what causes which symptoms. But for a sci-fi audience, just a little touch of technobabble can make them feel a lot more involved.
Technobabble has its place. Economically used, to smooth the discrepancies between the real world and the fictional world, and to ease the objections of people who actually know something about the science you’re fudging. If you’re Douglas Adams, not that anyone is these days, it can even be almost poetic. I don’t think it’s offensive to non-geeky viewers, but by the same tack, I think in many cases, especially Stargate‘s, large swathes of it become about satisfying Stargate nerds as opposed to science nerds. That’s when it becomes a mess — because let’s face it, the only people who give a crap are probably going to find a hole in it anyway.
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Andy
September 1st, 2006 at 12:19 am
I like Stargate because the writers attempt to make the technobabble make sense, especially because I have a science background and understand the concepts they use. I lose interest in House because I don’t know what they are talking about. The technobabble I dislike is the Star Trek variety where nonsensical words are made up and use concepts that have no real world basis.
Tom
September 1st, 2006 at 12:51 am
Yeah, some of Stargate’s babble is quite good. I quite liked the stuff in ‘Morpheus’. I’m only against the rambling continuity babble.
I find with House they usually establish the key rules of the illnesses in question at the start and then play around with them. That I like. Sometimes at the end a whole new disease comes up that we’d never heard of and that irritates me a bit. But not too much, because it’s not really what I’m watching for. I like their differing methodologies and character moments.
Star Trek has whole books dedicated to its science. Are you sure you’re targeting the right show?
Jack
September 1st, 2006 at 1:29 am
Star Trek’s science in many ways is more elegant than Stargates. So what if anti-matter/matter reactions aren’t a real world concept? (I don’t study physics, so I apologise if it actually is). They keep everything internally consistent, and because they do make up their own rules, it means they can make them simpler and nicer to understand than real life. In many ways Stargate suffers because they do try to tie in their science with actual theories.
Of course, just about every sci-fi show suffers when it comes to time travel. Stargate is alright because they’ve only done it a handful of times, but Star Trek has done it so many times I think they’ve confused themselves.
Andy
September 1st, 2006 at 1:58 am
For me, the unknown diseases and symptoms outweigh the interesting characters in House. I’ll happily watch an episode but overall I don’t find it compelling.
Star Trek is a horrible example for the point I was trying to make. I’ll think of a better one on the ride home. Also, I forgot you were Star Trek fans and would defend it.
Jack
September 1st, 2006 at 3:48 am
It’s too late!!! You have sleighted our show!!! You can’t take it back!!!
Actually you can. I used to like it. Now I’m upset you called me a fan.
Tom
September 1st, 2006 at 4:20 am
It’s vitally important that everyone know’s I’m not a Trek fan. I like some of the movies but that’s it. I’ve never seen the original series. But I might watch it soon given recent news.
Time travel’s a doozy. Is your universe the sort that makes self-contained loops, or the sort where you start to fade away when you contradict time, or the sort where the universe starts to fall apart when things go funny?
hayko
September 3rd, 2006 at 7:07 pm
If the intention of technobabble wasn’t to create a frame for a new episode in StarGate it would be ok. Here’s some mindless babble random event. Great, let’s fill in a story around it.
Wormhole though sun or solar flare is ok, but simple explosion to jump to parallel universes? It could work if the story to fill wasn’t to vain and wasted.
Personally I can’t recall much unsettling technobabble from Star Trek, and I’ve seen pretty much all there is except the newer stuff like Vogayer and DS9. ;) It all made sense back then.
What ruins a good epsiode is even stupider solution to an already freak random problem. And this has happened many many times recently on StarGate.
PS: Those recent news sound great. I haven’t seen the Alien trilogy yet and I fear it won’t be all that good being so old and crappy.