Talking Technobabble Article

Julia Houston, Star Trek Guide at About.com's Star Trek Fans has uploaded a new featured article, entitled 'And Pretending You're Superman', referring to a quote from Brent Spiner (Data) about all the technical terms the actors need to use. Not surprisingly, then, the article deals with the concept of technobabble:

"Star Trek speak" or "technobabble" not only puts actors' mouths through unnatural twists and turns, it usually has no real referent, nothing for the actors to connect it with in the "real world." We've all seen the bloopers where they stumble over "warp field inversion ratio" and "transwarp threshold interflux" and, of course, "recalibrate the lateral sensor array," but the true difficulty in these words isn't simply saying them: it's saying them with meaning.

How does one emote while discussing the difficulties of accessing the warp core? Just how much anger or pity or fear should one put into the line, "The containment field has dropped to 80%"? I mean, is that bad, or really bad? Many of Star Trek's actor have discussed how their involvement in the show prompted them to study science, but nothing in Mr. Electron and You is going to give you a real understanding for what you should feel like when you're being transported or how much it hurts when you're hit with a phaser on stun.

Discuss this news item at Trek BBS!
 Add TrekToday RSS feed to your news reader or My Yahoo!
Also a CSI: Crime Scene Investigation fan? Then visit CSIFiles.com!