Treknobabble is a portmanteau of "Star Trek" and "technobabble" (itself a portmanteau of "technology" and "babble"). It is used humourously by fans of the various Star Trek television series, and disparagingly by its critics, to describe the infamous amount of pseudoscientific gibberish inserted seemingly at random into many episodes of these television series. The term has escaped Star Trek fandom (and anti-fandom) and has become more commonly used in contexts where useless and incorrect "technical" explanations are given, typically in situations involving various pseudosciences or in science fiction writing.
Treknobabble devices and phenomena are increasingly used as dei ex machina in Star Trek, to the detriment of plot and characterization.
Another increasingly common use of this term has it applied to any in-depth discussion about Star Trek-related matters among fans.
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Examples of treknobabble
There are two possible sources for treknobabble: use of the actual item in the show itself as well as use of the term outside of its place of origin. Both are provided below.Examples from the show
Examples from outside the show
This web site contains the following sentence when describing a presentation made by a telephone company, very clearly establishing use of the term in a situation which does not even peripherally involve Star Trek.
This MUCK introduction page, in giving an example of providing an object description says:
- "@desc sample thing=Upon looking at the Sample Thing you see that it is quite an intricate device. It consists of a subspace jargon emitter attached to a small phased matter rerouter, and you can count at least five Treknobabble modulation units around its perimeter."
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