A handy tip for prospective ''Star Trek'' writers

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’ve had a number of excellent ideas for “Star Trek” episodes, and I’ve worked on a few scripts over the years. However, I found myself struggling with the gobbledygook – y’know, the sci-fi trappings that adorn the show, the spatial anomalies and the tachyon emitters and reversing the polarity of the annular confinement beam through the warp-field flux capacitor and all that. As I worked on the stories, I got bogged down with the technical babble.

But then I discovered that I could replace the gobbledygook in the script with, well, “gobbledygook.” Instead of actually figuring out something real-sounding, I could put in a placeholder and skip it, knowing it doesn’t really matter anyway in the larger context of the story. For example: “Counselor Troi, unless we can <gobbledygook>, we may die together. Kiss me.” See how it works?

As you can probably imagine, it makes it much, much easier to write a “Star Trek” script if you do it this way. In fact, here’s the first page of something I wrote a while ago. It will become immediately obvious how much time and effort this approach can save.

FADE IN:

INT - VOYAGER BRIDGE

On the viewscreen is gobbledygook.

[ul][list][list][list]KIM[/ul][/list]Captain, gobbledygook gobbledygook
gobbledygook.[ul][list]
JANEWAY[/ul][/list]Gobbledygook gobbledygook,
Commander?[ul][list]
CHAKOTAY[/ul][/list]Gobbledygook. Ma’am.[/list][/list]Janeway gobbledygooks the gobbledygook, and gobbledygook gobbledygook
gobbledygook. The gobbledygook gobbledygooks.
[ul][list][list][list]JANEWAY[/ul][/list]Gobbledygook gobbledygook gobbledygook
gobbledygook gobbledygook!

[ul][list]TUVOK[/ul][/list]Gobbledygook gobble–[/list][/list]Suddenly, the gobbledygook gobbledygook gobbledygook. The bridge lurches.
[ul][list][list][list]KIM[/ul][/list]Captain! Gobbledygook gobbledygook
gobbledygook![ul][list]
JANEWAY[/ul][/list]Gobbledygook gobbledygook. Let’s show
this gobbledygook we mean business.[/list][/list]_____________________

See how easy that is?

In fact, if anyone wants to contribute, we can collectively write a script for the new “Enterprise” series in no time…

:wink:

2

This is actually done I believe :slight_smile:

according to my how they made DS9 book anyway . .

3

I have the same book. They have two tags, [TECH] and [MEDTECH], referring to engineering and medical technical gobbledygook that’s inserted by their science consultants.

4

Oh, you guys wimp out. Coming up with Technobabble is half the fun. “Captain, our solar desynchrotronizer plexirouters have taken a direct hit and are causing a feedback surge into the antimatter flow-vent manipulation controls!” Or, if you’re stuck, just throw in the phrase “deflector dish”. I think I saw a Voyager episode where every other sentence involved the deflector dish.

Or was it an entire season?

5

Among our friends, we just say, “Techtechtechtechtech.”

Esprix

6

You mean they don’t use authentic 24th century technical terms?

Next you’ll be telling me there is no Santa Claus!!

Cervaise, I think you have a redundant “gobbledygook” in Janeway’s second line. Otherwise it seems accurate to me.