How they wrote the tech for Star Trek

[andrewducker]

Ron Moore revealed the secret formula to writing for Trek.  "...we had science consultants who would just come up with the words for us and we'd just write 'tech' in the script."

Moore then went on to describe how a typical script might read before the science consultants did their thing:

La Forge: "Captain, the tech is overteching."

Picard: "Well, route the auxiliary tech to the tech, Mr. La Forge."

La Forge: "No, Captain. Captain, I've tried to tech the tech, and it won't
work."

Picard: "Well, then we're doomed."

"And then Data pops up and says, 'Captain, there is a theory that if you tech the other tech ... '" Moore said. "It's a rhythm and it's a structure, and the words are meaningless. It's not about anything except just sort of going through this dance of how they tech their way out of it."

From

Comments

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

What cats hear (Gary Larson original): Blah blah blah Ginger blah blah Ginger blah blah.

What cats hear (ST:TNG): Tech tech tech Ginger tech tech Ginger tech tech.

[blearyboy.livejournal.com]

That's teching brilliant

[andrewducker]

Julie: "Teching" should be our new swear word.

[meihua.livejournal.com]

I use this to explain to technical people how their form of communicating with managers doesn't work.

"When a manger reads that email, they won't read what you wrote about a memory leak in one of our supporting components causing corruption in the main application and requiring you to restart it. They'll hear that when you tech the tech, the tech gets teched up and you have to tech it so it'll tech."

That's how technical authoring works.

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

Expert: "When you click this button, the script queries the underlying relational database to retrieve the cust_name."

I hear: "Tech tech tech CLICK BUTTON tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech CUSTOMER NAME".

[autopope.livejournal.com]

This probably explains why I hate STAR TREK with a violent burning passion.

It's SF written for pointy-haired [studio] bosses.

[andrewducker]

Most of the time it's fantasy written with the trappings of SF. Anything at all can happen, so long as you wave your magic wand dilithium crystal at it.

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

I've heard that one in the past, though with "technobabble" instead of "tech." Heeeee.

[kurosau.livejournal.com]

They sometimes get to some interesting themes, usually centered on characters, which frequently seems to be all that TV can really do. Consider the last episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and an interpretation of Q as a helpful trickster god, at least for my interest.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

Like most successful TV and film work in the genre it's space opera. What "hard" science fiction is there away from books; I don't use literature because of the prejudices there.

But so long as it sells better it will continue to be produced.