#Treknobabble

[whirligig-girl]

Mellanoids will always prefer a fluidic version of a technology over a solid one

So Mellanoids mainly use (micro-)fluidic processors Im presuming?

And has Guz thought about how you could use a ship's plasma stream to also function as (some of?) the computer? V:

Guz here. Mellanoid computing architecture is based around electro-optical systems, which I don't understand real well. I learned to program using those systems, but only abstractly; most of my current programming knowledge comes from Starfleet Academy and FTL Isolinear processing is completely and utterly different. The only similarity is that most powerful computers take up entire rooms or decks, and most interfaces are comparatively simple terminals. Most Mellanoid computers are owned by libraries and large institutions, but they're powerful enough that many many individual programs can be run, so you effectively have a bunch of personal computers on a network.

Guz isn't a computer girlie, so she doesn't know about the state of the art Mellanoid computers, which are indeed fluidic, but in a totally different way: believe it or not, Mellanoid Slimes invented the Bio-Neural Gel Packs used on the Intrepid-class and Sovereign-class starships. They were highly experimental in the 2360s, when the Federation made contact, but the techniques were refined by mellanoids and other researchers abroad. Federate takes on the architecture were more successful than Mellanoid ones--the Federation just has a much larger and more advanced scientific institution than Mellanus--but native Mellanoid bio-neural gel computers are starting to appear in certain niche industrial uses, and will probably replace electro-optical computers on UMSP spacecrafts before long.

Oh right, the plasma thing. So. Oh uh it's Guz again. Theoretically it would be possible to use EPS conduits to create logic circuits, in fact there are a few very simple logic circuits used in the main controls for most of the high power systems on the ship, but they can't be used for full-blown computing because the logic gates have to be too big. Like, we're talking bigger than vacuum tubes and tri-squish bulbs. So I dunno you might have to elaborate on that?

[simptasia]

you know britpicking? like where an american writes a fanfic set in england, or with an english character, and they get an english friend to look through it and check through it to see if the terms and phrases are accurate? (eg. flat instead of apartment)

well i propose there be such a concept for star trek

because people in star trek talk differently than modern humans. they use different words, different slang, phrasings. yes, they can speak casually but mostly it isn't like us. watch any of 90s trek and you'll see These People Do Not Speak Like Us

and, no disrespect, a lot of fic does not reflect this. and it irks me. they just speak like modern day people instead of... star trek characters. i personally think part of the fun of writing trek characters is writing it out to how they speak and how they would think

hell, this isnt even a fanfic problem. modern trek has this issue too. i think outta laziness. they have their people talking (and when in casual wear, dressing) like 2020s people and it pisses me off

its part of why strange new worlds feels like a high budget SNL skit

annnnyways. i propose this idea be called fact trekking

[seph-on-an-irrational-planet]

not Star Trek: Strange New Worlds getting a very basic fact about the radioactive decay of tritium wrong

[the-oracle-of-the-lost]

it turns out if you write enough Star Trek fic, you will lose sight of which words are treknobabble and which are normal dictionary words (what do you mean tricorders & phasers aren't 'real' words??) but then every once in awhile you'll type out a perfectly normal word in your head and it'll turn up red on spellcheck and you're forced to admit that yes, 'turbolift' is an incredibly silly name for an elevator.

[fancoloredglasses]

The Tribble Saga (what happens when invasive species come to the Federation (oh, the irony!)), Part 1: The Trouble With Tribbles/Trials and Tribble-ations

[All images are owned by Paramount. Please don’t sue me]

Of all of the ridiculous episodes Star Trek (the Original Series) has done (and let’s not forget that among those episodes we were treated to a planet of modern Romans, a planet of gangsters, a planet of Nazis, and space hippies), there is one bout of silliness that is fondly remembered by fans. That would be the episode featuring these little guys:

However, as Star Trek expanded beyond the Original Series, there were two other episodes that featured the Tribbles (including one that revisited the original episode thanks to *sigh* time travel)

I would like to note that it took me 40 years to realize that the original series episode that started this all was about the dangers of introducing an invasive species into a favorable environment.

Anyway, on with the saga, which starts nearly a century after it begins. If you would like to watch the episodes in question, they’re available on Paramount+ or behind your favorite paywall.

We open with a shuttle approaching Deep Space Nine

(Thanks to Mike Johnson)

And what was the Enterprise up to at this point?

We begin with an info dump about Sherman’s Planet, a world in dispute between the Klingons and the Federation, with colonization rights ultimately given to whomever can most efficiently develop it.

Suddenly, the Enterprise receives a Priority-One Distress Call from K-7, a space station on the border of Klingon space. Kirk assumes the Klingons are attacking the station and rushes to the station, phasers hot, to find no Klingons. If they has been and gone, the station would likely be nothing but debris. Surely K-7 didn’t send out a false alarm?

Kirk contacts K-7 to find out what the hell is going on. The director of the station (Director Lurry) apologizes and asks Kirk to beam over to explain why he issued the false alarm.

With that, Kirk and Spock beam over to K-7, where they encounter…

Nilz Baris, a diplomat from Earth who is now in charge of the development of Sherman’s Planet.

…and his assistant, Arne Darvin.

Varis drafts the crew of the Enterprise to guard the storage compartments in K-7, as they are filled with quadrotriticale, a genetically altered grain designed specifically to thrive on Sherman’s Planet.

(If you think I’m gonna keep typing quadrotriticale throughout this review, you’ve got another think coming! From here on out, I’m just gonna call it “grain”)

Well, as long as the Enterprise is stuck at K-7, Kirk authorizes shore leave for the crew while off-duty.

Back in the present, Sisko explains that Waddle stunned the crewman guarding the Orb and used it to send the Defiant over a century into the past to the Enterprise’s mission to Deep Space Station K-7.

[QUICK NOTE: The producers of DS9 managed to cast Charlie Bill (the actor who played Darvin in The Trouble With Tribbles) as Darvin in this episode]

Worf explains that Darvin was altered to look human and was a spy, but his mission failed and he was disgraced and left the Empire. Unfortunately, Worf isn’t sure if Darvin beamed to the Enterprise of K-7, so he has the teams split up to search both crafts.

Sisko tasks the crew to find Darvin before he can do what he came to this time to do (whether warn his younger self about his future, or even murder Kirk), but to do that, they’ll need to disguise themselves (after all, those stylish Federation “grease monkey” uniforms won’t exactly blend in with 23rd century garb, not to mention the fact that they have a Klingon among them!), so they have the replicator make them uniforms.

Obviously, history isn’t Bashir’s strong suit (also, I think his “23rd century” hairstyle makes him look more dorky than usual). Then Dax shows up in her minidress uniform.

Keep it in your pants, Julian!

Using Treknobabble, O’Brien explains that there are moments of “blind spots” in the Enterprise’s sensors that will allow the Defiant to decloak long enough to use the transporters (well, that closes one plot hole, at least) The human members of the command crew will search the Enterprise while Worf and Odo search K-7 and Kira coordinates the teams and takes command of the Defiant.

With that, the humans beam aboard (Sisko and Dax in the fore with Bashir and O’Brien in the aft) However, they have a comical bit of culture shock when they don’t know how to operate a 23rd century turbolift.

(Thanks again to Mike Johnson)

Worf has a seat (FAR from the Tribble) and explains his dislike of the creature.

Odo then mocks the Klingons, who committed genocide and destroyed the Tribbles’ homeworld for good measure.

Back at the bar, the trader (Cyrano Jones), sells his Tribble to Uhura, but not before the Tribble eats the sample of the grain Chekov was carrying.

Suddenly, alarms blare throughout K-7 and the Enterprise! Sisko checks in with Kira, who reports a Klingon battle cruiser is approaching K-7.(Well, THAT can’t be good! Did they find out there was a Tribble peddler on K-7?)

Kirk warns Lurry about the Klingons, but Lurry doesn’t seem worried about an attack, since the Klingons’ captain is in his office.

Kirk immediately beams down to talk to the captain, a Klingon named Koloth.

And what did Koloth want with K-7?

(Thanks to April 5, 2063)

Dax recalls Kurzon Dax knew Koloth and wants to transport to the station to meet Koloth help Odo and Worf. Sisko sends Bashir and O’Brien instead.

(Thanks to Dputiger)

Back on the Enterprise, Kirk and Spock enter the Lounge to discover Uhura’s Tribble has had a litter. Spock notes that the cooing from the Tribble has a soothing effect on humans.

…he says as he’s gently petting the Tribble. McCoy takes one of the Tribbles to analyze in Sickbay.

Meanwhile, Sisko and Dax spot…

(I do enjoy seeing the Forrest Gump effects being used to integrate the two casts)

…Baris contacting Kirk to chew him out about letting the Klingons on K-7.

Dax admires the pair from afar.

Sisko comments on Kirk’s reputation with the opposite gender.

Dax is amazed that Sisko doesn’t want to meet Kirk. Sisko admits he does, but it’s more important to find Darvin and not pollute the timeline.

Meanwhile, Kirk goes to Sickbay to deal with the dual headaches caused by Baris and the Klingons, when he sees the Tribble Uhura gave McCoy…or, should I say…Tribbles!

McCoy figures out that a Tribble’s internals are geared toward making more Tribbles, but he needs to further examine them.

Kirk addresses the crewmen going on shore leave, telling them to avoid conflict with the Klingons, and leaving Scotty in charge to keep them out of trouble.

On K-7, Bashir and O’Brien spot the others in the lounge.

(Once again, thanks to Mike Johnson)

[Clearly, that “Long Story” Worf is referring to is “Brannon Braga couldn’t be bothered to come up with a plausible explanation before the scripts were finalized and shooting began”]

Anyway, the Klingon kept goading Kirk, and when that didn’t work, the Enterprise.

Well, you can insult Kirk all day, but NO ONE insults the Enterprise in front of Scotty and gets away with it!

With that, the bar erupts into an all-out brawl!

Even Worf gets in on the fun on the Starfleet side (at least he knows where his loyalties lie) until Odo spots Darvin and they go to apprehend him. However…

…Security shows up and detains all Starfleet personnel. Kirk then dresses down all of his (and Sisko’s) men involved.

No one rats out Scotty, so everyone is confined to quarters and dismissed…except Scotty. Kirk wants to know from the one who was supposed to prevent this sort of thing who started the brawl.

When Kirk heard the insults thrown by the Klingons at himself and the Enterprise, he understood, but still had to punish Scotty.

Since Bashir and O’Brien have no official quarters on the Enterprise, they wander off randomly until they run into…

That can’t be good!

It’s not all bad news for the crew of the Defiant, as Odo and Worf have captured Darvin, who reveals he’s set in motion a plan to murder Kirk.

(Thanks to April 5, 2063)

And so…

…they scan Every. Single. Tribble. Unfortunately, the Tribbles are breeding MUCH faster than they can scan!

Fortunately, Dax has a brainstorm: the bomb must be somewhere that Kirk will be in the next half hour or so, so the new plan is to shadow Kirk and hope they scan the bomb before it goes off.

Meanwhile Kirk has Cyrano Jones brought in to deal with the Tribble problem. Jones says he’s done nothing wrong, despite the fact that the Tribbles are breeding out of control. At that, he saunters out of Lurry’s office as Baris storms in with a bone to pick with Kirk.

He accuses Kirk of allowing a Klingon spy free reign over the station, namely one Cyrano Jones. Kirk all but laughs in Baris’s face, having thoroughly checked Jones’s background.

Later, Dax and Sisko are in the Enterprise lounge when Kirk comes in for lunch.

Then Scotty comes in and announces the Tribbles have gotten into the air ducts, and Kirk realizes there are similar ducts leading to the storage compartments on K-7 (where the grain is stored), so Kirk and Spock rush to the transporter, and Sisko and Dax get beamed to the storage compartment and quickly start scanning as Kirk gets to the storage container and opens it.

(Thanks to Giant Giant Kelp Restoration Project)

And as this happens, inside the bin…

(Thanks to Star Trek Clips)

…and no one noticed the explosion?

But the last of that clip is getting a bit ahead of ourselves. We’ll circle back to that as Kirk has Cyrano Jones brought to Lurry’s office as Koloth also enters, demanding that Kirk apologize to the Klingon High Command for how the Klingons were treated while on shore leave.

Baris says that such an apology will be basically handing them Sherman’s Planet. However, Kirk first wants to know how the Tribbles wound up in the grain and what killed them before he gives the Klingons the time of day, let alone an apology. Koloth asks that, before proceeding, the Tribbles that have settled in Lurry’s office be removed.

As Security removes the Tribbles, Darvin enters.

Kirk asks Jones why the Tribbles are acting like that. Jones says he’s only seen that sort of reaction with Klingons. Kirk then takes the Tribbles and tests them against the people in the room first the Klingons, which causes them to screech once again.

Then Spock, whom they like.

Followed by Baris, whom they also like.

But yet, they screech at Darvin. Kirk asks McCoy to scan Darvin.

McCoy then gives his report on what killed the Tribbles in the storage compartment: the grain they ate was poisoned! Under threat of being locked in a room with the Tribbles, Darvis confesses to sabotaging the grain. As Darvin is arrested, Kirk tells Koloth to get his ship the hell back to Klingon space.

As for Jones…

(Thanks again to April 5, 2063)

By this time, Kira had learned how to use the Orb of Time to return the ship to the present.

(Thanks one last time, Mike)

[NOTE: The scene with Kirk and Sisko was NOT from The Trouble With Tribbles, but Mirror Mirror, with Sicko replacing Lt. Moreau]

…and so Odo managed to re-introduce the Tribbles to the galaxy thanks to the wonders on time travel. I suppose the crew could round them all up and send them through the Wormhole? If this happened in Season 6, they could’ve been a nasty “gift” for the Dominion!

However, this wasn’t their only appearance before the Klingons Wiped Them Out For Good (only for Odo to ruin all of their hard work)

[ozzie-starfur]

If you have heard of the genophage from mass effect that's what would happen to the male keronians

I haven’t, but I looked it up and that’s wicked!

Most of my sci-fi terminology comes from Treknobabble (Star Trek pseudoscience) for better or for worse lol

[jacensolodjo]

idk how i can live without pointing out this isn't how ship assignments work when you're a recent graduate or of low rank, especially for a new science vessel like Voyager. You're told where you're going to be going based on your experience, your track, and what the ship needs.

(Also what he did for the Cochrane Medal of Excellence is a bunch of word salad/treknobabble lmao)

[whirligig-girl]

How did Mellanus invent warp technology?

Was it an independent inventor like Zefram Cochrane? Or was it a government project?

Eaurp Guz here. So, In the 2330s, our species made first contact with the Zaldans, who had a military station on the surface of and orbit around Oldsky, the other habitable planet in our Zwo-Nmu system (Omen's biggest moon, in fact.)

Zaldans only actually visited Mellanus a handful of times iirc, but they brought knowledge of faster than light travel. We had an understanding of Syernit's Theory of Heavy Masses [Ed note: an incomplete piece of General Relativity, itself an incomplete piece of Subspace Field Theory], but it was not able to explain Zaldan spaceflight. Before the Zaldans had left in the late 2330s or 2340 or so, we had a pretty good understanding of Subspace Field Mechanics on paper, and tested against astronomical observations of Zaldan spaceflight and subspace radio astronomy. (Thanks to a Zaldan Military Officer who left behind a communicator watch)

But this is equivalent to, to put it into Earth terms, Alcubierre's metric. Actually inventing the Cochrane drive was a completely different beast for humans, and the Zaldans were tight lipped enough that we just had no clue at all how to actually build one.

The Omen apparition after the Zaldans left was focused on designing missions to explore Oldsky. This was before Economic Standardisation and the formation of United Mellanus, mind, so this was a real space race. (No, not like the one-sided space race of Terran history.) Who could recover what technology, who could understand how disruptors and subspace and warp drive all worked first.

Using artifacts recovered, several different nations tried to build warp drive prototypes. Most failed. The coolest was probably the Arrowhead Initiative's warp ship, which had the reactor and nacelles built into the payload bay of a two-stage spaceplane. It flew twice, but only on test missions with dummy warp drives. First test was low orbital, second test docked to a transfer stage to test how it would handle reentry from escape velocity, as a potential abort scenario in case the warp drive could not be reactivated.

The Economic Standardisation revolution ended up putting a pin in all of that for a bit.

And so the first successful warp drive was a joint project of United Mellanus Space Program. Which, by the way, fun fact, actually predated United Mellanus itself by several years! We unified our space program before we unified as a planet, which is kinda funny and backwards.

Shortly after the flight of the first crewed warp flight--made from a space station module docked to an NTR, a bunch of capacitors radiators, and a warp drive that could do brief bursts of warp-1, the United Federation of Planets arrived. I was one or two years old when that happened, so I don't remember it personally.

This isn't that different from Earth's spaceflight history. In the 2030s, multiple human nations had launched uncrewed warp drive prototypes, and one of them reportedly even managed to break warp 1, and all sorts of private agencies were sticking sublight warp rings and fusion-impulse drives on old interplanetary rockets to try and make interstellar rockets. But the last of the Eugenics Wars put those projects on hold.

I think terrans tend to exaggerate the importance of individual 'great people.' While it's undeniable that the circumstances of Cochrane's flight were pivotal to the formation of the Federation, humans would have invented warp drive sooner or later without him. (And hey, what about all the other physicists who came up with the theoretical background for it! The many thousands of people in those space programs that made the warp prototypes happen. What about Lily Mucking Sloan! She's the one who did most of the systems engineering on the Phoenix!)

I think that's why we call two nacelles and a cubic factor/speed relationship a "Cochrane drive." Even though most other spacefaring aliens will independently invent essentially the same metric and engine design.

Anyway, mellanoids don't tend to think this way, so we can't really point to a single slime who 'invented' the pulsed warp drive.

And, don't let the UMSP hear me say this, but it's not even completely clear whether we truly invented warp drive. I mean, yes, there are key differences in both the theoretical metric and the physical engineering between mellanoid pulsed warp nacelles and Zaldan warp drive, but like. We got the idea from them. Does make me wonder what we would have figured out, maybe 50 or a hundred years later, if Zaldans never colonized Oldsky. There's only a handful of common 'baby civilization's first warp drive' modalities, but we do lots of stuff weird. We do warp drive weird. Could we have discovered something completely new? Oh well. We'll never know.

[simptasia]

on a practical level i wouldn't be able to be a starfleet officer because space scares me and i don't wanna explore and i dont wanna be brave and academy physical training has gotta be brutal and,, and,, also i couldn't handle actual school, how could i handle the academy? ya know the people in trek actually understand treknobabble

however, i am full of love and hope and open mindedness and i wanna fuck a vulcan so so bad

so i'd make a perfect 24th century human

[strix-x]

ST Resurgence actual gameplay thoughts:

Actually getting to interact with LCARS interfaces was WONDERFUL please can I do that forever and also in real life. Please let me click the buttons.

Also, I got so so so excited when they let me use a tricorder. Tricorder sections were hands down the best part of the gameplay.

Generally speaking if you understand the treknobabble, you get rewarded. Like because I know what a plasma torch or hyperspanner looks like, I could grab it right away from a table of options. Or because I know about shield harmonics, I understood what they wanted me to do in certain sections right away rather than having to fiddle around. I love when games reward you for prior knowledge.

One thing is they didn't let me use a mouse click and drag to energize the transporter. Why was it a keyboard input.

[quasi-normalcy]

Lay viewers assume that all of the technobabble on Star Trek is just meaningless bullshit, but those of us with STEM degrees know: it’s only about 85% meaningless bullshit.

[animentality]

Him: she won't text me back :(

Me: hm. Perhaps if you developed a simple broadband subspace link transmitter with a multi frequency transponder then she might?

[nelc]

Technobabble by Brian Herrick

[nesterov81]

There was also the Tox Uthat, the MacGuffin from the third-season episode “Captain’s Holiday”, that could perform the same trick. No explanation is ever given as to how the device works, beyond the Treknobabble description of “quantum phase inhibitor”, so beyond “piece of alien technology from three centuries after TNG that works by Trek science rules”, there isn’t much room to speculate as to how it shuts down stellar fusion reactions.

In Star Trek Generations, the bad guys had a substance which could stop the fusion inside a star, making it collapse and produce a solar-system-obliterating shockwave. This is actually somewhat feasible compared to your average Star Trek science: for various reasons I don't think it could actually exist in the way it does in the movie, but you could conceive of a substance that acted as "fusion poison", producing more of itself when it collided with energetic hydrogen but was not itself able to be fused further. Even the bit about the shockwave was really plausible: it's pretty much exactly what happens in an actual core collapse supernova.

The one really unfeasible part was that it couldn't happen instantaneously like it did in the movie. Even in the core of starts, most hydrogen atom collisions don't result in fusion - they can't overcome the Coulomb barrier. If you introduced a self-replicating fusion poison into the core of the Sun, it would grow only very slowly, at least at first. You could imagine a fusion poison produced almost no notable effects for centuries or millennia, then maybe a one-lifetime period of noticeable effects, then the Sun went out and everyone died.

Which I actually think would be a better story. Suppose you knew that there was a fusion poison, but not exactly when the Sun would collapse, since astrophysical time scales are immense and imprecise. It's going to be in the next 10,000 years, but beyond that you're not certain. Would people try to escape the Solar System? What would life be look in an era of certain doom but highly-uncertain timing?

[spockvarietyhour]

Aw.

[figachilles]

marinler timeloop fic?? 👀👀

OK HEAR ME OUT

mariner is stuck in a timeloop and she tries everything to get out of it and finally after a mariner-typical amount of self-destruction she comes to terms with the fact she maybe possibly might have to face her feelings and kiss boimler to escape

so she does

but instead of it getting her out of the timeloop, it gets him stuck in the loop WITH her

chaos ensues