Technobabble
From Memory Alpha, the free Star Trek reference.
Technobabble is a term for an explanation for a complicated situation.
In 2369, Q goaded the senior staff of Deep Space 9, who had been unable to find the cause of a crippling power drain on the station, by saying "Picard and his lackeys would have solved all this technobabble hours ago." (DS9: "Q-Less")
In 2372, when Tom Paris and Neelix were alone together in a shuttlecraft descending to the surface of "Planet Hell", Neelix said he was unimpressed by the technobabble spouting from Tom's mouth as he completed the shuttle's log. (VOY: "Parturition")
- Technobabble is a moniker describing the pseudo-scientific terminology of Star Trek. While the terminology itself is unavoidable, several episodes were criticized for its use as a Deus ex machina.
- Among the most notorious examples of technobabble are Star Trek: Voyager's "Threshold", the baryon sweep and the Heisenberg compensator, but even famous pieces of Star Trek technology like the warp drive or phasers belong to this category. Voyager is the series criticized most for the use of technobabble.
