Entertainment
The Next Generation Episode That Invented Star Trek's Worst Trope
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
As a franchise, Star Trek has always faced an interesting creative paradox: it must balance the human storytelling of the present day with the science of the far future. Some writers prefer stories that are driven by hard science, and some prefer those driven by emotion. In The Original Series, these extremes were represented by Spock (who had to explain the cold logic of what was going on) and Dr. McCoy (who constantly espoused the values of passion and emotion).
In the Golden Age of Star Trek, the technical side of storytelling was represented by “technobabble,” the catch-all term for the confusing blather of scientific and technological terms often blurted out by characters like Data. Many fans (even those who prefer stories more in the vein of traditional science fiction) came to hate technobabble because it felt forced and out of place, often disrupting otherwise excellent stories. One of the best examples of this is the Next Generation episode “Pen Pals,” which one iconic Trek director thought was ruined by technobabble.
Reach Out And Touch Someone
In case you’ve forgotten, “Pen Pals” is the episode where Data makes contact with an alien child on an underdeveloped world. He discovers that her world is in danger and implores Captain Picard to violate the Prime Directive in order to save her people. Picard reluctantly does so, and Dr. Pulaski mind-wipes the alien kiddo to prevent her from remembering that time her entire planet was saved by aliens with what she would consider godlike abilities.
The episode was directed by Winrich Kolbe, a Star Trek icon (he dated Kate Mulgrew, for God’s sake!) who directed some of the best episodes of the franchise. For TNG, this includes such bangers as “Darmok” and “All Good Things…”, the series finale. On DS9, he directed some personal favorites, including “Through the Looking Glass” and “The Siege of AR-558.” For Voyager, he directed the premiere episode “Caretaker” and the ambitious two-parter, “Basics.”
They Blinded Us With Science
As his resume indicates, few people understand Trek like Kolbe, someone who quickly developed an instinct for what can make or break a potentially excellent episode. In an interview with The Official Star Trek Magazine, he described “Pen Pals” as “one of those cases where I felt the original script… the first draft, was very, very nice. It was a very personal story.”
He said it was a personal story, so what changed? Winrich Kolbe claims that someone very high up (he couldn’t remember if it was Rick Berman or Gene Roddenberry) “felt we needed more of a technical surrounding story.” The storytelling change was swift: “Suddenly, out went more and more of the character issue, and in came more and more tech talk.”
Putting Star Trek Under The Microscope
Kolbe wasn’t a fan of adding so much technobabble to a very personal story, and he didn’t mince words when discussing what went wrong with “Pen Pals.” He called the infusion of the distracting space lingo “a problem” and said that he disagreed with the prevailing staff assessment “that more technical jargon enhances the stories.” The director believes “these stories should be left alone” and summarized his thoughts on this particular episode quite bluntly: “I think ‘Pen Pals’ could have been a better show than it was.”
Most fans would agree with this assessment; after all, “Pen Pals” is a good episode that falls far short of its potential. Even controversial showrunner Maurice Hurley agrees. According to Captains’ Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, he said the script “kind of got muddled around, mucked up and lost its purity.” He ultimately decided that the finished episode “worked okay,” but he generally echoes Kolbe’s argument that the jargon-ridden additions to this script made the episode far worse than it should have been.
Technobabble Never Left The Franchise
Sadly, the rest of the writing staff didn’t see it that way: “technobabble” became an ever-present feature in the franchise, one that was often used as a writing crutch to explain how our heroes suddenly turn the tables on their enemy. It could often be grating for fans whenever an episode of The Next Generation or Voyager ground to a halt so someone could explain the plot in the most confusing way.
Still, the scientifically accurate (more or less) technobabble of Old Trek will always be preferable to the breezy stupidity of NuTrek, where a single supernova can threaten the entire galaxy!