gnuplusmatt

Erin MacDonald interview

NS: So speaking of cool, you are now a science consultant for the franchise. Tell me how that came about, and what your duties involve.

EM: Yeah, this is a dream job. This is as good as it gets.

...

They’re realizing how effectively Star Trek can be used to teach science, they really want to capture that, and with Star Trek having this big resurgence, and having all of these shows now being developed, they realized that having someone who is a behind the scenes person as well as a representative for teaching science through Star Trek would be an advantage to them.

So that’s what they’ve hired me to do. I’m working this year on retainer for the Star Trek franchise. That doesn’t say that every show is using me, but I’m available to any shows that do want to use me, and to try and keep track of all the technology and all of the travel and all of the stuff that they mention. All of these series are coming out at different points in different timelines, and someone’s gotta keep track of all of that. And they are, but it helps having me who can just focus on the technology and the technobabble and the galaxy and to try to keep that all straight. So it’s really exciting and I can’t wait for the stuff that I’ve worked on to actually start airing so that I can talk about it!

confirms Mack as consultant

There are other resources and tweets out there confirming as much.

Don't assume I'm a "nutrek" hater. I love new Trek mate, I buy the discs, I stream it, I've got the eaglemoss models! I use to defend the spore drive as a cool use of subspace domains or that Picard season one is a good remix of the themes of the episode tapestry all of which earned me many down votes on parts of reddit.

I can still be critical when parts of it could IMHO be done a little better, and as I said I'm glad that new Trek really is trying

Both of us can do backflips to justify our positions. I also acknowledged that it's fiction and it can be whatever it wants to be. I dont claim to know everything.

It doesn't change the fact they brought on people specifically to do a better job of these things, so that backflips are less required 🤷‍♂️

I am going to shift the window on what I meant a little - star trek uses its technology as a plot contrivance all the fucking time, every series is guilty of it. Tech can be a hindrance to the protagonist or be stupidly overridden depending on what the plot needs. Most of the series are good at making the tech at least make sense in the world.

Take the breath sensor in s1e03 - as a security device its there to just be beaten, which is stupid - but also in star trek world with scanners and tricorders it makes no sense. The main computer could scan you at the door and know who you are without breathing on something. Its a fundamental misunderstanding of the world. To new fans its not a problem, but have you met a Star Trek fan before?

Once they brought people on that actually can beat the technology needs into shape for the world, this new era of trek has been fine IMHO. None of it is story breaking, and its frivolous because yes, this is fiction and the world can be whatever it wants for scifi reasons. This was the first example I found quickly scrolling transcripts. There's others like the SQL line in season 2.

I'll be sure to take notes next time I do a rewatch

There is nothing technochron blorbinator in the Trek lexicon - I'm saying that writing example technobabble like that shows a lack of understanding of the source.

I don't have any specific examples, but I remember the first 2 seasons of discovery and a little in the first season of Picard getting Trek particles wrong and not knowing systems. It got better once they hired Erin MacDonald and brought on David Mack and a few other novelists to consult on prodigy and I think Picard iirc

edit: Hey look I can play the edit game too - I provided a poorly researched example and explained that technology use not well used in early discovery - I acknowledged that being critical of technology use can be hand waived because its fictitious and apparently that's not good enough for our combative OP. I also provided sources on the franchise now using specialists to keep track of technology and technobabble, and advised that I am not a "nutrek hater" as our contentious colleague here had to go and attack me personally - check below for the receipts and tax returns!

I hate when people try to write technobabble like that. It has a logic and if you have watched enough star trek it starts to make sense.

Then JJ Abrams comes a long and has Butterbeer Crampleslice tell us life support system is behind the aft nacelles. Even the first few seasons of the new Trek shows did this crap until they brought on science and Canon consultants

Why is top left Kevin James

I just got a car with no transmission instead

I went back to a pixel, as I couldn't get my oneplus with lineageOS to do Android pay, after custom roms on all my phones since the HTC Dream, I have been running stock for the last 18 months, kind of miss it

At 720p you can, not 1080p or 2160p - Linux meets minimal widevine

Trumped up charges? Doesn't trump like things named after himself?

Things like androidpay/apple pay type functions require a chain of security checks, on Android it's levels of safety net. some banking apps require similar