How Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Christina Chong keeps the technobabble straight

by

As a seasoned Trekkie with decades of Starfleet service logs under my belt, I can confidently say that the art of memorizing technobabble is as much a part of the Star Trek universe as warp drive and Klingon battlecries. It’s fascinating to see how each actor finds their own method to navigate the complex labyrinth of interstellar jargon.

In simpler terms, Technobabble refers to the complex, technical jargon often used in Star Trek series, especially among science department characters. Even non-science characters can find themselves grappling with this specialized language. To make things easier, actors like Garrett Wong wrote their lines on black tape over the Voyager bridge console, while Tim Russ and Robert Beltran came up with their own ways to remember their technobabble dialogue.

It’s no shock that the classic techniques are still in use in modern Star Trek, as Christina Chong, who portrays Lt. Noonien Singh in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, confessed at Creation’s Trek to Chicago Convention. She shared that she breaks her lines down into tiny pieces and places them on the bridge during filming, according to Screenrant.

I put my lines on the bridge. I cut them up really small. … There’s just some lines that are hard to remember, the science schmience…. When you’ve got only one or 2 lines through a 5 page scene, you’ve gotta stay focused, and make sure you come in on time. I have been known to not come in on time a few times. I’ve put the lines there for when I’m off in my mind. It’s not for me, it’s for them.”

Christina Chong

One actor from Star Trek: Voyager appears to have committed nearly every technical term used during his time on the starship to memory, and that’s Robert Picardo. He portrayed the Emergency Medical Hologram for seven seasons, which required a considerable amount of technical jargon. Now, more than two decades after the series ended, Picardo produces videos on his YouTube channel where he recites the technobabble he had to memorize for his scenes. Remarkably, he does so flawlessly without using any scripts or prompts. While it’s likely that he rehearses the lines beforehand, it’s still quite impressive to see him perform them so effortlessly.

It’s likely that Chong isn’t the sole Star Trek performer who uses traditional methods to memorize their lines. As far as the audience is concerned, it doesn’t matter how they do it, right? It’s all about delivering fantastic entertainment!

Read More

2024-10-06 04:22