The only issues I have (currently, until proven wrong) with DIscovery with the Spore Drive and other technological things, is that it didn’t seem to have an answer for why the Federation didn’t use it later. I do know that in the timeskip season, a log does not mention the use of the s-drive.
But man I can only imagine how pissed Admiral Janeway would have been to find out it exists.
Plus I can’t hate a show that has Doug Jones in it. I didn’t get into Discovery, but I don’t hate it.
it didn’t seem to have an answer for why the Federation didn’t use it later.
Well, you need to either find and enslave an exotic space tardigrade in order to navigate the network, or illegally splice said tardigrade’s DNA into your own.
And even then, navigation is pretty challenging, and can result in accidental time and/or interdimensional travel.
And a malfunction has the potential to destroy all life in the multiverse.
And both ships that had the prototypes installed were lost within about a year.
Take your pick, really.
For the reward of instantaneous travel, I’m sure the Federation could muddle its way through amending a 100 year old law. The rest of the points don’t seem all that different than the complications we see our heroes regularly encounter exploring the galaxy. And none of them were enough to convince the crew of the Discovery to stop using the spore drive for the rest of the series.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Discovery anyway. Trek is full of miracle technologies that go conveniently forgotten. Janeway has no reason to be miffed given that she sat on an infinite speed drive herself, which had no downside that the doctor wouldn’t have been able to cure after it took them home.
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Not to mention the specific spores required for the drive to connect with the mycelial network come from one specific type of fungus that exists at least partially within subspace and doesn’t seem to be all that common.
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Could you imagine a Voyager where the ship is no longer constantly running towards home? One where they have to stay and gather materials to get their warp 10 drive working. The species they meet will be the same species around a few seasons later, and the relationships they build with them matter. Maybe stasis isn’t good enough, and they have to hold everyone in a transporter buffer, which means rebuilding huge sections of the ship to support having all the crew inside transporters at once. They expect this to take years, but it’s still by far the shortest way home. A few shuttles get modified and they send couriers back to the alpha quadrant. So they have some contact with Star Fleet, but it’s not as simple as opening a channel.
If there’s only enough story material here to support a few seasons, then maybe something comes up that means they have to go back and fix it. Maybe some Borg shit. Make up a reason to keep the Maquis crew around (not like Star Fleet gives a shit once the Dominion War is underway).
Good thing they never gave us that nightmare of a show.
And a malfunction has the potential to destroy all life in the multiverse.
I didn’t like that part at all. An infinite multiverse, which they state in DSC is the case, means that anything with a probability greater than zero is guaranteed. Mathematically, the multiverse should have already been wiped out at some point. It’s also a throwaway line meant to increase dramatic tension for all of ten seconds before the scene ends, and an empty threat given that following through would end the show.
Maybe it’s like vacuum decay; yes, it’s already happened, but maybe it doesn’t propagate instantly. There are expanding pockets of dead universes around where malfunctions occurred, but the Multiverse, in its infinite size, means that these pockets are also infinitesimally small compared to it.
Yyyyyyeahhh genetic modification has been a BIG NO-NO in trek canon since the 1990s eugenics wars, right…?
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So we still have a chance to fulfill the trek time line?
The big temporal shift took place when TNG’s premiere ‘Encounter at Farpoint’ was written to place WW3 and first contact into the mid-late 21st century.
TOS was very specific in saying that the Eugenics War was a precursor to WW3.
Roddenberry wanted to ensure that the franchise’s optimistic future was always a future possibility for viewers. So he insisted that TNG reset the date of WW3.
At the time TNG appeared, there were die-hard gatekeeping TOS fans that argued that this time shift broke canon and meant TNG was in a different universe despite McCoy’s appearance in the premiere.
SNW just confirms the physics of temporal slippage in the Prime timeline as the consequence of all the various intertemporal incursions over the history of the franchise.
I actually did not know that they shifted it. Are the eugenics wars still part of the shifted timeline or were they cut when moving ww3 back?
TNG and all the 90s shows finessed their way around the date of the Eugenics War.
The writers at the time (e.g., Moore & Braga) would rationalize in response to fan questions that the Eugenics War was going on but we just weren’t aware. Or something. But they assiduously avoided dealing with the issue onscreen despite trying to write around other inconsistencies like Klingon foreheads.
So, it was left to SNW’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow to spell it all out, including moving Khan’s birth back by decades. It’s worth putting a priority on seeing that episode just for that clarity.
There are allowances for genetic therapies to treat medical conditions, but this probably falls outside of that realm just a bit.
Fair enough. Tho I’m sure Janeway would still consider using Tuvix for that one editing your DNA thing.
So a coverup then. Interesting.
Spock flat-out said it at the end of “Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2”, albeit with a focus on the time travel shenanigans of the second season:
Regulation 157, Section 3 requires Starfleet officers to abstain from participating in historical events. Any residual trace or knowledge of Discovery’s data, or the time suit, offers a foothold for those who might not see how critical, how deeply critical, that directive is.
Therefore, to insure the Federation never finds itself facing the same danger, all officers remaining with knowledge of these events must be ordered never to speak of Discovery, its spore drive, or her crew again, under penalty of treason.
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All it would take is a Short Trek where someone rediscovers the network and encounters a group of advanced beings living there, who explain that it has been closed to current warp-capable beings because they have proven themselves not ready for the privilege yet.
Discovery was like Alexander the Great stumbling onto warp drive.
I can look past the mycelial network. I just can’t tolerate some of the characters. And unfortunately they decided to focus on one main character. And that character’s main feature is to cry throughout the entire series, despite being raised by vulcans. Also the pacing of the show is very annoying. It’s high tension drama, all the time.
I watched the whole thing. There were some episodes that kinda gave me hope. Those usually were the ones that weren’t part of the main plot. But the next episode it went back to the same dramatic formula.
Oh, and Tilly. What the hell man? How did she get into Starfleet??
That said, I’m happy people enjoy it! It’s just not for me.
For that matter, they didn’t even use it well at the time. Their accuracy of jumping with the spore drive was shown to be good enough that they could jump inside the shield bubble of every Klingon supply base, launch a bunch of torpedoes, and get out. War = done.
Gotta admit that introducing big fancy transwarp highway in a prequel wasn’t the most clever move… Especially considering Voyager…
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Discovery also had hologram communication technology that I guess was also a secret? Starfleet went back to flatscreens for everything and didn’t use holograms again until the 24th century.
If it was just one thing, okay, but there were such numerous inconsistencies, it was like the writers and designers did not care about trek, they were writing a sci-fi show with the trek name slapped on top.
It’s totally possible to respect the heritage of old sci-fi - look at The Mandalorian and Andor - maintaining consistency with the old retro sci-fi aesthetic actually elevates them above what a modern redesign would have done.
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I think to say that Disco has nothing that contradicts established canon is overselling it a bit. But, I will say that all Trek has violated established canon at one point or another, up to and including TOS itself, which was created by people who had no idea at the time that anyone would even remember it some 57 years later, let alone be obsessed with all this minutiae.
If we ignore visual continuity – which, as a life long comic book reader, I am more than happy to do – Disco still has some few contradictions here and there, but I will say that it actually toes the line without crossing over it too frequently fairly well, allowing it to have some interesting and new approaches to Trek.
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The big one – relatively speaking, of course – in my mind is the site to site transporting.
In “Day of the Dove”, Kirk asks Spock, ”Intra-ship beaming, is it possible?” and Spock rattled off a litany of reasons why it was considered too dangerous in all but the most necessary circumstances.
However, we see in Disco, starting with “Context is for Kings”, that they can just order the computer to transport them from one room of the ship to another without hesitation.
It’s a minor quibble all things considered. And clearly something most of the Disco detractors aren’t even aware of.
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You’re right, it doesn’t violate the canon.
It just cheapens it.
This is just petty.
So you think going from “This didn’t exist yet” to “This existed, it just wasn’t used,” doesn’t in any way cheapen the older stories?
Not for the most part.
I would probably be more annoyed by the Klingon cloaking devices in season one if not for the fact that ship had already sailed when ENT established that the Romulans already had that technology a hundred years before “Balance of Terror”, and oh, so did the Suliban and the XyrIllians whom the crew of the Nx-01 also encountered.
Not to mention there’s a throw away line in one episode of season one about how the sensors are picking up massive power readings but can’t actually pinpoint the ships, and in “Balance of Terror” Spock notes that the Romulans must have figured out a way to bend light around their ship without the tremendous power draw. I have to assume someone on the writing team was trying to square that circle.
But yeah, the idea of a technology existing but not being widely used doesn’t bump me at all. This is like getting mad that when you go into watch the latest Marvel movie and they’re not using Smell-O-Vision. The technology exists! Hell, I can’t remember the last movie I saw in theatre that was 3d. Obviously they still exist, but it’s not a technology that’s really taken off once the gimmick lost its lustre. Or think about how many people, especially young people, prefer to text over talking on the phone.
So yeah, I don’t think anything is cheapened by the idea that a technology exists by is not widely used, and I do think it’s silly that anyone would make that argument.
Discovery also had hologram communication technology that I guess was also a secret? Starfleet went back to flatscreens for everything and didn’t use holograms again until the 24th century.
In “The Undiscovered Country” we see the Klingons are watching the Federation President’s discussion with Azetbur using a grainy hologram. If they’re able to receive a holographic signal, that implies that the Federation is transmitting one. Hell, even in the TOS episode, “Return of the Archons” when confronted with the holographic projection of Landru, Kirk and Spock recognize it for what it is right away, but the things they remark upon are the fact that there’s no visible projectors, and Kirk says it’s “Beautiful.”
I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch based on what we’ve see to say that Starfleet decided that holographic projections were too low fidelity compared to viewscreens.
Hell, it even happens again. As you note, they made another attempt at holographic communication in the 24th century, which we see in DS9 the Defiant is kitted out with the new holo-communicator, allowing a fully realized, high fidelity, holodeck quality real time holographic communication. And where else have we seen it? We never see the Enterprise E use that technology; In “Nemesis” Shinzon is able to broadcast a hologram of himself from the Scimitar to Picard’s ready room, but he claims it’s through the use of his own holo-emitters. We’ve never seen it in LDecks, PRO, or PIC, all of which take place after DS9.
So yeah, Starfleet went back to flat screens for everything.
TNG’s and VOY’s viewscreens are technically holographic, but the effect is applied inconsistently.
That’s a great point. They’re certainly at least 3-dimensional, as seen most clearly when someone is on the main viewscreen but their eyeline matches the smaller figures on the bridge, rather than looking more like a zoom window as it would if it was a simple camera-flatscreen configuration.
I’ve headcanoned it that Discovery was covertly part of a Section 31 collaboration with the Department of Temporal Investigations to test technologies and materials acquired or implied through various temporal incursions, the goal being to see which ones could be arrived at and used without causing potential disturbance to the timeline. The updated look of Federation ships is also a result of that, producing a 23rd century which looks quite different but in which events play out functionally the same.
That’s all well and good for the lore, but it doesn’t make it feel any less like a way of getting out of the corner they wrote themselves into. It would also probably be little comfort for the version of the Voyager crew that took something like 70 years to get home.
I’ve enjoyed Discovery. Not as much as other series, but I have enjoyed it. I still think the spore drive is a story that should’ve been told later in the timeline, though.
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Unless it gave her access to coffee, then she’d install that on the Delta flyer and make weekly secret trips to Seattle to stock up.
I feel like the problem with Discovery is the same of the warp 10 episode in Voyager. A bunch of people create the most OP way of travelling and barely use it, and don’t tell me that the ship is unique and Stamets is the only person in the universe in the following centuries to be able to use it, because that just doesn’t make any sense, it’s a cheap trick to justify why such an incredible technology has never been mentioned after, not even by a super villain that gives no crap about genetic augmentation.
At least with Voyager you could just write it off as a badly written episode, but you cannot ingore a whole series. Yes even TNG had some magical guy make the ship travel fantaszilion light years, but at least it was out of their control and they could not exploit it.
Also, Trek shows have not been the most consistent ever, but Discovery really went their way on completely distegarding every Star Trek lore existing in the first season which, personal theory, is a major reason for the writers to “get rid” of the ship at the end of season two. Discovery just did not make sense in the universe created by the othee series, to put it where it does no more damage.
What specific lore has been disregarded?
Everything about klingon for example, the spore drive itself. Even the uniforms!
Fuckin’ jeepers, this is grasping at straws.
There’s no “lore” regarding the spore drive or the uniforms, so nothing to disregard.
What specific lore about the Klingons was abandoned by Disco. Just one specific thing. Any single, specific thing.
In Discovery, instead of honorable warriors, the klingons are a bunch of sneaky backstabbing and coward warriors. They also don’t look like klingons at all, both in appearance and architecture, the speak like their mouth is full of potatoes and for some reasons they make ships out of coffins.
I’m not against change, what I don’t like is calling another thing with its name just because you get to be part of a franchise. The only thing they have in common with klingons of other series is the language and that they want to kill. All the modifications they made, just for the sake of it, makes it look like they wanted to use the standard scifi appearal of standard bad aliens and just put the name “klingons” on it. No surprise they reverted this change and discarded all of this in season two.
Btw “the klingons started growing their hair again” might be the single most stupid line I’ve ever heard in a Trek show, especially considering the reason why it was said.
In Discovery, instead of honorable warriors, the klingons are a bunch of sneaky backstabbing and coward warriors.
Like they are in TOS?
They also don’t look like klingons at all
Are you similarly upset by the change in appearance the occurred between TOS and TMP?
and architecture
Architecture? I don’t know, the House Mo’Kai fortress we see in season two doesn’t seem all that out of place. The rounded towers of the capital city seen in ENT is a greater divergence than anything we see in Disco. But that’s also fine, because architectural styles change over time.
the speak like their mouth is full of potatoes
And apparently, according to experts in the language, that’s the best Klingon has ever sounded on screen. Not really sure how that qualifies as a lore thing, though.
they make ships out of coffins.
One ship. The home of a cult leader.
A bunch of people create the most OP way of travelling and barely use it, and don’t tell me that the ship is unique and Stamets is the only person in the universe in the following centuries to be able to use it, because that just doesn’t make any sense, it’s a cheap trick to justify why such an incredible technology has never been mentioned after, not even by a super villain that gives no crap about genetic augmentation.
That wasn’t really the reason, the reason wasn’t nobody else could figure it out or that nobody wanted to do it because it required genetic modification, the reason was that jumping on the mycelial network was actively killing it unless I am misremembering things which is in line with the rest of star trek’s ethos (how about the DS9 episode where they help the dominion destroy a trans warp gate for example? There are other technologies that are abandoned and hidden for the greater safety of the universe all over Star Trek, it can be really silly I agree but I don’t think discovery is unique here.
The retcon is that the whole spore drive program was actively suppressed, because any knowledge of Discovery and/or Control would lead to cosmic apocalypse. And so part of Section 31’s imprimatur was to work behind the scenes and prevent it and other disruptive tech from seeing the light. And other civilizations did the same, because the same thing happened to them at some point in their history.
It’s pretty sweaty, and requires quite a bit of stretches credulity, but it beats a lazy handwave.
I assume the spore drive is in a wood box in section 31s “neato beans” warehouse next to Rikers “phase through matter and I guess go invisible whatever do what you want bro” cloak.
I feel like the issue with Discovery is that it just shoe-horns in an overproduced and under considered last 2 episodes every season in the name of “stakes”.
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Q did it? Seems fine
I think the mushrooms almost feel too… mundane? The average person probably interacts with a lot more mushrooms than crystals. Crystals also have a long history of being associated with magical properties, and modern science has figured out some neat things that can be done with crystalline structures. We’re pretty primed for crystals doing cool stuff. Mushrooms have significantly less mysticism associated with them and related science is more biological than technological. That’s not really solidly in favor of one or the other, but it does mean the audience will more readily accept crystal hijinks with no warm up than mushroom hijinks with no warmup. The closest comparison to the mycelial network is Yggdrasil, which is solidly in the high fantasy category rather than sci-fi.
All that is to say, I think the mycelial network needed more time to set up than the show gave it. Some kind of foreshadowing, like simply mentioning something about advances in organic technology. Farscape probably would have been able to sell it pretty quick, but Farscape also has organic technology as a core part of the premise with Moya. Not an inherently bad concept, just kind of comes out of nowhere in the context of Trek.
Mushrooms have significantly less mysticism associated with them
Ah yes, psychedelics are famously not associated with mysticism.
The closest comparison to the mycelial network is Yggdrasil, which is solidly in the high fantasy category rather than sci-fi.
The closest comparison is actual fungal networks that exist beneath forests supporting life through the transference of nutrients and biochemical communication, are some of the largest organisms on the planet, and are actual nonfiction science.
All that is to say, I think the mycelial network needed more time to set up than the show gave it.
I think I can agree with you to some extent there. Stamets, by virtue of being standoffish and prickly when the character is introduced, is not the best at explaining things, and the concept could have used a better explanation early on to mitigate the response I’m complaining about with this post.
Ah yes, psychedelics are famously not associated with mysticism.
Might depend on your area? I mostly just associate them with stoners. Mystic folks in my area are really into crystals.
The closest comparison is actual fungal networks that exist beneath forests supporting life through the transference of nutrients and biochemical communication, are some of the largest organisms on the planet, and are actual nonfiction science.
I meant in terms of ‘a thing that links worlds together’. Typically, a trans-dimensional plant or plant-like thing is depicted as a tree, patterned off of the mythic Yggdrasil. World trees are also typically a high fantasy thing, since they’re mimicking Yggdrasil. The mycelial network is essentially a world tree, or rather a world shroom. It’s not exactly an expected trope in sci-fi. Mixing the genres is definitely doable, but you need to get your foot in the door with some shared concepts before you spring a wrong-genre thing on the audience.
I think I can agree with you to some extent there. Stamets, by virtue of being standoffish and prickly when the character is introduced, is not the best at explaining things, and the concept could have used a better explanation early on to mitigate the response I’m complaining about with this post.
Stamets not being a great vehicle for exposition is definitely a problem, but I think the real problem is that season 1 in general has weird pacing. They spent a lot of time getting Burnham situated on the Discovery and the Mirror Universe arc took up a lot of time for how little actually happened in it. They wound up course-correcting near the end of the season by literally skipping ahead a few months on the return trip. I’m sure it’s partially a too many cooks situation with the early show’s revolving door of showrunners, but the second season did greatly improve in that regard while still having to swap out showrunners mid way through.
My point is, season 1 is kind of wonky structurally.
Star Trek TNG had a Space Loki on steroids driving key points of the plot so what’s the issue with a Space Yggrasil? Star Trek was never supposed to be hard sci-fi in the first place.
Concepts inspired by the idea of the World Tree are also common in other sci-fi works.
Next you’ll tell me the other ships run on space rocks!!!
I don’t like Discovery because of the nonsense with the Klingons. I don’t know why they changed their look again, but mostly I like to be able to do other things when watching TV, like cleaning up or making food, and hate the subtitles.
I understand if I’m watching a movie and a scene takes place in France with a bunch of Frenchmen speaking in French accents that “in universe” they are actually speaking French and it’s being translated to English for my benefit. The long drawn out subtitled scenes just killed the show for me. Give me a dubbed Discovery and I’ll happily give it a go.
Dilithium=crack rock
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I’m not much of a fan of Discovery, as seems to be the case for many Trek fans. It’s alright though. But this aspect I found myself enjoying. I liked the whole mycelial network angle.
Yeah, I like Disco because I think they’re at least trying to do something, and that’s interesting to me. They don’t always succeed, but I respect the attempt. However, I fully get why people don’t like it.
My issue is with the silly complaints, not what amounts to a matter of taste.
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I think I had a stroke.
