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this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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Risa
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I do seriously hate the spore drive though. The travel time is a huge part of what makes a Star Trek episode.
Depends on the episode.
When Quark is abducted from Deep Space 9 in "House of Quark" he's taken clear across the entire Federation and into the Klingon Empire in about a day. And then D'Ghor sends someone to the station to grab Rom and get him back to Qo'noS the next day.
Trek moves at the speed of plot.
Voyager might want a word ...
It was always a part of it though ... travel times were always there and relevant, the delta quadrant was very far away, getting to the battle in time wasn't always possible, being alone when in trouble was almost always the point ... space hadn't been reduced from a final frontier to an irrelevant playground.
Well this was part of the contrivance ... once Discovery made it work why wouldn't the whole federation be running spore drives ASAP? Security wise they'd be nearly unstoppable.
Because they needed the tardigrade and then a specific person to make it work...
And Star Trek was never about human ingenuity coming together to make near-magical technology work? Stamet's DNA changes weren't recorded? They weren't studied and replicated or had the essence of their effect distilled into an interface that mimicked the physical effects?
This all seems like clutching at very untrek-like straws ... which kinda encapsulates the whole issue that some have with Discovery.
I personally don't mind the idea of a mycellial network, or more broadly, some sort of futuristic bio-physics phenomenon/technology. I just think Discovery didn't land the handling of it. I think there are plenty of possible reasons for the spore drive not being used by all of the federation that are more interesting than these "lucky, only one person got the DNA so I guess it's over now" reasons ... reasons that would actually contribute to the Sci-Fi of it all. Like, just shooting from the hip ... it has an immune system that learnt to kick out foreign starships.
The ship was erased from records, the tardigrade found by accident, genetic modifications are pretty much unacceptable to humans... Plenty of other great answers in this thread.
It's funny how people are able to suspend their disbelief for some extremely convoluted things but for something fairly simple like that? Nah, the show is just bad.
Ok, why was the ship erased from the records? Why did it have to go into the future? What was the sphere thing again? How were Discovery going into the future again ... couldn't they have just sent the important thing separately? Does Discovery going into the future and being "erased" actually prevent the problem ... which was what ... AI?!
Honestly, I don't know the answer to all of those questions. And as much as I personally liked the idea of doing Trek 900 years in the future (finally, something new in trek), I remember the plot of the backend of season 2 being just a bit too much "what? really?".
I can't break it down, like at all, but I'm personally not convinced at all that Discovery needing to be erased made much sense. Convince me otherwise, please. But also, to anyone else ... do you honestly remember why Discovery had to go into the future and be "erased" ... and even if you do ... does it feel like a good or interesting story point to you? If you answer with at least one "no", then the whole "erased" thing just isn't a good explanation or defence for why the spore drive in a prequel is somewhere between bad and awkward.
Personally, I'd go further and say the whole "erased" thing cant be anything other than contrived ... because it's simultaneously so extreme and completely necessary to handle the issue of the spore drive ... they had to do something like this and it's just too hard to not think about the writers trying to work their way out of the problem. That their reason for needing to be erased and go into the future doesn't seem to have any connection to Discovery or its spore drive, but just happens to have struck the same ship with a spore drive and no other ship, only affirms the contrivance.
Maybe I'm missing something here, it's been a while since I've season 2. But the "erased from the records" plot point might just be a part of the problem we're citing here, not a defence against.
It was to ensure there was no way for Control (which they were not certain had been eliminated) or anyone else to get hold of the sentient sphere data in their possession. I admit the episodes are a little muddled, but it seemed like the original "Perpetual Infinity" plan had been to go into the wormhole and never emerge, which isn't exactly what happened in the end.
Absolutely, I think the 32nd Century is pretty great, and the time jump was the means to that end.
Oh I’m all for the jump! Just not sure the justification for it makes much sense. Was the sphere sentient by that point?
They couldn’t just destroy Discovery? Or spore drive the ship far away?
By that point, the sphere was actively resisting attempts to tamper with it or delete or destroy it, though it doesn't appear to have developed a personality.
They tried, in "Such Sweet Sorrow" - the sphere disabled the auto-destruct and raised shields, preventing the Enterprise from firing at Discovery.
I believe they discussed this as a possibility in "Perpetual Infinity" - IIRC, their conclusion was that it was too risky to bring the sphere data anywhere, which was why their original plan was to "merge it into the river of time" (which, to me, suggests they never actually intended to leave the wormhole.
I don't personally think the climax of season 2 is very good or clearly-written, but there are explanations provided for a number of things.
I’d personally completely forgotten about the river of time stuff and the intention to never emerge. Though wasn’t there stuff also about Michael setting a beacon in the future? Also, in season 3 they seemed unsurprised at emerging in the future IIRC.
I freely admit that this probably falls under the category of "personal interpretation" - here's the exchange that makes me think that (without identifying who's speaking, because the site I found doesn't provide that info):
However, I don't think this idea is ever really acknowledged after this conversation, and like you said, Burnham seems thrilled when she arrives in the future in season 3, so maybe I'm way off.