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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.
It could have been solved if they just decided that the mycelium network got destroyed. They could have had Control release a weapon that destroyed it or something. I agree, “never talk about this” doesn’t make sense when science progresses and someone else could have easily discovered it. And I’m guessing there were plenty of spies from Romulus and other such places that became aware of at least the basics of the spore drive.
I like Discovery a lot, but it was handled badly.
Honestly, I liked it much more than I thought, given what I saw on YouTube before watching the entire season, especially the klingon battles. After season 1 it gets much better, which seems to be a recurring theme in Trek shows, but for a very different reason herr.
Altought I really don’t like most character (especially Burhnam) and I find most of the representation of seasoned officers overly dramatic and silly (looking at you Tilly), most of the themes are well treated and some episodes were particularly good (I enjoyed the mirror episodes more than I could think possible given the first episodes).
Sometimes it feels a very generic scifi show and it doesn’t get me too attached, but it’s a decent enough show to keep watching.
I never have high expectations for a sci-fi show’s first season, because most of them are still finding their footing, which is harder to do with sci-fi and its dramatic plots than it is with a sitcom. So while I agree, Discovery got a lot stronger after season 1, I let a lot of stuff in season 1 slide. I just wish they had found better resolutions to things in season 1 in later seasons.
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.
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.
Pssssh, I bet these people don’t even realize that reversing the quantum polarity in the nacelles is absolutely a hard science solution to whatever problem the enterprise faces.
(Please don’t verbally hit me for that sentence.)
It’s a perfectly cromulent sentence.
I’m anaspeptic, frasmotic, even compunctious to have caused you such pericombobulation.
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.
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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.
a single ship having it
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.
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.
do you honestly remember why Discovery had to go into the future and be “erased"
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.
and even if you do … does it feel like a good or interesting story point to you?
Absolutely, I think the 32nd Century is pretty great, and the time jump was the means to that end.
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Q did it? Seems fine
I think the big difference is that this is Federation science, not super-being using their superpowers. I like Discovery, as you know, but I think they could have done a lot to handle the idea that no one else has ever used the mycelial network again, not even 900 years in the future, better. I think they could, at the very least, have come up with an explanation for why no other non-Federation empire- not the Klingons or the Romulans or the Cardassians or the Borg or anyone else- ever made the same discovery despite being at basically the same technological level or, in the case of the Borg, at an even higher level. They didn’t, but I think they should have. Maybe they will in the new season, but I have a feeling they won’t. It by no means ruins Discovery for me, but it could have been handled better.
Discovery, in a way, seems to take place in its own universe. All the other new series seem to ignore the Discovery Klingon look, for instance. In Picard, Worf looked like Worf. In SNW, Klingons in the musical episode looked like TNG Klingons.
I realize it would create continuity problems, especially with Pike, but it wouldn’t kill me if they decided by the end of the show that it took place in an alternate universe like the Kelvin movies did.
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I just think expecting it to never be discovered again over 900 years is a little hard to buy. Sure, not having it by TNG works for me, but the fact that this whole mycelial network crosses the galaxy and multiple universes and was never discovered again, even almost a millennium later… I don’t know.
A good example- we have no idea what ‘Greek Fire,’ a secret military technology used by the Byzantines actually was, but we have many ways to recreate what it did through rediscovery of technology.
That said, I realize it’s just a TV show. I take your point about it being in the Prime timeline. I just wish there was more reconciliation with the rest of it, like why the Klingons look totally different in Discovery than in SNW and Picard. You can just dismiss that as being the same as the Klingons looking different between TOS and TNG with no explanation (unless you accept the explanation in Enterprise that many people hate), but I still would have appreciated an explanation. For example, I saw it suggested that the Klingon empire was actually more diverse than it seemed and various ‘types’ of Klingons were in power at various times. So in the TOS era, the “human” Klingons were in charge, in Discovery, the Discovery Klingons were in charge, and in TNG, the TNG Klingons were in charge.
So the “impossibility” of the spore drive doesn’t bother me. I just have a hard time with the idea that it was never rediscovered by someone else over many centuries. One solution would have been that everyone was using the spore drive in the future until the planet that the Kaminar guy was on made it impossible instead. It could even have ended differently with the mycelial network becoming unusable, even destroyed, and them having to go back to, maybe even re-engineer ships with warp drive technology. I also suggested above that they could have had Control use a weapon that destroyed the network and it took 900 years to heal. I can just see so many ways around the problem that they could have used but didn’t. I don’t want to suggest I’m a better writer than they are or anything, Discovery has had some episodes with exceptional writing, I just think this particular story element was handled badly in this specific case.
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.
Logic Extremists
I wouldn’t say they’re exactly logical…
Dilithium=crack rock
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