How advanced is Federation or V'Draysh tech in the 32nd or 33rd century, depending where Discovery ends up in Season 3? What are the Starships like and what technology do they have aboard? What about the planets like Earth, Vulcan, Andor or Q'onoS? Let's go with the there is no downfall of the Federation but it may have become very different to the one we know from the 23rd and 24th century.
Look at Captain Braxton's Shuttle from the 29th Century, it had enough power to fight / take out Voyager 1 on 1 if it wasn't for some Technical Ingenuity / Trickiness that saved Voyager. Just imagine how powerful their StarShips have become and they've mastered Time Travel.
It seems notable that we didn't see anything of Discovery after the time jump, aside from the signal. They might have accidentally jumped to the far past or anything, depending on what the writers feel like. They might make it back to their own time in an episode or two if they want to write them interacting with Enterprise characters again. Just because the producers are playing up the intended time jump doesn't mean they are tied to it. In any case, my guess is tech is going to have devolved if they do end up in the future, mainly because they aimed for the Discovery herself and its production style to be as futuristic as they can imagine. So to avoid the far future looking too similar to the not as far future, they'll do something else entirely.
My bet is that they not only time jumped to the future, but also a parallel universe like "Sliders" that is run by CONTROL and they have to help the resistence.
I'm not convinced the environment in the Xth century ought to be drastically different from the environment in the Yth century. There has been humanoid life roaming the galaxy for four billion years. One century shouldn't differ much from the other. Some civilizations will get new gizmoes, new ones will emerge with primitive tech, and some folks will bow out and become noncorporeal or otherwise nonexistent... We haven't learned of anything radically different in the 30th century or thereabouts yet, techwise. If anything, DSC and ENT show that great tech miracles can be part and parcel of primitive starflight, without much affecting politics or economy. Timo Saloniemi
Take a page from B5 and have it that advanced civilisation has collapsed and they've all reverted to a pre-industrial society
We know they have Tardis tech by then from Enterprise. Using pockets of sub space to make their ships bigger on the inside than out. They can also travel anywhere and any when instantly.
But something like jumping to the past would kill a lot of excitement when a lot of people, me included, were waiting for a new show set in the future of the star trek universe for a long time. And it would make the producers appear dishonest. I guess they would cause a lot of anger and disappointment with such a move...
If we look back at what was introduced before about the future like what we saw about the 29th century timeships and crewman Daniels 31st century tech, i guess without a downfall scenario the tech might got even more advanced. Even if a downfall scenario happened, the tech might still be better than anything from the 23rd and 24th century. Depending on what exactly was the cause for this.
I don't think downfall is a likely, necessary or even sufficient explanationbfor technology plateauing. The question goes, if tech could be better, why isn't it? And the answer can't be "time", because achievements a thousand years in the future of mankind are a thousand years in the past of somebody else, and a million years in the past of somebody else again. Rather, the answer ought to be distance. Before warp, Earth could plausibly lack transporters, shields, phasers, tractor beams and the like. After warp, interstellar contact should kick in a plateau phase where Earth shares everything with the neighborhood, or dies of the failure to do so. Theoretically, more advanced gadgetry and knowledge may lurk beyond the immediate neighborhood, and the next plateau phase thus requires an advance in propulsion tech. But we observe galaxy-wide propulsion in many near-future scenarion for the UFP. By the 30-somethingeth century, Earth may well again have run out of advances to steal from its betters, and the only way forward is going intergalactic. Of course, there already are folks who go beyond provincial in the 23rd century, yet their benefits do not yet touch Earth. So a Prime Directive of some sort probably applies, forcing Earth (the UFP, etc) to invent ever-better propulsion all by itself in order to make contact with the betters. But better propulsion is already suggested (and is inherent in DSC!), so the potential for the plateay is certainly there, too. Timo Saloniemi
Just pointing out that an “elephant in the room” is something staring us in the face that arguably we’ve completely missed, which is hardly the case for 2257/8 + 930 = 3187/8. (One candidate might be the need to reimagine all the other Enterprises to make them line up nicely with DSC’s version at 442 meters, unless the DSC version is never going to participate in charts like that.)