Seriously we had an entire episode dedicated to the idea that travelling at warp 10 triggers a mutation into salamanders, and the reason for that is because salamanders are the next stage in human evolution. And even that wasn't the first or worst example of bad science in the Trek franchise. Let's not pretend space mushrooms are some kind of line that shouldn't have been crossed. Because that line was crossed very long ago.
Exactly. I have yet to encounter a reason for my the spore drive someone was the final straw that broke the bad science back of Trek. The list of bad science in Trek is great. My favorite is The Traveler who says "Thought is the basis of all reality" in Season 1 of TNG. Great scientific moment there.
Not sure. It is incredibly difficult to read and really doesn't make the argument beyond "Shrooms are weird." Again, Trek has delved in to weird stuff. It is not the bastion of hard science that often gets purported.
I mean it's a franchise where the first filmed episode was about flying to the edge of the Galaxy to get superpowers. The first aired episode was about a giant sasquatch looking thing who could change her appearance, hight, and mass at will and had suction cups for fingers to suck salt from peoples' bodies.
Both of which were really cool. I don’t have an issue with the spore drive, I have an issue that mainly it was just a tool for fan service. Taking us where we had already gone.
The wasted potential man. I mean, we have access to a drive that can be used to get anywhere instantaneously. Any point in space. Not only that, but it turns out it can also travel to any point in the multiverse - meaning alternative universes - along with any point in time (as the jump forward unexpectedly at the end of Season 1 shows). The show does not take us to Andromeda or something - which is forgivable, because I think Voyager shows us that just going somewhere new doesn't mean new stories. It doesn't explore alternate universes really, just taking us to the same tired MU we've seen over and over for fanservice. Worse still, the ability to time travel is promptly forgotten - even though it would instantaneously solve the issue at the end of Season 1, and possibly solve a lot of the issues with Seasons 2 and 3 as well.
I'd agree normally, but I think they were sentient. So, Ripper more than likely communicated to its fellow tardigrades "Hey, there's these ape-like idiots who are messing around with spores. Usually in clunky metal cans floating in space. It will seem like a good idea to go visit and check it out. But....trust me....whatever you do....DO NOT GO THERE!"
Okay. The main conceit of the franchise revolves around traveling at exceedingly faster than light speeds without any concerns of relativity while magically dissolving people into thin air, instantly teleporting them across great spatial distances.
And almost all the aliens look either identically human or nearly identical to human and everyone can communicate thanks to a universal translator which instantly translates a newly encountered language into perfectly understandable English.
They explored a fantastical concept. No different than other Treks. Some will like it and others don't.
Watch TNG Chase and Hoshi's arc on ENT. All of which is explained and physically possible with advanced technology.
Not technically travelling faster than light, but folding the area of space in front of and behind the ship, to allow it to cross a greater distance at the close to light speed that Warp allows.
So, you're defending TOS with a TNG episode made over 25 years later, and an Enterprise Storyline 35 years later? So does that mean that if we get a storyline scientifically explaining space mushrooms sometime around 2040, Disco is okay with you?