Discovery in the 32nd Century

[Lord Garth]

Here's something I was just thinking about. If all information about Discovery was blocked out in the 23rd Century, at the end of "Such Sweet Sorrow", how will whatever's left of the Federation be able to know if Discovery really is from 2257 and that it's not a fabrication?

From someone's point of view in 3188, it would make sense to be skeptical about Discovery if there are no surviving records of it.

 

[TPezz]

I was thinking that it could be something like “the legend of Discovery”. A thousand year old conspiracy theory passed down verbally through the years about a ship that disappeared and traveled to the future. And the legend became true! Like things the government attempts to keep quiet these days, if enough people know about it, despite the consequences of talking about it, they still do. I’m sure there’s a 23rd century version of Reddit

Or perhaps it was only classified for a certain period of time? Surely Starfleet and the Federation wouldn’t have destroyed every single piece of evidence of the ship ever existing?

 

[Noname Given]

Here's something I was just thinking about. If all information about Discovery was blocked out in the 23rd Century, at the end of "Such Sweet Sorrow", how will whatever's left of the Federation be able to know if Discovery really is from 2257 and that it's not a fabrication?

From someone's point of view in 3188, it would make sense to be skeptical about Discovery if there are no surviving records of it.

As long as the Discovery's computers are functional, there should be enough information there to correlate with any records they have from the 23rd century. Plus, if time travel was as easy in the 31st century as Daniel's claimed, The idea of a ship coming from the distant past into the present shouldn't be too much of a leap for denizens in the 32nd century.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I'm sure that there is still technology left in the 32nd century to scan the Discovery and determine that it really did come from 2257.

Kind of like carbon-dating (formerly) living matter which we can do today.

 

[Tuskin38]

I'm sure that there is still technology left in the 32nd century to scan the Discovery and determine that it really did come from 2257.

Kind of like carbon-dating (formerly) living matter which we can do today.

Quantum Dating is something that exists in the Star Trek Universe.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Surely Starfleet and the Federation wouldn’t have destroyed every single piece of evidence of the ship ever existing?

Actually, that seems to be exactly what Starfleet did.

To protect against the risk of Control re-emerging and trying to gain access to the sphere data, the Discovery and all evidence of it needed to be purged from the records. If Control ever reasserted itself, it had to think there was nothing at all left of the ship.

 

[Lord Garth]

I'd love it if as an in-joke they had an exchange like this...

Future Person: This ship doesn't look like it's from 2257!
Stamets: That's because it was an experimental ship.

Nudge-nudge wink-wink

 

[Nerys Myk]

Or
Future Person: This ship doesn't look like it's from 2257!
Stamets: Were you there?

 

[valkyrie013]

Sure there was an entry that there was a discovery, but was lost with all hands. But no mention of an experimental drive or how it went missing.

 

[XCV330]

Actually, that seems to be exactly what Starfleet did.

To protect against the risk of Control re-emerging and trying to gain access to the sphere data, the Discovery and all evidence of it needed to be purged from the records. If Control ever reasserted itself, it had to think there was nothing at all left of the ship.

And Starfleet wasn't going to waste a name as good as Discovery. (not counting the non-canonical pre-NX one) there was at least one Discovery doing things in the TNG era, and since that was season one, it might well have been around awhile. What we saw of starfleet in early seasons of TNG was mostly old Mirandas and Excelsiors.

 

[serabine]

Here's something I was just thinking about. If all information about Discovery was blocked out in the 23rd Century, at the end of "Such Sweet Sorrow", how will whatever's left of the Federation be able to know if Discovery really is from 2257 and that it's not a fabrication?

From someone's point of view in 3188, it would make sense to be skeptical about Discovery if there are no surviving records of it.

I wouldn't put too much thought into it. It's 950 years later, it would be ludicrous to expect to have flawless, complete records from almost a millennia ago. And even if they have a complete list of all active ships out of that point in time, the Discovery and the Glenn would both be on it. They were ships with a high security ... "rating"(?), meaning they contained a lot of classified technology beyond just the spore drive. But people knew about the ship. Because they had family on it, because they at some point transferred from or to it, because they build it or repaired it, because they interacted with it during it's run, or because they know about the commendation the crew got after the war.

The Federation isn't pretending they never existed, they are just trying to have the knowledge of it, or to be precise the knowledge of the spore drive and the dimension hopping and time travel shenanigans, fade into obscurity. No one who knows about the Discovery's mission in detail (all high ranking officers or former crew men with the security clearance to know what all that was about) will reference or mention the ship to other people, even those who technically also have the necessary clearance.

Like removing referrals/links to more classified data about the Discovery from the official, public records. Like avoiding to mention any of Stamets' and Straal's research even if it might be pertinent to whatever research project is currently on their desk. Hell, maybe like removing the files about Discovery's research, or even deleting them (or just removing the metadata like the registry entry or tags, so they can't be found in database searches). The goal is that when the people who knew are dead and gone they take their knowledge with them and the official record is the only record.

 

[Dukhat]

I'd love it if as an in-joke they had an exchange like this...

Future Person: This ship doesn't look like it's from 2257!
Stamets: That's because it was an experimental ship.

Nudge-nudge wink-wink

Actually, it would go more like this:

Future person: This ship doesn’t look like it’s from 2257!

Stamets: I don’t know what you’re talking about. The ship looks fine to me; I don’t know anything different.

Future person: Oh, wait a minute. Where you’re from, do the women wear beehive hairdos and the Klingons look like humans with oily skin?

Stamets: Er, no. What are you talking about?

Future person: Sorry, I got my universes mixed up.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Actually, it would go more like this:

Future person: This ship doesn’t look like it’s from 2257!

Stamets: I don’t know what you’re talking about. The ship looks fine to me; I don’t know anything different.

Future person: Oh, wait a minute. Where you’re from, do the women wear beehive hairdos and the Klingons look like humans with oily skin?

Stamets: Er, no. What are you talking about?

Future person: Sorry, I gotta stop with Holo-fic.

 

[The Wormhole]

I'm going to assume records in the 32nd century are somewhat fragmentary with gaps large enough that one starship appearing that no one's heard of won't itself be a red flag.

Spoiler: speculation laced with real info

Although, another possibility related to the recently released novel Die Standing, in which the author implies in his acknowledgments does include information from the third season. In the novel, set just before the second season, Georgiou teams up with the current Dax host. If the Trill character introduced in the third season is indeed the new Dax host, it's possible they will recognize Georgiou.

 

[Deks]

I'm going to assume records in the 32nd century are somewhat fragmentary with gaps large enough that one starship appearing that no one's heard of won't itself be a red flag.

Why would data from the 23rd century be fragmentary in the 32nd?
This makes no sense to me.
The Federation is comprised of over 150 different alien species working together by the late 24th century... there's bound to be massive redundancy when it comes to data storage... not only would every Federation/Starfleet ship have this information, but all planets, starbases etc.

Spoiler: speculation laced with real info

Although, another possibility related to the recently released novel Die Standing, in which the author implies in his acknowledgments does include information from the third season. In the novel, set just before the second season, Georgiou teams up with the current Dax host. If the Trill character introduced in the third season is indeed the new Dax host, it's possible they will recognize Georgiou.

Novels aren't usually considered canon.
Besides, there are different ways to 'authenticate' the Discovery as being from the 32nd century.
Since we have evidence that the UFP has been sending historians from the 26th century into the past, we also know there's a Temporal Committee in the 29th century...
Daniels come from 31st century...

All this temporal technology is bound to give people the ability to verify the Disco is from the 23rd century... such as tachyon signature, quantum dating, residue of passing through a quantum singularity in the hull, etc.

 

[The Wormhole]

Why would data from the 23rd century be fragmentary in the 32nd?
This makes no sense to me.

Probably as a by-product of "The Burn."

Novels aren't usually considered canon.

I know that, and I wasn't suggesting otherwise. However, the Disco novels are written in coordination with the show's writing staff, and since the author even notes that elements of the novel are connected to season 3's storyline, of which we know Trills will be a part of, it stands to reason the choice to include a Dax host in the novel is very deliberate choice and is the connection to the third season mentioned in the acknowledgements. Indeed, the author was actually asked directly about this in a podcast released in tandem with the novel's release, and in response he just gave a cagey and evasive non-answer, which could suggest this is indeed the case.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Data from the 20th Century was fragmentary in 23rd Century in TOS.

 

[Hawku]

I just wanted in on this.

Future person: "Your ship doesn’t look like it’s from 2257!"
Stamets: "We have a Doctor's note."
Future person: "That checks out."

 

[Timo]

Besides, there are different ways to 'authenticate' the Discovery as being from the 32nd century. Since we have evidence that the UFP has been sending historians from the 26th century into the past, we also know there's a Temporal Committee in the 29th century... Daniels come from 31st century... All this temporal technology is bound to give people the ability to verify the Disco is from the 23rd century... such as tachyon signature, quantum dating, residue of passing through a quantum singularity in the hull, etc.

Well, we could always speculate that the Burn deprived the 32nd century of those technologies.

Data from the 20th Century was fragmentary in 23rd Century in TOS.

It would be interesting to learn what Spock meant with that exactly. Were the shipping records incomplete and this could have explained why no Botany Bay could be traced? If so, was this because something happened to the records, or simply because folks back then didn't keep records that would have been up to Spock's standards? If the latter, then people from the 32nd would expect sufficiently high standards from the 23rd that there could be no repeat of the failure.

If the former, what caused the damage to the records? WWIII didn't stop Picard from enjoying the complete works on Dixon Hill, say. But did WWIII erase all traces of Lew Archer or Mike Hammer when the libraries burned, and Dixon Hill is a random survivor?

The Burn could of course be a million times worse than WWIII (or whatever the putative calamity that befell the 1990s records). But this would probably make folks more accepting of the Discovery story, not less: "Anything could have happened back then" would be the default assumption, especially if the survivors believe in a great past, a golden age lost in the calamity.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Deks]

Probably as a by-product of "The Burn."

Possible, but unlikely.
In the case of 20th century files being somewhat fragmentary in the 23rd century for example, Earth went through various conflicts and wars (most notably WWIII which was the biggest conflict).
WWIII likely may have damaged some records as redundancy wouldn't at all be as widespread on a planetary level at that time (aka, different nations not working together).

However, when the Federation was founded, data redundancy would be ridiculously huge.
You wouldn't be storing this info on 1 planet (such as Earth)... data would be stored in databases across the Federation...
A single starship can easily contain the ENTIRE Federation database... that's practically all collective knowledge of ALL UFP species in a single computer core onboard 1 ship.

Stalfeet had 7000 ships in active service by the 23rd century... this number was likely bigger by the 24th century and so on and so on.
Then you have member species planets which would ALL have copies of Federation database across a planet in multiple locations... (over 150 different Alien species are part of the Federation by the late 24th century).
Then you have to factor in colonies in existing star systems (SOL, Tellar, Vulcan, Andoria) on asteroids, moons and planets.

Different colonies throughout Federation space...
Its unlikely that everyone would be constantly connecting to a central database across large distances.
Sure, we've seen that there is such a thing as 'central archives' on Qo'nos in the mid-late 24th century... but we're talking about stuff from the 32 century.

Admittedly, we don't know exactly what 'The Burn' is/was, however, I find it unlikely that even major wars throughout UFP history (such as the Dominion War) would cause data fragmentation because it didn't really affect large number of planetary bodies or colonies... in fact, the data lost would be from starships that were lost in battle... but on a large scale, this is minor, and all of the data pertaining to the war, or files BEFORE the war or immediately after it were left intact.

For Starfleet that has backups for backups in the 24th century, it would be kinda surprising (ludicrous even) that 0 data on Discovery exists by the 32nd century... or that data about the 23rd century is fragmentary by that point.