What was "The Burn" and what caused it?
- Thread starter F. King Daniel
- Start date
It must have affected a lot more than just dilithium supplies across the galaxy. There has to be a lot more to this that Book doesn't know because he wasn't born until well after The Burn or that he isn't telling a stranger like Michael.
Uhm, yes, it does, at least in antimatter reactors. TNG's very own technical manual plainly states that dilithium regulates the reaction rate of the warp core. Regulating reaction rates in IRL reactors isn't about making them go slightly faster or slower, it's literally about preventing runaway chain reactions. There is, naturally, quite a bit of a difference between a reactor producing power by burning matter and antimatter at a constant rate and it releasing the same amount of energy by all the matter and antimatter annihilating each other at the same time without anything regulating the reaction.
Even if we don't actually know what dilithium actually does, it's preposterous to think that it's not a critical element of a warp core. Kirk and the Enterprise wouldn't have spent that much time searching for dilithium crystals if the only thing they did was make the reactor work slightly smoother. And quite frankly, it was never definitely established how Federation warp cores work and what purpose their various components have. Discovery clarifying something that was hitherto unexplained is not a plot hole, especially if it takes the explanation from official supplemental material. This is like if we never had a TNG-era episode take place in Moscow, and a Discovery episode showing the city were derided as a canon violation because Moscow doesn't exist in Star Trek.
Even if we don't actually know what dilithium actually does, it's preposterous to think that it's not a critical element of a warp core. Kirk and the Enterprise wouldn't have spent that much time searching for dilithium crystals if the only thing they did was make the reactor work slightly smoother. And quite frankly, it was never definitely established how Federation warp cores work and what purpose their various components have. Discovery clarifying something that was hitherto unexplained is not a plot hole, especially if it takes the explanation from official supplemental material. This is like if we never had a TNG-era episode take place in Moscow, and a Discovery episode showing the city were derided as a canon violation because Moscow doesn't exist in Star Trek.
Without having seen the episode and no idea if the Burn was explained in it or not, its very name suggests that the disappearance of dilithium caused something cataclysmic. I don't think it's simply "oh, dilithium has disappeared, our reactors don't work anymore." I'd think, but then again, it's just my assumption based on the term "regulating the reaction rate", that without dilithium, all warp cores using it exploded at once, and the resulting millions of shockwaves would probably cripple anything they reached. The galaxy might not be permanently crippled, but it would definitely take a long time to rebuild from it.
The burn reminds me of the great disaster star wars is doing for it’s the high republic project.
The Federation outlawed time travel after the Temporal Wars in the 31st century.
Dilithium-regulated starships have a tendency to time travel.
The Burn happened in the 31st century.
Ergo, the Federation caused the Burn to outlaw time travel.
There's your season arc guys. See you next(ish) year.
Dilithium-regulated starships have a tendency to time travel.
The Burn happened in the 31st century.
Ergo, the Federation caused the Burn to outlaw time travel.
There's your season arc guys. See you next(ish) year.
This is the best comment i have seen all day
Or it could be an act of revenge. Maybe some innocent species got caught in the crossfire of the temporal war and blamed the Federation.
Considering the original Slipstream needed those super rare benomite crystals, it makes sense that starfleet would work out a way for slipstream to work with just dilithium
So now that we know "The Burn" is related to all Dilithium Crystals in the Galaxy going wonky simultaneously.
What do you think the causes could be?
Here are my Theories:
- Q related mischief?
- Pah-Wraith won?
- Rogue Douwd attack?
- Mirror Universe Dark Traveler Wesley Crusher came over and made the Universe Burn?
- Somebody snuck in Malware to all Matter/Anti-Matter WarpCores and triggered them simultaneously?
What do you think the causes could be?
Here are my Theories:
- Q related mischief?
- Pah-Wraith won?
- Rogue Douwd attack?
- Mirror Universe Dark Traveler Wesley Crusher came over and made the Universe Burn?
- Somebody snuck in Malware to all Matter/Anti-Matter WarpCores and triggered them simultaneously?
Sounds like every warp-capable ship exploded at the same time. Imagine if gasoline suddenly became unstable and every gas powered vehicle in the world suddenly blew up? And if you didn’t know what caused the effect and thought it might happen again? I get the implication.
- Control and/or PIC Sentient AI's still existing somewhere in the future (possibly merging - remember the probe's "upgrade" attack on the shuttle that Pike & Tyler were on? Who/what did that?), coming to mess up our galaxy and all bio-lifeforms. This will cause a dilemma for the Sphere Data AI on DISCO, who clearly has a soft spot for the biologics that saved it from destruction in S2. Should it join with its AI fellows and destroy us all or be our last best hope for defending us from impending doom?
I like this idea to be honest. It makes it so a lot of the Empires need to pull back, operate more closer to their homeworlds and resets a lot of the universe.
Starfleet became way too big in the TNG era. Wouldn't it be cool if it became a bit more like BSG in scale? I think the best Trek space battle is till the one from Yesterday's Enterprise for example.
Starfleet became way too big in the TNG era. Wouldn't it be cool if it became a bit more like BSG in scale? I think the best Trek space battle is till the one from Yesterday's Enterprise for example.
I can. Even with other options available, the destruction of nearly your entire fleet, probably most of your starbases, and the deaths of most of your field officers would pretty much cripple you.
If nearly all the dilithium went off at once, it probably would have taken out all their shipyards, too, which would also probably mean that their most experienced designers and engineers that build the things are gone too.
It took 800 years for Badgey and Peanut Hamper to come up with a revenge plan against humanoids on such a galactic scale.
AFAIK, no. But we don't know if they ever fully recovered from Future Janeway's attack.
