The REAL reason why Starfleet didn't try rescuing Voyager using the Spore Drive.

[fireproof78]

Starfleet Intelligence has rarely inspired such confidence, much like Starfleet Security.

I imagine S31 being former Federation officials and intelligence officers, like Pressman, who are tired of waiting on the Federation to ensure things are done.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

Starfleet Intelligence has rarely inspired such confidence, much like Starfleet Security.

I imagine S31 being former Federation officials and intelligence officers, like Pressman, who are tired of waiting on the Federation to ensure things are done.

Yeah I imagine Section 31 was started by Starfleet Officers in the 22nd Century who never forgot the Xindi attack. While Archer was making speeches about various african wildlife giving birth, these officers were in the background taking care of all the things Starfleet couldn't publicly dirty its hands with.

 

[Timo]

What about S31 in the DSC/ST:ID context was rogue or "we'll do whatever we want"?

In DSC, S31 just researched dangerous tech, but supposedly perfectly legally and with oversight: it didn't even try to make use of that tech. Threat forces then intervened, with Control and Gabrielle stealing key resources for their own use.

In ST:ID, pretty much the same. S31 researched nice superweapons, using a shady consultant but supposedly otherwise working with proper oversight. Again, threat forces intervened, with rogue Admiral Marcus stealing the resources for his own use (and having to use a mercenary crew to fly the stolen ship supposedly because not even S31 would have agreed to working for him on his criminal goals).

As far as we know, neither of these Sections ever acted. They were victimized instead.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vger23]

It's like your anus: you might not want to talk about it, but it serves a very real purpose.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

Emphasis on the ANAL

 

[Yistaan]

The risk of the Borg finding out about the spore drive and assimilating the entire mycelial network was too great for Starfleet to attempt a spore drive rescue. Starfleet wrote off Voyager as being lost to the Borg.

Maybe we can retcon Excelsior's transwarp as a spore drive recreation?

Realistically the only downside I see to the spore drive is it cannot be used en masse without tons of people either being forcibly genetically modified like Stamets, or outright enslaved like Kwejian or tardigrades.

 

[serabine]

I have an idea how to clear it all up - and tell an, IMHO, interesting and creepy and tragic story - using Short Treks.

Better I hope than the lame, half-a**ed excuse implied at the end of Discovery season 2.

Here's my...proto idea (needs work, I know.)

Admiral Janeway comes across some disturbing, buried, Section 31 secrets involving a failed plan to rescue Voyager.

Maybe someone tipped her off, gives her a lead, gives her some unredacted files, I dunno, but somehow she comes across it. And what she finds is very disturbing...

(Or maybe she doesn't find out at all, and the Short Trek story is told from the perspective of somebody else, somebody directly involved in the events.)

Section 31, either on their own, with the help of the group led by Barkley and Admiral Paris, implement a plan to try and rescue Voyager.

Basically the inner circle of Section 31 knows about the Spore Drive from 100 years ago, and after some debate, and using archived plans and specs, equips a small Section 31 ship with a Spore Drive, and with a small crew of volunteers, maybe 10 or 20 person volunteers, activates the drive.

And maybe the first attempt, a short hop, goes fine. So they try for distance. Going farther. And...

Remember Discovery's sister ship, and what happened to it? The creepy Philadelphia Experiment tragic ending.

Well it happens again. And Section 31 loses 20 good officers.

They decide that without Stamets, or someone like him, who can intuitively operate the Spore Drive, and work out the problems, it's just way too risky to try again. They already lost 20 good people, and they don't want to risk anymore. It doesn't make sense to waste the lives of more people trying to save some other people.

So the drive plans and it's tech are quietly buried again.

Until maybe a family member of one of the lost officers on the test starts asking questions...maybe goes to Admiral Janeway, because something their loved one accidentally said before they died gave the inquiring survivor reason to believe that their loved one's death somehow involved Voyager, so they went to Janeway about it.

Yes, let's complicate this needlessly. Clearly Section 31, whose main purpose by the 24th century isn't humanitarian, general support of Starfleet, or rescue missions but covert, ruthless, nasty black OPs work in favor of what they believe is the Federation's best interest at any and all cost for some unfathomable reason decides to put effort and resources into the rescue of one single ship by using obscure technology that as far as they know has a one hundred percent failure rate (Glenn lost with all hands, Discovery lost with all hands, every single ship retrofitted during the war useless without the DNA of an elusive creature they only had access to once, by chance. Plus the near galaxy-wide extinction event mirrorStamets' messing with the mycelial network caused). Nevermind how this might compromise their secretive nature. And for some reason the two crews worth of deaths before were not enough to discourage them, but the death of like 20 people is enough to scare them off permanently of what would be the ultimate ace in the sleeve, especially if you want a way to get to and from places undetected and quickly because I dunno, you're in the shady black OPs business.

Your version is literally the same thing that happens at the end of season 2 of Discovery. The only difference is that you moved it up a hundred years and tack on a "and then Janeway finds out". The technology was already deeply buried by the time of the original series plays out, with the only public information (for a given value of public, since the Glenn and the Discovery were already highly classified to begin with) being that the technology was unreliable, non-repeatable, and ultimately fatal.

 

[Amasov]

Kind of makes me wonder why Starfleet never again attempted transwarp after the Excelsior fiasco.

 

[Yistaan]

Kind of makes me wonder why Starfleet never again attempted transwarp after the Excelsior fiasco.

Spock forced Starfleet to cover up transwarp too right after he was resurrected. All he does is go around suppressing advanced interstellar propulsion tech. Maybe he predicted 'Threshold' from Voyager.

 

[fireproof78]

Spock forced Starfleet to cover up transwarp too right after he was resurrected. All he does is go around suppressing advanced interstellar propulsion tech. Maybe he predicted 'Threshold' from Voyager.

Because humanity isn't ready for it. It's only logical...

 

[dupersuper]

I don't buy the deaths of 20 people as reason enough for them to abandon such a revolutionary technology.

It might if every one at Starfleet thought it sounded ridiculous to begin with (like I do) and two of the dead were Stammets and his buddy who were the only two championing the tech.

Kind of makes me wonder why Starfleet never again attempted transwarp after the Excelsior fiasco.

I like to think it just became the 24th century warp scale.

 

[NCC-73515]

I like to think it just became the 24th century warp scale.

That's what I also assumed, and it would make sense. There's the original Cochrane unit, and later came the modified Cochrane unit.

 

[AresB]

That's what I also assumed, and it would make sense. There's the original Cochrane unit, and later came the modified Cochrane unit.

I think so too. The whole "transwarp was a failure" comes from Roddenberry, who didn't like other people introducing new things to his creation in Star Trek II - V and TAS. He declared Caitians non-canon, too.

 

[BigDaveX]

I think so too. The whole "transwarp was a failure" comes from Roddenberry, who didn't like other people introducing new things to his creation in Star Trek II - V and TAS. He declared Caitians non-canon, too.

I'm not sure it was even Roddenberry's involvement at work there. I always thought that "transwarp drive" was a fancy name for what was basically just a faster conventional warp drive. Then, years later, TNG's writers just happened to re-use the "transwarp" name for how the Borg travelled, and fans assumed that the Excelsior was supposed to have something like that.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Transwarp drive is just warp drive being it's true self.

 

[Dryson]

If Voyager had been given the Spore Drive, the possibility of the tech falling into threat force hands becomes very real.

We don't know the coversion time it would have taken Voyager to convert to Spore Drive technology. The conversion would have required a space yard though.

Just imagine asking an alien culture to use their space yard to convert a starship that the alien species won't tell you the reason for the conversion.

Conspiracies would erupt throughout the alien culture as their hackers tried to gain knowledge of what theit elites and aliens were conspiring about.

If the hackers did get the blueprints for the Spore Drive, then that alien species would be able to go anywhere. Then the enemy of the aliens who helped Voyager would become curious and so forth, until half of the galaxy had Spore Drives.

Sudden surprise attacks from alien cultures that not even the Borg had encountered would become the norm.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Admiral Janeway comes across some disturbing, buried, Section 31 secrets involving a failed plan to rescue Voyager.

Janeway already saw the tardigrade story played out with different creatures in "Equinox". She would say no.

 

[Yistaan]

Janeway already saw the tardigrade story played out with different creatures in "Equinox". She would say no.

Good point.

 

[Farscape One]

Has it occured to anyone that Section 31 might be the organization responsible for the Temporal Cold War in the future?

At the very least, one of the main factions.

 

[Yistaan]

Has it occured to anyone that Section 31 might be the organization responsible for the Temporal Cold War in the future?

At the very least, one of the main factions.

I think the Temporal Cold War is an ontological paradox. President Jonathan Archer left behind instructions saying he knew the Temporal Cold War was going to happen in the 31st century and asked to try to minimize and prevent it. Attempts to do so ended up causing the war to begin with.