"Living Witness" and The Burn

[Lord Garth]

I was watching "Living Witness" the other day and it just occurred to me how it fits with Discovery. If a backup of The Doctor was left behind on Kyria in 2374 and was reactivated around 3074, then he would've been reactivated after The Burn happened. The Burn was about 120 years before DSC Season 3 (3188), so around 3068. You can fudge the years in the 31st Century a little, but I'm going to go with The Doctor arriving after The Burn.

From what I remember of "That Hope Is You, Part I", subspace relays were either out or had extremely limited range. Contact between Federation worlds was cut off.

The Doctor would have no way of knowing if the Federation was still around because he wouldn't be able to contact them. Which means that even if the Federation, or at least Starfleet, extended into the Delta Quadrant, he'd have no way of knowing.

The only two things I can't piece together are:
1. Why were Kyrian and Vaskan ships not effected by The Burn? (Besides the obvious: "Discovery wasn't written yet!")
2. Wouldn't the Kyrians and the Vaskans know more about the Federation in this time? Why not, if not?

"... But to Connect" establishes that the Federation has travelled to all four quadrants and they're within easy reach for those with the resources to move about.

 

[Deks]

Its possible the Vaskans and the Kyrians lived in relative/fragile 'peace' up until the Doctor's reactivation - which was of course shattered after the facts from 2374 emerged.

Its been a while since I've seen the episode, but from the transcript, the Kyrians were a neighbouring species of the Vaskans... this would imply that they either both evolved in the same star system, or neighbouring star systems which weren't that far apart.

Its also possible they moved past the need for dilithium and M/AM in the 700 years after their contact with VOY - which would insulate them from the Burn.
That, or they haven't had many/any ships with active warp cores at the time the Burn occurred - so its possible their interstellar activity was fairly low.

Since nothing of the kind was mentioned in Living Witness (for obvious reasons), its possible that even if they still used Dilithium, they may have had only a few ships at Warp or with active Warp cores... who knows. So, the loss of one or two ships wouldn't have warranted their attention and they just may not have been aware of how widespread the Burn was... in essence, neither stroke me as if they moved that much beyond their two planets or star systems (or same star system).

""... But to Connect" establishes that the Federation has travelled to all four quadrants and that they're within easy reach of for those with the resources to move about."

The ending of S4 implies that it would have taken Disco decades to get back to their own home after burning out the Spore Drive (aka, same thing that happened to VOY)...
But the star system they went to investigate beyond the Great Barrier was only 2 LY's away from the Hyperfield (which encompassed a star system 10-C moved to) - both star systems seemed to be within 9 Ly's of the Milky Way great barrier.
Disco took about a day to cross 9Ly's to reach the barrier so that's roughly a speed of 3285 times C.

Plus, the starship Tikhov was months away from SF HQ in S3, and the whole thing kinda depended on Disco's spore drive capability to deploy instantly - sure you can't beat 'instant', but lets be fair, if any appreciable advances were made which allowed SF ships to traverse say 10 000 ly's per day (which would have been a realistic expectation by the 25th century), then it would have taken them days to traverse huge distances.
The line 'months' away implies much lower speeds and something akin to 2370-ies era level of Warp speed.

While the UFP travelled to all 4 quadrants, I doubt they are within easy reach... or they are and Disco's and Tikhov's Warp drives are just pitiful.

 

[Discovery McDiscoveryFace]

Its possible the Vaskans and the Kyrians lived in relative/fragile 'peace' up until the Doctor's reactivation - which was of course shattered after the facts from 2374 emerged.

Its been a while since I've seen the episode, but from the transcript, the Kyrians were a neighbouring species of the Vaskans... this would imply that they either both evolved in the same star system, or neighbouring star systems which weren't that far apart.

Its also possible they moved past the need for dilithium and M/AM in the 700 years after their contact with VOY - which would insulate them from the Burn.
That, or they haven't had many/any ships with active warp cores at the time the Burn occurred - so its possible their interstellar activity was fairly low.

Since nothing of the kind was mentioned in Living Witness (for obvious reasons), its possible that even if they still used Dilithium, they may have had only a few ships at Warp or with active Warp cores... who knows. So, the loss of one or two ships wouldn't have warranted their attention and they just may not have been aware of how widespread the Burn was... in essence, neither stroke me as if they moved that much beyond their two planets or star systems (or same star system).



The ending of S4 implies that it would have taken Disco decades to get back to their own home after burning out the Spore Drive (aka, same thing that happened to VOY)...
But the star system they went to investigate beyond the Great Barrier was only 2 LY's away from the Hyperfield (which encompassed a star system 10-C moved to) - both star systems seemed to be within 9 Ly's of the Milky Way great barrier.
Disco took about a day to cross 9Ly's to reach the barrier so that's roughly a speed of 3285 times C.

Plus, the starship Tikhov was months away from SF HQ in S3, and the whole thing kinda depended on Disco's spore drive capability to deploy instantly - sure you can't beat 'instant', but lets be fair, if any appreciable advances were made which allowed SF ships to traverse say 10 000 ly's per day (which would have been a realistic expectation by the 25th century), then it would have taken them days to traverse huge distances.
The line 'months' away implies much lower speeds and something akin to 2370-ies era level of Warp speed.

While the UFP travelled to all 4 quadrants, I doubt they are within easy reach... or they are and Disco's and Tikhov's Warp drives are just pitiful.

Is the Tikhov not an old ship and thus maybe slow? It's not totally clear from MA but it does have a -M designation which suggests a new Tikhove gets built - or is it still the original and gets upgraded.... ish.... every 80 years or so and then gets a new letter.....

 

[Deks]

Is the Tikhov not an old ship and thus maybe slow? It's not totally clear from MA but it does have a -M designation which suggests a new Tikhove gets built - or is it still the original and gets upgraded.... ish.... every 80 years or so and then gets a new letter.....

The Tikhov may be old, but that doesn't matter if SF was upgrading it in the 930 years since Disco left. Even if the underlying matter was from the original Tikhov, major refit cycles would have recycled the matter into brand new materials, structural enhancements, systems, hw etc... essentially, it would be a 'brand new ship' with every major refit cycle (because at some point even the frame would be 'refreshed' - so 'old' would become 'brand new' - you can easily make the ship run indefinitely like that - and yes, it would become virtually unrecognizeable after sufficient time as the design itself would likely undergo changes to keep it modernized.

SF's every ship in the fleet in the 32nd century was essentially 125 odd years old more or less - or at the very least, it was implied that because they haven't had a 'real spacedock', making new ships wasn't doable (but that doesn't make much sense and doesn't matter in the context of even just replicators+transporters, and especially programmable matter - the Terrans in the Mirror Universe were able to construct the USS Defiant at one of Terrok Nor's docking ports after all - SF could have easily done the same, and there were 38 member planets left when Disco arrived).

One possible explanation behind the Tikhov being 5 months away could have been because UFP didn't know what caused the Burn, so ships may have been instructed to travel at lower Warp speeds, but given the medical emergency I would imagine these restrictions would have been rescinded (similar to how ships were mainly limited to Warp 5 except in cases of emergency).

Though in S4, it seems a lot of representatives from different parts of the Galaxy were able to travel to UFP HQ - though some were there in holo form... so there's that.

Either way, it doesn't bode well for Warp speed if you ask me. Most places would have still been far away even without the Burn and if the limitation of Warp drive persisted (Aka, it wasn't improved since the 24th century).

 

[Discovery McDiscoveryFace]

This ties in to a brainworm I have had for a while for a new 32nd century series. I realise we were led to believe that Discovery was jumping here there and everywhere to deliver Dilithium after series 3. I would love to have seen either Discovery feature more of the reconnecting to the lost Federation worlds, or maybe another ship tasked with reforging the links and bringing OG Official Federation order to the various spin-offs that sprung up after subspace was lost. My idea would be a titular ship, and series, called Endeavour.

The Tikhov may be old, but that doesn't matter if SF was upgrading it in the 930 years since Disco left. Even if the underlying matter was from the original Tikhov, major refit cycles would have recycled the matter into brand new materials, structural enhancements, systems, hw etc... essentially, it would be a 'brand new ship' with every major refit cycle (because at some point even the frame would be 'refreshed' - so 'old' would become 'brand new' - you can easily make the ship run indefinitely like that - and yes, it would become virtually unrecognizeable after sufficient time as the design itself would likely undergo changes to keep it modernized.

SF's every ship in the fleet in the 32nd century was essentially 125 odd years old more or less - or at the very least, it was implied that because they haven't had a 'real spacedock', making new ships wasn't doable (but that doesn't make much sense and doesn't matter in the context of even just replicators+transporters, and especially programmable matter - the Terrans in the Mirror Universe were able to construct the USS Defiant at one of Terrok Nor's docking ports after all - SF could have easily done the same, and there were 38 member planets left when Disco arrived).

One possible explanation behind the Tikhov being 5 months away could have been because UFP didn't know what caused the Burn, so ships may have been instructed to travel at lower Warp speeds, but given the medical emergency I would imagine these restrictions would have been rescinded (similar to how ships were mainly limited to Warp 5 except in cases of emergency).

Though in S4, it seems a lot of representatives from different parts of the Galaxy were able to travel to UFP HQ - though some were there in holo form... so there's that.

Either way, it doesn't bode well for Warp speed if you ask me. Most places would have still been far away even without the Burn and if the limitation of Warp drive persisted (Aka, it wasn't improved since the 24th century).

 

[Tuskin38]

This ties in to a brainworm I have had for a while for a new 32nd century series. I realise we were led to believe that Discovery was jumping here there and everywhere to deliver Dilithium after series 3. I would love to have seen either Discovery feature more of the reconnecting to the lost Federation worlds, or maybe another ship tasked with reforging the links and bringing OG Official Federation order to the various spin-offs that sprung up after subspace was lost. My idea would be a titular ship, and series, called Endeavour.

There's a novel that covers one of those IIRC.