The Spore Drive Technology. What Do You Think About It?

2001 featured godlike aliens (albeit not directly visible) and it's considered hard SF. It's not really that far-fetched to think that over a long evolutionary timeline that a species could evolve towards godlike abilities.

 

The point is the criticisms are often couched as if DSC is the first Trek show to have these specific issues and therefore doesn't deserve to be called Trek. It's fine to say you don't like these aspects, it's another to claim they make the show less valid as a Trek show than those which preceded it. It comes across as hypocritical or selective nitpicking.

 

Maybe you should ask all of Trek fandom considering they've been doing it for the 30 years since TNG was released. People are carrying on like Discovery is the first series to have an unlikeable lead, and unlikeable crew, unlikeable ship design. My comparisons to previous series is often used to indicate that people have whinged about this nonsense before about series that they ended up liking. I think what's sad is when people claim that Discovery has faults, but then totally ignore those same supposed faults in their favourite series. The previous series have done a lot of things that I disagree with but I don't judge the series solely on what they did wrong. I apply objective criticism unlike some of the people criticising Discovery.

 

I think topic subject matter is how it is shaping up for me. I don't get any reflected satisfaction in being disillusioned by past Trek to make me feel anything different about this one. I'm watching this one and I see the spore drive tech stuff and think.. oh man, that is far fetched. If I did that or didn't with other Trek, I don't recall, but I don't think I did. I'm kind of an in the moment viewer.

 

It's no more far fetched than any of the other magical tech that appeared in other series.

If you're not into it, you're not into it. Maybe stop watching if that is the case?

 

My watching habits are really my own call I don't care if there are other far fetched premises in other shows.. this doesn't make spore technology fusion with tardigrade or human infused with tardigrade any less ridiculous.

 

Yeah it is your call. I just don't know why anyone would bother wasting time watching a show when they can't find anything to enjoy in it.

 

Meh.
Dune had the spice and the guild navigators since 1965.
Discovery has the shroom and the Tardigrades in 2017.
They’re both more space opera than hard sci-fi.

 

I think the spore-drive is a cool piece of technology. Hope they keep tinkering with it for several seasons and experiment with possible compatibility of other lifeforms etc.

 

Tardiness is finally free!
Nor certain whether there are side effects by using the"secret sauce"? Foes not matter too much since the drive can be used for short hops. At the end the network may have to collapse, by Starfleet or the spores?

 

Who's saying those are bad things? I like a lot of the silly, absurd and psuedo-scientific aspects of Star Trek. There's nothing wrong with them if they make the story entertaining.

 

Personally, I think the mycelial network is a fun take on the same silly Trek-science of subspace. When I was a kid, I thought subspace was a real thing and that the science of pushing a ship into the subspace plane with a warp core was totally believable. The mycelial network and the spore drive seem like a natural progression of the same idea, but it has the added fun of an organic component. I really enjoy the idea of living and corporeal fungus has part of its structure entangled with the quantum realm that its root system can reach into the depths of subspace. The technobabble explanation of it in episode 5 (or was it episode 4?), well I totally geek out with technobabble in general, but it made sense in-universe building off already established Trek-science ideas. It was so much fun to hear Stamets talking about it.

It also retroactively makes characters like The Traveler more believable, in that we can kinda say there is precedent for organic beings to be tied into subspace purely by genetic makeup. An idea that regular everyday beings can, in fact, evolve to a 'higher plane of existence' that sci-fi loves to posit. The Traveler has never been a completely believable character through scrutiny, but he was the type of 'evolved' alien that we were use to back in the day. Now, we get more sciencey sounding explanations, but they're still the same magic.

The made-up realm of subspace allowed us to believe that FTL drives were possible, at a time when we were told that FTL is absolutely without-a-doubt impossible. Nowadays we accept that it might be possible, but the engineering and power to do so is outside our current grasp. So today we have a made-up living organism that exists in our dimension but is entangled with the made-up realm we learned to accept, allowing for even faster than FTL drives possible. Tomorrow we might learn that there is a type of mushroom that curiously has root systems that are influenced by some kind of weird quantum entanglement effect. It's totally unlikely... but quantum physics is that weird science that says anything can happen for no reason whatsoever :P

Trek-science has always been fun and this new take on it is no different for me.

 

Star Trek has had some varied and far fetched stories, no doubt at all. I guess the difference was before you could put up with one bad episode and move on. Now, we are in it for the long haul. Can't wait too see how this whole idea of spore drive and mycielel plane gets integrated/disintegrated into Trek history.
Also liking forward to how the spore drive is making the mirrors on the ship some sort of gateway to another realm of reality. With so much going on at the same time, it's hard not to enjoy all the action in this newest Star Trek.

 

I think...it's the kind of thing I would have accepted without question when I was 10 and crazy for Star Trek. I'm attempting to approach it in that spirit.

 

I just think the spore drive would be better suited in a later time frame.
Unless they work it into something we've seen before in a different form. In all the different series set in a later time period, it doesn't make sense that it wouldn't have been at least mentioned, seeing as it has such amazing benefits.

 

Which IMHO makes it all the more interesting, because obviously the writers have something in mind for this very issue.

Timo Saloniemi

 

I'd like to think the writers have something in mind,I won't hold my breath though. Even though it's set in the prime timeline, they've changed so much. It may as well be a complete reboot much like the kelvin universe.

 

It occurs that, in it's introductory episode, the tardigrade was impervious to guns, knives, Klingon blades, etc, yet in this episode and the prior one the spore drive interface punctures it's hide with big long needles. Okay, sure?

 

Good catch ... maybe the underbelly where it gets punctured is soft. Or perhaps the spores do something to TG's armor.

 

Aside from the aesthetic, what exactly have they changed thats universe shattering?

They've said quite plainly - multiple times - there's a plan that leads into TOS. Holding breath isn't necessary. Waiting patiently is.