Given the technological hurdles that Starfleet had to deal with, I can't imagine either of those powers pursuing much further. Look at how far the Romulans pushed the phasing cloak.
I don't know if this has been mentioned before and although I hate the concept of spore drive I will take a guess. The whole mycelial network will be destroyed in the Discovery's attempt to go back to prime universe. Either accidentally or on purpose to prevent mirror universe bad guys from moving to prime universe. While incident will get classified.
Given how incredible the Spore Drive is - The ability to travel anywhere in the universe or even alternate dimensions in a few seconds, I'm kinda curious as to why The Q haven't shown up yet. I mean Q appeared when The Enterprise was venturing into uncharted space yet they are happy to ignore this ? Strange.
Discovery hasn't actually ventured all that far away from Federation Space...aside from universe hoping, it hasn't even really left a region that Archer's ship could have explored a hundred years prior. The dangers of long distance jumps seem to be an issue with the biological component of the system, and so far the only known species (that have a reasonable population in the galaxy) that can be used to operate the drive as navigator is Human. That basically leaves this as a Federation only device, and if they don't want to use it, its not getting used. Plus it is entirely possible that the universe jumping at long ranges would get far worse, and the likes of USS Voyager attempting to get home would whined up far more lost using a Spore Drive than just their own warp drive. Not only is a lot of the region they'd be jumping to uncharted, it is also possible that the universal jumping could be worse if you jump long distances, thus If Janeway attempted to jump from Ocampa to Earth in one jump she might end up at Earth, but one populated by ultra advanced reptiles fighting off a third Dalek Invasion while the Time Lords try to figure out how these humans arrived.
Why? The Q didn't intervene when the Enterprise left the Galaxy in TOS. Nor did any other all powerful being for that matter.
I'd probably guess it had something to do with The Q not having being created when TOS aired. Could be wrong though.
What about ENT's Temporal Cold War storyline? Did that rise to the level of maybe getting the attention of the Q Continuum?
Let me go back and check and I'll let you know.......bear with me now........ Nope. No Q there. I'm happy to indulge in a game of whataboutery if you'd like, all of it is just dancing around the main issue though. The spore drive is a poorly conceived idea for a prequel show that writers have backed themselves into a corner with.
Well, then I don't understnd your argument for you implying that Q should show up in DSC because of the spore drive. They didn't back themselves into a corner. Even before the show aired, they showrunners warned us that there would be something that seems to go against canon, but that all will be explained as the story progressed. I could be wrong, but now after seeing the first several episodes, I assume that the "something that seems to go against canon" is the spore drive. If that is the case, then from what they said back before the show premiered about non-canonical items being explained, I bet they had a pre-arranged storyline that will explain why the spore drive is not a thing in TOS, TNG, etc.
It's not like Q-like beings didn't exist so that standard is rather arbitrary. The spore drive hasn't backed the writers "in to a corner." It's a story device that they are using to explore some themes of wartime tech use, ethics, and the shades of gray that come with it. And the writers seem a lot more comfortable using it and how to explain it away than they will ever be given credit for.
I didn't say they should show up, I said I was surprised they hadn't given the in continuity reasons they gave Picard for showing up at Farpoint, Spore drive would make a lot more logical sense. I've heard this theory before about the grand plan to technobabble their way out of the Spore drive. I just can't see, personally, what explanation they can come up with that can rationally explain Starfleet abandoning the spore drive program for good. Would sure have been handy during the Borg attacks, or the Dominion War for example. But Starfleet couldn't use it because ........ It's going to have to be pretty good.
If I had to guess right now, I'd say Discovery will either never get back to the Prime universe or we'll find out the prime universe was never really the Prime universe in the first place. Thus rendering the spore drive moot because this is a whole new universe. My guess is the former. Discovery will jump from parallel universe to parallel universe throughout the series and never actually get home.
Yes. And I thought the Temporal Cold War could also be a logical reason for the Q Continuum to show up. But they didn't there, and they didn't here. It's no big deal to me that they didn't; if the writers want Q to show up, he will. If they don't, he won't.
Well, there was Trelane and the Metrons and those guys that Charlie X was hanging out with, and also Apollo, and the lights of Zeta, and that serial killer spirit thing.... TOS didn't have a Q episode, but it did have meddlesome godlike beings with weird motives, and that's damn close.
Q might not want to meddle, until the UPF has a certain level of tech and exploring into regions the Q think they are not ready for? Nice idea of DSC jumping into close universes, but not back into the PU.