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

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.

 

I see spores, Operation Annihilate parasites and space amoebas all linked to fluidic space

 

That's actually a pretty good theory. Also, another spore drive attempt could have occured around about the Enterprise B era... same messy result, and Starfleet shelves the technology indefinitely. By 50 years later, it's essentially forgotten.

 

Yeah it just may be that there is something unique about Stamets that makes him almost uniquely suited to effectively interface with the mycelial network.

It may take somebody who can really...grok...the mycelial ecology and network.

It may be a very rare ability.

(Note: I am still trying to catch up with season 3. There may be another character who can also do what Stamets does...but that still doesn't mean that it's not a rare gift.)

If they hadn't jumped to the 32nd century, and still able to access the Network and use the Spore Drive, and I was a writer in the series, I would have written in an episode at the end where the Mycelial Network decides that it's not happy with people using it, it damages the Network, and puts it at risk - something that they have shown can be the case in that episode where the Network, well, got pissed.

And so as a defense mechanism the Network closes itself off from outsiders using it.

 

I don't buy the deaths of 20 people as reason enough for them to abandon such a revolutionary technology. Heck, humanity won't even give up regular technology despite thousands of deaths.

 

They could certainly technobabble a reason for why the technology was abandoned by the TNG era. Bryce's theory that only a tiny percentage of humanoids could make it work could certainly be adapted as an explanation.

 

Well it required violating federation law's against genetic engineering to use it.

 

...Which really shouldn't even slow down anybody much.

The writers basically machine-gunned themselves in the leg in their misguided attempts to write the spore drive out of the 23rd century equation. Making it illegal won't cut it. So perhaps it doesn't work? Except it does, even with Ripper gone, and it works everywhere the heroes dare try it out, including the Mirror Universe. So perhaps it can be made to stop working? Ah, no, if the spore medium is rendered unflyable, not only is this the end of the world - it is the end of all universes everywhere and ever! So the spore medium can never cease to be.

But then they introduced a UFP-built time machine. And showed us it was a black project. And showed us how black projects get (mis)managed.

So there really is no problem. Spore drive, cloaking device, Angel Suit: they all are available for use by the black sector. This sector just chooses to remain in the shadows, for a good reason, and won't go around rescuing Voyagers unless it finds a way to hush up the whole deal. And getting NCC-74656 back can't be hushed up, because it needs to be a public and heroic return to brighten the present and future of war-weary citizens. Not worth risking the spore drive, then. Although well worth risking some time travel tech.

Timo Saloniemi

 

The angel suit seems a far more dangerous technology than the spore drive. Michael (and her Gabrielle before) seemed to have unlimited access to space and time in that thing. It's god-tier technology, just scroll to the place and time you want to go and you're there.

DS9 couldn't make a stable wormhole in "Rejoined" but a century earlier they had a working miniaturised version of it.

 

It does seem that, pre DSC season 2, Section 31 was more integrated with Starfleet and there were fewer scruples over how tech was developed or sourced.

Post S2 is where society seems to move back in line with TOS and 80s Trek but, as a result, certain technologies and that are no longer available/as easily developed

 

"Section 31" really seems to go through three distinct stages.

- In the 22nd century, it's an illegal cabal of hubris-filled folks of whom some but not all are involved in United Earth Starfleet, either in its Intelligence work or in other branches, deriving bogus legitimacy from a vaguely worded UESF charter.
- In the 23rd century, a certain branch of UFP Starfleet Intelligence has started calling itself Section 31, possibly in jest and as a nod to the notorious (and now disbanded) cabal of the previous century. It's a perfectly legitimate branch doing specific work on threat analysis and doomsday scenarios and whatnot, not a cabal hell-bent on promoting human supremacy by whichever means. It never pretends to lean on the now outdated and foreign UESF charter.
- In the 24th century, it's back to a cabal again, possibly because the legitimate branch of the 23rd century soiled its reputation at some point and was disbanded, renamed or otherwise whitewashed. It may even be a one-man cabal, the creation of the sick mind (and holodeck resources) of Luther Sloan, a possible former SF Intel employee. Or then it's a useful front for SF Intel. Or both.

In all these forms, S31 has access to high tech and other important resources, because legitimate or not, it attracts powerful people from within Starfleet and from elsewhere. In all the forms, it feels relatively free to apply the tech and resources, too, for basically the same reasons of concentrated power. The 23rd century version is especially openly involved in developing and otherwise managing supertech, in at least two timelines. The other versions are mainly seen dabbling in bioweapons, which may not really be supertech and are simply politically unpalatable if over the counter; they taste much better when slipped under the door in the dark of the night.

Time travel may be a disruptive tech, but the Angel Suit need not be especially obnoxious. After all, time machines have the habit of ending up in other times: there would always be time travel tech in the 23rd century, regardless of whether the UFP built it or not. An in-universe mechanism must exist for keeping time travel secret at all times, including today and during the Punic Wars. We are not familiar with that mechanism yet, but perhaps the conclusion of the time wars by the 32nd century has something to do with it?

The practical effect as relates to the Angel Suits may be the weird way in which Gabrielle Burnham eternally fails to accomplish her goals: she feels time hates her, but we may assume somebody is pulling strings behind the scenes (and fairly literally at that, what with the bungee cord that ties Gabe to Terralysium and the moment of time 950 years in her "native" future). The puppeteer would then likewise control Mike B to the end effect of her destroying her own suit.

Time travel is a fun threat in that it can always be negated before it happens, by default and through itself... Spore travel, not so much. But time travel is the universal band-aid to that, too!

Timo Saloniemi

 

It simply did not make sense that an organization the size of United Earth/the Federation didn't have a special organization for discreetly handling certain... hard to solve problems. It's like your anus: you might not want to talk about it, but it serves a very real purpose.

 

Also, making said organization public (and blatantly illegal and despicable and whatnot) is good when the problems or at least their solutions are highly public anyway. Although you then need a secret organization as a driver for the public one.

Starfleet has apparently always had Intel and Security branches - we just don't have a clear picture of whether they are independent or whether one is subordinate to the other. The UFP probably always has supremacist cabals that attract people from Starfleet. And there in all likelihood always exists a pool of technology that is too powerful to see open use. Quite possibly SF Intel sees benefit in letting the tech seep into the hands of these cabals (which is where it would end up anyway) and then controlling the cabals? Better have the superweapon as the ace-in-the-sleeve or Endlösung of a group of madmen who wish to live and rule forever, than in the hands of a lone madman who thinks Armageddon Now is a wonderful way to put an end to his misery.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Why would Section 31 care about rescuing Voyager? They’re in the business of covertly dealing with threats to the Federation, not ships lost on the other side of the galaxy. If astronauts on a moon lander were stuck on the moon with no way to get back to Earth, would the CIA be called in to help them?

 

This. If we had a group of astronauts shipwrecked on Mars, a la "The Martian", it would not be the CIA's job to get them back. It would be NASA's.

 

That depends. Are there Transformers involved?

 

There are not.

 

Ok, then probably NASA. Possibly Space Force.

 

It makes a lot more sense to suggest the secret cabal of ENT evolved into the Disco 31*, which following the events of Discovery season 2, is reduced back to the secret cabal of ENT in the time of DS9.

*And one timeline over, the Kelvinverse 31

 

They already have that organization. It's called Starfleet Intelligence.

Whatever Starfleet needs to do, SI can do. If they can't get it done...it doesn't DESERVE to get done.

And I don't particularly care how "in the open" Section 31 appeared to be during DSC. It doesn't change who they are, at the core: a group of rogues who literally do whatever the hell they want. At least Starfleet Intelligence is answerable to the Federation government. They're not above the law like Section 31 is.