Can you dial it back a bit, please? You've been pretty brusque throughout this thread.
Cool with Q, but not the spore drive? Interesting...
- Thread starter NewHeavensNewEarth
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Nope. Just a fan willing to give DSC the same grace and latitude other series have been afforded.
Even if you don't agree with the Genesis Device analogy (agree to disagree and all that) it doesn't change how DSC is being picked to death over various aspects. I appreciate your POV, but my fundamental disagreement is the lack of latitude and grace given when the story isn't even finished yet. I have read and listened to many rationalizations over the years, from Vulcan's appearance to Trill differences. Inconsistencies are not new. Overpowered tech is nothing new, from curing aging to instantaneous warp travel.
Not sure what makes the latest one the most egregious?
I was just watching a clip of Enterprise where the Xindi opened up a vortex. I remember hating they had introduced long distance travel and that was well before Discovery. Same with the reboot films and transwarp beaming, and maybe throw in their death cure in Into Darkness.
So mycelium is the MacGuffin. I fail to see the difference between an imaginary engine and an imaginary fuel source.
The Klingons wanted Genesis as a weapon of mass destruction. In that regard it worked really, really well. Why didn't they or the Romulans spend the next 80 years perfecting it as a weapon? I'm sure the Cardassians would have loved to get in some genesis action as well.
MacGuffin. “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
A classic MacGuffin is something the characters want that pushes the plot forward, usually an object that everyone is chasing but which has no meaningful relationship to the plot and/or meaning to the audience. In North By Northwest it's the microfilm. In The Man Who Knew Too Much it's the message about the planned assassination of a foreign dignitary.
The Spore Drive, dilithium, et all are not MacGuffins because they're not what people are after, they're what people are using. If you could replace the Spore Drive with the Maltese Millennium Bird of the Galaxy, then it would be a MacGuffin because it's interchangeable.
A classic MacGuffin is something the characters want that pushes the plot forward, usually an object that everyone is chasing but which has no meaningful relationship to the plot and/or meaning to the audience. In North By Northwest it's the microfilm. In The Man Who Knew Too Much it's the message about the planned assassination of a foreign dignitary.
The Spore Drive, dilithium, et all are not MacGuffins because they're not what people are after, they're what people are using. If you could replace the Spore Drive with the Maltese Millennium Bird of the Galaxy, then it would be a MacGuffin because it's interchangeable.
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This 1000000x... What we see as Q is the tip of a huge iceberg so to speak. Q beings might be far more complicated than mortal species can comprehend.
BTW bloody good thread
It didn't work as a stable long term habitable planet creator, but even that could have been down to being a result of Regula being too small or the bulk of the material used being from the Mutara Nebula rather than just the protomatter being the problem. They gave up without further testing, because it was also a terrifying weapon with too many political implications and most of the development team was dead. But that doesn't necessarily mean other less ethical cultures wouldn't show an interest or that it didn't have other applications.
It worked as a weapon of mass destruction, as previously mentioned. It worked as a means of bringing dead people back to life. It worked as a method of creating massive amounts of vegetation or rapidly growing lifeforms (like the microbes and Spock, which could be applied to livestock) for harvesting as food to feed a starving population before the previously barren planetoid breaks up. It's got to be an amazing source of (temporary) energy for massive projects, and can be used for solar system scale engineering.
Dilithium is often used as MacGuffin in plots where it is actually relevant. It is something that needs to be obtained or it is stolen, etc. It is written to be rare and hard to replace, so that it makes sense.
But any starship can nuke a planet, so nuking one harder is hardly a big deal. And as I've said, by TNG era starkilling weapons exist, so I don't think anyone would much care about planet killer at this point. Also, metagenic weapons existed (though were banned) which allowed killing all life on planet, leaving the infrastructure intact. And of course in the era of replicators being able to grow food fast is pointless. I'll grant you that bringing dead back to life is a big deal, even if they were resurrected with their mind gone. It remains open whether that part was somehow inexplicably unrepeatable, or whether it was deemed not worth resurrecting people without their minds.
Yep, I hated all of those.
Nukes exist now, but we still use fuel-air explosives and conventional bombs. Sometimes you don't want to destroy a whole solar system, and just feel like destroying a planet. Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't.
Rudimentary replicators exist in the Federation in the 23rd century and yet Kodos is still executing large portions of the population because of starvation.
Regardless, the point is that massive society changing technologies get introduced in Trek all the time and are routinely forgotten, presumably because something happened offscreen to prevent their further experimentation or application. One would assume an explanation for why the spore drive is not in use in the future will actually be forthcoming in this series, so I don't get why it is such a dealbreaker unless one has just arbitrarily decided that Discovery itself is a dealbreaker of a show. Which you're entitled to do, but at least acknowledge that as your motivation instead of trying to justify it by saying this is some sort of unprecedented situation in the franchise when it's not, and they haven't even gotten a chance to finish telling their story yet, so you don't know what they're going to do with the spore drive.
But were you this super positive about other series too? Because I sure weren't (even though I don't think the Genesis device is good example at all.) Did nothing ever bug you in any previous series, did you never think anything was silly or badly written? For example I think the Voyager is one of the biggest reasons why setting show in the 24th century would be difficult. They introduced such a huge amount of setting breaking technologies and idiotic concepts (Fluidic Space, Slipsteam, nano-probes-can-do-everything) that it would take unprecedented amount of brushing things under the carpet to keep the setting functional (and I expect this is exactly what happens with the Picard show.) So I am indeed annoyed when similar level of nonsense is introduced in a prequel series too. The transwarp beaming in Kelvinverse is very similar issue.
'And it is not done yet' sure, that is true. And if they wrap up it all in some brilliant way then I will be both pleased and surprised. But we can only talk about what we have seen thus far. And I really don't have super high confidence on them on this, I think this whole can of spore worms was Fuller's idea, and the current writers probably have no idea of what to do it. I stand by my assessment that it was unwise to introduce this sort of thing in a prequel series. A lot of the recent episodes have been pretty damn excellent, but they have been that when they have been following the Trek format of mystery of the week and working with the parameters of the previously established universe.
I have a sneaking suspicion the Picard Series won't have most of the Wonky Technobabble Technology of the Week introduced in Voyager.
Major things like Sentient Holograms sure, but that thing that got them out of some anomaly from that random episode in 1998? Probably not.
It created a planet out of nothing and brought a dead person back to life. How is that not worthy of further research?
Sure, the planet self-destructed eventually, but you'd think people wouldn't give up after one trial. Instantly turning a nebula into a planet, complete with vegetation, is pretty damn impressive.
I mean, the Wright Brothers' first flight was only a few minutes long, but it's not as though humanity shrugged, decided that flight wasn't worth bothering with, and moved on.
It was pretty clearly stated that it cannot work. It would be comparable to the spore drive if all we ever saw about that was the Glenn disaster and then it would be stated that it cannot work any better.
Much like TNG never mentioned travelling at warp 14, potions that make anyone who takes them telekinetic or the fact that hologram technology had been commonplace for centuries? How about disembodied brains living in vats, we've seen a few of those too, one of them being Spocks'.
How come Tranya is pretty much the only reference we get to the vast hyper advanced and friendly neighbour right on the Federations' doorstep who seem to simply no longer exist where it comes to interstellar politics? You'd think the Borg or the Dominion might have noticed and made mention of them even if they chose not to get involved of their own accord. Surely someone would say "You know, we could really do with a mile wide supership which outstrips our tech by centuries right about now, any thoughts where we could find one? You know, I'm sure we had an ambassador to someone just like that.
If Balok's busy we could always try the Tamarians, they've also got a supership which served a very similar narrative purpose about communication with people who are fundamentally different and threatening where military power is not only pointless and foolish but outright unworkable.
Why was Data such a source of fascination when Starfleet had encountered hundreds of sentient androids, cyborgs and other artificial lifeforms before? Flint could make them, so could Harry Mudd, Korby too. Soong was years behind the times it seems.
Did anyone notice that Voyager explicitly stated no one had ever reached warp 10? At least two Enterprise crews might disagree, but who needs to go that fast when the galactic core is only a few hours away in a 23rd century starship? Surely the fastest, most advanced cruiser of the 24th wouldn't require 70 years to get back from the other side of it? Whatever happened to the galactic barrier anyway? Is that where the Prophets came from?
Strange how non linear time was so confusing and new to Sisko since Picard had faced the same dilemma more than once. Then again, why should he act surprised when Spock had also solved much the same puzzle numerous times prior to mind melding with him? In fact how many times exactly are time travel and alternate dimensions going to be brand new and world changing discoveries which change the way we think, at least until we discover them again next week?
Anyone got a spare phase cloak to hand? The Romulans haven't but they did have regular cloaks long before anyone invented them.
Then again, why would anyone be surprised at the idea of an incorporeal being or telepathic powers when the very first aliens humanity had ever met were telepaths who could disassociate themselves from their own souls? Speaking of which how come Talos IV is out of bounds but we're totally fine with dozens of telepathic species crewing our starships? Anyone notice that Spock periodically demonstrated mind control? How about Kes? Didn't Barash do exactly the same thing with his technology? Why isn't the Wormhole also out of bounds?
Who maintains the timeline, is it Daniels? How about Gary Seven? Are they members of the Department of Temporal Investigations? Who is Future Guy exactly?
How big is Starfleet?
It's ok, JJverse still sucks, but I'm not too bothered because it's just a TV show, not something I'm invested on to the point where I'd get upset about it
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Was I super positive? No, but I stopped watching because of that. I didn't continue on in the vain hopes that it would get better. And yet, those series have their defenders, and are accepted amongst the works of Star Trek with little, if any, issue over their overall presentation, even with the nitpicks. Rationalizations abound for why setting breaking tech is no longer seen. This doesn't even begin to address the omnipotent and god-like beings shown throughout the series.
So, if DSC's spore drive is so "setting breaking" then why watch it? This isn't meant as snark. You asked me how I dealt with it. Well, I ignored it. I pretty much regard VOY with casual disinterest and stopped watching it before middle of first season. Same thing with ENT.
Why watch it? Because it had good characters, great actors and lately even pretty decent stories. Trust me, if I hated everything about it, I wouldn't watch it. To this day I haven't seen all episodes of the Voyager. Ultimately continuity issues are a minor annoyance, though with the spore drive it is related to a bigger problem with Disco, that being colossally stupid and badly handled serialised 'big plots.' Klingon war, the mirror jaunt and the spore mystery are examples of those. What seems to work pretty well is more episodic classic Trek like stories they have been doing this season. Serialisation of the characters work too. I just don't get this attitude that you either have to unequivocally hate every bit or alternatively you have to love it all and have the defend to death any and every brainfart the writers happen to come up with.
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Since I didn't say that, I agree with you on this point. I also appreciate your candor regarding VOY and am glad you liked it in spite of the apparent setting breaking tech and issues. I regard DSC in a similar way.
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