Spoilers Discovery and the Novelverse - TV show discussion thread

[Tim Thomason]

There are plenty of ways an android/robot version of Vic could end up existing in the MU.

If they can build a Death Star wannabe, they can probably manage a simple humanoid android. MU Vic could conceivably be over 100 years old (with an image based on an old lounge singer).

This is kind of an issue with me. In TOS, Mirror, Mirror was an episode that helped us explore the characters abit and offered an alternative future, with some silly '60s sci-fi that we can ignore. In DS9, most of the MU episodes were silly diversions (with occassional pathos), that didn't really effect the serial storyline.

In DIS, the MU portion is integral to the overall story, and Lorca will always be a Mirror universe operative with his own agenda in every episode since Number 3. My brain wants the MU to exist as a side-thing that I don't have to explain or worry about, but DIS has placed it at the very heart of the story it's trying to tell.

It's not bad, per se, but it's just not as fun.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Like how a hologram in one universe is somehow human in another supposedly parallel but twisted universe?

Following their initial episode, DS9 treated their Mirror Universe the way Farscape did their glimpses of alternates - weird for the sake of weird, with the actors playing each others' roles and with zero attempt at plausibility or continuity.

 

[The Wormhole]

I think Andrew Robinson even admitted he treated Mirror Garak as a caricature rather than a character.

 

[Leto_II]

LOL:

#MEGA

 

[The Wormhole]

Yeah, that certainly muddies the waters big time.

 

[Destructor]

So when Trek producers approach it as just one more generic SFTV fantasy with no grounding in reality, it takes away one of the things about Trek that was most important to me as a child and an adolescent, as well as one of the things that made it special and successful in the first place. So naturally I find that disappointing.

The way quantum mechanics actually works, here in the real world, frequently seems impossible to reconcile with the human mind. The double-slit experiment really pushes at the limit of what we believe to be true about the universe- yet it is true. That real thing is no more or less confounding than the idea that one day we might encounter an alien spore that is connected to all other life of its type through a subspace network and, using technology combined with a human brain, you can use that network to transport instantaneously from one place to the other, well, that does sound crazy, but no crazier than an alien species highjacking someone's mind to turn them into a supercomputer that makes a jump drive that takes you to another galaxy. Star Trek has often engaged with such crazy concepts- that's part of its charm, as well.

Equally, so far as we know, FTL travel for something with mass is impossible and always will be, teleportation of matter is impossible and always will be. Now you may say: "Ah but the tech consultants put the sheen of believablility on it because it seems plausibly supported by technology, and any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, as we know." but that is literally no more or less implausible than saying: "With technology PLUS a subspace network that exists in nature through this alien fungus, instantaneous transport became possible." If you are saying that because nature is now in the mix, it seems less plausible (and too much like 'magic'), I ask you to consider that we've made some pretty insane discoveries about the nature of the universe, again, here in the real world*, and I'd like to think Star Trek will continue the tradition of blowing our minds by encountering aliens so weird and different that they border on implausibility.

Also the last time I did mushrooms I am pretty sure I was connected at a profound level to all other living things, so there is some precedence (just couldn't figure out how to jump to where I wanted to go but I almost had it).

*If you read this article, check out the name of the guy who made the Discovery.

 

[Leto_II]

So:

Spoiler: DSC spoilers

• 20 percent of the Federation has been conquered by the Klingon Empire while Discovery was away? And 1/3 of the fleet gone? Yeah...that might wreak some havoc with the Litverse, unless this turns out to be a "Yesterday's Enterprise"-type timeline-correction down the road.
  
• But going by that map Admiral Cornwell refers to in the next-episode preview, it sure looks like one helluva lot more than 20 percent, unless that was just a local region depicted, and not the whole entire Federation.
  
• Looks like Mirror Lorca's dead, and Mirror Emperor Georgiou is now in the Prime Universe, which theoretically opens the path for Empress Sato II to regain her throne and eventually Sato III, but who knows where the heck this is all headed in the next couple of weeks, here.
• Also, with the destruction of the ISS Charon, whomever takes over the throne by Kirk's time can move the royal court back to wherever they theoretically wish, either planetside or floating/mobile.
• One of my big concerns was that the show would have Mirror Sarek getting publicly exposed as the leader of the non-Terran rebellion and rule out his future governmental position in The Sorrows of Empire, but looks like we lucked out, there. Again, though, there are still two more episodes left to go this season.
  
• And since the show has never concretely established that Prime Lorca is truly, definitively dead, Jason Isaacs can still show up in future episodes if they want him to. Am guessing that there's more to the Prime Buran destruction than meets the eye (plus they've never established what exactly happened to the Mirror Discovery, either -- a TOS-style transposition?).

 

[ryan123450]

Spoiler: Tonights episode spoilers

Yeah I too an very curious what happened to Mirror Discovery and Prime Lorca. I didn’t quite follow all of Lorca’s story about the transporter accident but maybe Prime Lorca died on the Mirror Buran?

Also it seems the Succession comic could end up ruining the ‘return of Sato II’ workaround. Though I guess whoever becomes the new Emporer in Succession, we could still imagine that Sato II replaces them too.

And all these maps in Discovery have seemed to be roughly based on the Star Trek Star Charts layout of the Alpha Quadrant. If thats the case there should br alot more Federation far off the top and left edges of the map.

 

[Leto_II]

Spoiler: More DSC spoilers...

Oh shit, Succession deals with the Mirror Universe? Yeah...that could definitely throw a giant monkeywrench into things, although looking at the press release, Kirsten's credited as co-writer, so maybe....

 

[Leto_II]

Possible partial-answer to the whole "where's Prime Lorca?"-question:

Spoiler: After Trek quasi-spoilers

During this week's After Trek, a fan got up and asked producer Ted Sullivan and Rekha Sharma if Prime Ellen Landry was Prime Lorca's XO aboard the USS Buran, and both of them indicated "yes" (although Sullivan added something along the lines of, "in my mind"). So, if the producers roll with this down the road, Prime Landry too might also have survived that starship's destruction, which would go slightly against Mirror Lorca's insinuation early in the the series that he killed his entire crew off, and which raises the possibility that Prime Lorca's still alive somewhere out there.

 

[Christopher]

The way quantum mechanics actually works, here in the real world, frequently seems impossible to reconcile with the human mind. The double-slit experiment really pushes at the limit of what we believe to be true about the universe- yet it is true. That real thing is no more or less confounding than the idea that one day we might encounter an alien spore that is connected to all other life of its type through a subspace network and, using technology combined with a human brain, you can use that network to transport instantaneously from one place to the other, well, that does sound crazy, but no crazier than an alien species highjacking someone's mind to turn them into a supercomputer that makes a jump drive that takes you to another galaxy. Star Trek has often engaged with such crazy concepts- that's part of its charm, as well.

People who don't understand quantum mechanics are fond of claiming that its variances from conventional expectations are equivalent to whatever random fantasy or pseudoscience they want to argue for, but that's not actually true at all. If you really study quantum mechanics, you find that it's actually rigorously mathematical, consistent, and logical. The lay public still believes it's some mysterious unknown thing, but it's been quite well-understood by physicists for decades and its principles are used in many practical technological applications, including the transistors, diodes, etc. in the devices we're using to have this conversation. Even classical physics is now understood to be just what you get when quantum physics operates on macroscopic ensembles of particles, with their individual states correlating into a single larger state that behaves classically. Quantum physics is not some remote, unknown mystery, but the hardcore foundation of everyday modern physics.

I mean, I took quantum physics in college, and it was nothing but endless calculus. It's not obscure vagueness, it's rigorous, detailed, exhaustive math, all sorts of intricate equations for codifying every conceivable state or interaction. Yes, it's probabilistic math rather than deterministic, but it's no less clear and consistent once you learn to look beyond macroscopic preconceptions.

Equally, so far as we know, FTL travel for something with mass is impossible and always will be, teleportation of matter is impossible and always will be.

Actually, we have pretty solid theoretical understandings for how both those things are hypothetically possible; they're just prohibitively difficult and impractical. Yes, fiction has to gloss over the impracticalities, but the basic concepts are rooted in knowledge of physical theory. Warp drives and wormholes are solutions that arise out of the equations of General Relativity; the concepts wouldn't even exist without Einstein. Starting with known physics and applying some poetic license to its details is a whole different matter from making up random gibberish. Any scientifically savvy audience member can see a clear difference, just as any viewer with a knowledge of law can tell the difference between a well-researched courtroom drama and a completely absurd one, or just as my musician father could tell the difference between an actor actually playing a saxophone and one just pretending to. The difference does matter to people who can see it.

So:

Spoiler: DSC spoilers

• 20 percent of the Federation has been conquered by the Klingon Empire while Discovery was away? And 1/3 of the fleet gone? Yeah...that might wreak some havoc with the Litverse, unless this turns out to be a "Yesterday's Enterprise"-type timeline-correction down the road.
• ...
  
• And since the show has never concretely established that Prime Lorca is truly, definitively dead, Jason Isaacs can still show up in future episodes if they want him to. Am guessing that there's more to the Prime Buran destruction than meets the eye (plus they've never established what exactly happened to the Mirror Discovery, either -- a TOS-style transposition?).

Spoiler

Actually the fleet in TOS does seem a lot smaller than the fleet in DSC, so that actually kind of fits. And 9 months puts us in about October 2257, so there are still 8-9 years before TOS proper. If you think about it, we didn't really see that much of the Federation during TOS, so we don't really know what state it was in.

As for Lorca, he and Mirror Stamets said the ion storm switched transporter signals, suggesting the same mechanism as "Mirror, Mirror." So I was wondering all episode if Prime Lorca would turn out to be alive in the MU and come back with Burnham and Discovery. I guess instead he beamed onto ISS Buran and got blown up moments later.

Spoiler: Tonights episode spoilers

Also it seems the Succession comic could end up ruining the ‘return of Sato II’ workaround. Though I guess whoever becomes the new Emporer in Succession, we could still imagine that Sato II replaces them too.

Remember, even with the close coordination with the show's staff, the tie-ins aren't canonical.

 

[David cgc]

Spoiler: Giving everyone a chance to get caught up with the new episode

I still haven't seen any indication (except, perhaps, the title) that "Succession" is going to be a continuation of the MU plotline and not a prequel, as has been SOP for Discovery tie-ins thus far.

Personally, I think that Sato II fits in perfectly into the power vacuum established. A clone of a popular prior leader would be a great choice for both patriots and people hoping to manipulate her from behind the scenes. It's a bit of a short period of time for her to become decrepit enough to be deposed, and to also raise her own daughter in less than a decade, but I can think of at least two obvious ways around that off the top of my head.

While the logical assumption is that Lorca-Prime died very confused moments after being beamed up when the ISS Buran was destroyed, given how much of a fan-favorite he is, there's certainly plenty of room for him to have escaped and to be laying low in the Mirror Universe to return later on. After all, Mirror Lorca was crafty enough to survive undetected in the regular universe, which suggests that Lorca-Prime is just as crafty (sorry, I've been reading Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey, I've got craftiness on the brain), but also has a cooler head. Though I guess we'll know what Lorca-Prime is like in a week and a half.

 

[Christopher]

Spoiler: Giving everyone a chance to get caught up with the new episode

Personally, I think that Sato II fits in perfectly into the power vacuum established. A clone of a popular prior leader would be a great choice for both patriots and people hoping to manipulate her from behind the scenes. It's a bit of a short period of time for her to become decrepit enough to be deposed, and to also raise her own daughter in less than a decade, but I can think of at least two obvious ways around that off the top of my head.

While the logical assumption is that Lorca-Prime died very confused moments after being beamed up when the ISS Buran was destroyed, given how much of a fan-favorite he is, there's certainly plenty of room for him to have escaped and to be laying low in the Mirror Universe to return later on.

Spoiler

Where Sato is concerned, remember that the original Hoshi Sato was born 127-8 years before this storyline. Presumably Sato II has already been alive for decades. I'd assume she was deposed by Georgiou, went into hiding, and will now reclaim her throne.

Since when has Lorca been a fan favorite? And how can Lorca Prime be a fan favorite when we've never met him (or won't until Dayton's book comes out)?

And I don't see how Lorca could figure out a way back from the Mirror Universe. The only people who knew about the transporter/ion storm thing were Mirror Lorca, Mirror Stamets, and Mirror Landry, all of whom are now deceased. (Which was clever of the screenwriters -- they made sure the audience got the ion storm explanation without any Prime characters hearing it, so it would remain undiscovered until "Mirror, Mirror.") The mycelial reactor is gone, and interphase isn't a survivable way back.

 

[Destructor]

Starting with known physics and applying some poetic license to its details is a whole different matter from making up random gibberish.

But isn't that basically what they did? They took the known phenomenon of mycelial networks and extrapolated a transport system out of them (using the completely made-up phenomenon of subspace which is also used to explain warp travel and transportation- ie they are equally ridiculous). That is not 'making up random gibberish', that is more explanation (an explanation more connected to a real, observable phenomenon) than is given to Q, Trelane, the Guardian of Forever, Nagilum, Apollo, Organians, etc. And yet somehow Star Trek got away with all of those 'magical' beings for 50 years but the spore drive is where the line of ridiculousness is crossed? Look beyond your own macroscopic preconceptions.

 

[David cgc]

Spoiler

Where Sato is concerned, remember that the original Hoshi Sato was born 127-8 years before this storyline. Presumably Sato II has already been alive for decades. I'd assume she was deposed by Georgiou, went into hiding, and will now reclaim her throne.

Spoiler

Okay, three obvious ways. I was proceeding from a place where the clone Sato wasn't necessarily commissioned by the original, and hasn't necessarily been Emperor before.

Spoiler

Since when has Lorca been a fan favorite? And how can Lorca Prime be a fan favorite when we've never met him (or won't until Dayton's book comes out)?

Spoiler

Well, I liked him. And over in the DSC forum there seemed to be quite a few people who enjoyed his character. And while we're still mere days from knowing whether the Lorcas are more like Kirk and Kirk or Spock and Spock in terms of how similar they are to each other, but I have my hopes.

 

[Christopher]

But isn't that basically what they did? They took the known phenomenon of mycelial networks and extrapolated a transport system out of them

No, it's completely different, because it's an inept analogy. Sure, yes, mycelial networks are structurally analogous to networks of interconnection found elsewhere in nature, but that doesn't make them literally the same thing. It's the sort of thing you get when someone who doesn't understand science listens to a science lecture and draws the wrong conclusions from it, and I'm just left there shaking my head and going "That's not how any of this works."

Okay, yes, they did make up the idea that this particular kind of fungus exists partly in subspace, which somewhat justifies it, but it's a patch on an intrinsically silly idea. And the fact that they're now apparently treating the network as this sentient pseudo-afterlife thing just makes it more woo-woo and mystical.

(using the completely made-up phenomenon of subspace which is also used to explain warp travel and transportation- ie they are equally ridiculous).

Wrong. There actually is a physical concept called a subspace -- it's a subset of a certain number of dimensions within a higher-dimensional space. Yes, the concept as originally used in Trek (cribbed from earlier prose SF) was just a handwave, but TOS only used "subspace" in reference to radio. The first time the term was associated with warp drive was in Dr. Jesco von Puttkamer's technical notes for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, in which he defined "a subspace" as the bubble of spacetime within a warp field, using General Relativity-based physics that were essentially identical to the "warp drive" equations Dr. Miguel Alcubierre would derive some 16 years later. Puttkamer didn't work out the actual math, but the principle was equivalent.

However, the use of the term "subspace" in early SF, and in TNG and after when it was established as another spacetime domain, is basically a variant term for hyperspace, a concept which is entirely grounded in real physics theory of higher-dimensional spacetime continuums. Don't assume there's no science behind something just because you don't know the science behind it.

That is not 'making up random gibberish', that is more explanation (an explanation more connected to a real, observable phenomenon) than is given to Q, Trelane, the Guardian of Forever, Nagilum, Apollo, Organians, etc.

And I hate most of those concepts. I've never liked it when Trek skews more toward fantasy than SF. I've explained why already, and I have a right to my own tastes and opinions. You don't get to tell me I'm wrong for not liking the same things you do.

 

[Destructor]

You don't get to tell me I'm wrong for not liking the same things you do.

I did not say that you were wrong for 'not liking it' (nor did I say whether I liked it or not, I didn't mention my opinion at all, this is not at all what is under discussion). I really appreciate your knowledge of the underlying science and the respect you have for the science behind Star Trek, and for the time you take on the BBS to hash things out. I appreciate your novels and your contribution to Trek literature.

You asserted that the spore drive is gibberish that takes away 'one of the things that made [Star Trek] special and successful in the first place'. It has nothing to do with your opinion of the show, which you are completely welcome to, to point out that Star Trek was dealing with concepts (either in 'The Cage' or 'Where No Man Has Gone Before', if you prefer) as far-fetched as, if not more than, the concept of the mycelial-network-as-transport-mechanism, since literally the first episode. This is not an opinion- whether you or I 'like' that or not is immaterial. It is so. It is fine if people don't like those sorts of stories, I don't much either, but it is holding Discovery to a standard that Star Trek itself has never adhered to. It is okay for you to do that- you are welcome to your opinions on it, of course. And the show has clearly failed in being convincing to you, which is a problem for the show overall because that seems to be the case for a lot of people.

 

[thribs]

Was I watching Star Wars or Star Trek this week?
I wish we could get more Star Trek like weaponary in this. Not a fan of the “pew pew pew” weapons.

 

[SolarisOne]

"With technology PLUS a subspace network that exists in nature through this alien fungus

Biology isn't equipped to affect any plausible physics paradigm in that manner. Full stop. It's pure fantasy. Whereas the existence or lack thereof of extra physical dimensions (which is what "subspace" has to be--string theorists would likely call it the "bulk") is openly debated in the scientific community. A physics Ph.D. even pieced together a rough model of how subspace physics and (Star Trek's version of) warp travel could be squared with real-world physics (even going so far as to postulate how it might avoid violating causality!) That's far better at helping me suspend disbelief than fucking space mushrooms allowing for instantaneous travel.

http://www.physicsguy.com/subphys/SubspacePhysics.html

Equally, so far as we know, FTL travel for something with mass is impossible and always will be

Local FTL travel (as opposed to travel that is only observed to be FTL from the reference frame of a distant observer) is impossible for things with no mass as well. Anything affected by causality is limited to, at most, c. Real-life halfway plausible warp drive is predicated on the fact that the object in the bubble is both decoupled from the outside spacetime and never travels through its local space at a velocity meeting or exceeding c.

If tachyons actually existed (which is all but ruled out because they would cause pathological effects, beyond violation of causality, that are not observed in nature,) they would travel FTL. The thing is, though, they would always travel FTL and gain speed as they lost energy.

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/ParticleAndNuclear/tachyons.html

 

[SolarisOne]

And I hate most of those concepts. I've never liked it when Trek skews more toward fantasy than SF.

As much as I like Q, the character, I have to agree.