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Does the Spore Drive have a range?

The mycelial network is universe-wide, but they don't have a street map of say, the Andromeda galaxy, so wouldn't have the coordinates to know where to pop out like they do with our own galaxy.
 
That's one way of looking at it. But the premise it emerged from a federation database in the first place which emphasizes completely different approaches and methodologies (such as diplomacy, non aggressive behaviour, finding peaceful and scientific solutions to problems that benefit everyone, cooperation and sharing... Just to name a few) was nonsensical.

It was a Section 31 database, an organisation that believed the ends justified the means, amd didn’t have much time for Federation values.

It still makes sense to me that the danger wasn’t AI in general, just that one AI in particular and what it would use the sphere data to accomplish.
 
It was a Section 31 database, an organisation that believed the ends justified the means, amd didn’t have much time for Federation values.

It still makes sense to me that the danger wasn’t AI in general, just that one AI in particular and what it would use the sphere data to accomplish.
After Control debacle Starfleet gave Daystrom more funding.
 
It must have a range, and a pretty short one at that.

Otherwise the Control problem could have been solved by simply jumping the ship to another galaxy and calling it a day.
 
It must have a range, and a pretty short one at that.

Otherwise the Control problem could have been solved by simply jumping the ship to another galaxy and calling it a day.

Wouldn't have stopped Control from going after Discovery... and at the rate it was already evolving without the Sphere data, it would have become fully evolved in a short time frame (so, there was 0 need for it to get the Sphere Data in the first place), probably develop its own Spore Drive, or the ability to track Discovery through the Mycelial network and just catch up to them eventually by developing better Warp engines that would be ridiculously fast.
Even if the AI data became useless for its evolution, the Sphere Data contains vast amounts of information spanning 100 000 years that would be useful for further/faster advancement and whatever plan it had in mind
 
The heroes really had little in the way of means to judge how important the Sphere Data would be to Control. That is, sure, it was hugely desirable to Control, but quite possibly the menace would have managed just fine without.

So it was a weird set of priorities our heroes had. Stopping Control was paramount; stopping Control from having the Sphere Data was sort of incidental to that. So what do they do? Fight a secret battle with the goal of hiding the Sphere Data, and without any reasonable chance of success in elimination Control even as collateral.

Jumping away, whether though time or space, just meant that Control became Somebody Else's Problem. In which case it would be rather good an idea to actually tell Somebody!

Timo Saloniemi
 
It must have a range, and a pretty short one at that.

Otherwise the Control problem could have been solved by simply jumping the ship to another galaxy and calling it a day.
And that was basically the primary flaw with the whole "going to the future is the only option" thing from season 2. Even if we entertain the idea that the Spore Drive can't actually go to another galaxy (even though, logically it should) we do know it could reach Terra Elysium, which was stated to be a journey of over 150 years at maximum warp. So right there they had an option of going any direction and being safe from Control for at least 150 years, longer if they didn't go to Terra Elysium since Spore Drive can't be tracked and even if it could, you can't track something in uncharted territory anyway.
 
... where Control would have caught up with it eventually.
No it wouldn't have, galaxies are huge places, and finding a single ship in one is like finding a needle in a planet sized haystack.

And that's assuming they were lazy about it, they could have just dumped the ship someplace random a billion billion lightyears away in the void between galaxies.
 
And that's assuming they were lazy about it, they could have just dumped the ship someplace random a billion billion lightyears away in the void between galaxies.
which is more or less what was implied in Short Treks...But probably won’t happen.
 
...Possibly after a million years or so. Why care? If the folks a million years downstream can't defend against this thing, shame on them. Really, if the Federation can't defend against this thing when it hasn't gobbled up any superdata yet, shame on the Federation. There's no point in keeping the data out of Control's reach if Control can't also and regardless be defeated for good. In which case any half-measure at hiding the data should suffice while the AI is being fried.

Timo Saloniemi
 
A hostile AI, focused on a singular goal, not bound by petty constraints like human lifespans, would, inevitably have found it.
Maybe, but if that were the case then taking it to the future wouldn't have kept it from the Data either.


The reality is that time jumping to the future was a plot device to get the Discovery crew into the 32nd century.
And they could have done the same thing via dumping Discovery into a temporal anomaly.

Just because a thing has to happen, doesn't mean the path to get to that point needs to be full of plot holes.
 
The spore drive can take them anywhere in the galaxy, to other universes, and months into the future during a war.

So, I would wager no limits in space travel or universe jumping. But possible limits in time travel, the extents of which are unknown. They can go forwards in time, but no proof that they can go back in time.
 
Just because a thing has to happen, doesn't mean the path to get to that point needs to be full of plot holes.
I concur, tell that to the DISCO writing staff.

The spore drive can take them anywhere in the galaxy, to other universes, and months into the future during a war.

So, I would wager no limits in space travel or universe jumping. But possible limits in time travel, the extents of which are unknown. They can go forwards in time, but no proof that they can go back in time.
The only time they've gone forwards in time was when crossing Dimensional boundaries into and back from the Mirror Universe.

Maybe, crossing Dimensions via the Mycelial Network requires a ridiculously long route which effectively makes it close to "Time Travel" since it cost them months to get back.

We also don't know how much time they lost getting into the Mirror Universe.

We also don't know how long they stayed within the Mirror Universe covering all those events.

I double checked the episode, and they were gone a total of 9 months.

So in summary:
- Traveling to the Mirror Universe via Mycelial Network
- Doing stuff within the Mirror Universe and figuring out how to get back to the Prime Universe
- Traveling back to the Prime Universe via Mycelial Network
= That took a total of 9 months
 
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