How will the spore drive fit into canon?

[Rahul]

Uh oh.

Today I read a news article about what the creators of Discovery plan for Season 2. The most worrying statement was this:


‘We have ten years until the original series comes into play. It is a challenge creatively because we have lots of choices, in terms of how do we reconcile this [Spore] drive? This surrogate daughter of Sarek? How do we reconcile these things the closer we get to the original series?

‘That’s going to be a big discussion that we have in season two. What’s so fun about the character of Michael, just because she hasn’t been spoken about, doesn’t mean she didn’t exist. A lot of the writers on our show are deeply involved in Star Trek, their knowledge is some of the finest around, they really do help us find areas where we can steer around things.

‘But the Spore drive? Who knows. It could be classified. There are many options. Some of the best ideas come from all over the place, not just in our writers room so I love hearing about the fan ideas and theories. We’ll have to see.’

Source: http://metro.co.uk/2017/11/14/star-...tease-the-big-questions-for-season-2-7076988/


This is deeply troublesome. Originally I thought, the spore drive would be the main drive of season 1's storyline, together with the klingon war. I never thought about how it would break canon, because it so obviously does, that I never thought it would stay around much longer after that.

In fact, that the second half of Discovery's first season uses jumps to the mirror universe was indication for me, that something is deeply wrong with the spore drive, so much so that the entire process needs to be disregarded to not even work as a secret weapon at any time in the future. That it destabilizes the basic fabrics of reality itself, or somesuch. Whatever it is, there must be a reason that they may never use it again after TOS or during TOS/TNG. Otherwise somebody surely would have used it against the ultimate threats posed by the Borg or the Dominion.

But this quote indicates that there is indeed no plan on how to end the spore drive-storyline, and how to explain it's later vanishing. And that it will still be around in season 2, usable as ever before.

What do you guys think about that?
Is this a big misdirection by the creators?
Do they really not have a plan?
How do you think the spore drive will fit in the larger Trek universe?

 

[SPCTRE]

How do you think the spore drive will fit in the larger Trek universe?

Spoiler

okay that's not entirely true, I should say: it will fit however the STD writer's room will decide it's going to fit

shows historically did not automatically end up better in terms of writing because there was a Grand Plan - I admire a Grand Plan (think: JMS and B5) as much as the next guy, but at the end of the day you're always working within production realities

 

[cultcross]

Given the whole thing they're doing with the "Look at all the exploring we can do after the war is over", I fully expected another season with the drive. It may be that whatever they use it for then provides the answer to why it is ultimately retired.
We're nine episodes in. Long time yet to come up with a solution. Just tell stories in the meantime.

 

[fireproof78]

It will be supervised by top men.

 

[CorporalClegg]

This.

 

[Saul]

I imagine that spore drive will become totally unusable in some future season. Along with communicating by holograms, the holodeck, klingon cloaks etc

 

[Ovation]

It will be supervised by top men.

Top. Men.

 

[zar]

I never expected the spore drive would be gone so soon after just one season. In the last episode Lorca is talking about using it for exploration after the war to Stamets, but that's not new. He's basically reiterating what he said to Burnham in episode 3 when it was first introduced.

Also, it helps to read full sentences - it's pretty clear they're saying they have many ideas and haven't decided which one to go with, not that they have no plan.

 

[Ovation]

Besides...it’s already canon. We’ve seen it on screen numerous times.

 

[WarpFactorZ]

What do you guys think about that?
Is this a big misdirection by the creators?
Do they really not have a plan?
How do you think the spore drive will fit in the larger Trek universe?

Remember that time they made a device that could terraform a lifeless moon, and it ended up being horribly unstable? Remember how much it was talked about afterward? Me neither. So goes the Spore drive.

This is far from the first time Trek has introduced revolutionary tech that is never seen again.

 

[fireproof78]

Remember that time they made a device that could terraform a lifeless moon, and it ended up being horribly unstable? Remember how much it was talked about afterward? Me neither. So goes the Spore drive.

This is far from the first time Trek has introduced revolutionary tech that is never seen again.

/thread

 

[WraithDukat]

The only way it will make any sense at all is if the entire network (for want of a better word) is destroyed or rendered unusable somehow. Otherwise why didn't any of the other powers (esp the Borg and Dominion) have it? I can't imagine them giving it up on ethical grounds.

 

[Ovation]

It’ll be dealt with in some fashion—some will be happy, others disappointed. But perhaps (and I know this might be a radical idea) judgement should await the resolution?

 

[F. King Daniel]

So they haven't thought that far ahead? They just launched into a prequel with continuity-breaking teach and no clue how they were going to reconcile it?

And they still insist it's the same continuity as the rest of the Trek shows?

Fucking genius

 

[The Wormhole]

Do they really not have a plan?

Would that actually surprise you? This is hardly the first time an arc driven TV show did not indeed have a plan for future seasons or where the storyline would ultimately go. One need only go so far as the infamous example of BSG which used "A Plan" is the hook for the series opening narration, only there never was "A Plan," the whole thing was just meant to make the show sound more interesting.

So, no the Discovery writers not having a plan for future season is hardly surprising, nor is it scandalous.

How do you think the spore drive will fit in the larger Trek universe?

Personally, I do not believe Discovery really is the Prime Universe, so we don't really need to worry why it was never brought up in the 24th century. But even if you want to keep up this pretense, it's easily explainable. The spore drive requires a tardigrade to be tortured almost to death to operate, or a human who has been eugenically modified, both of which are against Federation ethics. And Starfleet does have a tendency to just throw away revolutionary technology anyway, so the spore drive is probably rotting in a warehouse next to the Genesis Device and warp 10.

 

[XCV330]

the spore drive could get us (as viewers.. don't want to provoke literalists) out of the galaxy. that opens up all kinds of new stories

 

[Jinn]

So they haven't thought that far ahead?

They did, they just didn't decide on what their ultimate plan is going to be. If anything the fact that they acknowledge that the spore drive needs to be dealt with shows that they think about continuity.

They just launched into a prequel with continuity-breaking teach and no clue how they were going to reconcile it?

No they didn't. As was discussed in various of marsh's threads the technology on Discovery is hardly continuity-breaking, more like continuity-bending at very specific points in time. Most stuff can be easily explained by the viewer and some problems (like the sim room) was acknowledged and explained by the producers and some by the tie-in authors. For obvious reasons the show itself cannot address many of these issues. Personally the only thing I found to be "irreconcilable" so far was the Klingon D7. What especially annoys me about the D7 design is that they could have easily called it the D6 thus providing an easter egg for the fans who know the D7 class and recognize it as its predecessor while the general audience likely doesn't know the D7 from TOS etc. so it wouldn't do anything for them either way.

 

[Romulan_spy]

The spore drive requires a tardigrade to be tortured almost to death to operate, or a human who has been eugenically modified, both of which are against Federation ethics. And Starfleet does have a tendency to just throw away revolutionary technology anyway, so the spore drive is probably rotting in a warehouse next to the Genesis Device and warp 10.

This explanation makes perfect sense. There would be no reason for Starfleet to ever mention the spore drive again since the ethical issues alone would make it a non option as a propulsion method. But I would add that, if the spore drive has gotten the Discovery lost in some alternate universe, then that would just compound the problem even more. After all, who wants to use a propulsion system that might throw your ship into a parallel universe that you can't get back from? So the propulsion system is not just unethical but also incredibly risky and dangerous. Plus, maybe Discovery eventually comes back but the crew has gone completely mad from hopping between universes? I can see a lot of reasons why Starfleet might want to pretend the spore drive never existed.

 

[Rahul]

Remember that time they made a device that could terraform a lifeless moon, and it ended up being horribly unstable? Remember how much it was talked about afterward? Me neither. So goes the Spore drive.

This is far from the first time Trek has introduced revolutionary tech that is never seen again.

But what about 'whataboutism'? This is hardly the first time this has been used as an excuse...

I mean, the Genesis thing is 1) creatively solved by the creators and 2) not the topic of this thread, and it's not as if STII was a prequel (TNG wasn't a thing back then...)

 

[the Sisko]

The Federation signs a treaty ending the war forbidding the use/development of Spore Drives. Klingons sign a treaty forbidding the use of Klingon cloak technology. Federation space, particularly the frontier, becomes filled with anti-cloak technology, such that a decade later, everyone is surprised to see an undetected cloaked ship.