How will the spore drive fit into canon?

I liken Spore Drive more to something like the Silfen Paths of Peter F. Hamilton's Void Trilogy or the Spice Navigator Guild of Dune. Mixed with a little dark matter imagery as inspiration for the Mycelial Network. They're using something so far in advance of human understanding that it seems more like fantasy than science.

 

Yes Dune space navigators did overcoming hughe distances but where using a known theory by folding space describd by the Holzman effect.

At this stage (2018) our developt theoretical knoledge regarding Superstring theory is at the basic quite simpel. You, me everything around us including empty space is preceived to be made of 2 dimensional strings (literally see it as pixels on your laptop or televison). Suppose you could manipulate this strings/pixels and recreate/broadcast them any where in the univers not by radiowaves but by Quantum entanglement/superposition. It means Discovery didn't travel 1 inch but changed their spin position for the empty space position where they reapear if they are observed (collaps of the wave function). Thats al there is too it an deep fantasising.

 

SD needs to be disabled. Treaties do not stop extremists from using it.

 

Except The Federation didn't give up cloaking technology, they only pretended they did. The sneaky blighters.

 

Captain Picard fixed that situation and Riker felt very bad about the whole thing.

However, since you brought it up. Did the Federation ever consider Phasing tech without the Cloak?

 

Eh, the network might become self-aware and forbid access.

That would be fun.

 

Anything less than destruction of the network or something rendering it permanently inaccessible would render Voyager, DS9 and any story where they needed to get somewhere in a hurry an absolute joke.

Even if it were classified, I'm sure the Voyager crew would have rediscovered it and invented a drive system from scratch if need be, as part of their quest to get home.

 

That is valid. The network has to be disabled before WNMHGB. if it existed, bypass the galactic barrier with a short jump.

 

VOY already was a joke given TNG and TOS journeying outside the galaxy.

 

Sure, but the fact that the technology is very hard to use and even harder to replicate unless you REALLY know what you're doing makes the spore drive a problem that basically solves itself. Given the problems we're already having with stamets, the "Mirror Universe" mishap, and the Galactic Titty Twister that killed the Glenn, it's already kind of obvious that this drive will never go into mass production.

 

Given that the Romulans gave up on the phasing cloak for less, I'd say this is probably true.

 

Gimmicky ways of getting "outside the galaxy" isn't the same as having to travel by regular means through the Delta Quadrant.

 

Enterprise in TOS did it without gimmicks.

 

Like when? They've gone in the galactic barrier, and aliens took them through it once, but everything that I know about is gimmicky to me.

 

"Where No Man Has Gone Before" is just the Enterprise traveling through the galactic barrier.

 

Doesn't the Enterprise suffer heavy damage after flying into it? It's not like the ship just ventures on out of the galaxy ho hum like everything is normal.

 

SD does work for short jumpd, which is why WNMHGB, you could jump around the barrier.

 

Yes, and it's possible to do it again. The larger point being that they got to the edge of the galaxy unaided and had time to get back to Federation space. Not exactly slow speed there.

 

I'm guessing the mycelial network somehow becomes unavailable to them -- either due to something like you suggested, or it simply "breaks".

 

In "By Any Other Name" the ship goes through the barrier to take the Kelvans back to the Andromeda Galaxy, but without suffering any major damage.