How will the spore drive fit into canon?

[Rahul]

If the only way to get the navigation system to work is by using tardigrade DNA spliced into a human....no other race is going to be able to use this engine design.

Even if you manage to steal everything technical about the systems, you still need the fungus that makes the spores....and a tardigrade to navigate the network...and after than, a human to augment when the tardigrade fails. And it is unclear if an unwilling human can pilot the ship correctly, or if it will just jump you into the nearest star to end the pain....or jump you into a different universe when it freaks out.

Otherwise you have an expensive moon jumper system. And while that might have some tactical uses....it likely takes up too much space on a ship to be worth having in place of more weapons, troops, and a larger warp drive.

Well, they need a Tardigrade (or human) because they don't have enough computing power. Something the super advanced 24th century computers should easily handle.

The one thing that really isn't recreatable are the fungi spores. Which DIS grows in a big hall. (They never told us were they got them from, am I right?) It generally feels like we are missing a lot of crucial exposition on the spore drive.

 

[Qonundrum]

It'll get forgotten - like "transwarp" between the TOS movies and TNG (season 5 or 6ish?), where it got a different meaning.

Or there will be some big event that proves the spore technology isn't suitable or desired for space travel...

 

[Stephen!]

I imagine that spore drive will become totally unusable in some future season.

Uraei secretly sabotages it.

 

[Refuge]

Well, they need a Tardigrade (or human) because they don't have enough computing power. Something the super advanced 24th century computers should easily handle.

The one thing that really isn't recreatable are the fungi spores. Which DIS grows in a big hall. (They never told us were they got them from, am I right?) It generally feels like we are missing a lot of crucial exposition on the spore drive.

The spores were "harvested from the fungal species prototaxites stellaviatori" grown in Discovery's cultivation bay. (Ref: The Glenn) - "I remember you chided Straal about not growing his own like you do. You were talking about mushrooms." "They didn't have a forest on the Glenn like Discovery has. If they stored mushrooms dry, it would have to be in tremendous quantities."

As for the biological 'interface' (technobabble warning) "The interface process requires an evolved organism.
A species with a highly functioning nervous system. And one that, like the Tardigrade, shares genetic information with mushrooms. The animal kingdom diverted from its fungal counterparts 600 million years ago, but Homo sapiens still share over half of our DNA with them."

It's the deterioration of the biological 'conduit' that is obviously the flaw in the Drive. Ripper suffered and shut down. Stamets - not so good either.

 

[Phily B]

It will become unusable due to ethical reasons or environmental reasons.

 

[Refuge]

Does anyone think because they are now in the middle of nowhere with their human interface lying on the ground babbling on "I can see all of them" (cuckoo cuckoo)... well, that this Spore Drive idea might be a tad unreliable??

 

[XCV330]

Does anyone think because they are now in the middle of nowhere with their human interface lying on the ground babbling on "I can see all of them" (cuckoo cuckoo)... well, that this Spore Drive idea might be a tad unreliable??

Somehow I don't see regularly scheduled Sporeliner Flights, no.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Well, they need a Tardigrade (or human) because they don't have enough computing power. Something the super advanced 24th century computers should easily handle.

Can they?

Somehow I don't see regularly scheduled Sporeliner Flights, no.

Fly the psychedelic skies.

 

[Ithekro]

The groovy 2260s are a side effect of the Spore Drive, failure or no.

The Spores are a potentially serious supply and demand issue. While a ship can grow more to produce more spores, what happens when a starship ends up across the galaxy? Is there any other source of this species of fungus. Is it cultivated from the Network or from some world? The fungus closest related to it on Earth is long extinct.

 

[zar]

Can they?

Yeah, there's really no meaningful point of reference to tell us exactly how much their computers have advanced. They went from duotronic to isolinear, neither of which mean anything in the real world.

 

[Wulff359]

Well, the reason that the spore drive never comes up in the future anymore might be that the fungus is developing anti-bodies against the intruding factors. It might simply be as easy as the spores rejecting entry to technology based species. And Disco ending up somewhere else but intended is the first sign of the resistance that is building up.

Another possibliity is that something happens that destroys the network. The Klingons or someone else might not find a way to use the network like Disco does, but to infect it with a deadly virus. It is not like the Klingons wouldn't destroy a whole Planet so that no-one can have it.

So in the "Future" no one is talking about spore drives as they also do not mention Transwarp from SFS anymore.

 

[Ronald Held]

Boone ever thought to get the Tardigrade to reproduce,once DSC found it was the missing navigational component?
With the 24th Galen theory , why cannot other races get an appropriate Tardigrade injection and now can run their spore drive?

 

[Lysian]

It's not technicly canon, but the very first Star Trek comic featured spores in space that were eventually destroyed by the Enterprise's "laser beams". I don't have a problem with Discovery being canon as long as that can be too!

 

[Ithekro]

Boone ever thought to get the Tardigrade to reproduce,once DSC found it was the missing navigational component?
With the 24th Galen theory , why cannot other races get an appropriate Tardigrade injection and now can run their spore drive?

It is probably the non-humanoid remains of the human DNA that is similar to the Tardigrade and the spores, while the ancient humanoid that is shared with most of the other Galactic species is not. The theory would be that the spore's DNA base there are looking for is Earth based in original, rather than the precursor species introduced humanoid pattern. That is if they scanned the DNA through all their species listings for all Federation (including Vulcans) and encountered races (such as Klingons) and found that humans were either the only compatible species, or the most compatible species....depending on their wording. That is still one of the episodes I missed as the play back on CBS All Access kept forcing us to skip that episode every time we tried to play it.

 

[fireproof78]

Boone ever thought to get the Tardigrade to reproduce,once DSC found it was the missing navigational component?
With the 24th Galen theory , why cannot other races get an appropriate Tardigrade injection and now can run their spore drive?

We might find out in a later episode. I still think Stamets will destroy the tech and close off the knowledge forever.

 

[wilmaed]

developing anti-bodies against the intruding factors.

Or the using damages the fungus.

Or the fungus is developing a higher level of mental awareness.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

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?

The real answer is that the writers are intentionally fucking with you because they find amusement in getting under fans' skins when playing with canon.


While everyone is complaining about canon violation, the writers are laughing in a room saying "we got em!"

 

[Jackson_Roykirk]

It'll get forgotten - like "transwarp" between the TOS movies and TNG (season 5 or 6ish?), where it got a different meaning.

Or there will be some big event that proves the spore technology isn't suitable or desired for space travel...

It might have something to do with opening doors to alternate universes, such as the mirror universe.

At the end of "Choose Your Pain", after Stamets used himself in place of the tardigrade, we saw that after Stamets and Culber walked away from their bathroom mirror, there was some mysterious scene of Stamets' walking away from the mirror a second time....

....which I think is foreshadowing Discovery's involvement with the Mirror Universe. Somehow, using the spore drive will create huge problems between our universe and other parallel universes, and thus its use must be abandoned.

 

[fireproof78]

It might have something to do with opening doors to alternate universes, such as the mirror universe.

At the end of "Choose Your Pain", after Stamets used himself in place of the tardigrade, we saw that after Stamets and Culber walked away from their bathroom mirror, there was some mysterious scene of Stamets' walking away from the mirror a second time....

....which I think is foreshadowing Discovery's involvement with the Mirror Universe. Somehow, using the spore drive will create huge problems between our universe and other parallel universes, and thus its use must be abandoned.

I honestly think it will either be that, the fungi becomes self-aware and shuts it down, Stamets destroys the knowledge, or they encounter an "antimatter" universe that threatens to destroy both universes.

 

[Ovation]

I honestly think it will either be that, the fungi becomes self-aware and shuts it down, Stamets destroys the knowledge, or they encounter an "antimatter" universe that threatens to destroy both universes.

So Stamets “in the mirror” is Lazarus’ cousin?