Spoilers Is there a way to win the war without using time travel?

After the end of the last episode which had the Discovery returning to the Prime Universe 9 month after they ended up in the MU, which showed that the Klingons conquered large swaths of Federation Territory in their absence i wonder if that is compatible with what we know about canon history before and if the war can and will be won by the UFP without using time travel again.

 

Maybe something like sending the information from the spore jumps back to Starfleet in the past (9 months back) without the Discovery time-traveling herself.

 

Until we know the extent of the Klingons success in next weeks episode, it's difficult to say. Right now it looks The Federation is in real trouble and The Klingons are on the edge of victory.

The spore landing on Tilly and MU Phillipa now being in Prime must have some connection, I would think.

Personally I wouldn't like it if it were a simple case of DSC having to go back and put right what once went wrong.

 

Time travel is the only way to bring our universe Hugh back.

 

— Use Emperor Georgiou's knowledge of conquering the Klingon Empire to develop a strategy of defeating them (her assistance is shown in the preview).

(If the ISS Discovery is still present in the Prime Universe somewhere):
— If the ISS Discovery is still around, they would still be loyal to Emperor Georgiou, so use her to convince them to aid Starfleet in fighting the Klingons in exchange for assisting them in returning home.
— If they agree, use both the ISS and USS Discovery to conduct guerrilla-style hit-and-run raids behind enemy lines using spore drive jumps.

(They should do these either way even if they only have the Prime Discovery):
— Hand over all the data on the cloaking devices to Starfleet to remove the Klingon technical advantage.
— Have Burnham convince Voq/Tyler to aid their cause (by exploiting their relationship) and use his knowledge of the MU and how the Terrans conquered Klingons to convince L'Rell that they'd be better off seeking an end to the hostilities now that Discovery has returned and can start fighting them once again. Also remind her of the other Klingon House's betrayal of them and how she and Voq owe them no loyalty and would be better off leading the Empire themselves.
— If L'Rell and Voq cooperate, use their inside knowledge of Klingon defenses to launch a decapitation mission against the current Klingon leadership using the Discovery's spore drive to jump in and out, but frame one or more of the rival Houses for the attack in order to further sow the existing seeds of discord and infighting among them.
— Have Discovery conduct a Doolittle-style raid on the Klingon Homeworld and other key wartime resource and manufacturing locations in the Empire in order to force the Klingons to pull ships back from the front to defend the core worlds from attack.
— Once the Klingons are in disarray, have L'Rell and Voq return to the High Council and say that Voq was T'Kuvma's rightful heir to the Chancellorship and convince them to unite the Klingon Houses under him once again and end the war (while remaining on a Cold War footing with the Klingons) (L'Rell and her House and Voq having greater influence may explain the prevalence, along with the Augment Virus, of human-looking Klingons during TOS, as it's hard to deny them a chance to serve in military and leadership roles if the Chancellor is one too).

 

Yeah I had a big post ready on the subject which largely accords with your points but you beat me to it. Georgiou knowledge (partly due to her knowledge of the redacted data from the Defiant logs) + Spore drive stuff + ability to see through cloak + possible ISS Discovery help (I think the latter is not key) = victory.

In any case, these factors also explain (non-human Federation members getting very edgy about what humans could REALLY do if they wanted, knowledge of the near future, resolution of the spore drive and hopefully why it eventually becomes unusable etc) why all these things become classified. Its weakness it relying on the Discovery crew all keeping schtum....but I can't think of any better solution - only lame ones like the time travel reset.

 

I thought they were out of Spores and therefore couldn't make any more jumps? Or can they make more now they're back in our universe?

Either way, they couldn't equip ISS Disco with a spore drive because they don't have a navigator.

 

I hope they will not use time travel.

Federation can use the data Discovery collected to see cloacked ships.
20% of occupied territory is not that much.

Maybe the USS-D will ally witha klingon ship to defeat ISS-D.

Anyways, Tyler/Voq and L'rell will play a role. Maybe Michael will find a way to use what she learnt from MU Voq

 

They healed the network by destroying the palace ship and its mini-star, so they can harvest more spores, presumably.

 

Right, that's true. They're still out of spores and we don't know how long it'll take to resupply, so I hope they won't be jumping around straight away.

I wonder how they're going to get rid of it? Obviously we don't see spore drives ever again, so there needs to be a problem with it. I assumed the last episode was showing that travelling the network was too destructive, or too damaging on the navigator to continue.

 

Yes they need to explain its non-use not because it is destroyed (now no longer a way to keep the mulriverse alive!) but because it can no longer be accessed.

 

I'm thinking there will be some sort of environmental reason cited like their spore drive jumps are actually damaging the mycellial network and eventually threatening all life in the universe again like the ISS Charon's spore sun drive (though much slower), so they find a way to prevent its use as a means of FTL travel ever again.

It'll be like that TNG episode where they (albeit only briefly) had to limit themselves to Warp 5 because it was damaging the fabric of subspace.

Stamets wasn't a navigator until he just upped and injected himself with the tardigrade DNA, so there's no reason that I'm aware of why they couldn't do that with someone else by injecting Stamets' DNA into them. I assume that was the original plan once Stamets told Lorca he was going to retire before they jumped to the MU, otherwise someone would have pointed out that there's no way Starfleet is going to give up such a valuable asset as the only working spore drive in the middle of a war.

If the ISS Discovery is still out there somewhere and not wreaking havoc on Federation planets and ships and making things worse for the war effort...

Spoiler: Next Week's Preview

—though that's a distinct possibility given Admiral Cornwell's hostile reaction to the return of Discovery and Sarek's mind meld scans of the crew in next week's preview—

... Starfleet will probably try to find a way to send them home instead of destroying them. And unless they can recreate the conditions of USS Defiant's crossing over or find a way to beam them back like Lorca or the DS9 MU crossed over, then they'd have to use the spore drive to do it, which means installing it on the ISS Discovery.

You probably wouldn't want to give them technology like that though (it would make the Terran Empire too powerful and they might even come back to try and attack your universe), so maybe Stamets can find a way to link himself between both ships through the network and temporarily navigate for them both, but then he'll remain in our universe while the ISS Discovery returns home with no additional supply of spores, no navigator, and no Stamets to rebuild their research, so it will be very hard for them to recreate the spore drive again. Plus, we know they don't have the spore drive in the future of the MU either.

Of course, this is all just a pie in the sky theory and depends on the ISS Discovery still being around in the Primeverse, not fighting the Federation and needing to be destroyed by our Discovery, not getting destroyed during a potential team-up against the Klingons, and them not finding an alternate means of getting home besides the spore drive, so it's a longshot at best.

 

Of course there's a way to win the war - particularly when you consider that according to the trailer, only 20% of the Federation has been occupied. The problem is squaring it with canon:

1. How was 20% of the Federation occupied, without it ever being mentioned in TOS?
2. How was the Mirror Universe kept a secret?
3. How was the mycelial network kept a secret?

The easiest way out of all of this is, unfortunately, a reset.

That said, I have no confidence that the writers are concerned with these issues whatsoever, so I'm not betting on one.

 

What I'm afraid of is that Time Travel is used and the entire first season is erased and made a moot point.

 

Ditto. And we're all back to square one for Season 2, which makes the entire first season a Groundhog Day experiment, with a different possible outcome

 

I am not too bothered about point (1) and don't think it necessarily need have ever been mentioned in TOS. However the other two points depend upon the ISS Discovery not having been too troublesome whilst in the PU AND all the crew of USS Discovery keeping schtum. We're getting into really unbelievable territory there so I fear a reset is on the cards.

 

1) Well, not TOS, but perhaps some of the territory occupied by the Klingons became the Klingon Neutral Zone mentioned in TWoK and TUC after open war ended and returned to a Cold War status.

Also, in DS9 the Klingons reclaimed the Archanis Sector in Federation space during their brief war with the Federation. The Klingons had laid claim to the Archanis Sector before but had returned it to the Federation sometime over 100 years prior to 2372, so perhaps during the Organian Peace Treaty or after the conclusion of this war in DSC if we allow for a rounding of the hundred years figure. The Archanis Sector is shown on Lorca's sitrep map of the war.

Archanis could also represent the "historical event" from canon that inspired the events on the series that the showrunners keep alluding to (or did they say it was a historical event specifically mentioned in TOS? I don't recall).

2) It's wartime and Discovery is already a top secret ship whose crew probably have higher security clearances then most Starfleet personnel, so I don't imagine it would be too hard to force them to keep quiet about it or face jail time. Especially if the Federation does something unethical they might want to cover up like using Emperor Georgiou to plan some ruthless attack on the Klingons (which it seems like they might do).

3) Presumably classified again, and I'm assuming Stamets will find some way to shut off the network from outside contact once the war is over because it's too dangerous a weapon (and threat to the existence of the universe) to allow anyone to have access to it.

 

Officialy the war has never ended until the Treaty of Organia ... DISCO will end in a cold war ...
Discovery allone can attack numerous klingon outposts, ships and regain the systems the federation has lost over the last 9 months in a couple of "Minutes". Jump BOOM Jump BOOM Jump BOOM ... eaaasy.
Or they can jump directly to Qo´noS aim a couple of torpedos on the main city and the klingons can do nothing against it.

I think they will do well.