The Spore Drive Technology. What Do You Think About It?

Defunct in making a functional planet which the Klingons didn't want it for anyway.

 

known but not found. and who is to say that the mycellium network, in trek backstory, is not a catalyst for panspermia.

 

Used by the Preservers? How's that for an Easter Egg?

 

This would be a valid explanation. But it also a massive retcon and in stark contrast to previous canon.

But the main problem is that it truly puts Star Trek in "another" universe. While previously, the creators were always very adamant about it being "our" future, even ignoring previous canon for it (the 1996 augment wars vs. Voyager later visiting our "real" 1996) to continue that illusion. Star Wars was always "another galaxy, far far away", and as such was allowed to directly contradict our universe, with the Force and all. Star Trek usually showed us things that were highly improbably (time travel, aliens, FTL, ...), but (as far as possible) not downright wrong. As in, disprovable wrong. Sure, there were slip-ups from time to time, and they used a lot of real science the wrong way. But never previously they built an entire season-spanning arc on a McGuffin that is truly, downright provable rubbish and violating the very reality we live in.

Again: nothing here is truly "fact based", this is fiction after all. But it moves the illusion, for many people's taste (mine) way too far into the direction into the realm of disbelief.

 

As opposed to time travel? I guess my line of suspension of disbelief is a whole lot different than others.

 

Well. Time travel is physically possible if you can achieve faster than light travel. Since FTL is a major corner stone of Star Trek as a whole, it's reasonably that it exists. Again: Highly improbably. But not impossible.
Like, it's highly unlikely time travel really exists (I don't think so), but we don't have physical proof it is impossible. A giant mushroom spanning the entire galaxy with sentient beings (tardigrades) traveling it's paths through the galaxy? Well, we can safely rule that out as provable impossible. Just by looking at the observable universe today.
YMMV though. Big time.

 

I actually find the idea of extra-dimensional lifeforms as likely as the way time travel is presented in Trek.

In fact for Trek to have the same kind of life over and over again, where its so compatible that species that have evolved over billions of years separately on other worlds can breed, requires both it and on some level a Creator, so for me the mycellium works as well as anything else they have put on there. I actually like it.

And while the mycellium does span the galaxy, and perhaps more, it does not in itself have to be large, as whatever dimension it partly exists in does not have to take up a "space" relative to 3 dimensional understandings

 

And the Q? The Organians? The Prophets?

Or, we know what exists in all ten spatial dimensions that have been theorized? I'm no physicists, but I do feel like that Star Trek has dealt in the provabable impossible before without issue.

 

You didn't seem to get my larger point: All those were hidden. Like, really rare, and really hard to find. IF they exist, it'd be logical we wouldn't know of their existence yet. Same goes for subspace funghi. They're okay in fiction.

NOT okay: A galaxy spanning space shroom FTL network with biological organisms travelling on it. That'd be right in front of us. IF such a thing existed, we would know of it by now. Aka - we would see the consequences of it right in front of our eyes. Ergo - while all of these are highly implausible in the real world (and none of them really scientific), only the latter is already provable impossible, even in the more lenient fictional universe of Star Trek.

 

To put it more bluntly: It breaks the rules of it's own universe. By it's own rules, Star Trek is our universe, in the future, however unrealistic that might be. But this LSD-network simply doesn't fit in, as it clearly isn't part of our history or universe right now.

It's the same as if suddenly Orcs and Elves appeared on Star Trek. They are equally realistic as the Q. But they very obviously belong in a different type of setting. It has less to do with real science, but with narrative cohesion.

 

That's fair point. Lorca and his mapping of the network means we are supposed to believe it has always been there just not mapped yet. I have struggled even wanting to give sense to the mechanics of spore drive. Visually it seems silly, it really does. Having a creature, be it a Tardigrade or a human hooked up and mixed with spores then piloting this technology through pathways that present themselves in the interfaces brain. What a freak show.

 

No we wouldn't.

 

Well, Battlestar Galactica quite succesfully used "jumps" as their means of FTL-travel. But they didn't have Warp at te same time. Andthe human navigator, being transformed by spice/funghi folding space is straight out of Dune. My major issue with it is not the jumping per se - it's the underlying explanation of a trippy space funghi network, and the canon conflicts it creates - Voyager surely would have been able to muster the resources for one jump! At least at the point were communication with Earth was established.

Yes, we would. Science is really good at direct and indirect observations about the stuff that's directly arund us. The problem is scale - reaching too far out, or getting in subatomic structures. Not mass. If a structure this massive would be there, and if it would in any way interact with our universe (which this clearly does, showing gravitational waves and even having large-scale organisms using it as a means of transportation) we would not only know about it by now, we probably would already have a bunch of nerds filling drawers with every type of specifics about is.

 

How would we know about it? What tool is present in current technology that would make that possible? Why is an FTL lifeform when humanity cannot surmount the lightspeed barrier yet be so detectable?

Again, this feels like a very strange place to say "suspension of disbelief broken!" when Star Trek has gods, noncoporeal beings, aliens who state that "thought is the basis of reality," time travel, temporal wars, terraforming torpedoes, aliens who talk to whales, cross-species breeding (by accident some times), ion storms and transporter duplicates.

This line makes no sense to me.

 

Well, first of all: The suspension of disbelief is quite different from person to person. But I see a lot of people being discontent with the mycellium network, so I believe I'm not alone here.

And again: This is not a matter of real science. This is about a fictional universe following it's own rules. If "The Force" from Star Wars, or Orcs and Elves would suddenly appear in Star Trek, it would equally break the suspension of disbelief (I have quite a few problems with Apollo's appereance on TOS), all while they work fabulously in their own universes, and are neither more or less realistic than the other.

Also: Only because these things have happened before (cough* warp 10-salamanders), doesn't mean it's an excuse now. It was stupid back then, and it faced a whole lot of fan-backlash back then. And was thereafter immediately buried, forgotten and never mentioned again. Star Trek always had it's lower points. But it's not good to use them as a point of reference. And rarely they used one of the truly audaciously stupid concepts as a main arc. The FTL "jumping" would be much more believable IMO if it didn't were linked to some concept someone clearly came up with while being stoned, like a funky intergalactic shroom network with happy tardigrades travelling upon it.

 

This is a fair point.

I don't want to be that guy, but you stated in another post that if Star Trek is supposed to be connected to our real world and that our real world had not observed this network, that current science should be seeing the consequences of it and that we hadn't and , therefore it was ridiculous (oversimplifying). Since it doesn't "fit" in real world science it doesn't fit in universe? Again, I'm missing some place where this the straw that breaks the camel's back.

This isn't the force, or Orcs, or anything of the sort. This is another dimensional being and network being discovered and utilized as propulsion.

It's not different than the Traveller, the Equinox aliens, or any number of oddball propulsion systems in Trek history.

Backlash is one thing. The demand that it be explained and made to fit in to continuity is the part that I find truly baffling. As if Star Trek has never done this before.

 

The way TNG or VOY had often represented subspace realms, it seemed to me that those realms were like entire always right with us, but "out of phase" with our universe or something like that (think "TNG: Schisms"). Fluidic space is a similar idea -- an extra-dimensional realm that coexists with our space, but in a different dimension. In those cases, there is a whole subspace realm or fluidic space realm right in front of us that we cannot readily detect.

The mycelium network is (as has been described on DSC) extra-dimiensional compared to our universe. So, just like subspace of fluidic space, it may coexist with us, but on a different dimensional plane, and thus would not be readily detectable.

 

Star Trek has done that for a a while, including in TOS-Wink of an Eye. Phasing cloak in TNG, aliens who exist like you described also appear in VOY too, with "Scientific Method" as well as fluidic space.

Really don't find this network that strange at least in Star Trek.

 

"Wink of an Eye" is a different situation, since they existed in our universe and in our dimension, but just moved too quickly for our eyes and brains to be able to detect.

I'm talking more about the realms such as the aliens in TNG: Time's Arrow. That was another example of an entire realm that we humans (in our universe) could not see, even when it was right in front of us, because it was out of phase with our universe.

The mycelium network exists in a different dimension, so even when it is right in front of us, it cannot easily be seen by us. Granted, I doubt that's how other dimensions work, but that's the way Star Trek has always handled it.