What was "The Burn" and what caused it?

Burnham stated in her speech about "The Burn" in the third episode of the Season that the Dilithium shortage began 700 years after the 23rd century. Starfleet began trying/testing new FTL methods/designs, but nothing proved as reliable/sustainable even with the shortage. The Burn occurred about a century after that.

 

Oh no! Grudge is in legion with Badgey and Peanut Hamper!

 

Grudge: Meow! Meow meow meoooow!!!

Burnham: Oh no, now even the cat is singing that mysterious melody!!

 

There must be some kind of way out of here.

 

Who caused the Burn? A second Terran Empire. One formed sometime after then events of DS9's Mirror episodes.

The basic principle of the Mirror Universe is that relationships and political structures operate as their opposite. Honorable people are dishonorable. The peaceful are warlike. I think it extends to the Federation vs Terran Empire as well. I think as the Federation ascended over the 23rd and 24th century (and beyond) the Terran Empire declined and fell. And hundreds of years as the Federation continued to grow in strength and endure, the Empire stayed dissolved. And then a few hundred years ago the Empire got back together and has been building its strength in the mirror universe. Meanwhile the Federation entered a slow decline as it hit limits. Technological. Political. Even in terms of space itself - Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies are just too far away even for Quantum Slipstream. As Rome hit effective geographic limits of its expansion before its slow decline, so too did the Federation. It harkens back to something T'Kuvma said in the pilot about the Federation's expansionism.

Time travel opened a new domain for Starfleet to explore and the Federation to perhaps grow into. And for about 100 years it looked like it would be the answer. The Temporal Wars put a stop to that. The federation hit a ceiling again.

And then the Burn delivered a big push and shoved the Federation in a slow decline as dilithium dried up, over the edge of a cliff.

So what is the nature of the Burn? I think The Terran Empire reconstituted itself sometime in the 26th or 27th century or so and spent the next few hundred years conquering the entire galaxy. Literally the whole galaxy, not Star Trek's occasional reckless use of the word. An Empire that would make the Empire of Star Wars blush in its scope. But it encountered the same problem as the Federation: what happens to an empire that does not grow? It whithers.

I think the Burn was a misfire of sorts. I think 120 years prior to Discovery, the Terran Empire tried to punch a hole through the increasing distance between the two universes big enough to send an enormous armada through to conquer the Federation's Galaxy (and thus, expand its domain into that).But the attempt at punching that hole through the "great distance" messed with subspace and some of this universe's laws of physics. Every warp core emitting any kind of subspace field saw it's dilithium (its modulator) was destroyed as the effect rippled out from its point of origin (an Episode 6 plot point). Dilithium, already rare, wasn't *actually* at fault per se. The Terran Empire didn't intend to destroy the Federation this way. It was incidental to them trying to open an enormous subspace fissure.

After the failure to punch a hole, the Terran Empire didn't try again, but watch for some relationship with Discovery's wormhole that brought them to the 32nd century having made a second try worthwhile for the Terrans. Which is why Georgiou is having "episodes". That's the Terran Empire trying to bring the universes closer based off something they learned (maybe from the Wormhole... somehow...) having a biological effect on the only Terran in the Prime universe.

Towards the end of the season, we'll get more black boxes and eventually coordinates. Discovery will find the rift and realize what is going on. They'll realize the Terrans are trying to break through. The risk wouldn't be a second Burn pe se (that'll be incidental). It'll be the largest invasion fleet in modern galactic history and versus a Starfleet that has about 15 ships left. And that'll force Georgiou to make choices about her relationships and loyalties. It's also suitably Star Trek-y in that in the far, far distant future, even after a millenium of prosperity, our greatest enemy is still our "original sin" - our dark impulses and baser instincts expressed when humans in the Terran universe killed the Vulcans during First Contact, while humans in the Prime Universe decided on a path better than their baser instincts. And how even though we can never really escape them, we can keep them safely under lock and key by the choices we make (as shown via Georgiou).

But in short... the Burn? It's not the Borg, or bitter old Romulans bent on revenge, or Klingons or Q or any other fanfic. It's something within Star Trek: Discovery's sandbox which relates to the show's leads in its most profound way, and that's the Mirror Universe and the Terran Empire.

 

This is the best theory I read, and even beats my pah-wraith theory which honestly won't mean anything to the Discovery crew. But Discovery very much has a history with the Terran Empire.

Has Mirror Georgiou heard the mysterious melody yet? If what you say is correct, I wouldn't be surprised if it was a Terran Empire song.

 

I forgot about the melody. In the spirit of everyone being opposite watch the Prime Universe lullaby be like a part of the Terran Empire imperial march or something when done on a different instrument at a different octave or something. Michael's not asking Georgiou about it early in the season will be a classic TV trop of the "near miss" that blows the plot open early on. And in the last episode or something, Georgiou will hear it in passing by accident and it will freak her the hell out and she'll be like "WHAT IS THAT? WHY ARE YOU PLAY _MY_ SONG? I WROTE IT AS THE TERRAN IMPERIAL ANTHEM!" or something.

So why do different people know it? Watch it be an artifact of the universes being pulled closer and it echoing through. Mirror versions of characters are hearing it at the same time Prime universe characters are and through subspacey story magic it connects them to each other.

 

Oh one more thing to add: Since forever, Star Trek and the Federation uses the word "planets" in a very non-literal sense. The "United Federation of Planets" is more accurately named "The United Federation of Interstellar Political Bodies". In the 24th century Earth and Mars and Luna didn't have seperate political representation. "United Earth" meant the Solar System and some other stuff but not litterally "just the planet Earth". Same with the Vulcans. The entire Andorian Empire, which controlled at least several Star Systems, was a member. And we don't know the circumstances that lead to the Klingon Empire joining, but it's unlikely it meant specifically Qo'nos, and probably meant the entirety of the Klingon domain of that era, which would have been like the United States annexing Texas in a sense.

In the 24th century, we knew the Federation was across 8000 light years with 150 "planets". There's probably far more than 150 planets within 25 light years. So planets, as we've known forever, isn't literal. It means political entities. So when the Federation is said to have been at it's peak "350 planets", that could easily mean a very large portion of the entire galaxy depending on the scale of it's constituent political entities... basically how many "Texas" or "Klingon Empires" it annexed. As in, most of the Alpha, Beta and a nice chunk of the Delta Quadrant. In that sense, that could offer the Federation no more room to "grow" within our galaxy because, with some pockets, the Federation was more or less the entire Galaxy, unless it decided to outright go on a very un-Federation conquering spree of non-hostile neighbors.

 

The Terran Empire have always been cartoonish villains though. Even just one Terran character we've had so far has been very jarring. I'm not really sure if this is the way to go as the villains who crippled the Federation.

 

Well I'm thinking kind of like the 1812 Overture. Yeah, it has the parts that are often accompanied by the actual firing of artillery, but it also has some very soft and melodic parts.

I'm just thinking that the lullaby could be a soft part of a larger song that is more in keeping with the "cartoonish villainy", and maybe performed differently on some brass instead of strings. On Youtube, for example, there's the Star Wars Imperial March - designed intentionally to be militarized evil and evoke fascism - performs all sorts of different ways, and it changes the song to varying degrees.

Anyway that's my guess as to how it ties in. But I do think regardless of the song, the Terran Empire is the Burn's most logical culprit. This is a show that, while it gives shout outs to Trek history, very rarely goes out of its way to give the kind of infodump that assigning it to the Dominion or the Borg or Q or somebody.

 

I mean the Dominion or the Borg are more dramatically intriguing characters than the Terrans who are evil for evil's sake. And if they aren't cartoonish anymore now, they'd still need an infodump on how they developed as characters.

 

As a fan, I entirely agree. But I try to take a step back and look at these things as we've seen them in this (and other) franchises in which continuity and old shows/events have their hat tipped to, but they have an otherwise standoffish relationship with it. And to a degree its understandable as to why - most of the people working on Discovery were kids or teenagers or not born yet during the Berman era that created modern Star Trek and want to make their "own story" within the confines of the larger Star Trek sandbox, rather than just sequelling somebody else work from 15-25 years ago (and far longer if we're talking about TOS). It's like with the Star Wars sequels and people speculating about the involvement of Asohka Tano. That's Dave Filoni's character, not JJ Abrams. That's why we'll see her in the Mandalorian but were never going to see her in the sequels. JJ Abrams wanted to tell his story.

I think this is particularly true for Star Trek, which has been (in my view unfairly) tagged with the perception that its dense and more or less well constructed continuity made it impenetrable to new audiences. Take Star Trek: Picard for example. Captain Picard, within the continuity, was captain of the Enterprise-E over 1.5 times as long as he was captain of the Enterprise-D. And Data mostly wore his post-FC uniform in the show. But they only ever showed the Enterprise D because that's the more iconic ship that Patrick Stewart and the Picard character are associated with. The E, where Data actually died (and a far better looking ship IMO), only ever showed up as a model in Picard's museum locker. Even the main ship of movie TNG was too "continuity entrenched" to show up as the ship Riker rode to the rescue on, even though that was what a lot of people (myself included) had hoped. But it was never going to happen.

I wish it wasn't like this, but the filmmaker and writing team that sees a pile of previously created work to build off of and does deep dives into it is an extreme rarity. Dave Filoni is pretty much "it". I wish it weren't that way, but it's what we got.

 

I wonder if the human population of Starfleet started to pull back to secret locations anticipating something very explosive happening in the future? In 2379 the USS Titan (NCC-80102) was launched The Titan, a Luna-class Federation starship in Starfleet service, launched in the year 2379 under the command of Captain William T. Riker. The Titan, like the other ships in the Luna class, was named for a moon in the Sol system, Titan. This new series of vessels had one of the most diverse crews in fleet history—fewer than 15% of the Titan crewmembers were Human.

In 2379, history appears to show the beginning of more diverse starship crews and fewer human crews. Maybe it's nothing.

 

Did you just copy and paste a wiki summery?

 

I like that everyone kind of thinks the Burn was important but has moved on. Michael thinks, "If I solve this, the galaxy will magically fix itself."

When it's more likely just galactic trivia at this point.

 

Unless they can reverse it with the "Unburn"...

 

Don't we need Burn II first?

 

Or the shortage caused the Federation to begin experimenting on the remaining supplies, and one of those "new FTL methods" went tits-up and exploded all the dilithium everywhere. At this point, that's where I'm leaning, that it was self-infliced out of a well-intentioned but desperate attempt to fix the problem.

 

Well, Whatever the burn is, Dilithium is still in short supply.. Shorter now that most blew the F up 130 years ago. So they need to find a new source of power, or a new way of travel. Disco still uses the warp reactor to use the DASH drive to my knowledge, So once she runs out of Dilithium she's stuck at the dock like the rest.

 

Nope.
Discovery can run off auxiliary power (which is enough to run the Spore Drive - and the Spores themselves when properly used can also act as a very powerful source of power).
They turned off the Warp core and ran on auxiliary power before jumping to SOL in episode 3.