If it were not for that trope the human race would be nearly Q like by now. What happens after that, story wise? Torturing lesser species and/or suicide inducing boredom, apparently.
Or perhaps not introduce that super tech in the first place? Plots revolving around such tech are rarely particularly good, and often for such plots the tech doesn't need to be as godly as depicted. For example for the plot of the last DIS episode all was that needed for the new drive to be faster than the old drives ('you're the only ship that can make it in time'), not an insta-teleport-anywhere-in-the-universe device.
Hey - I bet that's where these creatures come from they aren't Salamanders - what we saw in ST:VOY's "Threshold" were all baby Tardigrades
I have the feeling by the end of the series it will have been proven to be a failure. It will have horrifying consequences along the lines of Ripper having been created unnaturally from a standard water bear and those melted crewmen in the corridor of the Glenn. Not only that, but the project will have driven Lorca and his closest people mad and Burnham will lead a successful mutiny to retake the ship; Lorca will join the pantheon of other insane captains and admirals.
Then whats Lorca obsessed with? A slightly faster ship? That super-tech is the core of this whole thing. What Stamets see's as amazing achievement, Lorca see's a weapon. And it can only work with someone forcefully plugged into it. So it's not just new tech, it's a new problem that presents character conflict and development through moral dilemma. If the plot of the last episode was simply about speed, there's little excuse to have the tardigate, so no fallout. There's no obsession from Lorca that isn't pointless. There's no substance to the tension. The drive isn't the only way it can be done - but strip it out of what was written and you're not left with much.
My guess as to why it doesn't work in the future? is because writer's had the wisdom to know it was a bad idea I kid I kid, the universe takes some allergy medication and everything goes back to normal.
No, but it *is* acceptable to the Klingons, the Romulans, the Cardassians, and countless others. If the Trek universe allows for this kind of technology to work for the Feds, it also works for those, less enlightened civilizations. Additionally, if all TG is doing for the Glenn and Discovery is behaving as a supercomputer, then eventually Starfleet will have a manufactured supercomputer that can do the same thing. Or they'll find a less invasive means of getting help from the tardigrades -- possibly even making them full members of the crew on Spore Drive ships. Unless there is something more to explain why spore drive tech got shut down, this entire season will end with a gaping, glaring plot hole that undermines all of Star Trek. Well ... I think game-changing technologies are fascinating and allow for amazing stories. A lot of us on these boards lived through the microcomputer and Internet revolutions and even those technologies continue to have all kinds of impacts on our culture. In the 1960s, the President of the United States could barely talk with the Soviet Premier without lots of diplomatic coordination -- today Trump and Putin can tweet at each other openly from anywhere on the planet, and anyone can read the messages! Seeing something like that happen to the UFP is bound to be interesting. Next Generation and Deep Space Nine touched on the Iconian Gateways and the upheaval such tech would have on the galaxy. This is much the same thing, examined in greater detail.
It would have to be an anti-fungal med. This subspace spore network is the jock itch infection of the universe. Kor
What if it's like trans-dimensional transport? Continued use could kill the crew, and being used to move such a large mass around would damage biological tissue, for light years around, on the sending and receiving side.
Okay a few things:- 1. We have no idea how it was discovered yet. 2. Likelihood only the Discovery has any information on it, making the data easily deleted. 3. We've just found out that there's some form of food chain. My guess is ripper is pretty low on it. If Ripper can appear out of nowhere, what about the things that feed on Rippers? Using the drive may end up attracting some nigh unstoppable abomination. 4. Michael isn't happy torturing Ripper, so there's a good chance she'll do something about it. In fact it's looks like the story is being set up just for that. 5. Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians developing this technology? None of them have used anything like the Genesis device, despite the Klingons certainly knowing about it. Nor do you see those star destroying weapons a lot (I think twice, once in DS9 and once in Generations). Simply having no one else use it isn't the worst thing to happen in Trek. The Borg have time travel, yet we've seen them do it on a grand scale of once. 6. We're only at episode 4 for god's sake. The spores were introduced in episode 3. Lets wait a while before we start complaining about inconsistencies with an already inconsistent Star Trek universe.
The moral reasons excuse would be a big cop out and an explanation that doesn't really hold up to scrutiny. First of all out of all the groups in Trek, only the Federation has ever discovered & used this method of travel? Also something like this would be used for sure by Section 31 (if not Starfleet Command) in dire times like against The Borg or the Dominion war. Speaking of The Borg, they would know of this method of travel surley and it's vastly superior to the Transwarp drive and even the Transwarp Nexus Hub from Endgame. The only acceptable explanation IMO is the destruction of the entire network, maybe by Lorca to stop it falling into the hands of the Klingons. You would imagine any such event that would be on a galactic scale, surely would have huge consequences.
Another possibility is that the network is sentient. It denies access when it's apparent it's used to kill on a massive scale. If they have Prophets or Organian-level capabilities, they might have the power to deny access even to the Borg.
There's about 0% probability that the writers didn't have this figured out last summer already. And they wouldn't be thinking in terms of making transwarp or kironide disappear: they aren't facing the prospect of two remaining seasons or a slight potential for syndication, but the already real existence of an entire franchise fundamentally based on the S-drive not existing. They won't settle for half-measures here: they want the thing gone for good, so that nobody will even bother to speak about it for centuries come. And they don't need to leave any leeway for future stories, as they know for a fact there will be none. So they can shoot with big guns, and probably will. Timo Saloniemi
For complete finality with no chance of this tech being used by anybody in Trek ever again, it would have to be something along the lines of the mycelial network being completely destroyed, unusable and no chance of being recreated. Not even Voyager, S31 or Borg or Dominion or Q in the future should be able to use it.
Every jump is actually into an alternate universe. So far the changes have been minor to non-existent (one universe might have a Kelvan turn right 30,000 years ago in Andromeda, while the other universe the Kelvan turned left...they died twenty seconds later in the atomic blast anyway, so the universes are basically the same otherwise). But as they jump more and more, they will start to notice changes as the changes effect them locally or personally, rather than being some far off difference no one would notice. By the 24th century, this in a known issue. Use of the Spore Drive doesn't get you to anyplace in your own universe instantly. It instead gets you to another location in a different universe. The farther you jump the more differences in the universes. Voyager couldn't use said drive as they would effectively be universe hopping and might never reach the correct universe. The simulation they ran ended with Voyager appearing over an Earth dominated by reptilian humanoids that were having issues with an ongoing war between some mutants that piloted mini-tanks and humanoids that used time travel as a potential weapon, with Earth being constantly invaded by one species after another only to be defeated by one of the time traveling humanoids.
The only way I can imagine for it to work while explaining why Voyager (and other extreme situations) didn't use it is to have the fungus network destroyed at the end of this season/series. Other reasons, like ethical reasons, slowly damaging space, etc, doesn't explain why Voyager and other extreme situations that must have happened in Federation history after Discovery didn't use the network anyway. They just need the knowledge of the technology and a human willing to "sacrifice" itself. If the space mycelium network is destroyed, it explain why it was never used again. It just doesn't exist anymore. There's other explanations (god like being protecting any further use of the network, using the network actually leading to an invasion by a very powerful evil beings in season 2 and have the federation shutting it down for good for it's own protection, etc, etc) but they are out of the left field, probably not particularly better and doesn't seem to be the way we are going. The network must be destroyed/unusable at the end of the season/series.
I really cannot imagine how this could be even remotely plausibly be done. It is spanning entire universe and would reasonably contain significantly more matter than the rest of the known universe.