this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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Risa
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Come on'n get your jamaharon on! There are no real rules—just don't break the weather control network.
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For the reward of instantaneous travel, I’m sure the Federation could muddle its way through amending a 100 year old law. The rest of the points don’t seem all that different than the complications we see our heroes regularly encounter exploring the galaxy. And none of them were enough to convince the crew of the Discovery to stop using the spore drive for the rest of the series.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Discovery anyway. Trek is full of miracle technologies that go conveniently forgotten. Janeway has no reason to be miffed given that she sat on an infinite speed drive herself, which had no downside that the doctor wouldn’t have been able to cure after it took them home.
Not really. The Federation, humanity most of all, are aggressively against genetic engineering. On top of it the genetic engineering requires one of those specific species of tardigrade. None were found despite Starfleet having a call put out to go looking for it. Only one was found and that was on accident.
Navigation in the other Trek shows isn't difficult. It's pathetically simple provided you're not going through some weird distortion or nebula that messes with a bunch of shit. Warp also doesn't destroy all known sentient life in the galaxy. Whether the Discovery keeps using it or not is irrelevant. At the time that the Spore Drive was known, it was not feasible to make another attempt at a spore drive. They did not have any of the originating scientists, they did not have required materials, and they were prohibited by their own law.
Yep. That always made zero fucking sense to me. It's proven you can be un-salamandered and they have an inorganic being on board who wouldn't be affected. Why the hell don't they just Warp 10 back to the Alpha Quadrant? Or put everyone in stasis while they Warp 10 over? They've done it before. Janeway doesn't get to complain about a spore drive that would have required her to rebuild the nacelles from the ground up when she was sitting on a way home with a solution and didn't bother.
Not to mention the specific spores required for the drive to connect with the mycelial network come from one specific type of fungus that exists at least partially within subspace and doesn't seem to be all that common.
Yup. Took Stamets a year (or more) to cultivate his sample. Took even longer to grow all the spores on board.
Could you imagine a Voyager where the ship is no longer constantly running towards home? One where they have to stay and gather materials to get their warp 10 drive working. The species they meet will be the same species around a few seasons later, and the relationships they build with them matter. Maybe stasis isn't good enough, and they have to hold everyone in a transporter buffer, which means rebuilding huge sections of the ship to support having all the crew inside transporters at once. They expect this to take years, but it's still by far the shortest way home. A few shuttles get modified and they send couriers back to the alpha quadrant. So they have some contact with Star Fleet, but it's not as simple as opening a channel.
If there's only enough story material here to support a few seasons, then maybe something comes up that means they have to go back and fix it. Maybe some Borg shit. Make up a reason to keep the Maquis crew around (not like Star Fleet gives a shit once the Dominion War is underway).
Good thing they never gave us that nightmare of a show.