Discovery Trailer

[Deset Gled]

As cool names for science fictional propulsion systems go, "spore drive" ranks pretty low, somewhere below Farscape's Hench Drive. I also can't really get on board with the whole concept of there being a galaxy-spanning network of fungus that serves as a means of instant transportation.

Since we don't end up with a setting where warp drive and transporters have been replaced with mushrooms, I'm guessing Lorca's crew are going to wind up breaking the mycellium network in some fashion by the end of the series.

Aside from the problems mentioned above, "instantaneous" transport doesn't appeal to me because we've seen it before. TNG encountered an ancient "lost" tech that could transport farther an faster than transporters, and Voyager found another one in the delta quadrant. And that's just the ones I remembered while watching the Discovery episode. I'm sure there are more. It never sticks; it can't stick; it's boring.

 

[Ryujin]

Jump drive fungus with truffle-snuffling Tarti-pigs? Better and better.

 

[Hussar]

Personally, I think the fact that they are torturing a living being to use the spore drive is probably going to be the larger issue. Particularly since the Tardigrade's are shown to be pretty darn intelligent (it has all the star charts in its brain!) and I wouldn't be terribly shocked if that aspect is the reason the spore drive is abandoned. The whole enslavement of an intelligent race thing would make a pretty good reason for Star Fleet not to use it.

That or Michael mutinies one more time, destroys the spore drive and makes sure no one else can figure it out somehow.

That or they go really dark and using the spore drive kills every tardigrade somehow. Federation genocide FTW.

 

[MarkB]

Personally, I think the fact that they are torturing a living being to use the spore drive is probably going to be the larger issue. Particularly since the Tardigrade's are shown to be pretty darn intelligent (it has all the star charts in its brain!) and I wouldn't be terribly shocked if that aspect is the reason the spore drive is abandoned. The whole enslavement of an intelligent race thing would make a pretty good reason for Star Fleet not to use it.

Starfleet, yes. But it wouldn't bother the Klingons, Romulans or Cardassians.

In any case, the beast is just serving as an organic supercomputer. Eliminating it from the equation wouldn't result in the whole project being scrapped - merely placed on the back-burner until computing technology improved to the point where regular ships' computers could handle the task.

 

[Hussar]

Starfleet, yes. But it wouldn't bother the Klingons, Romulans or Cardassians.

In any case, the beast is just serving as an organic supercomputer. Eliminating it from the equation wouldn't result in the whole project being scrapped - merely placed on the back-burner until computing technology improved to the point where regular ships' computers could handle the task.

Well, fair enough, I'm obviously not privy to any insider information.

But, I'm going to stand by my prediction. This is going to get very strongly tied into the Prime Directive, which, at least in the show, doesn't exist yet - it's General Order 1. I wonder if they will play up the fact that there are some differences between them.

 

[Ryujin]

Well, fair enough, I'm obviously not privy to any insider information.

But, I'm going to stand by my prediction. This is going to get very strongly tied into the Prime Directive, which, at least in the show, doesn't exist yet - it's General Order 1. I wonder if they will play up the fact that there are some differences between them.

I'm failing to remember exactly when, but the "Prime Directive" has been referred to as "General Order One" before "Discovery." I'm thinking that it was in TOS, but can't find a reference. Maybe it was "A Private Little War"?

 

[Jester David]

Well, fair enough, I'm obviously not privy to any insider information.

But, I'm going to stand by my prediction. This is going to get very strongly tied into the Prime Directive, which, at least in the show, doesn't exist yet - it's General Order 1. I wonder if they will play up the fact that there are some differences between them.

It's the same rule. General Order 1 is the official name. Prime Directive is effectively slang.

 

[CapnZapp]

Jump drive fungus with truffle-snuffling Tarti-pigs? Better and better.

Sigh

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

 

[CapnZapp]

As cool names for science fictional propulsion systems go, "spore drive" ranks pretty low, somewhere below Farscape's Hench Drive. I also can't really get on board with the whole concept of there being a galaxy-spanning network of fungus that serves as a means of instant transportation.

Since we don't end up with a setting where warp drive and transporters have been replaced with mushrooms, I'm guessing Lorca's crew are going to wind up breaking the mycellium network in some fashion by the end of the series.

Which is monumentally disappointing.

Just like the Zanthi or whatever they were called in Enterprise.

Note to every prequel writer: stay the frak away from completely new tech, or races, or events.

The very fact we haven't heard about them before means the storyline will always end in a wet whimper. Why couldn't they have written a positive optimistic story about how one of Treks existing trademark techs came about to be? The ship having adventure to create transports, phasers, photon torpedoes, tricorders?

Together with the underwhelming music intro, the bafflingly inept Klingon costumes, the is-the-captain-maybe-evil thing, and no bridge crew working together, it's almost time to abandon this series.

And what was it about killing off the cool security chief?!? Please tell me they had to write out the character, and not that they had the chief go full retard just to make the "make friends, not war" point! :-( :-( :-(

The hippie gaia tech makes me retch. The casual way logic is thrown out the window makes me think of the films (and not in a good way).

This last ep isn't winning me over.

In stark contrast, I'm looking forward to the next Orville very much.

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[Mallus]

FYI... "tardi-pig" has replaced "Ensign Daft Punk" as my favorite piece of Discovery-based snark.

The 4th episode was uneven, but the end half (third?) was outright thrilling. Loved Lorca's manipulative-yet-truthful ship-wide broadcast and the fantastic bit at the end with Georgiou's holo-will. Are Lorca and Discovery the beginnings of Section 31, i.e. is it named *for* his ship?

Discovery is an odd mix of obvious and unpredictable - I honestly don't know what's coming next (and can't wait to find out). It does bears the marks of its troubled development, but the result is far more compelling than I expected. Potentially unpopular opinion: so far this is easily the strongest first season of a Star Trek series since TOS.