To explain simply, Discovery basically does a Super Mario and enters the Mushroom Kingdom…..then pops out through a warp pipe. They should add the sound effects.
@@Mortlupo I don't think YOU understand the chain of command. And trying to apply existing chain of command standards to a franchise that has actively de-militarized its military is pretty stupid as well.
I don't know YOU don't want to Talk about MR Paris's experimental warp drive or Discovery's spore(D.A.S.H.) systems but i sure don't mind talking about them after ALL they are a part of THE STAR TREK universe!!!!!!!!! There's stubborn people WHO don't want STAR TREK universe to grow and mature like ALL creative show's AND ALL people everywhere do!!!!!!!!!! But there YOU have IT!!!!!!!!!!!! Stop being So Purative and accept a growing S.T. universe and remember the man said experimental they can experiment YOU know!!!!!!!!! Experiment is a part of the scientific method as ARE stated in ALL forms of science out there!!!!!!!!!! Along side ALL science classes out there who actually have time set aside for students lab and experiments for grades TOO!!!!!!!!!! Sorry but i always 💘 science and science fiction which IS what Star Trek is science fiction emphasis on fiction!!!!!!!!!
@@dustygrant3043 OMG. Caps and exclamation points. What about some arguments instead? Some that would convince the majority of people that STD is not a poorly written, incoherent mess?
Maybe they call it the Spore Drive instead of the Dash Drive because (A) they'd be too confused by the cooler name: are they dashing or driving? And (2), let's not lie, they're high as &^%$ when they use it. Klingon war? Dimension hopping? Time travel to the far future? The crew of the _Discovery_ has been lying on their backs the whole time, working through a shroom-induced fever dream. Or several. They don't all have to be the same. In some of those dreams, Romulus is destroyed. In others, Vulcan is. Or maybe Spock has a goatee, or every person is a captain working through a plot of high conflict, and some Klingon took the shroom zoom and turned it into a shroom boom. Does it really matter?
It reminds me a little on the Slipstream Drive from Andromeda. They tapped into a parallel dimension network of roads and the pilot had to seek for a exit near the coordinates, where the ship wanted to go.
Given that starfleet can make artificial neural tissue by voyager and their computers can accidentally make advanced AI they could probably make a pilot you didn't have to torture.
I don’t think STD’s writers like to constrain themselves to Trek lore. JJ moving everything to the Kelvin timeline was more intended to free his writers from the lore of Trek. Thus new stories could be written without the need for writers to know anything about Trek beyond the superficial.
Do remember that the discovery is so old that it was briefly captained by Pike. There's a difference of a century and a half between tos-disco and ds9-voy, and the latter made it pretty clear that those technologies were state of the art. I don't think it was an option for the 2250s discovery and now that they're in the future they have bigger problems.
This is a great breakdown. I like it because it takes a critical look at the engine WITHOUT making fun of it and using as a stepping stone to rant about Discovery itself. Another great Video, Rick.
Thanks! I praise many of Discovery's inclusions in other videos, and think the series has gotten better with every season, but this is the one big thing that still bugs me. I actually find it easier to get immersed when they just don't talk about how the drive works and go with it.
What's crazy is that some kind of experimental drive that allows you to enter/exit subspace, allowing your ship to essentially teleport, could have been cool. But then having it run on magic mushrooms, and take place in a time period that radically fucks with canon. So much so that they had to pull a MASSIVE excuse out of their booty holes, to send the ship 900 years into the future, so as to get as far away from the massive canon problem they created as possible. Were both terrible decisions.
@@BossRedRanger so easy, and the technology displayed in the show would have made way more sense. Like having replicators, a holodeck, holographic communication, holographic displays, a drive that teleports your ship through subspace, etc. Except for non canon material like Star Trek online, books, etc. That time period you mention is completely virgin territory. So like you said, they could do whatever they wanted.
@@BossRedRanger Yeah the only reasons why I can see for them wanting to do it was: 1. We want Burnham to be Spock's sister. 2. We have this stuff we want to do with Pike.
I've been reminded that we already saw teleportation through subspace in _TNG, "The High Ground." Bad episode, but the reason nobody uses it is because you get irradiated in the process. It's not clear that there's any way to protect from the radiation, although apparently if you give yourself enough time you'll recover. It's also not clear if you can scale it up to starship size; the units we see teleport people. Of course, such a device (which bypasses shields) would be invaluable for teleporting bombs or the like; even if the radiation would damage them, you're not going to be teleporting the same warhead again and again. And the people using the tech were another man's freedom fighters who couldn't think past the idea of gunmen out of nowhere.
And yet no one can answer why the writers needed a spore drive. Every story they tell involving it could be done using existing Trek technology and there wouldn't be a hanging thread about why they never use it in later series or try to redevelop it.
@@ChocoHearts I think it's fair to say that they don't care about STO, at least after Picard went and discarded all the lore from "The Needs of the Many".
I noticed that too :=). Also why is it a prequel? Most of the plotlines in this show could easily work in the 24th or even 25th century. In fact, they might even work BETTER if they were happening further down the timeline :=)
The spinning part of the saucer may just be a normal Crossfield class feature -- someone suggested that it may have originally been used for rotating different sensor arrays into position. But since the Glenn and Discovery are the only Crossfield class ships we've seen, I guess we may never know
Bad Robots writing teams, just endlessly struggle with the idea that space is 'big'. The movies have instant transporters that can beam from Earth the Qonos, the ships get everywhere in a matter of hours, impulse engines can sometimes go faster than light, they think light can travel across a galaxy instantly, They seem to think planets are always in visual range of each other (think Vulcan in Star Trek and the planets destroyed by Star Killer Base in the Force Awakens) I seriously dislike their writing teams, not only for this but for many many other aspects too.
Its to save $$$.... not having to pay writers to think about it, film crews to not have to sacrifice useless/action packed plot in the name of science, and not pay actors to spend more air time/episodes explaining and building character/plot to the audience. All in the name of $$$. Remember when Star Trek averaged 20+ episodes a season? Gene Rodenberry remembers.
I agree, but I thought the idea for Star Killer Base's weapon was it fired through hyperspace, not that the planets were in visual range of it. They just didn't explain it very well. How exactly the single beam split up to hit multiple targets remains totally unexplained however.
@@ManabiLT God just thinking about Star killer Base makes my head hurt. An Ice planet eats a fucking star. Storm troopers stand next to the damn thing firing all celebrating like that shouldn't vaporize them.
What's the difference? Space fantasy movies and shows (I refuse to call any of them sci-fi, because there's nothing "sci" about any of them)have been doing stupid shit like that since day one. Look at all the battles where ships are stupidly, and often impossibly, close together. The fact that they do ground invasions, at all. The fact that they actually spend an entire planet's worth of resources to send cargo to a place that could've grown/produced whatever it is themselves...space trade will never be a thing.
I agree with some of what you said. However the transwarp beaming thing was something that was already in the star trek universe. It was used in both TNG and DS9. They even went out of the way to differentiate it from regular beaming and explained Scotty invented it in the future. The transwarp beaming thing was more of a deliberate plot point rather then a lack of understanding of the lore which I really appreciated. The fact that long range beaming technology already existed in star trek but was mostly kept secret is something many fans miss or forgot. The Romulan star thing was sloppy. One word change in the dialogue could have fixed it, instead of having Spock say "threatened to destroy the galaxy" he could have said "threatened to destroy Romulus".
Big mistake on your end: 2:24 The Glen did *not* have a hydroponics bay to grow the spores. That was only discovery. The Glenn kept their spores in a dry storage. That is how they attraced the tardigrade in the first place! The larger concentration of dried spores somehow attracted it.
I dunno if that's a 'big' mistake. Just add water, and some noodles. But seriously that's just another 'wtf' segment, why would dried spores be more attractive across the subspace barrier than regular spores? are they trans-dimensional potpourri? XD
@@RoballTV Last I checked cans of peas needed a whole lot less space then a pea field, at the same number if peas. So of course a predator would go for a concentration that is impossible in nature.
If that one missed "detail" is considered a big mistake on Certifiably ingames part, the attempt at weaving it all together into something even remotely scientific/fictionally believable is an absolute monstrosity of lazy writing and a smack in the face of what Star Trek was meant to be when it comes to the ones who wrote Discovery. Gene would be rotating and teleporting out of his grave if he saw this show. edit: my theory: "....Alright executive team, space is big and we dont have $ or $, also time and $ to spend on filming episodes on character building and dealing with travel time like every other Trek show did. How do we get around it" "Instant galaxy wide teleportation fueled by my magic mush- .. I mean magic mushrooms. We dont have to spend potential profits in order to come up with any story/lore on it, f**k em just throw out a few techno-babble lines the idiots will eat it up. I expect this route will cost us only 4-7% of potential profits depending on film time spent, and which actor we have to pay to say it "
@@JohnSmith-vr8cx Ah yes, "DISCO Bad". That horse you star Trek haters have been beating to death and resurrecting for years now. If you hate it, why watch a video about it?
I believe Dr Alcubierre came up with the idea after watching some startrek and trying to figure out if physics would actually allow it to exist. The answer turned out to be yes* * probably not cuz you need negative matter or absurdly strong magnetic fields and neither are anywhere close to being fiesable under our current understanding of engineering. But maybe
Although the general idea of warping space-time was around before TOS. That's also why it was sometimes called space-time warp on the show. Dr. Alcubierre showed how to form the bubble to warp space-time. Of course it comes with a negative matter issue and more energy than the known universe needed issue. On the upside Dr. White was able to update Dr. Alcubierre's theory by changing the gemotery of the warp bubble to use signigantly less energy that's still more than humans could figure out how to obtain any time soon.
@@lucky-segfault rediculous magnetic fields? We don't have that tech yet but we very nearly have room temperature superconductors so I think we are close.
Correct, but it turned out to be in agreement with plausible science! Let's see how long it takes for science to validate the "Jack and the beanstalk" spore drive.
Something y'all may have missed: the Celestial Temple exists in this realm. It's 90s graphics, yeah, but it also easily explains how the Prophets stay separate from normal existence, and don't seem to care about a lightyears-long stable wormhole.
And it is for this reason that if Trek says they found a way to surf along mushrooms in subspace that I will just have to take them on faith that it works...just like some of the characters in universe have to do as well. I love it how they lampshade how rediculous the technology appears on the surface.
Good video, think the big mistake they made was saying the mycelium network was everywhere and therefore the ship could go everywhere but then they over simplified the visuals to make it meaningful on a ship display. The network is more like a scholera (Ed - I meant sclerotia but Auto correct don't recognise that, the mycelium network is not academic shit I swear😉) or truffle where the threads are so densely packed you could not actually see an individual branching network like they show. Perhaps, considering the network can be used to travel dimensions, we could consider visualising our realities network as a slice through the truffle, movement to another dimensions network is to move sideways into their slice when visualised in three dimensions. Truth be told everything we see about the network is a visual oversimplification as it would require viewing a four dimensional object from a fifth dimensional perspective to even grasp the edges of what Stamets theories are proposing.
Just one minor point, Miguel Alcubierre didn't propose his model until 1994 so the "warp drive" of the 1960's was pure fiction and as much deus ex machina as the transporters. (In fact the entire Next Generation fits within this as well.) But you are right; spore drive is probably the second worst explained drive after the warp 10 nonsense. You might be able to handwave something by suggesting that all the spores in the "network" are quantum entangled with each other and technically the same as being adjacent to each other even though there is "space" between them even at the subspace level. Thus you could have the equivalent of the Holtzman effect from Dune but at the subspace level. Note I said "you could" because it would still he "head canon" and, frankly, why bother.
@@Kelastris not exactly because warp 10 is still a "velocity" or a vector and therefore in one dimension where the IID was a three dimensional uncertainty as to location. In addition IDD also basically throws all scientific logic under the bus which is why you could suddenly be a penguin (as opposed to nonsensical genetic evolution of warp 10). There are, however, a lot of problems with IDD that weren't fully thought through as well.
Next week's warp video is going to cover the Alcubierre Drive and how it was inspired by Trek, then in-universe it was made the other way around. Same as the naming of the shuttle Enterprise being inspired by Star Trek, then Star Trek saying the NX01 was named after the shuttles in later canon. :D The importance of Science Fiction!
The Alcubierre drive was actually inspired from Einstein's field equations. The concept of warp travel has been around ever since Einstein first theorized that space could expand and contract, but no one had actually fleshed it out mathematically until Alcubierre. Kind of like the new Lentz drive model. The recently published all positive mass warp theory. It has been known for a while now that an all positive mass warp model was likely possible. It just hadn't been done yet until Lentz.
It's the anime version of folding space where two places in space-time are connected for instant travel, metaphorically written with a child's crayon to introduce Star Trek subspace travel methods that would ironically stop the travel from being instant. They are holding up a lead cube, calling it a sphere, and saying its main function is providing light... metaphorically speaking. Correct, no way to salvage the idea... and that's the REAL reason the spore drive was written out of their infection to canon.
I've got an idea. While outside observers see them travel instantaneously, the onboard journey feels like traveling at the speed of light. This means the entire crew would need to be in stasis if they wanted to travel any significant distance. They could send a probe, but distance would still be limited by how long the equipment can remain operational. Of course, this would still contradict STD.
The fact that you only have one problem with the Spore Drive is astounding to me. I've got at least seven off the top of my head, and if I actually think about it I'll probably get into the double digits.
I start with first one. Its an excuse to have shroom addicts tweaking out in an presentable benefit. I saw the commercials snd was like nope. Clear message to do shrooms and shoe in social symbolism in one go with seemingly poor acting.
So this is a good explanation with how little information there is. However there were 2 things i noticed which dont add up with what is said on the show. First is that only Discovery has the cultivation chambre. It is stated that the Glenn had to import their spores this is how the tardigrade got onboard in the first place. Straal states in S1 E3 that "There are benefits to not growing your own." This is further backed up by a conversation between Burnham and Stamets in the next episode where it is said "They didn't have a forest on the Glenn like Discovery has. If they stored their mushrooms dry, it would have to be in tremendous quantities. In their lower stores. Right there." Second is that there is enough context for speculation that there arent any other Crossfield Class ships. From the little context we are given it is implied they were designed to be testbeds for the spore drive. Stamets says in S1 E4 that "If I go, I'm taking everything with me. My spores, my drive. This entire ship was designed around my scientific specialty."
I think your final line can just as easily imply that the specific configuration of this ship was designed for him, new conduits, etc. There’s gotta be at least a USS Crossfield too right? So why not a bunch of other science vessels. They did talk about how plentiful and modular their science labs are after all.
I think Discovery is actually pretty bad at explaining things to the audience? It makes for a very confusing watch (especially in seasons 1 and 2). Not properly explaining the fictional science/mechanics behind the spore drive is probably the biggest misstep of the entire show, and I feel like people in general would like it better if it didn’t just gloss over such an unprecedented technology. My own personal understanding of how the spore drive works (and this is definitely dipping into headcanon territory) is that the mycelial network is capable of near-instantaneous information transfer, due to the different physical properties of the particular subspace realm it inhabits (or partially inhabits?). A real life mycelial network in a forest is also capable of informational transfer at seemingly breakneck speeds across vast distances (some people have referred to it as “nature’s internet,” or something to that effect), and I think they’re just saying the fictional network is capable of doing the same, but with more information and at much faster speeds. The spore drive uses some sort of transporter technology to convert the mass of the ship into energy/information, and uses the data-transfer infrastructure of the network to basically email themselves anywhere they want in the network’s reach (which is apparently anywhere in the galaxy...maybe the mycelial network doesn’t extend beyond the limitations of the galactic barrier). Maybe the spinning hull is some sort of high resolution scanning tech that quickly scans the whole ship to properly convert it into energy/data/whatever. Maybe this species of fungus exists simultaneously in our dimension and in another dimension/layer of subspace, much in the same way that dilithium has some properties that make it exist simultaneously across different dimensions. Maybe the subspace realm is much much smaller in scale than our physical dimension, and that’s why it’s possible to travel the network so fast. Maybe there isn’t a speed limit in the mycelial realm and matter/information can travel faster than C over there. But that’s just what I think. Until we get some super expository technobabble on screen that properly explains it, this is how I imagine it works.
Helm, upload Discovery.zip to Sector B,0,1 😂 Does this mean we can call it an EMAIL (Experimental Matter, Antimatter Instant Leap) Drive? I also hope they have a good ISP (Intergalactic Service Provider)
It purposely explains nothing because thats seen as wasted screen time that could be spent on "action/plot/CGI" that executives feel is what really pulls people into these types of shows. Not realizing star trek fans dont really care about explosions and super advanced CGI. Its 2021 and i will watch star trek TNG/ds9/voy. even the TOS and love every moment of a firecracker in a plastic cutout model of a starship in front of a 4th graders astronomy science fair cardboard background before I spend a single $11.99/month or whatever it is to watch discovery. Dont trouble yourself with fixing their "plot" they dont deserve it. They are literally putting 0 effort into the lore of the show, and hoping we fill in the blanks for them. Dont give them that satisfaction. They didnt want to deal with the travel time due to how big space is. So they skimped out using the "spore drive" in order to focus on action/plot.
@@JohnSmith-vr8cx I agree, and I think the effects in TNG/DS9/Voyager largely look great still, even though DS9 & Voyager are stuck in SD resolution. However, the people that CBS seems to be targeting are the ones that say even the remastered HD TOS & TNG look awful and they can't stand to watch them because of that. Since Discovery & Picard both seem to be doing well, apparently there are more "give me the shiny CGI" people than there are the ones that prefer everything make sense. For that reason and others (gore is another big one) I've decided the new Star Trek live action series are not for me. Lower Decks is good though, I liked it a lot.
I like your head canon. Yup the makers of Discovery and truthfully current live action Trek are terrified of techno-babble. And as far as I can tell they lacking someone like an Okuda to explain it all and keep it as in universe consistent as possible.
For the record, my comment was not inviting a bunch of people to jump in saying “STD AND NU TREK SUX.” I think Discovery is awesome, I just think behind the scenes there was a ton of hand-changing and rushing and corporate meddling that made the first couple of seasons messy and imbalanced. I’m being critical, but I’m trying to be constructively critical - I’m not making any sort of value-judgement and I’d like to discourage anyone from doing so in this thread. (The comments actually haven’t been too bad, but I just wanna get ahead of it before I start seeing people post about how Alex Kurtzman is drinking baby blood in a pizzeria basement or whatever)
This. Exactly this. I went on to study physics because of Star Trek after my (much) younger self discovered that "warp drives" were theoretically possible.
but the network shows specifically that they don't, it shows veins or highways of them, with massive areas of the galaxy that aren't remotely touched by the network.
@@RoballTV the network is apparently necessary for life to exist. I assume the image was either simplified, or maybe only showed larger branches of the network, or something else. I know the image showed a decent amount of dead space, but the fact that the destruction of the network would apparently wipe out all life makes me believe that that was a failure of the image shown.
Time and distance seem like wobbly concepts in subspace so yeah, if it got into subspace somehow, I don't think it breaks the rules of the setting to say that the fungi managed to grow basically everywhere.
Yeah CI got this ALL wrong. The Idea of the Mycelium is that it is everywhere, but it is in a SUBSPACE layer. With normal terrestrial mushrooms, a single mycelium can span HUNDREDS OF SQUARE MILES with visible mushrooms poking out of the ground in clusters apparently unrelated to each other. So in our normal space prototaxites stellaviatori appear to grow only rarely on a handful of planets, but they fill an entire layer of subspace. It's a cool idea.
My understanding is that it works like the Borg network - the reason it lets you go anywhere is because the mycelium is everywhere. It's based on research by an actual guy called Stamets (that's who the character is named after) on the way fungus propagates through ecosystems. Stamets is something of an obsessive who talks about how important fungus is and how it's everywhere - the writers presumably had this same intent for their fictional subspace fungus.
My pet theory that will probably never be discussed is that the borg network is a portion of the subspace fungus that they've assimilated. It would certainly suit their style.
I actually think the Spore Drive uses a form of quantum tunneling, the actual distance is irrelevant as you treat a branch of mycelium as the wall or barrier you are trying to bypass
This might be how it works, based on one descriptor from Stamets who says that there is no difference between Biology and Physics. So this could be an attempt at tying it into quantum tunneling, but (as of now) that's never stated for sure or addressed again. It would be great if they do expand upon this idea through, it would certainly help with the drive for me.
Yep. That's pretty close to how it's explained to have worked-quantum _entanglement_ vs. tunneling, but similar idea-it's a _transporter_ that quantum teleports the ship to a distant location by carrying the signal via the mycelial network. Sorry-felt compelled to add to a two-year-old conversation after having just gone down a rabbit hole involving the _real world mycologist_ Paul Stamets, who proposed the concept for the Spore Drive.
You know what if the Mycelial network is where the borg got the idea for transwarp corridors from ? I doubt they could assimilate the network as we saw it destroying a starship hull.
Wouldn't extracting the unique elements from the shrooms as an additive fuel be cheaper and easier for future vessels to use rather than trying to squeeze the whole ship into the organic network? the Equinox from Voyager had a similar setup but easier methodology and implantation
who says they can actually be used for such things? the spores just seem to be exotic plants. aside from their adaption to use subspace to spread, there really isn't much special about them. the drive is just exploiting a part of subspace that allows rapid travel to anywhere.. the spore requirement is likely just due to the fact the whole think is a mcguyverred prototype by people who lack the kind of subspace manipulation tech required to reach said part of subspace any other way.
That's the thing, though. The drive doesn't seem to use the spores as fuel. It would appear that the greater spore organism is telepathically linked or whatever with the spores, and the Spore Drive uses the high concentration of Spores and the biological "pilot" to somehow contact this being, and tell it where to move them to. It's not the Spore Drive moving the ship, it's the subspace fungal meta-organism. In that way it's similar to the Soliton Wave that we see tested in TNG. The ship wasn't the thing doing the moving, the Wave was, and the ship was just surfing on it.
@@PhailRaptor That is only the case if we can't replicate the Transport function in a artificial system. Which can be built to avoid the more bizarre side effects of the fungi highway
@@r.connor9280 To me, that pushes more in the direction of building a Transwarp Network like the Borg use. The Spore Drive would then be the exploitation of a naturally occuring equivalent.
May i suggest a Sci-Fi answer ? The mycelial network spans the entirety of subspace. Linking all points in real space at the subspace level very close together. The Discovery jumps into subpace, travels a short distance along the mycelial network, then jumps back to real space incredibly long distances away. As for the power to open a way to and from subspace ? Techno babble maybe ? ;)
I'd suggest that the power question is that there is no way into subspace being "opened", the way is already there, the spore drive is just to find the pre-existing access points. And given the organic origin, those access points can be really strange. (Like "you need a certain amount of angular momentum" strange) As an analogy, while regular FTL is like placing a long distance call, spore drive is phone phreaking.
@@zhoufang996 i see what you are getting at... Like a 4D being looking on our 3D universe. You turn just so, and you are in subspace.. and the network allows the ship to connect.. hmm...
The ship gets converted into energy/light and travels the mycellial network like light in fiberoptic cables. Matter/energy conversion like the replicator/tranporter.
I kinda went over this a few days ago. I can see where the spore networks developed. The spinning ship and such, I think may tie into something to do with the spore biology. (Reality: "Ohh, that looks neat! Let's do that!"). But it's all headcanon, so, we'll see more probably as they have to develop an alternate to dilithium warp systems. (One planet of dilithium does not a permanent recovery make).
minor correction, warp drive isn't based on the Alcubiere drive, is the otherway arround, it was because of star trek that Alcubiere developed is theory... also, I admit I didn't finish my physics degree( I switched to mathematics halfway), but I can assure you, we only know like 10% of why physics work or how they work... heck, even things in regular Newtonean mechanics we have no idea how they work(as an example, check the misterius physics of how a bicycle balances) once you get into deep of it, we know nothing... that is basically when I stopped calling bullshit in anything science fiction... we literally don't know what is the extend of what is possible.
I read somewhere that the rotation is supposed to spread the spores around the ship? Can't remember where I found that but honestly it doesn't make it better for me. I like to picture the spore drive like the Starburst visual from Farscape. Spread the energy around the ship then enter hyper/sub/mega space.
The skin of the ship spins, the outer hull. The inside, the windows, they’re shown to be static. So it’s just a thin layer of spinning. It’s still silly but yk
@@kaitlyn__L Even if that were the case, (which seems unlikely that the only outer hull of the saucer, as opposed to the entire exterior ring of the saucer, spins- which explains why the bridge is stationary), there's the issue of the aerilon roll the Discovery makes before it "drops" into Mycelial Space. (I mean, a good chunk of the ship is spinning on two different axes)
I just smirked and imagined that reality is a mass of overlapping perceptions which taking mushrooms can allow one to transcend. This concept would have worked well in TOS - the hippies from The Way To Eden could have discovered it. ;)
The thing about the mycelial network is that we don’t understand the laws of physics in the network they never really explain it. My interpretation is that the network itself is transmitting spores and information at infinite velocities discovery enters the network and rides this infinite velocity to where ever they need to go the point of using spores as a way to direct the flow.
Yes, but the Slipstream Drive in Andromeda made much more sense than this Spore Drive. It's just lazy. They took a idea from another show, and copied it in a bad way
That was the first thing I thought when I understood the concept they were going for in Discovery: it's kinda like the quantum slipstream drive in Andromeda. The second thing I thought was why the hell do they need to bring magic mushrooms into it.
@@razvanmazilu6284 Right. If they'd put the show 200 or 300 years into the future after Nemesis and made this new Drive progressing into the Slipstream Drive, i'm sure, the complaints would've been insignificant. But instead, they're obsessed with putting the show into a Era before Kirk took command over the Enterprise and by doing so, they're making themselfs more trouble than needed
@@Anthyrion I agree. I also would've dropped the whole "mycelial" aspect of it, since frankly I think it's ridiculous. The need for a human/biological navigator along with its different way of working would've been enough to make it feel distinct from normal warp drive. P.S. I dunno how the hell "they were going for" turned into "they good morning for", but I've changed it now :)
I hadn't thought about it too much. But I love your inconsistencies that you brought up. Kind of the same things I subconsciously was taking into account. Could have been written much better. Give it some small amount of time to traverse the network. Make it channels the spores "dug" and not magic spore telepathy. That sort of thing. Haha.
6:50 I think the implication is that spores themselves aren't fully in phase in the universe they are collected as they still just part of the greater Mycelial network which is holding together Trek's greater multiverse. I develop that theory from watching episode "Lethe". Stamets ruled out the sending Discovery itself into the nebula to rescue Sarek, implying there was noway to prevent the spores from reacting harshly to the cosmic gasses...which I took as they are always connected to the Mycelial network. But that is just my thoughts on it. Personally I do agree that Disco's spores is one of the more wackier plot devices in Trek that would quickly to fall part by in depth analysis...but I am with fine with it as long as the writers don't use that ambiguity as a clutch in order to techno bubble there way to be the solution for everything.
Matter/energy conversion like the replicator/transporter. The ship is turned into energy/light, and travels through the mycellial network like light in fiberoptic cables.
Thank you for this video explanation. I have yet to see Discovery and didn't know how their space travel worked. Spore drive is strange... You mentioned briefly not liking Warp 10. I had thought that's what Discovery used to travel. The idea of Warp 10 and Infinite velocity from that Voyager Episode stuck with me and I decided it was a good way of explaining how the TARDIS in Doctor Who travels through Time & Space. The TARDIS hits Warp 10, it exists everywhere at once, and then you decide where you want it to slow down to. (I get that the show explains this by "Time Vortex" but Infinite Velocity by way of spinning is more sci-fi to me.)
If you have tried... let us say The Full Power of Mushrooms then the idea that mushrooms can help you get anywhere in the universe makes total sense. For people who can't see the fractals and haven't met the 5th dimensional elves... yeah, I can see how the spore drive would come across as a little weird.
This is my headcanon for why such a promising idea was shelved-the only scientists -high- intelligent enough to understand how it worked were dead (or effectively dead). It's also consistent writing that in S03, the only two people in the 32nd century who understand how it works are considered to be the brightest minds of their era and are also both *non-Federation.*
I was under the impression they, follow the roots. And their ability to show up pretty much anywhere is because the Prototaxites stellaviatori has been around since nearly the dawn of the universe. I also understood the fact that, the Mycellium uses energy for themselves to propagate, that's why they glow blue. They travel in and out of subspace to kind of, try to pollinate. So, my understanding even explains why the ship spins for-realzies.
There is one thing I really like about the mushroom drive - at least I know what the entire writing staff were high on. Can't wait for the next iterations of this technology - the Ayahuasca drive and the LSD drive.
Nah, they actually did explain why Voyager couldn't use it. As far as Starfleet was concerned, it was a failed experiment that destroyed two ships. It's a thin explanation but they had to come up with something after (former Voyager writer) Bryan Fuller shoe horned it into the 23rd Century canon with seemingly no plan or care as to how it would impact it.
@@joseaguilar3323 It lost me after season 1, the Mirror Universe was the only half watchable part of it and even then it was still so lazy! One episode Michael is claiming that the Empire is racist and sexist then a few episodes later it's revealed that the ruler of the Empire is an Asian woman, and that woman of colour hold the rank of captain
Honestly, Kurtzman carries most of the blame from the fans but most if not all of what's fundamentally wrong with Discovery was done by Bryan Fuller. like the Spore Drive, the Klingon design, being a prequel, overexposing Michael Burnham etc. Honestly, I was surprised to find out that most of what I like about Discovery were Kurtzman's idea, like the role Pike played in Season 2 and setting it in the 32nd Century from the 3rd onwards.
I say Quantum Tunneling, which is an actual thing. In real world science its how sub atomic particles can get pass a barrier it shouldn't have. A little jargon and techno-mumbo-jumbo would make the Spore drive more plausible instead of "Space magic"
@@lukasperuzovic1429 We get a line from Stamets explaining how biology is juts physics if you go small enough, but that's not brought up again, so (for now) that's juts another dead end.
My handwave of how the spore drive works is that it's basically an organic version of the Borg transwarp. The mycelium has created a vast and dense version of that network, and the spore drive essentially uses the mycelium's subspace abilities to navigate that. It's not a coincidence that both have about the same speed. This is also why the ship spins. Unlike artificially created transwarp conduits, as an organic construction the network has a chirality. The ship thus has to be correctly aligned in polarisation to enter.
The Spore Drive works as FTL because, as you said, Subspace doesn't obey the laws of space-time. It doesn't need to make sense beyond that. As for appearing anywhere, I think its implied that the network in subspace covers everything and is linked somehow to our universe. So you just go to the place that corresponds to where you want to go in this universe, then drop back out of subspace and boom you're there. Which explains why they struggled with navigation at first - they had no point of reference as to where the relative connections were, so were basically guessing. Leading to nearly jumping inside a star.
It’s interesting how a number of your concerns at the end were covered by now. And also it’s good to remember that Star Trek’s warp drive existed before Alcubierre’s Theory.
To be fair, this particular thing wasn't on them, it was on Bryan Fuller, as well of a lot of what's wrong with Discovery that Kurtzman takes the blame for.
Far worse than the realism of it is the fact that the spore drive is a horrible thing from a narrative perspective. Not only does it destroy the notion of travel times from a storytelling perspective, but its relative "fragility" is too great to simply ignore. If something goes wrong with the mycelium network, it can literally mean the end of all life in the ENTIRE MULTIVERSE. It's a level of stakes raising that's just quite frankly ludicrous and what the story gets out of it in return is practically meaningless in comparison. Just imagine: each and every time you're watching Kirk outwit a sentient computer, each time Picard gives an impassioned speech, each time Janeway sends a parallel duplicate of Harry Kim to his death, each time Sisko punches a god, each time Archer makes a whiny, morally-dubious statement, each time Burnham cries; the ENTIRE MULTIVERSE could be snuffed out in an instant because a scientist, in another galaxy, IN ANOTHER UNIVERSE, could make a mistake when working with some space mushrooms. FTL salamanders are practically sane in comparison. ...Also the spinning bugs me. It'd be one thing if the whole ship spun faster and faster, forming some sort of vortex that it slips into. But no, it literally spins around ONCE, then "voorrrrp"s away in a video game-esque animation. It just looks REALLY cheesy in a way that annoys my far more than it should.
Wait... Did they really name the character after the real life mycologist, Paul Stamets? Thats pretty awesome. Look him up if you haven't, interesting stuff
Yeah, they did. He's actually the one who came up with the idea of the Spore Drive, and the _Discovery_ producers were so grateful they named the character after him.
Star Trek is famous for its technobabble, I'm in the middle of rewatching Voyager and it gets quite ridiculous at times. That said, the spore drive comfortably sits up there with the worst of technobabble and centering a good deal of a show around it was in my opinion quite a daft idea. It's like doing a whole show around something as ridiculous as the ideas in the Threshold episode of Voyager. That said, Star Trek is not hard Sci-fi, it's not even close to being one, so I'm willing to look the other way most of the times if the story is good. How good the stories are in Discovery is, err, open to discussion. My feelings on it aren't quite as negative as I think that of many Star Trek fans, but I still think it is easily the worst live action Star Trek show I've seen and I've seen all of them.
Given how many god-like being TOS had and the Q in TNG era, I think "not hard- Sci-fi" is a very accurate statement. Even some of the technology is not really realistic, especially in terms of how much it can be minitirised. Good examples pre-Discovery include just how small they made transporter tech for the personal transporter in Nemesis or the Doctor's portable holographic emitter. EDIT: Corrected "militarised" to "minitirised"
@@golddragongaming1 Thing is that while a lot of it is not really practical, they are often fully aware of that and acknowledge it with things like "Heisenberg compensators" as a "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" to the science geeks in the audience. But Discovery has been making effort after effort to instead give precisely those people an "up yours" instead. Yes, the Voyager Warp 10 stuff was bad, but Discovery seems to be hell-bent to have that kind of nonsense every single season.
@@ohauss Well, I prefer getting less technobabble and prefer to just be left to accept that the tech works with a minimal of technobabble, just like the TOS did. TNG and Voyager had too much technobabble, especially when Data or Harry Kim spoke. Even Spock never got as deep into the technobabble. Though often that was because Kirk cut him off.
If it helps with your suspension of disbelief, I can offer an explanation. One of the competing theories for FTL travel is, effectively, jumping into higher dimensional space. If you look at it like that, then you could see the spore network as more like a series of light houses and the navigator is using them to pop up in the right spot since there there's some inherent uncertainty in the navigation and the ratio of distance travelled in that other plane to normal space may not be constant from our perspective.
The ship gets converted into energy/light and travels the mycellial network like light in fiberoptic cables. Matter/energy conversion like the replicator/tranporter.
I feel like the best explanation I can come up with for how the mycelial network enables ftl is that it sort of "pokes out" into real space in a way that let's the ship drop fully into subspace, inside of the fungus. In that particular layer of subspace, the maximum speed may be many many many times higher than it would be in real space, also causing the energy required to reach a given speed to be much less than it would be in real space, allowing them to catapult vast distances through the network
You have explained the problem with Spore drive perfectly and as a True devotee of Star Trek the illogical inclusion of this drive in Star Trek which traditionally has been Scientific in its thinking has irritated me, I hope future Star Trek creators will move away from nonsense like the spore Drive.
The spore drive turns the ship into energy/light that travels along the mycellial network like light in fiberoptic cables. Matter/energy conversion like the replicator/transporter.
Also, it's Yggdrasil the World Tree holding the worlds(Dimensions/Quantum Realities), the Crystalline Entity in TNG is a Frost Giant from another Dimension.
The thing is, that wasn't Kurtzman's idea, it was former Voyager and DS9 writer and Hannibal creator Bryan Fuller's. So was the Klingon design and pretty much everything else that was wrong with Discovery conceptually. The guy set the house on fire then threw the keys to Kurtzman and ran away.
@@joseaguilar3323 Yes, a lot of people forget that Bryan Fuller created it and its problems. However, it was not Kurtzman that inherited it initially. Two others did for season one. Kurtzman worked under them for season 1. He took over from them after 2 or 3 episodes were filmed in season 2 when they were also fired like Fuller was. He then went to the studio and convinced them he needed extra money nto do an extra episode it two and some rewrites to make season 2 work. And given what season two was like, I do think that even just 1 or 2 fewer episodes would have made it a lot worse due to making less sense. In short, Kurtzman actually inherited problems from *two* sets of show runners before him. EDIT: I forget the names of the two that inherited the show before Kurtzman. They were forgettable as writers, which is in some ways worse than being a bad writer.
The Problem with STD is simple: Nearly every fact, if it's scientific or world building, was ignored by the producer (Fartzman) and replaced with some fantasy bullshit. He lacks every effort, that Roddenberry and his successors made in every former series. He also ignores them and try to make his own awful thing. And because the viewing ratings are good (either Fans hate or love STD), CBS brought more content. It's the same thing, which the Star Wars movies suffered on. Make something, put a big name on it and the fandom will buy it
I point out why everything wrong with the show (and Picard) is wrong, and I get told that I'm simply a hater who never watched an episode. I actually watched quite a bit, enough to inform my decision that they are not good shows either in terms of being good Trek or even decent sci-fi in general. To be honest, both shows come off like a stone soup of concepts and plotlines lifted from better shows and thrown together by writers and execs who couldn't get hired on to work those shows instead.
@@The_Lucent_Archangel I somehow came through STD Season 1. After that i stopped and only watched reviews. But what i saw was enough to convince me, that the one guy, who called Kurtzman an idiot on a other Star Trek Set, was right. But even if you point out with common facts (how is there so much space in the Turbolifts, the "burn" shouldn't work, etc.) there are "fans" who ignore those and call it great shows. And instead of trying to argument, WHY they think they are great shows, they call you "Hater" and insult you. Have you heard from the channel "Major Grin"? He also pinpoints out, what the differences between the former Star Trek shows and STD and Picard are and why most of the things, they show, aren't working ore are plotholes.
@@Anthyrion I forgot about the "burn". LMAO! Newsflash, Romulan starships don't use dilithium and I'm quite sure the Federation understands how their engines work. Just switch over to forced-quantum-singularity propulsion. I mean for Christ's sake, if they didn't understand it then they certainly should have figured it out by the 32nd century. STD writing is lazy AF.
@@RobKMusic Even if some of the Romulan ships use Dilithium, that burn is simply not possible. I mean, a child is crying and whole ships and planets explode? You're right. Simply lazy. I hope, Season 2 of Picard will be better, but i don't think so. The only one of the new shows i enjoyed was Lower Decks. Yes, it wasn't really Star Trek at all. But is see it more like a parody and hommage on former shows
There's strong indications that the writers for _Discovery_ stole the idea of the tardigrade (and even a couple of characters) from Anas Abdin's video game. Not surprisingly, the big corporation won the lawsuit. ¬_¬
They didn't just win the case was laughed out of court because there was zero evidence of plagerism outside if the plaintiff basically saying "trust me it happened" you can't own the concept of tardigrades as they are real creatures that exist in the real world and the one in discovery is a literal animal while the one in the plaintiffs game was an intelligent being. His case had not met the burden of proof and so was dismissed. This was a dude looking for a payday and instead he is now broke because he didn't have a legal leg to stand on
The way i interpretated it was, the mycelial network is just another plane of subspace, but one on the very bottom of subspace, so it comparison to warp subspace, it is tiny. So the way it works, in my mind at least, is that the spore drive moves the ship into the network, the ship travels at impulse a few meters, and then the drive throws the ship out of subspace at the destination. It suggests that one meter in the network plane is the equiivolent of thousands of lightyears in normal space. And due to how time interacts with space, to an observer of the effect, it would appear as if the jump is reletivally instant, give or take a few seconds.
If I had to guess, the spore drive functions kind o like a transporter, the ship is turned into a form of subspace signal which is transmissible through the mycelium like a wire, but to protect the ship itself but being entirely deconstructed or rejected buy the network it has to use the spores like a sort of real space bubble
Until recently I had been listening to a lot of Deee Lite. You know, the Rave group from the 90s. Mushrooms ARE a general theme in their album art & so on. My only point here is that in order to traverse the universe in the 90s, I really only needed my imagination & good music. So although the spore ecosystem is undoubtedly relevant ... I mean there are Discothèques EVERYWHERE in Federation space according to STO... That alone...
I like the idea of the spore drive and it's connection to subspace, I'd have just called it a subspace drive or something like that. Too many people stop listening after ya use the word spores
Aye. If it weren't for the whole mushroom angle I feel like it would be far more accepted. It would still present a number of issues in canon, but they could be more easily waved away than... space mushrooms.
@5:51 There's been experimental proof of an ability to actually warp spacetime. Literally the only thing preventing us from trying it large scale is the problem of negative energy, and once we figure out how to get lower than zero-point, the USS Alcubierre will get built. For the curious: zero-point energy is a term used to describe the actual level of energy present in hard vacuum, in interstellar space. That number is minuscule, but it is not zero.
Love your videos. Always very well done. In this case, however, I feel you were far too generous. The Spore Drive is an idiotic contrivance created for a third-rate show by people who have no real appreciation for the source material. There. `Nuff said.
As an engineer, pilot and certified aircraft mechanic, I appreciate when sci fi shows a degree of respect and deference to real science. YES, IT'S JUST A TV SHOW, but the most thoughtful sci fi writers know that techies and nerds, like me, are a core part of their target audience, which are turned off by illogical fantasies. (The Expanse is the best, so far, in showing some respect to science.) Warp drives are fantasy, but firmly agree with Alcubierre, which is plausible science. A "spore" drive, on the other hand, is technically and scientifically insulting, seemingly created by writers and producers who don't know the difference between sci fi and "Jack and the beanstalk".
@@RobKMusic I doubt it. They just using the seven seas to see it for free. Streaming services don’t care about operating at losses as Netflix loves to show.
@@odiwalker3973 THAT one is BS. Mass Effect and Picard have the same cookie cutter Sci Fi Plot. It's not one ripping off the other, it's both taking from the same lazy well.
@@Sephiroth144 I never said it was the originator. I said Picard took the particular iteration of that trope from Mass Effect. First, its not a case of "uber AI hate organics" but rather "uber race executes cyclical genocide of one kind of life to protect the other kind", thats already very close to ME's plot, but we also have IN THE SAME FRAMEWORK organics VS AI, we have that uber AI connected to the deep past of the galaxy by means of ancient tech and lore, we also have that uber AI living outside the galaxy just coming over into it to start the next cycle, also - again - IN THE SAME FRAMEWORK, we have the synthesis (AI + organics into one being) leitmotif, all stringed together into the plot of a plucky crew running around the galaxy in their sleek starship in a race against time to unite ppl against this evil and......... must I go on? Cause I can. Sure, individualy each one of these elements are, to quote @José Aguilar down below "cookie cutter Sci Fi Plot", and yet how many times have you seen this particular array of tropes, arranged in such specific manner, in mainstream sci fi? For real, how many times?
Its the same thing with the spore drives, mycelial network and space tardigrade thingy, in a vaccum they're nothing more than "cookie cutter Sci Fi Plot", yet when they're arranged in a specific manner, with a particular plot structure to explore certain leitmotifs, it gets to a point where you gotta do a lotta effort to ignore the... lets call it "inspiration" taken from another work. And I see no reason to give CBS a pass when they're being so consistent in this regard
Very nice and fair critique. I thought the space fungus thing was a great idea despite not being based on any existing science, but making it a means of transport certainly is problematic and, frankly, a bit boring. They could do so many more interesting stories with it. Exobiology which isnt tied to a single planet or system and might interact with all species seems like itd be a creative gold mine.
Of all the pseudoscientific nonsense in Nu Trek, this drive is among the most egregious. I miss the days when effort was at least made to latch back onto theoretical concepts rather than just inventing new ones out of thin air that make no sense nor have basis in reality. If they really insisted on doing something like this, a propulsion concept that connected to string theory or quantum entanglement would have been far more palatable and made more sense in terms of crossing to the Mirror Universe. To say nothing of the merits (or lack thereof) of the writing and plot of the newer installments.
Trek is all about made up nonsense with hand waving explanations. The hysenburg compensator for example, self replicating cloaked mines, etc. If it bothers you that they gave up then by later TNG you must've been very upset
That's a load of crap. Another idiot fanboy using strawmen to defend the garbage that supposedly passes for Trek nowadays. I won't be humoring you, other than to say that it's "Heisenberg" and self-replicating cloaked mines aren't anywhere close to "hand-wavey" compared to nonsense like this moronic drive concept, a psychic link to dilithium (roflmao), and a device that makes one's thoughts or wishes reality as if it's packaged Q abilities. Realistically, something like a "Heisenberg Compensator" would be essential to a transporter, because how else are you going to transit an object down to the subatomic level if it's impossible to fix the position and speed of an electron? The only thing "hand-wavey" about that is that the compensator's function is not explained in detail, but it's ridiculous to cite that because if we knew of a way to compensate for the Uncertainty Principle, then we'd have probably licked Quantum Physics entirely by now! Replication is the re-ordering of matter from one form to another and self-replicating nano-sized machines are actually something being worked on albeit in preliminary stages. Cloaking is actually pretty far along as a military tech project. By comparison, I see no scientific papers or theories on a mycelial network nor on how a person can affect the stability of an inanimate substance via psychic manipulation. Period. There's zero comparison.
@@The_Lucent_Archangel while that STD Stan is partially correct, Star Trek does use hand wavy explanations for some of its science and technology. But as you pointed out, they clearly don't understand that much of the "hand waving" is still based in actual science. For instance, for an actual transporter to work, you would need something like a Heisenberg compensator, because of the real world problem of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. So the writers have to create something that gets around that problem. And that's generally the case with most "hand waving" found in real Trek, like the self replicating mines, nanobots, etc. Unlike the magic mushroom drive that makes the Discovery teleport because the writers say so. Star Trek has (for the most part) based it's science/technology on real world science, which is why it's always been top shelf sci-fi. But the magic mushrooms drive is the kind of bottom shelf sci-fi I'd expect out of one of those old, crappy, made for tv Sci-Fi channel original "B movies."
@@The_Lucent_Archangel never saw it. But I'm referring to the time back when it was the Sci-Fi channel, not the SyFy channel. Some of their made for tv movies back in the day were awful, bottom shelf sci-fi lol. The magic mushroom drive is something I'd expect to see in those movies lol.
Hi, Rick :) The drive is weird to me because there's no mention of it at all, even as failed technology, in previous media. It makes sense that it wad never used again, because it apparently damages the micelial network every time a ship uses it... May said so. It looks like the two ships were testbed platforms. The Glenn was destroyed and the Discovery was presumed as such, so Starfleet scrapped the program was failure. That's why nobody talks about trying it again. The mega tardigrades might be close to extinct by the time TOS comes around (again because of the damaged network). Maybe subspace radio doesn't pierce too deeply into the network, which is why they keep using it.
Actually what May said was that every time Discovery passes through the network is damaged, not that the ship[ damages it. She then explained that "the beast" follows them. She merely blamed them because she thought them and "the beast" were together. But it was soon revealed they did not even know anything about the beast, which turned out to be Culber. Even then he was only harming the network due to covering himself in the bark of a tree from that realm is poisonous to the spores, which the network relies on to survive. Think of it as similar to how oil is produced by nature but is poisonous to many creatures that an ecosystem on Earth relies on.
It really wasn't. When you look into it unbiasedly you see why that dev lost the lawsuits and appeals. It's similar, but not nearly similar enough to be plagiarism
5:56 By the way, the show came first, Alcubierre was inspired by the show and worked Einstein's equations in reverse to start getting an idea of what it would take to make one in the real world to see if it was even a feasible thing to pursue theoretically.
To explain simply, Discovery basically does a Super Mario and enters the Mushroom Kingdom…..then pops out through a warp pipe. They should add the sound effects.
Ha! Nice
But would you have that sound in space...?
@@Sephiroth144 If we can hear Kirk scream in Space, I am sure this is doable
@@Sephiroth144 as phasers, torpedoes, warp and everything else I’m assuming yes!
Super Mario Bros. 1 had better writing and characters than Discovery
"If you're telling me this ship can skip across the universe on a highway made of mushrooms, I'll kinda have to go on faith." - Capt. Pike.
Cause I’ve got faith…of the heart
Except it can't. Otherwise they wouldn't have to go to that extra glactic planet on season four by warp.😉
Pike is great 😂❤
@@oliverfranke7650 it simply couldn't cross the galactic barrier, this stuff is actually explained in the show
Maybe one also needs to be on mushrooms to understand how it works
I’m with you on this one. Your explanation of why sticks out like a sore thumb for you sums up how I feel.
I agree, it's a stupid drive for a stupid show that can't get simple military customs and regulations right like CHAIN OF COMMAND.
@@Mortlupoa dumb show that thinks during a battle, navy personnel will stop and have a good cry together instead of saving the ship.
STOP feeling & just ENJOY! (After all that's ALL it's supposed to be!)
@@DrG65199 you haven't been watching the rest of the franchise then lol.
@@Mortlupo I don't think YOU understand the chain of command. And trying to apply existing chain of command standards to a franchise that has actively de-militarized its military is pretty stupid as well.
"I'll trying spinning, that's a good trick." - Discovery producers and a child named Anakin
Under rated comment
“It’s got a big ring! It _Has_ to spin!” -An Air Force general.
Never bring up star wars, ever again.
Mythology is cancer.
@@jodybranson925 hmm interesting, does that make you atheist or agnostic?
@@UGNAvalon 🤣
We don’t talk about that thing with the salamanders anymore.
We also do not talk about STD anymore yet here we are.
I don't know YOU don't want to Talk about MR Paris's experimental warp drive or Discovery's spore(D.A.S.H.) systems but i sure don't mind talking about them after ALL they are a part of THE STAR TREK universe!!!!!!!!! There's stubborn people WHO don't want STAR TREK universe to grow and mature like ALL creative show's AND ALL people everywhere do!!!!!!!!!! But there YOU have IT!!!!!!!!!!!! Stop being So Purative and accept a growing S.T. universe and remember the man said experimental they can experiment YOU know!!!!!!!!! Experiment is a part of the scientific method as ARE stated in ALL forms of science out there!!!!!!!!!! Along side ALL science classes out there who actually have time set aside for students lab and experiments for grades TOO!!!!!!!!!! Sorry but i always 💘 science and science fiction which IS what Star Trek is science fiction emphasis on fiction!!!!!!!!!
@@dustygrant3043 Oh my, you just destroyed my sarcasm detector :)
@@dustygrant3043 OMG. Caps and exclamation points. What about some arguments instead? Some that would convince the majority of people that STD is not a poorly written, incoherent mess?
Because STD is so bad that it made the salamanders seem like the golden age of Star Trek.
Why wouldn’t it be called the dash drive? It’s a displacement activated spore hub drive. So dash
Several of the monitors in the show actually do call it that, but nobody ever says it in dialogue for some reason!
That would be pretty cool, I like that a lot.
Maybe they call it the Spore Drive instead of the Dash Drive because (A) they'd be too confused by the cooler name: are they dashing or driving? And (2), let's not lie, they're high as &^%$ when they use it. Klingon war? Dimension hopping? Time travel to the far future? The crew of the _Discovery_ has been lying on their backs the whole time, working through a shroom-induced fever dream. Or several. They don't all have to be the same. In some of those dreams, Romulus is destroyed. In others, Vulcan is. Or maybe Spock has a goatee, or every person is a captain working through a plot of high conflict, and some Klingon took the shroom zoom and turned it into a shroom boom. Does it really matter?
@@BNuts "Shroom Zoom" is the best name for the tech I've ever heard, bar none. Well done.
@@ChocoHearts Thanks.
The Sporedrive seems like something out of another scifi universe.
Like Farscape.
It reminds me a little on the Slipstream Drive from Andromeda. They tapped into a parallel dimension network of roads and the pilot had to seek for a exit near the coordinates, where the ship wanted to go.
@@Anthyrion Yeah, now that you say it mee too
No. Farscape wouldn’t waste time like that.
That's because it is. They stole the idea from a game developer. There was a law suit over it.
@@sardonicspartan9343 Yes, it was called, ironically enough, 'TARDIGRADES'!
Given that starfleet can make artificial neural tissue by voyager and their computers can accidentally make advanced AI they could probably make a pilot you didn't have to torture.
but such a pilot would be a sentient, at least partially organic, being. Which would fall under the umbrella of the genetic manipulation ban.
I don’t think STD’s writers like to constrain themselves to Trek lore.
JJ moving everything to the Kelvin timeline was more intended to free his writers from the lore of Trek. Thus new stories could be written without the need for writers to know anything about Trek beyond the superficial.
Of course they could!
But why would they want to?
It's STD after all.
Do remember that the discovery is so old that it was briefly captained by Pike. There's a difference of a century and a half between tos-disco and ds9-voy, and the latter made it pretty clear that those technologies were state of the art. I don't think it was an option for the 2250s discovery and now that they're in the future they have bigger problems.
Wouldnt Genetic Manipulation Include Things Like Berries Or Food?
meaning *oh boiye no good nutrient-rich food easy and quick to grow*
The spore drive does stretch the limits of believability a little, maybe, but the jump animation is just too cool.
Lol.
The animation is great, but the drive stretches the believability well beyond breaking point for me :/
This is a great breakdown. I like it because it takes a critical look at the engine WITHOUT making fun of it and using as a stepping stone to rant about Discovery itself.
Another great Video, Rick.
Thanks! I praise many of Discovery's inclusions in other videos, and think the series has gotten better with every season, but this is the one big thing that still bugs me. I actually find it easier to get immersed when they just don't talk about how the drive works and go with it.
What's crazy is that some kind of experimental drive that allows you to enter/exit subspace, allowing your ship to essentially teleport, could have been cool. But then having it run on magic mushrooms, and take place in a time period that radically fucks with canon. So much so that they had to pull a MASSIVE excuse out of their booty holes, to send the ship 900 years into the future, so as to get as far away from the massive canon problem they created as possible. Were both terrible decisions.
Setting this show 40+ years after the Dominion War would have been SOOOoOooooo easy. And they could have done whatever they wanted.
@@BossRedRanger so easy, and the technology displayed in the show would have made way more sense. Like having replicators, a holodeck, holographic communication, holographic displays, a drive that teleports your ship through subspace, etc. Except for non canon material like Star Trek online, books, etc. That time period you mention is completely virgin territory. So like you said, they could do whatever they wanted.
@@BossRedRanger Yeah the only reasons why I can see for them wanting to do it was:
1. We want Burnham to be Spock's sister.
2. We have this stuff we want to do with Pike.
I've been reminded that we already saw teleportation through subspace in _TNG, "The High Ground." Bad episode, but the reason nobody uses it is because you get irradiated in the process. It's not clear that there's any way to protect from the radiation, although apparently if you give yourself enough time you'll recover. It's also not clear if you can scale it up to starship size; the units we see teleport people.
Of course, such a device (which bypasses shields) would be invaluable for teleporting bombs or the like; even if the radiation would damage them, you're not going to be teleporting the same warhead again and again. And the people using the tech were another man's freedom fighters who couldn't think past the idea of gunmen out of nowhere.
I said from day 1 this show should've been posted voyager/dominion war. They could've done whatever the fuck they wanted.
And yet no one can answer why the writers needed a spore drive. Every story they tell involving it could be done using existing Trek technology and there wouldn't be a hanging thread about why they never use it in later series or try to redevelop it.
Theory: so there was new content for STO.
@@ChocoHearts I think it's fair to say that they don't care about STO, at least after Picard went and discarded all the lore from "The Needs of the Many".
@@joseaguilar3323 The shows/movies never cared what was featured in secondary media
It was the mcguffin for the crew to be the saviors of the future without warp drive
I noticed that too :=). Also why is it a prequel? Most of the plotlines in this show could easily work in the 24th or even 25th century. In fact, they might even work BETTER if they were happening further down the timeline :=)
The spinning part of the saucer may just be a normal Crossfield class feature -- someone suggested that it may have originally been used for rotating different sensor arrays into position. But since the Glenn and Discovery are the only Crossfield class ships we've seen, I guess we may never know
Heck, maybe the Glenn doesn’t even spin and that’s part of their previously-mediocre performance too.
Its a pizza cutter that barrel rolls. Lazy design and even worse writing
Bad Robots writing teams, just endlessly struggle with the idea that space is 'big'.
The movies have instant transporters that can beam from Earth the Qonos,
the ships get everywhere in a matter of hours,
impulse engines can sometimes go faster than light,
they think light can travel across a galaxy instantly,
They seem to think planets are always in visual range of each other (think Vulcan in Star Trek and the planets destroyed by Star Killer Base in the Force Awakens)
I seriously dislike their writing teams, not only for this but for many many other aspects too.
Its to save $$$.... not having to pay writers to think about it, film crews to not have to sacrifice useless/action packed plot in the name of science, and not pay actors to spend more air time/episodes explaining and building character/plot to the audience. All in the name of $$$. Remember when Star Trek averaged 20+ episodes a season? Gene Rodenberry remembers.
I agree, but I thought the idea for Star Killer Base's weapon was it fired through hyperspace, not that the planets were in visual range of it. They just didn't explain it very well. How exactly the single beam split up to hit multiple targets remains totally unexplained however.
@@ManabiLT God just thinking about Star killer Base makes my head hurt. An Ice planet eats a fucking star. Storm troopers stand next to the damn thing firing all celebrating like that shouldn't vaporize them.
What's the difference? Space fantasy movies and shows (I refuse to call any of them sci-fi, because there's nothing "sci" about any of them)have been doing stupid shit like that since day one. Look at all the battles where ships are stupidly, and often impossibly, close together. The fact that they do ground invasions, at all. The fact that they actually spend an entire planet's worth of resources to send cargo to a place that could've grown/produced whatever it is themselves...space trade will never be a thing.
I agree with some of what you said. However the transwarp beaming thing was something that was already in the star trek universe. It was used in both TNG and DS9. They even went out of the way to differentiate it from regular beaming and explained Scotty invented it in the future.
The transwarp beaming thing was more of a deliberate plot point rather then a lack of understanding of the lore which I really appreciated. The fact that long range beaming technology already existed in star trek but was mostly kept secret is something many fans miss or forgot.
The Romulan star thing was sloppy. One word change in the dialogue could have fixed it, instead of having Spock say "threatened to destroy the galaxy" he could have said "threatened to destroy Romulus".
Big mistake on your end:
2:24 The Glen did *not* have a hydroponics bay to grow the spores. That was only discovery.
The Glenn kept their spores in a dry storage. That is how they attraced the tardigrade in the first place! The larger concentration of dried spores somehow attracted it.
I dunno if that's a 'big' mistake.
Just add water, and some noodles.
But seriously that's just another 'wtf' segment, why would dried spores be more attractive across the subspace barrier than regular spores? are they trans-dimensional potpourri? XD
@@RoballTV Last I checked cans of peas needed a whole lot less space then a pea field, at the same number if peas.
So of course a predator would go for a concentration that is impossible in nature.
That's not a big mistake. STD itself has made dozens of far worse mistakes.
If that one missed "detail" is considered a big mistake on Certifiably ingames part, the attempt at weaving it all together into something even remotely scientific/fictionally believable is an absolute monstrosity of lazy writing and a smack in the face of what Star Trek was meant to be when it comes to the ones who wrote Discovery. Gene would be rotating and teleporting out of his grave if he saw this show.
edit: my theory: "....Alright executive team, space is big and we dont have $ or $, also time and $ to spend on filming episodes on character building and dealing with travel time like every other Trek show did. How do we get around it"
"Instant galaxy wide teleportation fueled by my magic mush- .. I mean magic mushrooms. We dont have to spend potential profits in order to come up with any story/lore on it, f**k em just throw out a few techno-babble lines the idiots will eat it up. I expect this route will cost us only 4-7% of potential profits depending on film time spent, and which actor we have to pay to say it "
@@JohnSmith-vr8cx Ah yes, "DISCO Bad".
That horse you star Trek haters have been beating to death and resurrecting for years now.
If you hate it, why watch a video about it?
Warp drive (TOS) predates the alcubierre drive theory by decades.
I believe Dr Alcubierre came up with the idea after watching some startrek and trying to figure out if physics would actually allow it to exist.
The answer turned out to be yes*
* probably not cuz you need negative matter or absurdly strong magnetic fields and neither are anywhere close to being fiesable under our current understanding of engineering. But maybe
Although the general idea of warping space-time was around before TOS. That's also why it was sometimes called space-time warp on the show. Dr. Alcubierre showed how to form the bubble to warp space-time. Of course it comes with a negative matter issue and more energy than the known universe needed issue. On the upside Dr. White was able to update Dr. Alcubierre's theory by changing the gemotery of the warp bubble to use signigantly less energy that's still more than humans could figure out how to obtain any time soon.
I'll cover this in next week's warp video, but it's a great example of fiction inspiring life, which then gets added to the fiction.
@@lucky-segfault rediculous magnetic fields? We don't have that tech yet but we very nearly have room temperature superconductors so I think we are close.
Correct, but it turned out to be in agreement with plausible science! Let's see how long it takes for science to validate the "Jack and the beanstalk" spore drive.
Something y'all may have missed: the Celestial Temple exists in this realm. It's 90s graphics, yeah, but it also easily explains how the Prophets stay separate from normal existence, and don't seem to care about a lightyears-long stable wormhole.
And it is for this reason that if Trek says they found a way to surf along mushrooms in subspace that I will just have to take them on faith that it works...just like some of the characters in universe have to do as well. I love it how they lampshade how rediculous the technology appears on the surface.
Good video, think the big mistake they made was saying the mycelium network was everywhere and therefore the ship could go everywhere but then they over simplified the visuals to make it meaningful on a ship display. The network is more like a scholera (Ed - I meant sclerotia but Auto correct don't recognise that, the mycelium network is not academic shit I swear😉) or truffle where the threads are so densely packed you could not actually see an individual branching network like they show.
Perhaps, considering the network can be used to travel dimensions, we could consider visualising our realities network as a slice through the truffle, movement to another dimensions network is to move sideways into their slice when visualised in three dimensions.
Truth be told everything we see about the network is a visual oversimplification as it would require viewing a four dimensional object from a fifth dimensional perspective to even grasp the edges of what Stamets theories are proposing.
Just one minor point, Miguel Alcubierre didn't propose his model until 1994 so the "warp drive" of the 1960's was pure fiction and as much deus ex machina as the transporters. (In fact the entire Next Generation fits within this as well.) But you are right; spore drive is probably the second worst explained drive after the warp 10 nonsense. You might be able to handwave something by suggesting that all the spores in the "network" are quantum entangled with each other and technically the same as being adjacent to each other even though there is "space" between them even at the subspace level. Thus you could have the equivalent of the Holtzman effect from Dune but at the subspace level. Note I said "you could" because it would still he "head canon" and, frankly, why bother.
Warp 10 is just the Infinite Improbability Drive from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
@@Kelastris not exactly because warp 10 is still a "velocity" or a vector and therefore in one dimension where the IID was a three dimensional uncertainty as to location. In addition IDD also basically throws all scientific logic under the bus which is why you could suddenly be a penguin (as opposed to nonsensical genetic evolution of warp 10). There are, however, a lot of problems with IDD that weren't fully thought through as well.
Next week's warp video is going to cover the Alcubierre Drive and how it was inspired by Trek, then in-universe it was made the other way around. Same as the naming of the shuttle Enterprise being inspired by Star Trek, then Star Trek saying the NX01 was named after the shuttles in later canon. :D The importance of Science Fiction!
@@tzor I mean, IDD is from a book written as a tongue-in-cheek parody of sci-fi that makes fun of relatively ludicrous concepts like warp drive
The Alcubierre drive was actually inspired from Einstein's field equations. The concept of warp travel has been around ever since Einstein first theorized that space could expand and contract, but no one had actually fleshed it out mathematically until Alcubierre.
Kind of like the new Lentz drive model. The recently published all positive mass warp theory. It has been known for a while now that an all positive mass warp model was likely possible. It just hadn't been done yet until Lentz.
I Love your videos Rick. For me, you are by far the best Scifi/ Star tTrek based you tube channel. Keep up the good work.
Well done, but I find the whole idea of the spore drive repulsively, risibly, absurd. There’s just no way of salvaging the concept.
It's the anime version of folding space where two places in space-time are connected for instant travel, metaphorically written with a child's crayon to introduce Star Trek subspace travel methods that would ironically stop the travel from being instant.
They are holding up a lead cube, calling it a sphere, and saying its main function is providing light... metaphorically speaking. Correct, no way to salvage the idea... and that's the REAL reason the spore drive was written out of their infection to canon.
Just like warp drive!
Agreed, the spore drive is so stupid.
I've got an idea. While outside observers see them travel instantaneously, the onboard journey feels like traveling at the speed of light. This means the entire crew would need to be in stasis if they wanted to travel any significant distance. They could send a probe, but distance would still be limited by how long the equipment can remain operational. Of course, this would still contradict STD.
100% agree
The fact that you only have one problem with the Spore Drive is astounding to me. I've got at least seven off the top of my head, and if I actually think about it I'll probably get into the double digits.
I start with first one. Its an excuse to have shroom addicts tweaking out in an presentable benefit. I saw the commercials snd was like nope. Clear message to do shrooms and shoe in social symbolism in one go with seemingly poor acting.
So this is a good explanation with how little information there is. However there were 2 things i noticed which dont add up with what is said on the show.
First is that only Discovery has the cultivation chambre. It is stated that the Glenn had to import their spores this is how the tardigrade got onboard in the first place. Straal states in S1 E3 that "There are benefits to not growing your own." This is further backed up by a conversation between Burnham and Stamets in the next episode where it is said "They didn't have a forest on the Glenn like Discovery has. If they stored their mushrooms dry, it would have to be in tremendous quantities. In their lower stores. Right there."
Second is that there is enough context for speculation that there arent any other Crossfield Class ships. From the little context we are given it is implied they were designed to be testbeds for the spore drive. Stamets says in S1 E4 that "If I go, I'm taking everything with me. My spores, my drive. This entire ship was designed around my scientific specialty."
I think your final line can just as easily imply that the specific configuration of this ship was designed for him, new conduits, etc. There’s gotta be at least a USS Crossfield too right? So why not a bunch of other science vessels. They did talk about how plentiful and modular their science labs are after all.
Q: How does the Spore Drive work? A: It doesn’t.... it was a horrible idea and sucks all around.
And plus it sounds like something that they ripped off from D&D spell jammers
Actually
It works for me
Since i shoot the spores out to create extremely fast travel
So What was 1 min in travel is now 1 second
I used this joke before, but... Even an LSD drive would make more sense at this point
I think Discovery is actually pretty bad at explaining things to the audience? It makes for a very confusing watch (especially in seasons 1 and 2). Not properly explaining the fictional science/mechanics behind the spore drive is probably the biggest misstep of the entire show, and I feel like people in general would like it better if it didn’t just gloss over such an unprecedented technology.
My own personal understanding of how the spore drive works (and this is definitely dipping into headcanon territory) is that the mycelial network is capable of near-instantaneous information transfer, due to the different physical properties of the particular subspace realm it inhabits (or partially inhabits?).
A real life mycelial network in a forest is also capable of informational transfer at seemingly breakneck speeds across vast distances (some people have referred to it as “nature’s internet,” or something to that effect), and I think they’re just saying the fictional network is capable of doing the same, but with more information and at much faster speeds.
The spore drive uses some sort of transporter technology to convert the mass of the ship into energy/information, and uses the data-transfer infrastructure of the network to basically email themselves anywhere they want in the network’s reach (which is apparently anywhere in the galaxy...maybe the mycelial network doesn’t extend beyond the limitations of the galactic barrier). Maybe the spinning hull is some sort of high resolution scanning tech that quickly scans the whole ship to properly convert it into energy/data/whatever.
Maybe this species of fungus exists simultaneously in our dimension and in another dimension/layer of subspace, much in the same way that dilithium has some properties that make it exist simultaneously across different dimensions. Maybe the subspace realm is much much smaller in scale than our physical dimension, and that’s why it’s possible to travel the network so fast. Maybe there isn’t a speed limit in the mycelial realm and matter/information can travel faster than C over there.
But that’s just what I think. Until we get some super expository technobabble on screen that properly explains it, this is how I imagine it works.
Helm, upload Discovery.zip to Sector B,0,1 😂
Does this mean we can call it an EMAIL (Experimental Matter, Antimatter Instant Leap) Drive?
I also hope they have a good ISP (Intergalactic Service Provider)
It purposely explains nothing because thats seen as wasted screen time that could be spent on "action/plot/CGI" that executives feel is what really pulls people into these types of shows. Not realizing star trek fans dont really care about explosions and super advanced CGI. Its 2021 and i will watch star trek TNG/ds9/voy. even the TOS and love every moment of a firecracker in a plastic cutout model of a starship in front of a 4th graders astronomy science fair cardboard background before I spend a single $11.99/month or whatever it is to watch discovery. Dont trouble yourself with fixing their "plot" they dont deserve it. They are literally putting 0 effort into the lore of the show, and hoping we fill in the blanks for them. Dont give them that satisfaction. They didnt want to deal with the travel time due to how big space is. So they skimped out using the "spore drive" in order to focus on action/plot.
@@JohnSmith-vr8cx I agree, and I think the effects in TNG/DS9/Voyager largely look great still, even though DS9 & Voyager are stuck in SD resolution. However, the people that CBS seems to be targeting are the ones that say even the remastered HD TOS & TNG look awful and they can't stand to watch them because of that.
Since Discovery & Picard both seem to be doing well, apparently there are more "give me the shiny CGI" people than there are the ones that prefer everything make sense. For that reason and others (gore is another big one) I've decided the new Star Trek live action series are not for me. Lower Decks is good though, I liked it a lot.
I like your head canon. Yup the makers of Discovery and truthfully current live action Trek are terrified of techno-babble. And as far as I can tell they lacking someone like an Okuda to explain it all and keep it as in universe consistent as possible.
For the record, my comment was not inviting a bunch of people to jump in saying “STD AND NU TREK SUX.” I think Discovery is awesome, I just think behind the scenes there was a ton of hand-changing and rushing and corporate meddling that made the first couple of seasons messy and imbalanced. I’m being critical, but I’m trying to be constructively critical - I’m not making any sort of value-judgement and I’d like to discourage anyone from doing so in this thread. (The comments actually haven’t been too bad, but I just wanna get ahead of it before I start seeing people post about how Alex Kurtzman is drinking baby blood in a pizzeria basement or whatever)
This. Exactly this. I went on to study physics because of Star Trek after my (much) younger self discovered that "warp drives" were theoretically possible.
The drive working only where the fungi exist is explained away by the multiversal network that seems to imply they exist everywhere
but the network shows specifically that they don't, it shows veins or highways of them, with massive areas of the galaxy that aren't remotely touched by the network.
@@RoballTV the network is apparently necessary for life to exist. I assume the image was either simplified, or maybe only showed larger branches of the network, or something else. I know the image showed a decent amount of dead space, but the fact that the destruction of the network would apparently wipe out all life makes me believe that that was a failure of the image shown.
Time and distance seem like wobbly concepts in subspace so yeah, if it got into subspace somehow, I don't think it breaks the rules of the setting to say that the fungi managed to grow basically everywhere.
@@RoballTV They probably aren’t showing all of the roots. Just the major ones.
Yeah CI got this ALL wrong. The Idea of the Mycelium is that it is everywhere, but it is in a SUBSPACE layer. With normal terrestrial mushrooms, a single mycelium can span HUNDREDS OF SQUARE MILES with visible mushrooms poking out of the ground in clusters apparently unrelated to each other. So in our normal space prototaxites stellaviatori appear to grow only rarely on a handful of planets, but they fill an entire layer of subspace. It's a cool idea.
My understanding is that it works like the Borg network - the reason it lets you go anywhere is because the mycelium is everywhere. It's based on research by an actual guy called Stamets (that's who the character is named after) on the way fungus propagates through ecosystems. Stamets is something of an obsessive who talks about how important fungus is and how it's everywhere - the writers presumably had this same intent for their fictional subspace fungus.
My pet theory that will probably never be discussed is that the borg network is a portion of the subspace fungus that they've assimilated. It would certainly suit their style.
I actually think the Spore Drive uses a form of quantum tunneling, the actual distance is irrelevant as you treat a branch of mycelium as the wall or barrier you are trying to bypass
This might be how it works, based on one descriptor from Stamets who says that there is no difference between Biology and Physics. So this could be an attempt at tying it into quantum tunneling, but (as of now) that's never stated for sure or addressed again. It would be great if they do expand upon this idea through, it would certainly help with the drive for me.
@@CertifiablyIngame "who says that there is no difference between Biology and Physics."
which is ridiculous.
@@ohauss he did preface that statement with “at the molecular level” or “at the atomic level” or something
@@ohauss written by a writer who understands neither and doesn't care to learn
Yep. That's pretty close to how it's explained to have worked-quantum _entanglement_ vs. tunneling, but similar idea-it's a _transporter_ that quantum teleports the ship to a distant location by carrying the signal via the mycelial network.
Sorry-felt compelled to add to a two-year-old conversation after having just gone down a rabbit hole involving the _real world mycologist_ Paul Stamets, who proposed the concept for the Spore Drive.
You know what if the Mycelial network is where the borg got the idea for transwarp corridors from ? I doubt they could assimilate the network as we saw it destroying a starship hull.
Wouldn't extracting the unique elements from the shrooms as an additive fuel be cheaper and easier for future vessels to use rather than
trying to squeeze the whole ship into the organic network?
the Equinox from Voyager had a similar setup but easier methodology and implantation
who says they can actually be used for such things? the spores just seem to be exotic plants. aside from their adaption to use subspace to spread, there really isn't much special about them. the drive is just exploiting a part of subspace that allows rapid travel to anywhere.. the spore requirement is likely just due to the fact the whole think is a mcguyverred prototype by people who lack the kind of subspace manipulation tech required to reach said part of subspace any other way.
That's the thing, though. The drive doesn't seem to use the spores as fuel. It would appear that the greater spore organism is telepathically linked or whatever with the spores, and the Spore Drive uses the high concentration of Spores and the biological "pilot" to somehow contact this being, and tell it where to move them to. It's not the Spore Drive moving the ship, it's the subspace fungal meta-organism.
In that way it's similar to the Soliton Wave that we see tested in TNG. The ship wasn't the thing doing the moving, the Wave was, and the ship was just surfing on it.
@@PhailRaptor That is only the case if we can't replicate the Transport function in a artificial system. Which can be built to avoid the more bizarre side effects of the fungi highway
@@r.connor9280 To me, that pushes more in the direction of building a Transwarp Network like the Borg use. The Spore Drive would then be the exploitation of a naturally occuring equivalent.
May i suggest a Sci-Fi answer ? The mycelial network spans the entirety of subspace. Linking all points in real space at the subspace level very close together. The Discovery jumps into subpace, travels a short distance along the mycelial network, then jumps back to real space incredibly long distances away. As for the power to open a way to and from subspace ? Techno babble maybe ? ;)
I'd suggest that the power question is that there is no way into subspace being "opened", the way is already there, the spore drive is just to find the pre-existing access points. And given the organic origin, those access points can be really strange. (Like "you need a certain amount of angular momentum" strange)
As an analogy, while regular FTL is like placing a long distance call, spore drive is phone phreaking.
That's literally how they explain it in the show almost word for word
@@exilestudios9546 Okay then. i've got the idea from a sci-fi novel somewhere that i read ;)
@@zhoufang996 i see what you are getting at...
Like a 4D being looking on our 3D universe. You turn just so, and you are in subspace.. and the network allows the ship to connect.. hmm...
The ship gets converted into energy/light and travels the mycellial network like light in fiberoptic cables.
Matter/energy conversion like the replicator/tranporter.
I kinda went over this a few days ago. I can see where the spore networks developed. The spinning ship and such, I think may tie into something to do with the spore biology. (Reality: "Ohh, that looks neat! Let's do that!"). But it's all headcanon, so, we'll see more probably as they have to develop an alternate to dilithium warp systems. (One planet of dilithium does not a permanent recovery make).
minor correction, warp drive isn't based on the Alcubiere drive, is the otherway arround, it was because of star trek that Alcubiere developed is theory...
also, I admit I didn't finish my physics degree( I switched to mathematics halfway), but I can assure you, we only know like 10% of why physics work or how they work... heck, even things in regular Newtonean mechanics we have no idea how they work(as an example, check the misterius physics of how a bicycle balances) once you get into deep of it, we know nothing... that is basically when I stopped calling bullshit in anything science fiction... we literally don't know what is the extend of what is possible.
I read somewhere that the rotation is supposed to spread the spores around the ship? Can't remember where I found that but honestly it doesn't make it better for me.
I like to picture the spore drive like the Starburst visual from Farscape. Spread the energy around the ship then enter hyper/sub/mega space.
Explains why the saucer spins like a pizza cutter.
@@qdllc Doesn't explain how they forgot that the ships have environmental systems- all those air ducts that go throughout the ship...
If it effects the spores... it effects the crew.
That would kill everyone on board!
The skin of the ship spins, the outer hull. The inside, the windows, they’re shown to be static. So it’s just a thin layer of spinning. It’s still silly but yk
@@kaitlyn__L Even if that were the case, (which seems unlikely that the only outer hull of the saucer, as opposed to the entire exterior ring of the saucer, spins- which explains why the bridge is stationary), there's the issue of the aerilon roll the Discovery makes before it "drops" into Mycelial Space. (I mean, a good chunk of the ship is spinning on two different axes)
I never get tired of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy style animation.
Speaking of, they should just trash the spores and move up to the Bistromathic Drive
I just smirked and imagined that reality is a mass of overlapping perceptions which taking mushrooms can allow one to transcend. This concept would have worked well in TOS - the hippies from The Way To Eden could have discovered it. ;)
Don't be such a Herbert!
Considering Roddenberry did genuinely believe the stuff he had the Traveler saying about spacetimemind, I think he’d be all for the spore drive.
This is just great work. Especially the comparison of all ftl tech in the last 3rd of the video. You're so quick and clear.
The thing about the mycelial network is that we don’t understand the laws of physics in the network they never really explain it. My interpretation is that the network itself is transmitting spores and information at infinite velocities discovery enters the network and rides this infinite velocity to where ever they need to go the point of using spores as a way to direct the flow.
I see it as entering one filament of the network and emerging from another. This one doesn't bug me so much.
That it existed and Kurtzman is allowed to keep making anything at all. He's done more damage to Star Trek than Johnson did to Star Wars with JJ.
Yes Absolutely, you have nailed right on target.
The irony being that JJ didn't take Alex along with him to do Star Wars, so as a consolation prize he got to stay behind and wreck Star Trek instead.
TOTALLY AGREED
Except none of them did “damage” to anything. I don’t like Discovery, but it’s fucking better than Voyager and Enterprise
No it isn't.
It's like you went into my head, found my exact opinion on this subject and then said it better than I could think it.
You know, when you put it like this then it awfully sounds like the Slipstream Drive from Andromeda (which was also a Gene Roddenberry show)
Yes, but the Slipstream Drive in Andromeda made much more sense than this Spore Drive. It's just lazy. They took a idea from another show, and copied it in a bad way
@@Anthyrion yeah iam not implying that they implemented it well into star trek, which they seriously did not ^^
That was the first thing I thought when I understood the concept they were going for in Discovery: it's kinda like the quantum slipstream drive in Andromeda. The second thing I thought was why the hell do they need to bring magic mushrooms into it.
@@razvanmazilu6284 Right. If they'd put the show 200 or 300 years into the future after Nemesis and made this new Drive progressing into the Slipstream Drive, i'm sure, the complaints would've been insignificant. But instead, they're obsessed with putting the show into a Era before Kirk took command over the Enterprise and by doing so, they're making themselfs more trouble than needed
@@Anthyrion I agree. I also would've dropped the whole "mycelial" aspect of it, since frankly I think it's ridiculous. The need for a human/biological navigator along with its different way of working would've been enough to make it feel distinct from normal warp drive.
P.S. I dunno how the hell "they were going for" turned into "they good morning for", but I've changed it now :)
I hadn't thought about it too much. But I love your inconsistencies that you brought up. Kind of the same things I subconsciously was taking into account. Could have been written much better. Give it some small amount of time to traverse the network. Make it channels the spores "dug" and not magic spore telepathy. That sort of thing. Haha.
6:50 I think the implication is that spores themselves aren't fully in phase in the universe they are collected as they still just part of the greater Mycelial network which is holding together Trek's greater multiverse. I develop that theory from watching episode "Lethe". Stamets ruled out the sending Discovery itself into the nebula to rescue Sarek, implying there was noway to prevent the spores from reacting harshly to the cosmic gasses...which I took as they are always connected to the Mycelial network. But that is just my thoughts on it.
Personally I do agree that Disco's spores is one of the more wackier plot devices in Trek that would quickly to fall part by in depth analysis...but I am with fine with it as long as the writers don't use that ambiguity as a clutch in order to techno bubble there way to be the solution for everything.
Matter/energy conversion like the replicator/transporter.
The ship is turned into energy/light, and travels through the mycellial network like light in fiberoptic cables.
Thank you for this video explanation. I have yet to see Discovery and didn't know how their space travel worked. Spore drive is strange...
You mentioned briefly not liking Warp 10. I had thought that's what Discovery used to travel. The idea of Warp 10 and Infinite velocity from that Voyager Episode stuck with me and I decided it was a good way of explaining how the TARDIS in Doctor Who travels through Time & Space. The TARDIS hits Warp 10, it exists everywhere at once, and then you decide where you want it to slow down to. (I get that the show explains this by "Time Vortex" but Infinite Velocity by way of spinning is more sci-fi to me.)
If you have tried... let us say The Full Power of Mushrooms then the idea that mushrooms can help you get anywhere in the universe makes total sense.
For people who can't see the fractals and haven't met the 5th dimensional elves... yeah, I can see how the spore drive would come across as a little weird.
This is my headcanon for why such a promising idea was shelved-the only scientists -high- intelligent enough to understand how it worked were dead (or effectively dead).
It's also consistent writing that in S03, the only two people in the 32nd century who understand how it works are considered to be the brightest minds of their era and are also both *non-Federation.*
I was under the impression they, follow the roots. And their ability to show up pretty much anywhere is because the Prototaxites stellaviatori has been around since nearly the dawn of the universe. I also understood the fact that, the Mycellium uses energy for themselves to propagate, that's why they glow blue. They travel in and out of subspace to kind of, try to pollinate. So, my understanding even explains why the ship spins for-realzies.
I just thought, maybe the idea of the spore drive came to the discovery creators whilst they where high on spores ie magic mushroom, lol
Got a name of said Comic?
Alot of Trek copied from other works, Tribbles for example is not original to trek.
Robert A. Heinlein's 1952 novel The Rolling Stones had the Martian flat cats which the tribbles are based on
There is one thing I really like about the mushroom drive - at least I know what the entire writing staff were high on. Can't wait for the next iterations of this technology - the Ayahuasca drive and the LSD drive.
The Spore Drive, the plot device that broke Voyager.
Nah, they actually did explain why Voyager couldn't use it. As far as Starfleet was concerned, it was a failed experiment that destroyed two ships. It's a thin explanation but they had to come up with something after (former Voyager writer) Bryan Fuller shoe horned it into the 23rd Century canon with seemingly no plan or care as to how it would impact it.
@@joseaguilar3323 That's just lazy writing, my problem with STD as a whole tbh
@@CharlieCookeActor Yeah, agreed. The writing improved after Michelle Paradise took over but the first two seasons are borderline unwatchable.
@@joseaguilar3323 It lost me after season 1, the Mirror Universe was the only half watchable part of it and even then it was still so lazy! One episode Michael is claiming that the Empire is racist and sexist then a few episodes later it's revealed that the ruler of the Empire is an Asian woman, and that woman of colour hold the rank of captain
@@joseaguilar3323 Which, to be fair, is rather normal for Trek shows...
Honestly, Kurtzman carries most of the blame from the fans but most if not all of what's fundamentally wrong with Discovery was done by Bryan Fuller. like the Spore Drive, the Klingon design, being a prequel, overexposing Michael Burnham etc. Honestly, I was surprised to find out that most of what I like about Discovery were Kurtzman's idea, like the role Pike played in Season 2 and setting it in the 32nd Century from the 3rd onwards.
"How did the Spore drive work?"
Stupidly
I say Quantum Tunneling, which is an actual thing. In real world science its how sub atomic particles can get pass a barrier it shouldn't have.
A little jargon and techno-mumbo-jumbo would make the Spore drive more plausible instead of "Space magic"
@@lukasperuzovic1429 We get a line from Stamets explaining how biology is juts physics if you go small enough, but that's not brought up again, so (for now) that's juts another dead end.
My handwave of how the spore drive works is that it's basically an organic version of the Borg transwarp. The mycelium has created a vast and dense version of that network, and the spore drive essentially uses the mycelium's subspace abilities to navigate that. It's not a coincidence that both have about the same speed.
This is also why the ship spins. Unlike artificially created transwarp conduits, as an organic construction the network has a chirality. The ship thus has to be correctly aligned in polarisation to enter.
The Spore Drive works as FTL because, as you said, Subspace doesn't obey the laws of space-time. It doesn't need to make sense beyond that.
As for appearing anywhere, I think its implied that the network in subspace covers everything and is linked somehow to our universe. So you just go to the place that corresponds to where you want to go in this universe, then drop back out of subspace and boom you're there. Which explains why they struggled with navigation at first - they had no point of reference as to where the relative connections were, so were basically guessing. Leading to nearly jumping inside a star.
It’s interesting how a number of your concerns at the end were covered by now. And also it’s good to remember that Star Trek’s warp drive existed before Alcubierre’s Theory.
Stretching disbelief beyond its breaking point is a hallmark of Abrams/Kurtzman Trek.
To be fair, this particular thing wasn't on them, it was on Bryan Fuller, as well of a lot of what's wrong with Discovery that Kurtzman takes the blame for.
Far worse than the realism of it is the fact that the spore drive is a horrible thing from a narrative perspective. Not only does it destroy the notion of travel times from a storytelling perspective, but its relative "fragility" is too great to simply ignore. If something goes wrong with the mycelium network, it can literally mean the end of all life in the ENTIRE MULTIVERSE. It's a level of stakes raising that's just quite frankly ludicrous and what the story gets out of it in return is practically meaningless in comparison.
Just imagine: each and every time you're watching Kirk outwit a sentient computer, each time Picard gives an impassioned speech, each time Janeway sends a parallel duplicate of Harry Kim to his death, each time Sisko punches a god, each time Archer makes a whiny, morally-dubious statement, each time Burnham cries; the ENTIRE MULTIVERSE could be snuffed out in an instant because a scientist, in another galaxy, IN ANOTHER UNIVERSE, could make a mistake when working with some space mushrooms. FTL salamanders are practically sane in comparison.
...Also the spinning bugs me. It'd be one thing if the whole ship spun faster and faster, forming some sort of vortex that it slips into. But no, it literally spins around ONCE, then "voorrrrp"s away in a video game-esque animation. It just looks REALLY cheesy in a way that annoys my far more than it should.
Wait... Did they really name the character after the real life mycologist, Paul Stamets? Thats pretty awesome. Look him up if you haven't, interesting stuff
That guy just wants to make money. Dude uses pseudoscience to sell his shrooms. Shrooms are fun, but not really anything more.
Yeah, they did. He's actually the one who came up with the idea of the Spore Drive, and the _Discovery_ producers were so grateful they named the character after him.
Thanks Rick, good explantion of the spore drive, always ;like your vids and explantions. Take care.
Star Trek is famous for its technobabble, I'm in the middle of rewatching Voyager and it gets quite ridiculous at times. That said, the spore drive comfortably sits up there with the worst of technobabble and centering a good deal of a show around it was in my opinion quite a daft idea. It's like doing a whole show around something as ridiculous as the ideas in the Threshold episode of Voyager.
That said, Star Trek is not hard Sci-fi, it's not even close to being one, so I'm willing to look the other way most of the times if the story is good. How good the stories are in Discovery is, err, open to discussion. My feelings on it aren't quite as negative as I think that of many Star Trek fans, but I still think it is easily the worst live action Star Trek show I've seen and I've seen all of them.
Very true.
Given how many god-like being TOS had and the Q in TNG era, I think "not hard- Sci-fi" is a very accurate statement. Even some of the technology is not really realistic, especially in terms of how much it can be minitirised. Good examples pre-Discovery include just how small they made transporter tech for the personal transporter in Nemesis or the Doctor's portable holographic emitter.
EDIT: Corrected "militarised" to "minitirised"
@@golddragongaming1
Thing is that while a lot of it is not really practical, they are often fully aware of that and acknowledge it with things like "Heisenberg compensators" as a "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" to the science geeks in the audience. But Discovery has been making effort after effort to instead give precisely those people an "up yours" instead. Yes, the Voyager Warp 10 stuff was bad, but Discovery seems to be hell-bent to have that kind of nonsense every single season.
@@ohauss Well, I prefer getting less technobabble and prefer to just be left to accept that the tech works with a minimal of technobabble, just like the TOS did. TNG and Voyager had too much technobabble, especially when Data or Harry Kim spoke. Even Spock never got as deep into the technobabble. Though often that was because Kirk cut him off.
Its Dune logic.
Navigators eat the spice to navigate
The Holzman effect makes the ship go faster than light somehow
"Travel without moving"
The spice must flow
@@shanenolan8252 Sporce
@@Sephiroth144 lol
If it helps with your suspension of disbelief, I can offer an explanation.
One of the competing theories for FTL travel is, effectively, jumping into higher dimensional space. If you look at it like that, then you could see the spore network as more like a series of light houses and the navigator is using them to pop up in the right spot since there there's some inherent uncertainty in the navigation and the ratio of distance travelled in that other plane to normal space may not be constant from our perspective.
The ship gets converted into energy/light and travels the mycellial network like light in fiberoptic cables.
Matter/energy conversion like the replicator/tranporter.
I feel like the best explanation I can come up with for how the mycelial network enables ftl is that it sort of "pokes out" into real space in a way that let's the ship drop fully into subspace, inside of the fungus. In that particular layer of subspace, the maximum speed may be many many many times higher than it would be in real space, also causing the energy required to reach a given speed to be much less than it would be in real space, allowing them to catapult vast distances through the network
You have explained the problem with Spore drive perfectly and as a True devotee of Star Trek the illogical inclusion of this drive in Star Trek which traditionally has been Scientific in its thinking has irritated me, I hope future Star Trek creators will move away from nonsense like the spore Drive.
The spore drive turns the ship into energy/light that travels along the mycellial network like light in fiberoptic cables.
Matter/energy conversion like the replicator/transporter.
Also, it's Yggdrasil the World Tree holding the worlds(Dimensions/Quantum Realities), the Crystalline Entity in TNG is a Frost Giant from another Dimension.
Disco runs on magic fairy dust and rainbow unicorn farts.
I prefer the title, "The Giggle Drive" for its accurate description of the sound of a spore jump. Also for its accuracy in describing the concept.
I cannot unhear it now.
Probably easier to just say "Everything in or about STD is a problem"
I think the best line was Philippa Georgiou's "said a man who fly's a starship through a mushroom space"
Kurtzman is to Star Trek as JJ Abrams is to Star Wars. He's so bad he makes us fans actually miss Berman, that's how impressively awful he is.
The thing is, that wasn't Kurtzman's idea, it was former Voyager and DS9 writer and Hannibal creator Bryan Fuller's. So was the Klingon design and pretty much everything else that was wrong with Discovery conceptually. The guy set the house on fire then threw the keys to Kurtzman and ran away.
@@joseaguilar3323 Has Kurtzman even looked for a metaphorical fire extinguisher...?
@@joseaguilar3323 Wow, that's almost praiseworthy is how diabolical it is XD
@@joseaguilar3323 Yes, a lot of people forget that Bryan Fuller created it and its problems. However, it was not Kurtzman that inherited it initially. Two others did for season one. Kurtzman worked under them for season 1. He took over from them after 2 or 3 episodes were filmed in season 2 when they were also fired like Fuller was.
He then went to the studio and convinced them he needed extra money nto do an extra episode it two and some rewrites to make season 2 work. And given what season two was like, I do think that even just 1 or 2 fewer episodes would have made it a lot worse due to making less sense.
In short, Kurtzman actually inherited problems from *two* sets of show runners before him.
EDIT: I forget the names of the two that inherited the show before Kurtzman. They were forgettable as writers, which is in some ways worse than being a bad writer.
@@Sephiroth144 Kurtman was contractually stuck with what Fuller came up with as there no time to redo anything
Thank you, I've been trying to recreate the "Spore drive" and I sent my cat somewhere. He's still floating around here somewhere.
The Problem with STD is simple: Nearly every fact, if it's scientific or world building, was ignored by the producer (Fartzman) and replaced with some fantasy bullshit. He lacks every effort, that Roddenberry and his successors made in every former series. He also ignores them and try to make his own awful thing. And because the viewing ratings are good (either Fans hate or love STD), CBS brought more content. It's the same thing, which the Star Wars movies suffered on. Make something, put a big name on it and the fandom will buy it
I point out why everything wrong with the show (and Picard) is wrong, and I get told that I'm simply a hater who never watched an episode. I actually watched quite a bit, enough to inform my decision that they are not good shows either in terms of being good Trek or even decent sci-fi in general. To be honest, both shows come off like a stone soup of concepts and plotlines lifted from better shows and thrown together by writers and execs who couldn't get hired on to work those shows instead.
@@The_Lucent_Archangel I somehow came through STD Season 1. After that i stopped and only watched reviews. But what i saw was enough to convince me, that the one guy, who called Kurtzman an idiot on a other Star Trek Set, was right. But even if you point out with common facts (how is there so much space in the Turbolifts, the "burn" shouldn't work, etc.) there are "fans" who ignore those and call it great shows. And instead of trying to argument, WHY they think they are great shows, they call you "Hater" and insult you. Have you heard from the channel "Major Grin"? He also pinpoints out, what the differences between the former Star Trek shows and STD and Picard are and why most of the things, they show, aren't working ore are plotholes.
@@Anthyrion I forgot about the "burn". LMAO! Newsflash, Romulan starships don't use dilithium and I'm quite sure the Federation understands how their engines work. Just switch over to forced-quantum-singularity propulsion. I mean for Christ's sake, if they didn't understand it then they certainly should have figured it out by the 32nd century. STD writing is lazy AF.
@@RobKMusic Even if some of the Romulan ships use Dilithium, that burn is simply not possible. I mean, a child is crying and whole ships and planets explode? You're right. Simply lazy. I hope, Season 2 of Picard will be better, but i don't think so. The only one of the new shows i enjoyed was Lower Decks. Yes, it wasn't really Star Trek at all. But is see it more like a parody and hommage on former shows
The spinning is crazy - nice to see Star Trek has Batttlestar's jump drive.
There's strong indications that the writers for _Discovery_ stole the idea of the tardigrade (and even a couple of characters) from Anas Abdin's video game. Not surprisingly, the big corporation won the lawsuit. ¬_¬
They didn't just win the case was laughed out of court because there was zero evidence of plagerism outside if the plaintiff basically saying "trust me it happened" you can't own the concept of tardigrades as they are real creatures that exist in the real world and the one in discovery is a literal animal while the one in the plaintiffs game was an intelligent being. His case had not met the burden of proof and so was dismissed. This was a dude looking for a payday and instead he is now broke because he didn't have a legal leg to stand on
The way i interpretated it was, the mycelial network is just another plane of subspace, but one on the very bottom of subspace, so it comparison to warp subspace, it is tiny. So the way it works, in my mind at least, is that the spore drive moves the ship into the network, the ship travels at impulse a few meters, and then the drive throws the ship out of subspace at the destination. It suggests that one meter in the network plane is the equiivolent of thousands of lightyears in normal space. And due to how time interacts with space, to an observer of the effect, it would appear as if the jump is reletivally instant, give or take a few seconds.
Problem 1:
It exists
If I had to guess, the spore drive functions kind o like a transporter, the ship is turned into a form of subspace signal which is transmissible through the mycelium like a wire, but to protect the ship itself but being entirely deconstructed or rejected buy the network it has to use the spores like a sort of real space bubble
I think there's more to the Spore Drive than just physics. Remember, there's a biological element to it.
Biological element? Dude biology deep enough is just physics. It can't be anything else. No magic😂
Biology is physics
They are limited to how far the spores are. Once near the edge of the universe they had to travel at warp cause their was no more spore drive lanes.
How about the problem with Discoverys' "plot armor" 😒🙄
Until recently I had been listening to a lot of Deee Lite. You know, the Rave group from the 90s. Mushrooms ARE a general theme in their album art & so on. My only point here is that in order to traverse the universe in the 90s, I really only needed my imagination & good music. So although the spore ecosystem is undoubtedly relevant ... I mean there are Discothèques EVERYWHERE in Federation space according to STO... That alone...
I like the idea of the spore drive and it's connection to subspace, I'd have just called it a subspace drive or something like that. Too many people stop listening after ya use the word spores
Honestly most of the haters stopped listening before they even saw a single episode.
Aye. If it weren't for the whole mushroom angle I feel like it would be far more accepted. It would still present a number of issues in canon, but they could be more easily waved away than... space mushrooms.
@@Kyronea meh all trek had issues with Canon so that's nothing new.
no one cares about fake star trek bruh
Yeah some kind of subspace drive could have been cool. But having it run on magic mushrooms like that was a teeeeerribler decision...
@5:51
There's been experimental proof of an ability to actually warp spacetime. Literally the only thing preventing us from trying it large scale is the problem of negative energy, and once we figure out how to get lower than zero-point, the USS Alcubierre will get built.
For the curious: zero-point energy is a term used to describe the actual level of energy present in hard vacuum, in interstellar space. That number is minuscule, but it is not zero.
Love your videos. Always very well done. In this case, however, I feel you were far too generous. The Spore Drive is an idiotic contrivance created for a third-rate show by people who have no real appreciation for the source material.
There. `Nuff said.
As an engineer, pilot and certified aircraft mechanic, I appreciate when sci fi shows a degree of respect and deference to real science. YES, IT'S JUST A TV SHOW, but the most thoughtful sci fi writers know that techies and nerds, like me, are a core part of their target audience, which are turned off by illogical fantasies. (The Expanse is the best, so far, in showing some respect to science.) Warp drives are fantasy, but firmly agree with Alcubierre, which is plausible science. A "spore" drive, on the other hand, is technically and scientifically insulting, seemingly created by writers and producers who don't know the difference between sci fi and "Jack and the beanstalk".
Meanwhile CBS gives Alex a contract extension…..
That's because everyone complains but then just keeps watching it.
@@RobKMusic I doubt it.
They just using the seven seas to see it for free.
Streaming services don’t care about operating at losses as Netflix loves to show.
@@AncestorEmpire1 ahoy matey!
@@RobKMusic if the FBI shows up, I know nothing and I am a fragment of a child’s imagination.
They wanted to make an alice in wonderland reference. Thats the only reason its a mushroom drive, stamits is the white rabbit. Georgio is the queen.
summary. It's just dumb...
It works a lot like the quantum realm from the mcu, travels through space time and into other realities.
They are both organic dimensions too.
I like to think the Spore Drive used Quantum Tunneling
The problem with the spore drive is because they didn't understand it when they ripped of the original creator
Finally someone said it. Same could be said of the Reapers they...ripped from ME for Picard
@@odiwalker3973 Yeeeeah- I don't think Mass Effect was the originator of the "uber advanced AI race that has a hate on for organics".
@@odiwalker3973 THAT one is BS. Mass Effect and Picard have the same cookie cutter Sci Fi Plot. It's not one ripping off the other, it's both taking from the same lazy well.
@@Sephiroth144 I never said it was the originator. I said Picard took the particular iteration of that trope from Mass Effect. First, its not a case of "uber AI hate organics" but rather "uber race executes cyclical genocide of one kind of life to protect the other kind", thats already very close to ME's plot, but we also have IN THE SAME FRAMEWORK organics VS AI, we have that uber AI connected to the deep past of the galaxy by means of ancient tech and lore, we also have that uber AI living outside the galaxy just coming over into it to start the next cycle, also - again - IN THE SAME FRAMEWORK, we have the synthesis (AI + organics into one being) leitmotif, all stringed together into the plot of a plucky crew running around the galaxy in their sleek starship in a race against time to unite ppl against this evil and......... must I go on? Cause I can.
Sure, individualy each one of these elements are, to quote @José Aguilar down below "cookie cutter Sci Fi Plot", and yet how many times have you seen this particular array of tropes, arranged in such specific manner, in mainstream sci fi? For real, how many times?
Its the same thing with the spore drives, mycelial network and space tardigrade thingy, in a vaccum they're nothing more than "cookie cutter Sci Fi Plot", yet when they're arranged in a specific manner, with a particular plot structure to explore certain leitmotifs, it gets to a point where you gotta do a lotta effort to ignore the... lets call it "inspiration" taken from another work. And I see no reason to give CBS a pass when they're being so consistent in this regard
The spore drive is there exact type OP plot device that good trek avoided using. It would make the owner of the tech near omnipotent.
Anything after Enterprise doesn't count.
2:25 The Glenn did not grow it's own mushrooms; it kept dried mushrooms in it's cargo bay which attracted the tardigrade.
How the spore drive works. Bad writing and plot armour.
Very nice and fair critique. I thought the space fungus thing was a great idea despite not being based on any existing science, but making it a means of transport certainly is problematic and, frankly, a bit boring. They could do so many more interesting stories with it. Exobiology which isnt tied to a single planet or system and might interact with all species seems like itd be a creative gold mine.
Of all the pseudoscientific nonsense in Nu Trek, this drive is among the most egregious. I miss the days when effort was at least made to latch back onto theoretical concepts rather than just inventing new ones out of thin air that make no sense nor have basis in reality. If they really insisted on doing something like this, a propulsion concept that connected to string theory or quantum entanglement would have been far more palatable and made more sense in terms of crossing to the Mirror Universe. To say nothing of the merits (or lack thereof) of the writing and plot of the newer installments.
Trek is all about made up nonsense with hand waving explanations. The hysenburg compensator for example, self replicating cloaked mines, etc. If it bothers you that they gave up then by later TNG you must've been very upset
That's a load of crap. Another idiot fanboy using strawmen to defend the garbage that supposedly passes for Trek nowadays. I won't be humoring you, other than to say that it's "Heisenberg" and self-replicating cloaked mines aren't anywhere close to "hand-wavey" compared to nonsense like this moronic drive concept, a psychic link to dilithium (roflmao), and a device that makes one's thoughts or wishes reality as if it's packaged Q abilities. Realistically, something like a "Heisenberg Compensator" would be essential to a transporter, because how else are you going to transit an object down to the subatomic level if it's impossible to fix the position and speed of an electron?
The only thing "hand-wavey" about that is that the compensator's function is not explained in detail, but it's ridiculous to cite that because if we knew of a way to compensate for the Uncertainty Principle, then we'd have probably licked Quantum Physics entirely by now! Replication is the re-ordering of matter from one form to another and self-replicating nano-sized machines are actually something being worked on albeit in preliminary stages. Cloaking is actually pretty far along as a military tech project. By comparison, I see no scientific papers or theories on a mycelial network nor on how a person can affect the stability of an inanimate substance via psychic manipulation. Period. There's zero comparison.
@@The_Lucent_Archangel while that STD Stan is partially correct, Star Trek does use hand wavy explanations for some of its science and technology. But as you pointed out, they clearly don't understand that much of the "hand waving" is still based in actual science. For instance, for an actual transporter to work, you would need something like a Heisenberg compensator, because of the real world problem of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. So the writers have to create something that gets around that problem. And that's generally the case with most "hand waving" found in real Trek, like the self replicating mines, nanobots, etc. Unlike the magic mushroom drive that makes the Discovery teleport because the writers say so. Star Trek has (for the most part) based it's science/technology on real world science, which is why it's always been top shelf sci-fi. But the magic mushrooms drive is the kind of bottom shelf sci-fi I'd expect out of one of those old, crappy, made for tv Sci-Fi channel original "B movies."
@@tyler4418 The only decent thing out of SyFy in years was 12 Monkeys. Sadly the showrunner from that got roped into doing Picard.
@@The_Lucent_Archangel never saw it. But I'm referring to the time back when it was the Sci-Fi channel, not the SyFy channel. Some of their made for tv movies back in the day were awful, bottom shelf sci-fi lol. The magic mushroom drive is something I'd expect to see in those movies lol.
Hi, Rick :)
The drive is weird to me because there's no mention of it at all, even as failed technology, in previous media. It makes sense that it wad never used again, because it apparently damages the micelial network every time a ship uses it... May said so.
It looks like the two ships were testbed platforms. The Glenn was destroyed and the Discovery was presumed as such, so Starfleet scrapped the program was failure. That's why nobody talks about trying it again.
The mega tardigrades might be close to extinct by the time TOS comes around (again because of the damaged network). Maybe subspace radio doesn't pierce too deeply into the network, which is why they keep using it.
Actually what May said was that every time Discovery passes through the network is damaged, not that the ship[ damages it. She then explained that "the beast" follows them. She merely blamed them because she thought them and "the beast" were together. But it was soon revealed they did not even know anything about the beast, which turned out to be Culber.
Even then he was only harming the network due to covering himself in the bark of a tree from that realm is poisonous to the spores, which the network relies on to survive. Think of it as similar to how oil is produced by nature but is poisonous to many creatures that an ecosystem on Earth relies on.
The biggest problem with the spore drive is the whole idea was stolen from someone else just like the rest of this trash Star Trek
It really wasn't. When you look into it unbiasedly you see why that dev lost the lawsuits and appeals. It's similar, but not nearly similar enough to be plagiarism
@@joseaguilar3323
Yeah and the fact that the main cast of std is a mirror of his game main characters is complete coincidence?
5:56 By the way, the show came first, Alcubierre was inspired by the show and worked Einstein's equations in reverse to start getting an idea of what it would take to make one in the real world to see if it was even a feasible thing to pursue theoretically.