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Crystals good, fungus bad
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this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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Risa
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Come on'n get your jamaharon on! There are no real rules—just don't break the weather control network.
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Q did it? Seems fine
I think the big difference is that this is Federation science, not super-being using their superpowers. I like Discovery, as you know, but I think they could have done a lot to handle the idea that no one else has ever used the mycelial network again, not even 900 years in the future, better. I think they could, at the very least, have come up with an explanation for why no other non-Federation empire- not the Klingons or the Romulans or the Cardassians or the Borg or anyone else- ever made the same discovery despite being at basically the same technological level or, in the case of the Borg, at an even higher level. They didn't, but I think they should have. Maybe they will in the new season, but I have a feeling they won't. It by no means ruins Discovery for me, but it could have been handled better.
Discovery, in a way, seems to take place in its own universe. All the other new series seem to ignore the Discovery Klingon look, for instance. In Picard, Worf looked like Worf. In SNW, Klingons in the musical episode looked like TNG Klingons.
I realize it would create continuity problems, especially with Pike, but it wouldn't kill me if they decided by the end of the show that it took place in an alternate universe like the Kelvin movies did.
I just think expecting it to never be discovered again over 900 years is a little hard to buy. Sure, not having it by TNG works for me, but the fact that this whole mycelial network crosses the galaxy and multiple universes and was never discovered again, even almost a millennium later... I don't know.
A good example- we have no idea what 'Greek Fire,' a secret military technology used by the Byzantines actually was, but we have many ways to recreate what it did through rediscovery of technology.
That said, I realize it's just a TV show. I take your point about it being in the Prime timeline. I just wish there was more reconciliation with the rest of it, like why the Klingons look totally different in Discovery than in SNW and Picard. You can just dismiss that as being the same as the Klingons looking different between TOS and TNG with no explanation (unless you accept the explanation in Enterprise that many people hate), but I still would have appreciated an explanation. For example, I saw it suggested that the Klingon empire was actually more diverse than it seemed and various 'types' of Klingons were in power at various times. So in the TOS era, the "human" Klingons were in charge, in Discovery, the Discovery Klingons were in charge, and in TNG, the TNG Klingons were in charge.
So the "impossibility" of the spore drive doesn't bother me. I just have a hard time with the idea that it was never rediscovered by someone else over many centuries. One solution would have been that everyone was using the spore drive in the future until the planet that the Kaminar guy was on made it impossible instead. It could even have ended differently with the mycelial network becoming unusable, even destroyed, and them having to go back to, maybe even re-engineer ships with warp drive technology. I also suggested above that they could have had Control use a weapon that destroyed the network and it took 900 years to heal. I can just see so many ways around the problem that they could have used but didn't. I don't want to suggest I'm a better writer than they are or anything, Discovery has had some episodes with exceptional writing, I just think this particular story element was handled badly in this specific case.
I think the mushrooms almost feel too... mundane? The average person probably interacts with a lot more mushrooms than crystals. Crystals also have a long history of being associated with magical properties, and modern science has figured out some neat things that can be done with crystalline structures. We're pretty primed for crystals doing cool stuff. Mushrooms have significantly less mysticism associated with them and related science is more biological than technological. That's not really solidly in favor of one or the other, but it does mean the audience will more readily accept crystal hijinks with no warm up than mushroom hijinks with no warmup. The closest comparison to the mycelial network is Yggdrasil, which is solidly in the high fantasy category rather than sci-fi.
All that is to say, I think the mycelial network needed more time to set up than the show gave it. Some kind of foreshadowing, like simply mentioning something about advances in organic technology. Farscape probably would have been able to sell it pretty quick, but Farscape also has organic technology as a core part of the premise with Moya. Not an inherently bad concept, just kind of comes out of nowhere in the context of Trek.
Ah yes, psychedelics are famously not associated with mysticism.
The closest comparison is actual fungal networks that exist beneath forests supporting life through the transference of nutrients and biochemical communication, are some of the largest organisms on the planet, and are actual nonfiction science.
I think I can agree with you to some extent there. Stamets, by virtue of being standoffish and prickly when the character is introduced, is not the best at explaining things, and the concept could have used a better explanation early on to mitigate the response I'm complaining about with this post.
Might depend on your area? I mostly just associate them with stoners. Mystic folks in my area are really into crystals.
I meant in terms of 'a thing that links worlds together'. Typically, a trans-dimensional plant or plant-like thing is depicted as a tree, patterned off of the mythic Yggdrasil. World trees are also typically a high fantasy thing, since they're mimicking Yggdrasil. The mycelial network is essentially a world tree, or rather a world shroom. It's not exactly an expected trope in sci-fi. Mixing the genres is definitely doable, but you need to get your foot in the door with some shared concepts before you spring a wrong-genre thing on the audience.
Stamets not being a great vehicle for exposition is definitely a problem, but I think the real problem is that season 1 in general has weird pacing. They spent a lot of time getting Burnham situated on the Discovery and the Mirror Universe arc took up a lot of time for how little actually happened in it. They wound up course-correcting near the end of the season by literally skipping ahead a few months on the return trip. I'm sure it's partially a too many cooks situation with the early show's revolving door of showrunners, but the second season did greatly improve in that regard while still having to swap out showrunners mid way through.
My point is, season 1 is kind of wonky structurally.
Star Trek TNG had a Space Loki on steroids driving key points of the plot so what's the issue with a Space Yggrasil? Star Trek was never supposed to be hard sci-fi in the first place.
Concepts inspired by the idea of the World Tree are also common in other sci-fi works.