Star Trek Discovery season 2 megathread

[Admiral X]

youtu.be/EzfkxAC-Bw8

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

No it's not. It's bad.

[Makeshift Python]

I think the whole conceit of Trek being "hard sci-fi" might have started among fans in the early 90s. During the fifth season the TNG Technical Manual came out. In the sixth season they started crediting "science advisors" like Naren Shankar and Andre Bormanis. It's also around this point when technobabble jargon had started to become much more prevalent than in the first four seasons.

[MixedDrops]

I mean, a lot of the "hardness" associated with Trek's science through the years was done post hoc. They did have scientific advisors on TNG (as does DIS), but ultimately a lot of things are stretched to crazy extremes in order to justify the fictional universe, then explained away later in supplementary material.

Since we're deciding to nerd out, let's talk about the spore drive beyond just "it's dumb because I think it's dumb". The in-universe explanation is that there's some kind of fungus-like life form that lives in subspace (and apparently grows its way through different dimensions), and by tapping into it, a ship can jump into subspace and then back into normal space again. When put that way, it's really not that different from the wormhole technology found in various types of scifi works. It's described as fungus-like because the lifeform (or group of lifeforms, whatever) extends its network through various subspace like mycelium extend its network throughout Earth.

If anything, the Tardigrade from S1 should've been the focus of the most scientific flogging, because even though "horizontal gene transfer allowed the space tardigrade to pick up mycelial DNA" was based off the belief that tardigrades took DNA from bacteria, the idea that any non-bacteria organisms are able to perform horizontal gene transfer has thus far been debunked. One might justify that by saying "well, it's a space tardigrade, not an actual tardigrade", but obviously it was written to resemble a tardigrade to reference the mistaken belief that tardigrades can do that.

[Yukaphile]

Does STD even have science advisors, though? And yeah, tech manuals were big in the 1990s. They aren't now, I don't think, because most people are dissatisfied with how these franchises are being handled. You see that from older fans all the time - with the possible exception of Doctor Who, I don't know. Still need to absorb more of that verse.

[J!!]

They originally built two Guardians, but one was left on a shelf and a cat knocked it off, now we have time crystals.

Actually, they left it lying around in a cave on Golana IV, which was really rather neglectful of them. Someone could've gotten hurt, then been forced to go back in time & save their past selves, thus retroactively erasing their present selves from ever having existed, and leaving nobody to save them.

Irresponsible time-machine ownership like that gives the rest of us a bad name. Remember kids, preventing causality paradoxes is your responsibility.

[J!!]

Does STD even have science advisors, though?

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Anthony_Maranville

[Makeshift Python]

Does STD even have science advisors, though? And yeah, tech manuals were big in the 1990s. They aren't now, I don't think, because most people are dissatisfied with how these franchises are being handled. You see that from older fans all the time - with the possible exception of Doctor Who, I don't know. Still need to absorb more of that verse.

I can't think of a bigger waste of time than writing or reading "tech manuals" of fictional space ships. I like the idea of creating a map of a whole ship to get a sense of where things take place, but I couldn't care less of how exactly the ship functioned. All that just goes right over my head as I'm much more concerned about the story and characters. There's a reason nerds cosplay as characters rather than as warp cores, although some can be hilariously creative.

[Admiral X]

*owns both TNG and DS9 tech manuals*

[MixedDrops]

Personally I find well-defined fantasy powers or internally consistent technobabble to be enjoyable when its done well, but I've always seen that as a bonus in Trek, which is notoriously bad for consistency even within a single season.

That being said, tech manuals can be fun since they can capture your imagination the same way the show itself can. Actually I remember Chuck actually owns at least one of the Trek ones, in his old Threshold text review he even attached a page of it about warp limits into the review.

Ah here we go:

https://web.archive.org/web/20080116190 ... r/e832.asp

Thanks Wayback Machine, now I can embarrass Chuck with his older opinions whenever I want.