Spoilers for Star Trek Discovery series 3, which has been out for a while but, you know.
Hello! Ric here looking at the Burn event it Star Trek Discovery, the behind the scenes
but in-universe science that went into justifying it and seeing if it holds up. Spoilers, it
kinda does, despite how weird it is for it to be generated by one screaming Kelpien.
The Burn was the event that swept across the Milky Wat galaxy in 3069, one that rendered
dilithium inert and caused the detonation of active warp cores that were utilising the
mineral. It only affected refined dilithium, and once the Burn passed, more ore was able
to be processed and used to continue warp drive travel. However, not Starfleet nor any
other galactic power could identify the cause of the event and therefore was unable to say
for certainty that it would not happen again. This resulted in 120 years of caution concerning
the use of Dilithium and a major shifting of the quadrant’s landscape.
Starfleet itself was heavily diminished and without its arm, the Federation’s influence
began to wane as it quite simply did not have enough ships nor manpower to cover its expansive
territory. We don’t know how big it was at its height, but considering its rate of
expansion, I recon it probably had members in every quadrant by the 31st century. After
the burn, planets began to withdraw officially, or simply assumed that the UFP had forgotten
them under the strain of trying to hold everything together. It didn’t collapse entirely though
and continued trying to provide what aid it could, although there were more plates than
it could spin. This meant that there was ample opportunity
for other powers to rise in the meantime, especially those who threw caution to the
wind and continued to mine and refine dilithium, such as the Emerald Chain, which seems to
be a second coming of the Orion Syndicate of old, allied with the Andorians.
But enough about the shift in the players of Star Trek’s power structure. Let’s
look at the Burn itself. Approaching the event, Dilithium had been running out as this mineral
was the go to warp reaction regulator for like 99% of Warp Drives and yes, even singularity
core vessels use it as part of their setup. So amid numerous alternatives that forgo Dilithium
crystals, there were many survey missions to located new sources. In 3064, the Kelpien
and Ba’Ul Alliance research vessel, a member of the UFP, locates a planet with incredible
amounts of Dilithium within the Verubin Nebula. However, that vessel crashed and due to the
interference, their distress signal was distorted and never detected. This planet was designated
Theta Zeta, and host to all sorts of nasty radiations from the nebula and the abundance
of dilithium. Dilithium itself is a physical pinkish-purple
to red crystal, obviously, but the reason it is used in warp is because part of its
structure actually phases into subspace, acting as a sort of bridge into the subspace layers
that Trek’s Warp Drive needs to function. I should point out, dilithium does not generate
a subspace field or warp bubble, but this property plays a part in simply regulating
the power flow and process. These crystals all resonate at a certain frequency and can
even react with one another, even being destroyed by a cascading piezoelectric effect as seen
in TNG’s “Pen Pals”. So Dilithium in large quantities seems to be easily sympathetic,
for lack of a better word, with nearby dilithium. After 5 years, a Kelpien child, Su’Kal witness
the final member of the crew die, his mother and cried out. This is where things get trippy.
Su’Kal, had become immune to the planet’s radiations through chance mutation, but additionally,
because of the high levels of dilithium present, a trait emerged that linked his physiology
to subspace too, in a very minor way. The unlikelihood of this occurring seems to have
been aided along by the fact that Su’Kal was also a polyploid, effectively a creature
with multiple copies of DNA from its parents, which is used to explain the resilience to
his genetic alterations. Polyploidy is a real phenomenon and seen a occasionally in plants,
insects and some amphibious creatures, such as salamadners.
Su’Kal’s cry of grief, because of his mutated connection to subspace, at the same
level as the surrounding dilithium, caused his scream to pass into subspace and the dilithium
all around Theta Zeta reacted. Things in subspace, aren’t limited to light speed, so his call
propagated all throughout the planet, which itself would probably have added to the effect,
and then beyond. This subspace shockwave had the effect of temporarily separating the subspace
component of dilithium from its normal matter. Not an issue in the natural, unrefined dilithium
ore, as that simply reconnected after the wave passed it by, but the refined stuff,
in the cores of thousands of Starships as well as in their reserves was fractured by
this disassociation. Suddenly warp cores were channelling energy (from whatever source)
into a lump of rock that was doing nothing to regulate it, only for an instant, but that
was enough causing core breaches across the board in ships that didn’t react fast enough.
The already refined Dilithium was damaged by the wave, some of it never regained its
subspace connections, becoming inert, and some did, but at a far less effective level.
So this was the Burn. The jargon around how dilithium and subspace works, is consistent
with how it’s been portrayed in the past, with a clarification that dilithium actually
partially exists in subspace. Until the explanation of the Burn, I don’t think we heard that,
but it would go a long way to explaining just why Dilithium was selected as the preferred
component for warp drives. There are two other elements to address. The first is that Su’Kal
just so happened to mutate in the exact right way to resonate with the subspace levels of
dilithium, which may have been aided by his polyploidy, but that is a rarity within a
rarity. Super unlikely, but in my opinion that kinda helps the believability of the
Burn, because there are so many safety features and fall-backs for the use of dilithium. The
frank absurdity of the level of coincidences to line up to cause this beggars belief, so
how on Earth could anyone prepare for that? The other thing is that there is no mention
of how Su’Kal’s scream had enough energy to pass through subspace. They explained how
the wave emanated from him in subspace, and sure, it was not bound to the speed of light,
but for the wave to cross most, if not all, the galaxy? I can only assume that the planet
itself acted as an amplifier, the sheer quantity of dilithium causing a sort of sympathetic
resonance that aided in the Burn, but that is not clarified on screen, nor behind the
scenes, so that is a bit of speculation on my part, based on what we already knew of
Dilithium. Before we knew what the Burn was, many fans,
including myself, speculated it was an Omega Molecule detonation, but in hindsight, I can
see why they didn’t go with this as Omega destroying subspace is pretty much irreversible
unless you want to include the ability to make subspace again and that’s opening a
whole new can of worms. At least what we got is an avoidable thing that had no lasting
damage like Omega would. Thanks for watching this video on just how
the Burn happened according to the show. And hey, at least now Su’Kal has been removed
from the planet, Starfleet has access to a massive dilithium deposit, the answer to the
burn and the reassurance that nothing else will ever go wrong ever again.
…Oh. Well, I’ve been Ric and I’ll see you next
time for another lore, theory, analysis, science fiction, oh you know I chat about nothin’
video and until then, thanks again and goodbye!