So With the ending of Season two of Star Trek Discovery, the series made a valiant attempt
to repair some of the huge issues created by season one. While not a perfect fit and
the overall look of the show has to be excused as a visual reboot, it is important to acknowledge
that these are retcons created from the balance of writing a new tale and adhering to the
larger universe’s established continuity. Both of which are important to a Star Trek
tale and as such, personally I’d rather see the addition of retroactive continuity
that adds to the canon than ignoring it all. So, I’m Ric and today we’re looking at
the status of the Star Trek Universe post season two of Discovery, where this may lead
looking forwards and how things were folded into the plot to reduce the impact of a prequel.
Obviously this will be rife with spoilers for Discovery so if you wish for a blind experience,
I direct you to the escape pod that looks like a back button.
The USS Discovery and USS Enterprise had a climactic battle with Control and its drone
fleet before the USS Discovery jumped into the future, but these event were recounted
differently during the Starfleet debrief at the end of the show. Pike, Spock, Tyler and
the rest of the crew go about reciting a fabricated version of events to command in order to force
Starfleet and the Federation into adopting a number of new policies.
The debrief reveals that Section 31 as an organization is not gone but now leaderless
and Starfleet is seriously concerned with its operations. Ash Tyler is promoted to the
commander of Section 31 for his perspective on the moral line that Starfleet’s Black
Ops walk. They first go about suggesting that Section 31 needs greater oversight and transparency
from Starfleet moving forwards and it still possesses around 170 ships, based on Georgiou’s
estimates. As Section 31 is anything but under Starfleet
oversight by the time of the Dominion War, we can assume that things do not go well for
the organisation. Tyler accepts the role as head of 31 to prevent the possibility of a
Control like AI from occurring again and from what we’ve seen of his character, his motivations
likely remain noble. But nonetheless, Section 31 is fated to effectively
go rogue, or be buried so far within Federation records that no one can identify it or who’s
in charge. So either Tyler undergoes a darker personality turn at some point, his reforms
fail to take route or something else, but this downfall is likely to be the subject
of the Section 31 show, a statement backed up by Kurtzman’s words in a recent Hollywood
reporter interview. The only thing that remains unresolved is
that the Section 31 show is set to have Michelle Yeoh returning as Mirror Captain Georgiou
and last we saw of her, she was on board the Discovery, travelling with them into the future.
So either the show is set well beyond Tyler’s time or she jumped ship before the USS Discovery
vanished or finds a way back to the 23rd century. Captain Pike and everyone else asserts that
Discovery has been destroyed by the attack of Control and that it vanished in a Spore
Drive related explosion. So why lie? Well this could serve a couple of purposes. First
off, it paints the attack from Control to be even worse than originally thought as despite
the loss of 30 Section 31 ships, few lives were actually lost in the battle. Now, according
to the Enterprise’s testimonies, alongside the deaths on Section 31’s base they have
to add the 130 odd souls of a starship even more reason to not recreate a system of influence
based on an AI. The research that carried on creating in true AIs, seems to have been
curtailed but not halted with creations such as Daystrom’s M-5 proving that even light
AI’s needed to be carefully approached. By the time of TNG (some 100 plus years later),
full AI is still a rarity, with Dr. Soong being one of the foremost pioneers of this
field alongside Lewis Zimmerman and the federation treats the issues of artificial sentience
very seriously moving forwards. Secondly, lying about the Discovery’s destruction
covers up the use of time-travel and the fact that they were able to fabricate a second
Red Angel suit, a technology previously thought lost to a Klingon raid. Spock in particular
is strongly tied to time-travel, both in Discovery’s portrayal and later in his timeline so understands
the importance of the temporal prime directive. Much like the allure of the mirror universe,
the notion of Time Travel is ripe for abuse, unintended or not. By covering up the existence
and successful use of a time-travel suit, Starfleet continues on its approach towards
a passive observer’s take on history and give it 9 years; they’re taking entire Starships
back in time to conduct research as seen in operation Earth. Though this is accomplished
with a differing method than the suit. As for the technology involved in the Red
Angel suit? Well, it only kind of worked. Doctor Gabrielle Burnham stranded herself
in the future and still hasn’t figured out a way to return to her own time despite years
of trying. Considering she was trying to go backwards in time by half an hour, that is
a major issue. As for the Federation’s approach to time travel, they seem to have solved these
problems over the next 9 years. Again, see Operation Earth.
As for Time crystals, they’re supposedly not natural to our dimension and no known
race can manufacture them. The only “natural” deposit of them can be found on Boreth, the
Klingon monastery where Kahless is prophesised to return one day. Arguably the addition of
a cave of time altering artefacts could put a science fiction spin on the notion that
an ancient Klingon warrior demi-god could indeed return in some fashion someday. Anyway,
The importance of this location to the Klingons is deeply tied to their spirituality and pilgrims
who meditate in the temple of Boreth often undergo visions, so perhaps the crystal’s
influence isn’t all that farfetched, even if it is kept secret. After all, Section 31
proved that if people were aware of the Time Crystals, they most definitely would steal
them. As for the name, I don’t like it, but it is what the real life, but theoretical,
higher-dimensional structure is called. So there’s that.
Just a quick aside about secrets. I can’t really blame the crew of the USS Enterprise
for covering up things either as, although effectively lying about things and facing
disciplinary actions if found out, look at the enemy they just faced? A rogue Starfleet
AI created by the Federation’s lax attitude and misplaced faith in a hands-off approach.
I can see the logical conclusion that they could present a view of events to help prevent
a similar situation from evolving again. Let’s talk about the Spore Drive. Obviously
the device is a recent addition to canon therefore was never in previous series, but that won’t
do for an in universe explanation. So let’s look at Trek’s history of dealing with similar
tech and how it was left during debrief at the end of season 2.
Well, a side effect of the crew saying that the Discovery exploded in a spore-drive related
explosion, (Would that be called a mushroom cloud?) could have applied unintended pressure
to Starfleet to drop Spore research. Originally I was looking for a single event that would
make Starfleet weigh the gain of instantaneous travel against the cost and say that’s not
worth it, but that never really happened. The end result of abandoning the Spore jumps
may be a coalition of all its problems. First off, the USS Glenn and the Discovery were
the only two Crossfield Ships and they had to be designed ground up to accommodate the
Drive. It’s likely that the only way this was approved in its entirety was that the
Crossfield class could accommodate a ludicrous amount of other Research and Development Projects.
Genetic modification heavily restricted under federation law
Doctors Paul Stamets and Straal were the two leads in the field of the Mycelial Network
and each was assigned to a ship. It proved to be highly dangerous to navigate the network
without an organic pilot wired into the system and this led to the deaths of all aboard the
USS Glenn, minus one dead researcher. Then Pauls Stamets had to genetically modify himself
to function as a new pilot for the system, a blatant breach of Federation genetics policy
laid down in the face of the Eugenics Wars. On top of this, the Drive caused problems
with travel to the alternate dimensions, which made Stamets into a vegetable and then they
screwed up the return to their own universe by jumping forwards 9 months. After all these
issues, Starfleet puts the project on hold, but none of these issues really out way the
potential gain of immediate travel across the galaxy, it needed further work to be sure,
but nothing yet convinces me that the Federation would drop it entirely.
Then season two happens. We learn the JahSepp are a sentient race that inhabits the mycelial
plane and prolonged use of the drive may be detrimental to them, certainly using it as
a power source is. So another moral issues atop the pile there. Finally, the crew of
the Enterprise come back and tell Starfleet Command that the USS Discovery, including
Lt Commander Stamets have all died in a spore drive related explosion. Another seeming failure
of the Spore Drive and now the loss of the only remaining Atsromycologist and ship versed
in the specifics of the Spore Drive. Sure Starfleet still has the specs for the
device, but looking at all the cons on paper make it far less appealing. Starfleet has
experimented with faster than warp tech before, or will do again, I mean. The USS Excelsior
was the pioneer for the Transwarp drive but that research ultimately went nowhere, though
perhaps it did eventually as they revamped the warp scale for TNG, but it took a while.
The USS voyager brought home research on Quantum Slipstream tech and after a semi-successful
test flight they still scrapped it because it was too risky. My point is both transwarp
and Slipstream faced a single setback and the projects were derailed for years. The
Spore Drive faced numerous and all the researchers involved appear to be dead.
Finally, the classification of the USS Discovery from public records was done to cover up most
of its events. From now on when spoken off, it becomes “that shady research vessel that
was destroyed in 2258 with no official records?” Just a footnote in Starfleet’s history during
the much more chaotic time of the post Klingon War.
For this reason, Spock, Sarek and Amanda keep mention of Burnham’s existence to a personal
matter. Not out of character for Spock anyway, to want to avoid talking about his personal
life, but there’s now the added catch of someone who knows of Burnham, following a
series of threads and getting suspicious when then find no mention of a USS Discovery, or
a pardoned Starfleet mutineer. Maybe this is all over-rationalization from
my own head canon, but to be, this makes sense and ultimately I want it to make sense. There
are to be further Discovery stories in the IDW comic Aftermath which is set in the year
2258 and follows the crew of the USS Enterprise and Spock’s family so perhaps this will
shed some more light on the post Discovery timeline.
As for the Discovery series itself, Season 03 speculated to be at least beginning in
the 32nd century, where the USS Discovery ended up and maybe even staying there, the
furthest in the Star Trek timeline we have ever seen, but that’s a long way away.
So that’s how Star Trek Discovery went about tying up loose ends. A lot of what I’ve
stated is based on the summary of the show’s actions and the conclusion presented in season
02 and may be subject to change with later trek projects but for now, I’m glad there
was an effort made to make for a more coherent timeline of events.
Thanks for watching, I’ve been Ric and until next time, see you later and goodbye.