I guess this had to happen. The writing has been on the wall from the start that this was not going to continue otherwise we would have seen it further along the timeline.
I like the reason given, that Stamets informs us that the use has been stopped until a non human interface can be developed, and the inference is that that will never happen.
I think this is a good idea as the continued use and investigation would allow for massive problems for temporal issues.
Jumping around in time can really mess with your canon as can going anywhere instantaneously, sometimes you need the time imperative to drive a story line and the spore drive would kill it. Oh this planet has some epidemic and Disco needs to get a vaccine there as soon as possible. Well ok engage the spore drive and put us there a week before the epidemic started.
It was an interesting concept but I think it would have killed the show if it had continued.
What do you all think?
@chrissam42 - Agreed. Even though it's been years since I bought my condo and I *still* get a Mortgage Payment Received Alert emailed every month!
Sometimes I can convince myself that there could be an unobservable, beyond miscroscopic continuum of portobello mushrooms which underlays every square inch of every universe in our proposed Multiverse. After all, this is the same franchise which gives us concepts such as Trelane, a French captain with a British accent, and a Universal Vulcan Telepathy Network (brought to us by Verizon). Star Trek loves crazy concepts. Who knows what the advanced science of our distant future will reveal? But yeah. I hope we can put the spore drive on the shelf for a while and talk about other stuff.
I really, really hope that the spore drive is truly dead, because everything about it has always bothered me. As everyone else has said, it was far too easy as a Deus Ex Mycelia that had no real rules. And I can stomach a lot of technobabble, but every time they started talking about the spore network my brain just tried to crawl out through my ears.
I've found myself thinking toward the end of the season, did they really need the whole Black Alert schtick once the spore drive became routine? Its main purpose was to up the creepiness at the beginning of the series, when random water droplets would materialize out of nowhere and there was a real risk of everybody being killed. But once they figured out how to jump reliably, it doesn't seem like the jumping caused any ill effects that would require an alert. You don't get Blue Alerts every time they go to warp!
@Valerie - somewhere in Psychiatry Heaven, Dr. Sigmund Freud is loving your Stamets typo above
Thank you, @kev may and @BionicDave for articulating so thoughtfully what the problems with the Spore Drive are, were it to have to continued. Personally, I wish they’d spent some more time on the story of it’s recall (something more than just a “oh we’re not going to use it anymore”). It would have been a really great way for them to pick back up the discussion that they tease in the beginning of the series about eugenics.
But I’ll have more to say about this and about the future of Culber, Stamens, and the Mycelial Network on our season wrap-up episode…
P.S. - @BionicDave, your spin-off suggestion might be up for an award on the next cast!
Well, there's what I think... and then there's what was said by Anthony Rapp on "After Trek" last night LOL
My own thoughts are that continued use of the spore drive is too dangerous for the storytelling of this series. It makes space travel too simple for my tastes, it makes the ship too powerful for outside conflicts to be as threatening as they may need to be, and it is too grand a concept to be used for so long without it having been mentioned A LOT by all of the rest of Star Trek continuity from TOS onward (and while I get that some people don't care about continuity, I believe ST's long and awesome continuity is one of its most unique and valuable qualities compared to other saga franchises). Therefore, while I've enjoyed the spore drive and Mycelial Network this season, I'd be happy to see them go. I'd have Starfleet - wary of the spore drive's ability to destroy the Multiverse (!) - decide to mothball/ black box the technology, and then force the entire crew of the Discovery, and Harry Mudd, and Mirror Georgiou, and everyone watching this show to sign an NDA to never discuss it amongst Muggles again.*
However.
On last night's "After Trek," Anthony Rapp implied that they might keep the Mycelial Network around to add to Stamets' story with Culber. The showrunners, though, later seemed to imply that Culber's loss is permanent :.( BUT they did say that something special "landed on Tilly" - as in, that little green spore :)
(*Also, make sure to have Mirror Georgiou sign another NDA to never discuss the Mirror Universe during her new adventures in ours!) (We clearly need a new spinoff series "Starfleet IP Attorney" to clean up after all this mishegoss..)