Star Trek

It's also an interesting idea, even if the lore isn't a 100% good fit.

Like, one thing about the franchise is that it never portrays the Federation as being faced with an existential crisis it can't just fight. So season 3 of Discovery is like "here's the equivalent of a horrific natural disaster, but the Federation is still trucking along and trying to do good, and the disaster didn't make it fall into fascism or anything like that".

It's also brought up a few times that there were dozens of alternative projects into other FTL methods but they all got shut down after because...what if one of them caused the Burn?

Even if the lore is a smidge wonky, I don't think it's that big a deal.

TBH i get what you mean, but also the same plotline has "All the ships exploded coz someone was really sad when near big chunk of dilithium" so I guess it's sort of like... feels like minutia.

They were interested in the "declining empire" idea but the problem was they didn't care much about handling the metaphysics of the situation. It's not just being inconsistent with the lore^note there are at least five different FTL engines in prior works that are not dilithium warp core based but consistent with their own premises ^note dilithium rationing meant even short trips can take weeks, giving the Discovery spore drive a massive edge, but for a cheap Gondor Calls for Aid moment suddenly everyone can show up when they need to.

I'm liking the season so far despite be just a Treasure Hunt plot. I always thought "The Chase" as episode needed to be revisited, given its gigantic implications in-universe is amazing no other show ever alluded even until now.

And regarding that "The Chase" causes the Star Trek universe to be intelligent design-ny, I think is more of a sci-fi version of panspermia, besides it only applies to humanoids other species like Tholians, Horta, Medusans or Species 8472 still evolved on their own.

I wish if they bring back the Breen and were not just mention that they go for the EU idea that the Breen are a conglomerate of species (thus the Confederacy part) as is pretty original and is kind of weird that in such a populate galaxy only one group of planets ever thought in doing The Federation (well two if you count the never seen again "First Feredation").

I also wonder if the Klingon would re-appear, I think it was confirm in ENT that Klingons were Federation members by the 2500 isn't? Even if they weren't they still were allied for long time something Michael doesn't seem to know.

Did they forget?

I mean, space travel exists Post-Burn, so what's the issue? The issue was the massive disruption to the economy and trauma of so many billions of death. Basically, all dilithium based machinery blew up and created isolationism and a shattering of the galactic economy.

People could have rebuilt space travel fine without dilithium but they were terrified of another Burn happening as they didn't know it would happen.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 8th 2024 at 3:25:18 AM

I want to point out that the Burn didn't destroy anything with a dilithium engine, just anything with a dlithium engine that was at warp at that moment.

True but that's still going to be a lot of exploding anti-matter.

Also, anti-matter generators are dilithium based as well I think.

They could have just declared that there was some kind of massive subspace disturbance that caused warp travel to stop for *everyone* regardless of the power source they used. But they didn't understand the franchise well enough to grasp how ridiculous the explanation they used instead actually was.

But regardless of the technobabble, there are countless worlds whose populations would be only minimally affected by losing travel and communications with other star systems. Their power generation and replicators would keep humming along very comfortably. You'd need something more profound to cause a genuine collapse of civilization. But the writers don't understand that, either.

Were they trying to get a collapse of civilization, or were they trying to get a collapse of connections between those civilizations? I'm not familiar enough with how this is portrayed to know, but those are two different things.

There was a way to go about it, just say there was an Omega bomb. Destroyed 'Subspace' throughout Federation space which forced alternate, slower, methods of travel and no quick communication methods. The planets would be essentially cut off but also 'safe' from invaders as those outside the blast area still have their travel abilities just outside Federation space.

What Discovery could meet is Starfleet that was cut off from the blast area. The plot would have been Discovery actually making contact with the myriad worlds, finding them terrorized by Orions with a different method of travel... (Iconian space gateway maybe). Season goal could actually be finding a way to repair said blast area with Vulcans and Romulans' help, the final episode would be essentially reopening the freeways with Starfleet coming to the rescue of the Discovery en masse to kick Orion ass.

Except that science and technology would continue to develop over hundreds of years, even if subspace travel and communications were made inoperable. Consider that Original Star Trek was only about two hundred years in advance of the time it was made, and TNG about a hundred years after that.

To really have a "Fallen Empire" you'd need something that causes foundational technologies to cease working. It might serve as as a nifty way of explaining why all of the starfaring civilizations encountered in ST are about the same level at the same time — everyone more advanced than a certain level was set back or wiped out the last time this occurred.

Environmental hazards have been suggested as a much more understandable alternative to a dilithium implosion. The franchise already had the Omega Particle, nebulas and numerous other phenomenon that places limits on where ships can travel safely. You can even make the hazard evolving and slowly encroaching on certain territories, which would contribute to the general sense of hopeless dread.

The season in general wanted to see familiar cultures altered and fragmented, which created an interesting contrast between the higher tech level of the setting and the dwindling resources that previously allowed the Federation to flourish. But I think the main flaw is the show's dependence on Discovery being at the center of a "fate of the Federation"/"fate of the galaxy" event every season and the stakes are just way out of control. Discovery doesn't just figure out what happened, they isolated the problem so it wouldn't happen again and found a new stockpile to revitalize the Federation. Basically in like six months they solved something that no one else could for 150 years, which was not especially convincing.

All of the suggestions are acting like there's not a Federation, interstellar travel, and the majority of the Alpha Quadrant being menaced by an Empire of Space Pirates.

People can travel just fine between worlds.

Book has a quantum slipstream drive on his starship.

This is a "Rome has collapsed due to mass death" situation, not a "oceans have drowned Europe" one.

And yes, the cause of the Burn is stupid but the Burn itself is fine.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 8th 2024 at 6:58:31 AM

No, the Burn is nonsense, and it shows just how far Star Trek has fallen.

Say what you like about the man, and there's plenty of room for criticism, but Roddenberry was always very clear about not insulting the audience's intelligence. That dictum is long-gone.

Right.

I disagree and can't see why it's remotely unbelievable. Indeed, I am very glad they had a disaster like the kind that Trek has introduced hundreds of time NOT get stopped and have some lasting consequences.

I heard they were planning on using the Omega Particle at first but then switch to the Burn as we know it because it was too radical. Someone nows something?

Edited by TVGuy on Apr 8th 2024 at 7:16:31 AM

I think the reason they didn't use the Omega Particle is it would prevent the setting from ever recovering.

This was meant to be about overreliance on fossil fuels after all.

They could have just said that it turns out the Omega Particle disruption slowly dies down over hundreds of years.

But then, TNG already established that warp travel slowly denatures subspace... and then it was ignored after that episode, with it being declared that a solution had been found, because they weren't willing to make substantial changes in the setting.

At least they didn't make a *stupid* change, though.

Techno Babble can be a magical thing if you know how to use it. They could have introduced an Alpha Particle that restores subspace regions destroyed by Omega... and I'm only halfway joking. Strange New Worlds was able to squeeze out a Musical Episode with a flimsy justification, it's best used as an easy analogy and to get the plot rolling but the resolution needs to be consistent with what was being set up.

Season three was heavily leaning on themes regarding overreliance on limited resources, it's said repeatedly that travel times multiplied afterward and season four starts with them sharing the new dilithium reserves to help everyone get back on their feet. The blow to morale in the event is certainly a factor, Vulcan/Ni'Var withheld information on some dilithium research they were doing fearing a link between the two would be made. And the fact no one could figure out the cause would create some hesitation with traveling, hence why the Couriers were seen as daredevil adventurers.

Edited by EmeraldSource on Apr 8th 2024 at 8:14:56 AM

Anything would be better than the mind of a lonely Kespien child screaming caused it.

The second ever broadcast episode of Star Trek was Charlie X. Sorry, don't know why that came to mind.

Eh, only seems relevant if someone is arguing that 'a superpowerful space alien did it' is either impossible in Star Trek, or not something that has happened before. Like, it would be perfectly in character and in keeping with canon for the Dominion Wars to ended because someone a Douwd loved got killed in a Dominion raid and he screamed them out of existence.

But boy would that be a let down.

The only argument seemed to 'this plot point is inherently ridiculous' which has never stopped Trek before. Neither is it used as an anticlimactic resolution to the plot thread.

Maybe I was misreading, but the above comments read to me as making three arguments:

1) That the Burn happening because "someone was really sad when near big chunk of dilithium" was, in fact, an anticlimactic answer to the question of 'what changed the galaxy so massively.'

2) The reaction of the galaxy to the Burn is unbelievable. I don't have enough detail to have an opinion on that.

3) The fact that the Discovery fixed it in a few months, after more than a century, is unfortunate. This strikes me as a standard storytelling trope, even if it's one I don't care for.

Edited by ECD on Apr 9th 2024 at 7:46:48 AM

The evident answer to 1 is the realization that no matter how complacent everyone gets, how much they think they have everything under control for the foreseeable future, the galaxy is ultimately a house of cards always just one breeze too strong away from collapsing. People laugh at the cause of the Burn when the likes of V'ger and the whale probe back in the day were even more arbitrary and ridiculous!

What defines the heroes is whether they're willing to give up in light of that, or build it all back up again and continue to struggle ever onward for a better tomorrow, no matter how many stumbles it takes. Hence the answer to 3: Discovery solved the issue not because they're the main characters, but because they refused to give up even after the Federation did, like every other Star Trek protagonist crew ever.