Relaying atomic information across distances, while an impressive feat, is not the same as teleporting an entire human being, let alone an entire landing party… Think of it more as a fax of an atom, as opposed to the actual atomic (for those of us old enough to remember fax machines). Yes, atomic information of atoms has been ‘teleported’ in labs, but over relatively short distances and not the actual atoms themselves. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle says it is impossible to know the exact quantum momentum and position of an atom at the same time, thus making easy teleportation of quadrillions of atoms utterly insane. Transporters are extremely problematic to say the least.
It also makes you realize just how utterly beyond our grasp many of its core technologies really are… Years of exposure to Star Trek pseudoscience, comforting as it may be, can lead to a lot of odd ideas about how the universe works. Professor Lawrence Krauss’ brilliant book, “The Physics of Star Trek,” was a splash of cold water in my face when I first read it back in 1999. But many scientific concepts of Star Trek are equally ludicrous, yet they’ve somehow received a pass over the years. In the cold light of science where facts always matter (as they always should), the idea of mycelia spores leading to inter-dimensional travel is utterly ridiculous. Gary Mitchell (Gary Lockwood) gets a bit starry-eyed in “Where No Man Has Gone Before”…
Both Mitchell and Stamets also gained an eerie psychic ability as well (Mitchell’s was much more um… pronounced, of course). Commander Gary Mitchell’s silver eyes in the 2nd Star Trek pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before” (after exposure to the ‘galactic barrier’). Overuse of the drive led to Stamets’ pupils turning milky white reminiscent of Lt. Stamets himself began to suffer ill-effects from his own spore drive. Melange also had the side effect of enhancing psionic abilities and turning one’s eyes ‘spice blue.’ Longterm exposure to the spice actually deformed its users (the Guild Navigators) much as Lt. In fact, Discovery’s spore drive reminds me of a more benign version of the spice melange from Frank Herbert’s “Dune” an organic substance mined from giant worms on the desert world of Arrakis that can fold space between star systems. ^ Paul Atreides (Kyle McLachlan) and his ‘spice eyes’ from 1984’s version of ‘Dune”… Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp) poetically puts it.įor me, I find a certain elegance in a near-instantaneous spacetime jumping technique that is both organic and renewable. The drive seems to work in a fashion very similar to Battlestar Galactica’s ‘FTL (faster-than-light) drive’ seen in the 2003-2009 version of that series, yet it runs on mycelia (the vegetative parts of a fungus) that somehow tap into (and allows travel along) the ‘veins and muscles that hold our galaxies together’ as Lt. Since the 3rd episode of Discovery aired ( “Context is for Kings”), I’ve read quite a few posts online from fellow Star Trek fans who seem to audibly eye-roll at the mention of the USS Discovery’s ‘spore drive.’ I can sort of understand why the idea of fungi whose spores somehow connect the universe and allow a spacecraft to jump from one end of space to another is pretty damned ridiculous on the face of it.
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