So as said in a previous post my players have not seen much Star Trek. Due to their enjoyment of the few games we have ran (Good job on the system and start adventures!!) they have decided to start watching it.
Being the kind of people they are they decided to watch Star Trek Discovery. Now I have not watched much of it, kinda a old school person, and so when my players come up to me excited asking if they can have a Spore Drive I dont really have an answer…
Now digging around the internet I found ALOT of different information but so far my one question has not been answered: How did the use of the Spore Drive never make it into the future? I know the actual reason is TV Writing but canon wise, what happened to it? Kirk never had this, TNG has episodes devoted to moving past Warp 5, Does anyone have a answer I can give to players that is more then “It just is that way”. Any thoughts help!
From the few episodes that I watched, I believe the reasoning behind it (aside from the obvious Sci-fi becoming Sci-fantasy) is that the spore drive was a prototype involving the exploitation of a living being.
That generally goes against the core Starfleet philosophy. At the time, they were at war, and may have decided to ‘look the other way’ as it were to see how viable the technology may be, but in my opinion in the end it may have been deemed against the laws of the Federation for exploiting biological beings in one form or another.
(I have not even seen all of the first season so I may be a little off in my estimation and evaluation, but this would be my reasoning for my own group.)
Well I humbly suggest that if any of them have netflix, they can watch the entire TOS, TNG, DS9, and Voyager, maybe Enterprise too? Any good Trek foundation should involve watching TOS first and continuing on from there IMO.
If they are set in the TOS era, then yes… Watch TOS and Ent on Netflix to get an idea for the history and timeframe they are in.
If you’re playing in the TNG era, they can start with TNG for a better feel, and then branch out to others. (In my opinion, they don’t need to watch TOS at all… They can substitute the movies for the TOS series. Except Star Trek V. They don’t need to watch that one.)
Although the Trek movies are actually very different from TOS - just the same characters, but in very different situations… You’re still recommending over a hundred hours of viewing a piece!
I’d recommend picking a series based on your planned campaign - TOS for a campy old-school “punch or kiss the aliens” feel, TNG for classic exploration and diplomacy, DS9 for wartime and VOY for frontier and survival stories. ENT gives a good feel for the early years but mixes up part of each of them. DIS is very different (but not wrong!), with much tighter plotting and an ongoing story.
Once you’ve picked a series, go to Continuing Missions and have a read of the recommended episodes guide). In fact I’d recommend all of the Trek 101 series for newcomers.
On the spore drive front, we certainly haven’t seen the final word yet, but it does appear to be a combination of: requires a sentient being to enable navigation (either an enslaved giant tardigrade or an illegally-modified human), and damages the environment within the network.
They’re certainly trying to write it out - as it’s never even mentioned in other series. Of course, a number of other superdrive technologies have been seen, but never adopted (presumably due to cost, reliability or other factors): the Excelsior’s transwarp system, the Xindi transwarp conduits, soliton wave propulsion…
The time Nomad modified the Enterprise warp drive to be too good for the structure of the ship. The time those Kelvan aliens from Andromeda galaxy modified the Enterprise warp drive to go much faster. Any other time, etc.
I still think TOS is the best series to get most of the themes of Trek, it has diplomacy, action, moral questions, emotional struggle. Anything you can find in TNG you can find in TOS IMO. It may not get played out as much as in TNG, but its all mostly there. DS9 is a different beast and is a good example of how you might do a campaign or series of campaigns in a single location.
Edit: if anything I think TNG is a little more cheesy or absurd than TOS because there’s children and families on the ship. Being that they face any number of dangers at any given time, or could be called in to fight against an invading force like romulans or borg, its a little less realistic to expose children and families to those dangers.
I agree with all of the takes here on why/how the spore drive is being written out.
That said, an alternative approach is to let your players have some sort of experimental super-drive and run into the same sort of environmental/humanistic ethical challenges as the TV show presented both in Discovery and TNG (Force of Nature), and they will have to deal with that in the spirit of star trek.
dazzleox hit the nail on the head. don’t get it twisted because of Discovery’s serial story telling. DS9 also had long story arcs. If Discovery says there was some super drive and they feature it in multiple episodes, it doesn’t mean it undermines canon. They’ve been steady upping the ante for why the spore drive is dangerous, unethical, and the recent episode last night really went over the top. Trust the process; the spore drive won’t be around by the end of the series.
Any thoughts help!