10 Dumbest Things In Star Trek: Discovery
Detached nacelles floating away? The spore drive needs a watering? Must be Dumb bits of Discovery!
Reviving the franchise in a televisual format was never going to be an easy task.
Away from the small screen since 2005, Star Trek: Discovery dropped a Vulcan Hello in 2017, igniting the fandom in more diverse ways than an academy course on IDIC. While those debates may rage on longer than a rainstorm on Ferenginar, the show is a part of the franchise, and for all the good, there are still a few points where we just need to take that step and a breath.
There may not be a Flotter or challenging parking issues here, but for every ton of programmable matter, there's certainly something that just makes viewers question what exactly was going on in the FX department or the writers' room.
Across five seasons, the show tackled time jumps, Mirror Universe shifts and the scenery chewing of Michelle Yeoh with bravado and a thought process of making a difference in the Star Trek universe. New, bold and certainly conversation-starting, Burnham and co firmly planted their legacy across the 23rd and 32nd Centuries, yet occasionally there was a stumble or a raktanjino where there should have been an Earl Grey.
So let's take a look at the times Discovery just went plain dumb. Grab a fire extinguisher because this one might Burn.
10. Spore Drive
If there was one thing that stumped fans from day one of Discovery, it was this revelation.
Applying real-world science and then taking it that Star Trek step forward has always been a hallmark of the franchise, yet here it was as though the puzzle piece didn't fit and someone hammered it into place anyway.
Warp drive has been a staple of Trek since 1966, and The Cage before that, allowing the stories to traverse star systems and quadrants in the blink of an eye (or a few blinks at least). Yet Discovery decided to challenge the concept with a device that effectively made that type of propulsion extinct within the very time period in which it was written and functional.
While turning the Discovery and the USS Glenn into spatial roulette wheels, the spore drive made cross-galactic travel instantaneous. It removed the necessity for starships to exist as they do throughout Star Trek's history and had to be sealed as top secret within the first two seasons of the franchise revival. Nothing could be said; all parties involved with the ship's disappearance were silenced, and conveniently, it would never be heard of again until 1000 years later. The element of travel was instantaneously removed, and with it some of the most humanising moments of Star Trek, which often took place while the ship was on its way between points A and B.
Picard's conversation pre-Borg encounter with Guinan would have been drastically short-lived. Kirk would have had no risky business, and well, Voyager would have been about 20 minutes long. The journey is a part of the Star Trek adventure, but in Discovery, it became more of an inconvenience to remove, which one might suspect was hoped would increase the pacing of the episodes. Sadly, it just created more plot holes.