10 Events That Changed Star Trek Forever

A dark prophecy of a future in which smart speakers have finally had enough of setting timers for us, Control was an artificial intelligence based at the headquarters of Section 31 and used by Starfleet more widely for threat-assessment in the mid-23rd century.

After the war with the Klingons, certain hardliners at Starfleet Command wanted all decision-making to be transferred to Control. Powered by nefarious AI programming from the 28th century, Control was also becoming self-aware and only needed the sphere data from the Discovery to fully achieve this goal. In the future as witnessed by Gabrielle Burnham, Control had absorbed the sphere data and gone on to wipe out all life in the Galaxy by the 32nd century.

With no other way to ensure that the sphere data would not fall into the hands of Control, it was decided that the Discovery would have to remove itself from the equation and travel to the future (not before an epic battle with the assistance of the Klingons and the Kelpiens). All remaining traces of Control in the 23rd century were then eradicated, and Starfleet was sold the lie that the Discovery had been destroyed.

Furthermore, anyone with knowledge of the ship, its crew, or its spore drive was forbidden to ever discuss it under penalty of treason: a handy workaround for the writers, but one heck of a kick-in-the-teeth for Voyager.

Not only did these events have a major impact on the 23rd century – notably for the period's FTL technology and Spock's loss, and never mentioning, of a sister – it also changed the 32nd century forever as the Discovery's spore drive became vital to the Federation in that time.