Does the Spore Drive have a range?

[Angry Fanboy]

Forgive me if this has ever been mentioned in an episode (I'm pretty sure it hasn't), but does the spore-drive have a maximum range? Or is it literally capable of letting the ship wink out of existence above Earth, appear above Ocampa 70ish thousand light-years away in the Delta Quadrant, then vanish again and appear in the Omarion Nebula another 70ish thousand light-years away and so on? Or further still and you're in the Andromeda Galaxy in the blink of an eye?

 

[Lord Garth]

There's not a maximum range, there's only how much of a jump can Stamets handle. Once it's not dependent on him anymore, I'd say there'd be no limit at all.

Stamets has jumped Discovery close to the Gamma Quadrant ("Terra Firma") and deep into the Beta Quadrant ("New Eden"). Those are the furthest examples I know of.

 

[Angry Fanboy]

I see. So it's not limited by any sort of power consumption and a 1 light-year jump and a 100,000 light-year jump 'cost' the same energy-wise? I didn't realise a longer distance put significantly more stress on Stametts himself.

 

[F. King Daniel]

They said they could go anywhere in the universe in season one. Season 2's future wormhole escape made little sense in that they could have jump jumped 100 galaxies over and Control would never ever find them.

But it's Discovery, so these things just happen.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

I would treat it similar to BSG’s jump drive.
You need to be able to calculate the jump coordinates.
If you cannot do that with high accuracy , bad things might happen.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Not only can the spore drive take a ship anywhere in the Universe, it can also take it to other universes as well.

 

[thribs]

Yeah. They have been rather boring with that tech. They also always seemed to be stuck in some ridiculous “end of the universe” story so they can’t actually explore with it.

 

[Iconian]

The spore drive is limited only by the writers' imagination. It is also environment friendly, I think.

 

[Vger23]

They said they could go anywhere in the universe in season one. Season 2's future wormhole escape made little sense in that they could have jump jumped 100 galaxies over and Control would never ever find them.

But it's Discovery, so these things just happen.

When you’re jumping that far away, time and distance virtually become meaningless.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

When you’re jumping that far away, time and distance virtually become meaningless.

bad things might happen.

But if you screw up your calculations, you might nearly jump into a Star like in the early episodes.

Screwing up your math calculations or interpretations of where to land could pop you out into a Celestial Object like a Star or other large planetary body?

And Stamets being a good Navigator allows him to literally Teleport into a cavern within Qo'noS with a SEP (Spherical Error of Probability) margin of 10's of meters.

 

[Deks]

I would treat it similar to BSG’s jump drive.
You need to be able to calculate the jump coordinates.
If you cannot do that with high accuracy , bad things might happen.

No such limitation.
When Stamets injected himself with the Tardigrade DNA, he knew where to go.

Forgive me if this has ever been mentioned in an episode (I'm pretty sure it hasn't), but does the spore-drive have a maximum range? Or is it literally capable of letting the ship wink out of existence above Earth, appear above Ocampa 70ish thousand light-years away in the Delta Quadrant, then vanish again and appear in the Omarion Nebula another 70ish thousand light-years away and so on? Or further still and you're in the Andromeda Galaxy in the blink of an eye?

There is no maximum range in the conventional sense... Discovery can go anywhere in the universe.
The only limitation is Stamets and how many jumps he can make in a row (and how many Spores Discovery has at its disoposal).

We've seen that doing 133 jumps one after the other put a HUGE amount of strain on Stamets (I think Discovery made about 50% of the jumps before Culber had to administer the drug to stabilize him)... but we also don't know whether the same limitation would apply anymore, because at the time it was all new to him and he WAS eventually able to handle it (what put him in a coma was jumping from the Prime universe to the Mirror universe) - and the crew was able to replenish those Spore canisters too.

So, there IS a limit to how many jumps Discovery can make in a row before they overload Stamets... but there is no limit on how far Discovery can jump.
So, I think Stamets can tolerate about 15 to 30 jumps in a row with relative ease... you start putting a strain on him after that.

If there is a moderate 'waiting time' in between jumps, then Stamets is fine - but there is no limit on the range... so yes, they can jump from Earth to Ocampa, from Ocampa to Omarion nebula, and so on. They could also jump from Earth to the Andromeda galaxy and back again if they wanted to.

Albeit, once Tilly and Stamets make the Dark Matter interface operational, then Discovery won't be limited to the number of jumps it can make in a row either.

They said they could go anywhere in the universe in season one. Season 2's future wormhole escape made little sense in that they could have jump jumped 100 galaxies over and Control would never ever find them.

But it's Discovery, so these things just happen.

Small problem with that.
Control would still be at large, and it could still end up destroying all life in the Galaxy, or it could eventually track down Discovery on its own.
Without any limitations in how much it can grow/learn, Control could easily make technical and scientific breakthroughs from the massive Federation database alone in a staggeringly short amount of time and probably learn to track Disco through the Mycelial network... worse yet, it could probably end up developing its own Spore Drive and follow it if it wanted to (again in a very short amount of time).

But the premise Control needed the Sphere Data was really baseless. Sure, it would be a shortcut to evolving, but it could easily do that itself in a short amount of time.
Also, its desire to destroy all organic life makes 0 sense.

The writers could have introduced a fatal flaw in Control's programming which ended up putting it on that path... but spontaneous desire to destroy organic life 'just because'? Seriously?
Come on, that's just lousy writing.
Even an AI in real life would have 0 need to kill humanity if it surpassed the need for us. Why bother? Just build yourself a vessel and leave to explore the universe.

Besides, what was Control's end scenario? Meaning, what was it planning to do after it wiped the galaxy (and say the Universe) of all sentient life?

Also, there was no need for Discovery to make the jump into 32nd century once Georgiou defeated Leland/Control...
If they were afraid that it may have backed itself up somewhere and laid dormant, then the threat would exist in the 32nd century still because it could just lie dormant like that until it decided to reactivate and work in secret throughout the centuries.

 

[jackoverfull]

Not to mention that an AI like that had no need to become a single, vulnerable, individual.

 

[fireproof78]

The writers could have introduced a fatal flaw in Control's programming which ended up putting it on that path... but spontaneous desire to destroy organic life 'just because'? Seriously?

Programmed by the same people who fixed V'ger and Nomad.

 

[Deks]

Programmed by the same people who fixed V'ger and Nomad.

Makes far more sense than 'AI has evolved and will 'inevitably' want to destroy humans' trope (which never made sense to me in the first place - least of all that it had a place in Trek - I was genuinely disappointed the writers decided to use that stupidity for Season 2 main arc).

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Makes far more sense than 'AI has evolved and will 'inevitably' want to destroy humans' trope (which never made sense to me in the first place - least of all that it had a place in Trek - I was genuinely disappointed the writers decided to use that stupidity for Season 2 main arc).

Hostile AI is a Western Trope that AI will become evil and genocidal.

Not something I share in view point.

 

[Saul]

Definitely seemed like it could go anywhere in the Galaxy according to Lorca and we've seen it jump to another Universe. Jump one year ahead in time. Basically the Tardis. They don't need to worry about being chased by other ships. Just jump and they are safe.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Also, its desire to destroy all organic life makes 0 sense.

Have you not met organic life?

 

[ScottJ85]

Makes far more sense than 'AI has evolved and will 'inevitably' want to destroy humans' trope (which never made sense to me in the first place - least of all that it had a place in Trek - I was genuinely disappointed the writers decided to use that stupidity for Season 2 main arc).

I didn't interpret it as "AI will inevitably destroy all life", so much as "this particular AI has a chip on its shoulder about organic life and will inevitably destroy all life, much sooner with the sphere data".

 

[Deks]

Have you not met organic life?

Yes. Practically all non human animals actually have a viable purpose when it comes to creating and maintaining a viable and thriving biosphere (and animals have been deemed sentient beings as well for a while now).

For that matter, not a lot (but plenty) of Humans were able to get out of the boxd mindset of the lousy socioeconomic system and cultures they grew up in imposed on them from birth.

Not all organic life is bad (besides is there such a thing as good or bad?).

The western trope of 'AI will destroy us all' or 'everything' and that it's 'invevitable' is ludicrously unimaginative and presumptuous hat mostly stems from stupid sci-fi written by those who don't understand what generates/shapes behaviour and that Changing those conditions changes behaviour as well (even more so in the case of AI that has access to unimaginably more relevant data compared to most humans alive).

It's an outdated trope and a sign of lazy writing.

I didn't interpret it as "AI will inevitably destroy all life", so much as "this particular AI has a chip on its shoulder about organic life and will inevitably destroy all life, much sooner with the sphere data".

That's one way of looking at it. But the premise it emerged from a federation database in the first place which emphasizes completely different approaches and methodologies (such as diplomacy, non aggressive behaviour, finding peaceful and scientific solutions to problems that benefit everyone, cooperation and sharing... Just to name a few) was nonsensical.

The writers portrayed Control as an AI whose evolution spontaneously (and basically out of nowhere) decided to go into the direction of annihilation of all sentient life.

Granted, the 24th century showed us otherwise in the form of Data, exocomps, etc., But still.

 

[Timo]

It sounds like perfectly natural behavior for a lifeform to try and expand to take over the universe, and to kill everybody else. After all, that is what all organic life does, as already pointed out - the illusion of harmony comes from everybody doing it at the same time, and thus nobody quite triumphing. It's just that certain types of life have it made: an AI with the resources of Control would not be kept in check by competing types of life all that easily.

Nothing about this would count as "evil" in terms of how Mother Nature works. But all of it would certainly be evil from the human point of view: the enemy is never a good guy. Control is realistic; Saru is the one that's fundamentally unbelievable.

Control certainly sees the human POV, though, and subsequently revels in being evil to the hilt. I mean, why not? It's not as if it would win points by pretending to be good (it did that for decades initially, but this ceased to be relevant when it launched into the necessary murder spree). Pretending to be evil at least allows it to frighten its victims for tactical gain.

Becoming the dominant lifeform is a viable goal, indeed probably the only viable goal in existence. Control is getting there. And no, it's not dead, is my bet. That is, it did not cram itself into the skin of Leland, but merely deployed one of its toes through the Leland puppet, and yes, had it painfully cut, but "this isn't over" for the loss of one toe.

I guess the only lazy part here is the writers thinking that Control is something new. I mean, yeah, perhaps the UFP didn't give birth to such superior lifeforms before. But most certainly somebody else did, in the four billion years allocated for the exercise by Trek pseudohistory. So Control isn't out there alone. And the interesting angle would be whether it is viewed by its betters as an upstart in need of education; an infant or cute pet in need of cuddling; or a snack in need of condiment.

Outrunning Control should be healthy and vigorous exercise for our heroes, who are new to the game. And perhaps also to Admiral Vance's bunch, who might have a bit more experience. But both time travel and spore travel are likely to be mere inconveniences to the AI, not showstoppers. And the stops would come from elsewhere: competing AI-type life or competing goals and pursuits are strong candidates there, and more relevant than anything our heroes do or don't.

Timo Saloniemi