USSBurritoTruck

What specific lore has been disregarded?

Lorca's not the only one who uses it in Disco, though. It actually happens relatively frequently in the first two season. Obviously for seasons three and four things have changed and it's no longer an issue.

Hell, in SNW while Kirk is on the Enterprise in "Subspace Rhapsody" he prepares some samples collected outside the ship to be beamed to engineering and thinks nothing of that instance of intra-ship beaming. I guess he forgot that whole event where people broke out into song by the time he was mid-way through his own five year mission.

But it's not a trail of spores going through space, and nothing in the show would lead someone who'd been paying the slightest amount of attention to think that's the case.

The mycelial network is a layer of subspace, which the spore drive allows them to access because the specific fungus they cultivate exists partially in subspace. Stamets makes that clear in "Choose Your Pain".

Subspace is entirely made up facilitate the stories that Trek tells. It was first mentioned in "Mudd's Women", the fourth episode of TOS to be produced. It has since served as a means of instantaneous communication across lightyears, as well as long range imaging vis subspace telescope, such as in "The Nth Degree". The sensors aboard the ships also operate via subspace, allowing them to detect things lightyears away, and detect things ahead of them while travelling faster than light.

And we learned in the TNG episode "Schisms" that subspace can support life, and even has beings living there. Or at least some aspects of subspace do.

The spore drive in based on the real science of mycology, and extrapolated through a Trek lens. Nothing about it requires any sort of special property that has not already been established as existing within older episodes of Trek.

The only one insulting your intelligence is yourself by believing you're not creative enough to figure out how the spore drive fits into the larger world of Trek.

The big one -- relatively speaking, of course -- in my mind is the site to site transporting.

In “Day of the Dove”, Kirk asks Spock, ”Intra-ship beaming, is it possible?” and Spock rattled off a litany of reasons why it was considered too dangerous in all but the most necessary circumstances.

However, we see in Disco, starting with “Context is for Kings”, that they can just order the computer to transport them from one room of the ship to another without hesitation.

It’s a minor quibble all things considered. And clearly something most of the Disco detractors aren’t even aware of.

You’re not wrong, but I do feel like that’s an over correction. They might as well have had text flashing at the bottom of the screen which read, “Sorry for the holograms, we didn’t realize how angry some of you would get.”

Not for the most part.

I would probably be more annoyed by the Klingon cloaking devices in season one if not for the fact that ship had already sailed when ENT established that the Romulans already had that technology a hundred years before “Balance of Terror”, and oh, so did the Suliban and the XyrIllians whom the crew of the Nx-01 also encountered.

Not to mention there’s a throw away line in one episode of season one about how the sensors are picking up massive power readings but can’t actually pinpoint the ships, and in “Balance of Terror” Spock notes that the Romulans must have figured out a way to bend light around their ship without the tremendous power draw. I have to assume someone on the writing team was trying to square that circle.

But yeah, the idea of a technology existing but not being widely used doesn’t bump me at all. This is like getting mad that when you go into watch the latest Marvel movie and they’re not using Smell-O-Vision. The technology exists! Hell, I can’t remember the last movie I saw in theatre that was 3d. Obviously they still exist, but it’s not a technology that’s really taken off once the gimmick lost its lustre. Or think about how many people, especially young people, prefer to text over talking on the phone.

So yeah, I don’t think anything is cheapened by the idea that a technology exists by is not widely used, and I do think it’s silly that anyone would make that argument.

Star Trek has never been hard science fiction, though.

How is the spore drive any more fantastical than half of what happens in Trek?

I wouldn't say they're exactly logical....

Depends on the episode.

When Quark is abducted from Deep Space 9 in "House of Quark" he's taken clear across the entire Federation and into the Klingon Empire in about a day. And then D'Ghor sends someone to the station to grab Rom and get him back to Qo'noS the next day.

Trek moves at the speed of plot.

Not to mention the specific spores required for the drive to connect with the mycelial network come from one specific type of fungus that exists at least partially within subspace and doesn't seem to be all that common.

Mushrooms have significantly less mysticism associated with them

Ah yes, psychedelics are famously not associated with mysticism.

The closest comparison to the mycelial network is Yggdrasil, which is solidly in the high fantasy category rather than sci-fi.

The closest comparison is actual fungal networks that exist beneath forests supporting life through the transference of nutrients and biochemical communication, are some of the largest organisms on the planet, and are actual nonfiction science.

All that is to say, I think the mycelial network needed more time to set up than the show gave it.

I think I can agree with you to some extent there. Stamets, by virtue of being standoffish and prickly when the character is introduced, is not the best at explaining things, and the concept could have used a better explanation early on to mitigate the response I'm complaining about with this post.

This is just petty.