Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Discovery Season 4, Episode 7 - "...But To Connect"
A technological breakthrough in Star Trek: Discovery season 4 may make warp travel obsolete in Star Trek's 32nd century. Star Trek: Discovery season 4 sees Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and the USS Discovery facing a galactic threat called the Dark Matter Anomaly AKA the DMA. However, even as the brightest minds of the 32nd century like Dr. Ruon Tarka (Shawn Doyle) attempt to solve the DMA's secrets, the United Federation of Planets is still innovating new technologies and could have found the solution to the galaxy's dependency on warp travel.
Warp drive is a pillar technology of Star Trek since The Original Series and it was how the Starship Enterprise was able to explore strange new worlds on its five-year mission. Canonically, Earth's first warp drive was built by Dr. Zephram Cochrane (James Cromwell) as seen in Star Trek: First Contact and the fact that humanity was able to achieve faster-than-light space flight is what brought the Vulcans to Earth, which launched Star Trek's optimistic future. Starships using dilithium crystals to power their warp drives have been standard since Star Trek's inception. Although there have been attempts at different technologies to replace warp travel, Star Trek: Discovery season 3's The Burn storyline established the galaxy's dependence on dilithium warp drives into the 32nd century when the Alpha Quadrant lost warp travel for over a hundred years.
Star Trek: Discovery season 4, episode 7, "...But To Connect" ended with a shocking revelation that Dr. Tarka had perfected a next generation spore displacement hub drive, and the mad scientist installed it in Book's (David Ajala) ship so the duo could go rogue and attempt to destroy the DMA. If it works as intended and can be mass-produced, Tarka's new spore drive could mean the end of Star Trek's reliance on warp travel in the 32nd century. Star Trek: Discovery season 1 introduced the displacement-activated spore hub drive which allows the USS Discovery to instantaneously jump to a destination by traveling on the mycelial network. But Dr. Tarka's miniaturized next gen spore drive could eventually be installed in every Starfleet ship, allowing the fleet to jump across the galaxy as quickly as the Discovery can.
While Star Trek: Discovery's spore drive was cool and innovative, it was canonically out of place in the series' original 23rd-century prequel setting, which was pointed out by many Trekkers. Star Trek: Discovery jumping ahead to the 32nd century recontextualized the spore drive because the Federation never duplicated the technology. The galaxy remained reliant on warp travel for the next 930 years after Michael Burnham and the USS Discovery left the 23rd century behind. The fact that the Discovery had the spore drive made Burnham's starship one-of-a-kind and crucial as the time-tossed Starfleet Officers solved the mystery of The Burn and restored warp travel to the galaxy.
However, every Starfleet ship in Star Trek: Discovery's distant future could eventually be equipped with Dr. Tarka's spore drive, which would radically change Star Trek canon going forward. Many Star Trek stories have been about or set during warp travel itself but Star Trek: Discovery has already gone in different directions with its instantaneous spore drive travel. Still, compelling new stories about the spore drive not working can also be told by Star Trek: Discovery, such as when the ship was trapped in a subspace rift in Star Trek: Discovery season 4, episode 6, "Stormy Weather."
Even if spore drives become standard in the 32nd century, it doesn't negate how the rest of Star Trek, which is set in the 23rd and 24th centuries, will still tell stories involving warp drives. This includes Star Trek: Prodigy, which introduced the USS Protostar's incredibly fast Proto Drive. But Star Trek: Discovery's mandate is to explore Star Trek's distant future and the series could soon make the spore drive integral across all of Starfleet, leaving warp travel and dependency on dilithium behind at last.
Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 returns February 10, 2022, on Paramount+.