What’s wrong with the magic mushrooms? It’s not like Trek was ever hard sci-fi when it came to how the ships fly. For crying out loud, in Voyager they went so fast they were everywhere at once, then Tom Paris and Janeway had salamander babies.
It just felt so cliche, that the crazy discovery they make is that the strange stuff is alive. The writers couldn’t make it sentient because then they’d need to explain why it’s just like the Great Lake but different from the Great Lake. It just exists and Star Fleet happens to be the only ones who know about it.
What’s wrong with the magic mushrooms? It’s not like Trek was ever hard sci-fi when it came to how the ships fly. For crying out loud, in Voyager they went so fast they were everywhere at once, then Tom Paris and Janeway had salamander babies.
It just felt so cliche, that the crazy discovery they make is that the strange stuff is alive. The writers couldn’t make it sentient because then they’d need to explain why it’s just like the Great Lake but different from the Great Lake. It just exists and Star Fleet happens to be the only ones who know about it.