Star Trek Theory Connects Voyager and Discovery In a Powerful Way

Officially, there has never been much connective tissue between Paramount shows Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Discovery. In addition to taking place in different time periods and featuring different crews, Discovery rarely made callbacks to Voyager outside of things like the Talaxians (Neelix’s species), which were briefly referenced in the final season. However, Reddit user Kalel1323 created a fan theory connecting Discovery’s spore drive to Voyager getting lost in the Delta Quadrant.

In the Voyager premiere episode “Caretaker,” the titular ship is scanned by a tetryon beam and transported to the Delta Quadrant, over 70,000 light-years from home. The crew discovers that the beam was sent by the Caretaker, a dying being living in a huge (but not, like, Galactus huge) space array. And in the Season 2 episode “Cold Fire,” Voyager runs into Suspiria, the Caretaker’s former mate and another member of his species.

What does this have to do with Star Trek: Discovery? As this theory points out, the Caretaker’s species is later identified as sporocystian lifeforms, and the term “sporocystian” relates to fungal spores (like the ones in The Last of Us). In Discovery, Dr. Stamets is able to utilize a mycelial network to help the titular starship travel over long distances without using warp drive.

This works because the network is its own subspace domain, filled with a special fungus’s roots. It’s possible to use the spores of that fungus to quickly travel along this network, which is precisely what a spacefaring tardigrade did before Discovery captured it. 

The crew eventually frees the creature, but thanks to what they learned from the tardigrade (and Stamets plugging himself into the engine), they can travel along the mycelial network, a plot point some fans hated even more than they hated Sybok.

As the Reddit user points out, this whole process sounds similar to how the Caretaker was able to transport Voyager and other ships to the Delta Quadrant. In “Cold Fire,” the Caretaker’s mate described an area of subspace that she resided in as "Exosia,” which Voyager crew member Kes described as "a place of pure thought, pure energy... a place of the mind.” 

Kalel1323 noted that this could be their native name for the same special subspace domain Discovery later uses to jet around the galaxy, linking two bits of Star Trek (now part of the MCU, read more here) history.

This fascinating (as Spock might say) Star Trek theory is not official in any way. But the next show in this franchise will be Starfleet Academy, which will bring the holographic Doctor from Voyager into the 32nd century. Since Starfleet Academy is a Discovery spinoff (some of us are still waiting for a Captain Kirk spinoff) and is making the Doctor a main character, it wouldn’t be surprising to hear him comment on the similarities between the mycelial network and the Exosia subspace domain.

Even if that doesn’t happen in the first season, the Starfleet Academy writers may include the connection in the future. As far as Star Trek fan theories go, this one is good: it doesn’t break any of the rules of this fictional universe and fits neatly within the parameters of everything fans already know. 

And even if it doesn’t become official canon, this Voyager/Discovery connection will likely become permanent head canon for fans throughout the quadrant–er, planet.