Paul Stamets (Star Trek)
Paul Stamets is a male television character who features in Star Trek.
Contents |
History
Paul Stamets was a male human who lived in the 23rd century where he was a citizen of the United Federation of Planets. By adulthood, he came to train as an astromycologist and became an expert in the field. Prior to 2256, Stamets and his research partner, Straal, were working on an experimental propulsion technology known as the spore drive. This made use of prototaxites stellaviatori spores linked to the so-called mycelial network and could theoretically allow a starship to travel great distances instantaneously. Stamets and Straal worked on the project together for nearly twelve years, but failed to achieve decisive results. When the war started, Stamets and Straal were co-opted by Starfleet to develop military applications for the technology. Stamets and Straal were assigned to the Crossfield-class starships USS Discovery and USS Glenn respectively, experimental vessels that were the first to be built around spore drive technology. (DIS: Context Is for Kings)
While aboard the Discovery, Stamets shared quarters with his husband, Lieutenant Commander Doctor Hugh Culber. He was uncomfortable with his work being co-opted for military purposes, and regarded his commanding officer, Captain Gabriel Lorca, as a warmonger. Despite six months of research, by late 2256 both the Discovery and the Glenn were still unable to make spore drive jumps greater than intervals of Speirin 12 for the former and Speirein 240 for the latter. Stamets remained in regular correspondence with Straal, who by the end of the year was ready to consider a spore drive jump of Speirein 900, which Stamets felt was unsafe. (DIS: Context Is for Kings)
At this time, Stamets met Michael Burnham after her disabled prison shuttle was rescued by the Discovery at Captain Lorca's direction. Despite being a convicted mutineer, Lorca assigned Burnham to work under Stamets in the hopes that her predictive mind and determination would help him make the spore drive viable. Initially affronted by this, Stamets was soon forced to confront other issues when a distress call was received from the USS Glenn. Stamets and Burnham were part of the team sent aboard to investigate, and discovered that the ship was a derelict with the entire crew having been severely mutilated, including Straal. Stamets deduced that the Glenn had been destroyed by an accident with its spore drive, and the team was soon ambushed by an immense creature. With the aid of Burnham, the creature was captured and brought aboard the Discovery. (DIS: Context Is for Kings)
Stamets had made the spore drive viable. Intensified development of the spore drive began on Earth while all Federation ships, starbases, and colonies were placed on alert to search for more tardigrades. However, forcing Ripper to act as a navigation computer caused it immense pain and it soon became obvious that each jump was severely debilitating to it. After Captain Lorca was taken prisoner by the Klingon Empire, repeated use of the spore drive in attempts to rescue him resulted in Ripper entering an extreme state of cryptobiosis and becoming unresponsive. It was subsequently released by Michael Burnham. (DIS: Choose Your Pain)
Later on, Commander Saru as first officer came to put pressure on Stamets to restore the spore drive. With the help of Cadet Sylvia Tilly, Stamets resorted to injecting himself with a sample of tardigrade DNA and entering the spore chamber to act as the navigation computer. The jump was a success and Lorca was recovered, along with another Starfleet prisoner, Lieutenant Ash Tyler. The exertion of the jump briefly knocked Stamets unconscious, but he recovered with apparently no ill effects. (DIS: Choose Your Pain)
To improve his connection to the spore drive, Stamets accepted cyborg augmentations to his arms. However, he was increasingly aware that use of the spore drive was taking its toll on his mind. He confided only in Cadet Tilly, refusing to tell Dr. Culber out of fear it would place his partner in emotional conflict over whether to alert the rest of Starfleet to his condition. (DIS: Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum)
While investigating the planet Pahvo, Captain Lorca saw an opportunity to destroy the Klingon starship Sarcophagus and develop a way to penetrate cloaking devices. To accomplish this Stamets would have to conduct 133 micro-jumps with the spore drive so the Discovery could gather data from multiple angles to generate the algorithm to penetrate the cloak. In the subsequent battle at Pahvo, the Discovery succeeded in destroying the Sarcophagus, killing the Klingon leader Kol and capturing L'Rell, who was believed to have tortured Ash Tyler while he was a prisoner. However, Stamets was visibly distressed from the effort of conducting so many jumps in such a short time, and declared to Lorca that he would conduct one last jump to get the Discovery to Starbase 88 before submitting himself to Starfleet Medical for evaluation. However, the man who the Discovery crew believed to be Captain Gabriel Lorca was in fact his mirror universe counterpart. This Lorca deliberately sabotaged the jump, using a theoretical application of the spore drive to take the Discovery into the mirror universe. The effect of this plunged Stamets into near-catatonia: his eyes became a blank white and when he spoke it appeared incoherent and delirious. Without Stamets, the Discovery had little chance of returning to the prime universe. (DIS: Into the Forest I Go)
Arriving in 3189, Lieutenant Commander Paul Stamets awoke from a period of unconsciousness following the USS Discovery’s violent crash-landing on the ice-covered moon of Colony 2188. Disoriented and suffering from a head injury, he was immediately thrust into a high-stakes repair mission as the ship’s structural integrity failed under the weight of parasitic ice. Despite his physical pain, he coordinated with Jett Reno and Tilly to restore power to the internal systems, eventually managing to crawl through the Jefferies tubes to manually reset the thermal regulators. His primary focus remained the safety of the crew and the preservation of the spore drive, though he was forced to confront the grim reality that the ship was grounded and Michael Burnham was nowhere to be found. He worked tirelessly until the ship was finally hauled from the ice by a tractor beam, marking his first full realization that they had successfully reached a future where the Federation was no longer the dominant force he remembered. (DIS: Far from Home) Stamets returned to active duty as the USS Discovery finally arrived at a vastly changed Earth, only to find the planet had long since withdrawn from the Federation. He initially spent his time in Engineering, where he was visibly frustrated by the intrusive presence of United Earth inspectors who dismissed the ship as a 'museum'. During this period, he encountered a young, brilliant inspector named Adira Tal, who demonstrated a surprising level of technological expertise by sabotaging the ship's transporters to prevent their own departure. Rather than reporting the sabotage, Stamets tracked Adira to a Jefferies tube and, impressed by their intellect, engaged in a mentor-like dialogue to understand their motivations. Through this interaction, he learned that Adira was actually seeking a way to share the location of the Federation's remnants, leading to the revelation that they carried the Tal symbiont. This encounter marked the beginning of a foundational bond for Stamets, as he successfully recruited Adira to join the crew, effectively securing a new scientific partner and future family member for the era ahead. (DIS: People of Earth)
Overview
Personality and attributes
Stamets was good friends with his research partner Straal and was distressed when Straal was killed aboard the USS Glenn. (DIS: Context Is for Kings)
Powers and abilities
Notes
- Paul Stamets was portrayed by actor Anthony Rapp where he featured in the setting of Star Trek: Discovery.
- The character's name was an allusion to Paul Stamets who was a self-taught mycologist that advocated the ecological benefits of mushrooms.
Appearances
- Star Trek: Discovery:
External Links
This article is a stub. You can help Multiversal Omnipedia by expanding it.
