And just like that, we have another Paul in Star Trek Fleet Command. This time, it’s Paul Stamets or rather Origins Paul Stamets. This version of Stamets is a common engineering officer in the Discovery Origins crew.
Captain’s Maneuver
Biologist – Origins Stamets increases the health of All Officers on the ship by 10
As with most common officers, this captain’s maneuver is nothing to write home about. A small increase in officer health. But that’s not why you want Origins Stamets.
Officer Ability
No Time to Waste – Origins Stamets increases the Warp Speed of the Ship by 45%.
THIS is why you want Origins Stamets. You’ll want to pair him with Stonn and Helvia on your long-distance raiding crew, and I can’t wait to use him to zip from system to system hunting Latinum on Ferengi Mondays.
He’s got a bonus over Helvia in that he’s not reliant on having an empty cargo hold to work. I can also see players pairing Origins Stamets with Michael Burnham as captain, and getting a bonus to both warp and impulse speeds.
Of all the officers in this group, he starts off as the most functional. He quickly becomes an officer that I’m going to want to upgrade as much as possible.
Paul Stamets Background
So I’ll be writing about Anthony Rapp later, but since this character is “Origins Stamets,” it seems really fitting to write about the rather interesting Stamets origins.
As it turns out, the character of Paul Stamets is based on an actual scientist named… Paul Stamets. And would you believe, he’s really into fungus. If you’re into that sort of thing, you can even buy Stamets mushroom supplements.
Really.
Stamets studied mycology (which is obviously, “the branch of biology concerned with the study of fungi, including their genetic and biochemical properties, their taxonomy and their use to humans as a source for tinder, traditional medicine, food, and entheogens, as well as their dangers, such as toxicity or infection.”) Duh.
I don’t know about you, but my college was just plum full of mycology majors. They threw the best parties.
Anyway, because there’s no advanced degrees in mycology, he started his scientific career as… a logger. Which is extremely practical, but I’m going to bet you’ve never heard of anyone else trying that career path.
In 2014, he was honored with an an Invention Ambassador Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Here’s a TED Talk from 2008 and the “real” Paul Stamets.
The concept of the spore drive comes from Stamets work, and showrunner Bryan Fuller showed the writer’s room Stamet’s talk.
And now you know… the rest of the story.