I don’t think the Star Trek Discovery Season 3 writers know what Dilithium is. I have many issues with the facts / continuity of this story line.
- Dilithium is not glowing red.
Dilithium is opaque, clear-ish, or pink-ish.
- Star ships did not carry hundreds of extra crystals in any kind of storage. Several episodes of Star Trek (all series and movies before STD) were based on the ship needing to find new crystals because something had happened to theirs. They did not just open the vault and grab another one.
Dilithium is VERY VERY rare in most parts of the galaxy it would have been hard for all of Star Fleet to have as much Dilithium as they show on Discovery.
- Dilithium does not just disappear or stop working (in a short period of time) – the crystals currier ships are given “to complete their delivery” would sustain the ship for a very long time. *especially after STNG era when they started to reconstitute the crystals inside the reaction chamber… making their 1or 2 crystals last indefinite time periods, unless otherwise damaged….
I thought I had another point, but I think they have that one right enough.
I don’t mind a little bit of re writing history for these prequel shows, but this is too much.
Besides this, I do like the new season!
P.S. I did have some issue with how much Saru was like “we are Star Fleet” or “Star Fleet does not…” in this last episode.
Yeah Yeah, we got it.
Techbreakdown 
In the first TOS episode to mention crystals of any kind (Mud’s Women) that were required for the warp engines, they were erroneously referred to as “lithium crystals.” At one point in this episode, Kirk instructs Scotty to “keep her running long enough to get six crystals.” We can therefore assume that the enterprise required a compliment of a half dozen to operate at maximum power.