Star Trek: Discovery ended this week, with an episode that, maybe in true Discovery type, threw some wild curveballs and equally wild pacing collectively to offer us a bumper episode of ups and downs. But it surely actually did save its weirdest second for final: and even weirder, it’s what may need been Discovery’s next big story if it had made it to a different season.
The ultimate act of “Life, Itself,” the hour-and-a-half-long ending to Star Trek: Discovery, provides solution to a flash-forward nicely after the occasions of the remainder of the finale have come—and arguably, been rushed—to finish. Choosing up with now-Admiral Michael Burnham, dwelling an idyllic lifetime of semi-retirement along with her husband E book, and with a son who’s simply been promoted to captaincy, life is nice for Discovery’s ever-put-upon hero. However we discover she’s been tasked with one final thriller mission from Agent Kovich: dump Discovery at a distant spot in area, deserted, and re-fitted again into its unique twenty third century design, leaving the ship and its sentient laptop Zora untouched, given nothing to go on however a single phrase, “Craft.”
It’s a peculiar means for the collection to finish, nevertheless it’s made much more peculiar by context: that is in reality establishing the occasions of a mini-episode launched as a part of Star Trek: Quick Treks in 2018 between seasons one and two of Discovery. That short, “Calypso”, written by former Star Trek: Picard showrunner Michael Chabon, is about roughly a thousand years after the tip of Discovery, and sees a lone, stranded soldier named Craft (performed by Aldis Hodge) come throughout the long-abandoned Discovery and construct a reference to Zora. It’s completely insane as the final word Star Trek: Discovery goes out on, retroactively squaring the circle on a timeline discrepancy—arguably not even a discrepancy, given the huge swaths of time between the present’s finish and the occasions of “Calypso”—spurred on by a six-year-old quick that was, at the time, infamously troublesome for viewers to entry exterior of the US (they’re nonetheless type of awkward to search out on Paramount+ proper now, except you’re actively trying to find them). But it surely was, apparently, one thing Discovery showrunner Michelle Paradise was insistent the collection deal with earlier than it ended.
“We all the time knew that we needed to in some way tie that again up,” Paradise recently told Variety concerning the determination to make the present’s epilogue what it was. “We by no means needed ‘Calypso’ to be the dangling chad.” And if Discovery had been renewed for a sixth season, apparently the street to establishing the place the ship is left off by the point of “Calypso” would’ve served because the season’s main story arc. “The story, nascent because it was, was finally going to be tying that thread up and connecting Discovery again with ‘Calypso,’” Paradise confirmed.
As an alternative, we obtained what was an already a peculiar selection of ending for Discovery, which left so many doorways open because it rushed to shut this one specifically. However for Paradise, at the least, it was a door that wanted to be closed earlier than Discovery was no extra. “I actually don’t really feel like we missed out on one thing by not having yet another day [to shoot],” Paradise concluded. “I really feel prefer it ends the best way it wanted to finish.”
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