If you haven’t watched the Star Trek: Discovery series finale “Life, Itself” yet, stop reading now — because this is about to become a heavy spoiler zone for Michael Burnham’s last on-screen moments!

* * * SPOILER WARNING! * * *

After Discovery’s season-long Progenitor story came to a conclusion, and the crew celebrated the wedding of Saru (Doug Jones) and T’Rina (Tara Rosling), “Life, Itself” jumped decades into the future to follow a now-Admiral Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) back to active duty — to send Zora (Annabelle Wallis) and the USS Discovery on one last top-secret Red Directive mission.

That mission? No, not all the hugs! Starfleet overhauls the starship back to its original 23rd century design, and Burnham is tasked to park it out in deep space for 1,000 years until Craft (Aldis Hodge) — a warrior from planet Alcor IV — floats by in an escape pod, beginning the events seen in 2019’s “Calypso.”

One of four Discovery-adjacent live-action Star Trek: Short Treks tales filmed between Discovery’s first and second seasons, “Calypso” (written by noted author and Picard co-creator Michael Chabon) showed viewers a love story between the marooned Craft and Zora, an artificial intelligence who mysteriously “lived” inside the USS Discovery’s computer systems.

“Calypso” debuted on Paramount+ (then CBS All Access) in January 2019, and over the intervening years Star Trek: Discovery began to slowly integrate elements of the tale into the series — most notably the inclusion of Zora, a nascent AI who grew out of the Sphere Data absorbed by the ship back in Season 2.

When Paramount+ cancelled Discovery in early 2023, showrunner Michelle Paradise and team had a short window to film additional material to turn “Life, Itself” into a series finale, rather than just the conclusion to Season 5 — and in a new interview with Variety, Paradise talks about not just the rush to find Discovery’s ultimate ending, but how the “Calypso” tie-in almost became a central element in the show’s now-impossible sixth’s year.

The [Discovery] production team had only eight weeks from when Paramout+ and CBS Studios signed off on the epilogue to when they had to shoot it. Fortunately, the bridge set hadn’t been struck yet (though several standing sets already had been). And the budget allowed only for three days of production.

 

“We always knew that we wanted to somehow tie [back to ‘Calypso’],” says Paradise. “We never wanted ‘Calypso’ to be the dangling Chad.”

 

So much so, in fact, that, as the show began winding down production on Season 5, Paradise had started planning to make “Calypso” the central narrative engine for Season 6. 

 

“The story, nascent as it was, was eventually going to be tying that thread up and connecting ‘Discovery’ back with ‘Calypso,’” she says.

 

Once having a sixth season was no longer an option, Paradise knew that resolving the “Calypso” question was non-negotiable. “OK, well, we’re not going to have a season to do that,” she says. “So how do we do that elegantly in this very short period of time?”

The decision to focus the final moments of Discovery’s finale explaining how Zora and Discovery got to where Craft would eventually find them has been met with both praise and criticism.

While some fans have found great satisfaction in the connection to “Calypso,” others have expressed frustrations that the show spent these its precious moments looking backwards — to a Short Trek that many viewers don’t even know exist.

Would an entire season building up to “Calypso” been a good idea for a hypothetical Star Trek: Discovery Season 6? We’ll never know — but you can tell us your thoughts on this idea in the comments below.

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