Star Trek: Discovery Canceled Season 6 Revealed
Star Trek: Discovery had such a great final season that it’s genuinely difficult to believe that it wasn’t deliberately planned out as the last adventure with these characters. Incredibly, though, the cast and crew didn’t know this season would be their last until after it was mostly shot, and everyone was fully planning on continuing with another season. Now, we know what Star Trek: Discovery season 6 would have been about: according to showrunner Michelle Paradise, the sixth season was going to focus on the “Calypso” mystery that the finale tried to tie up in a single scene.
Calypso
For this tea (Earl Grey, hot!) about Star Trek: Discovery season 6 to make any sense, we’re going to need to review the whole “Calypso” thing. In 2018, there was a Short Treks episode named “Calypso” in which the Discovery had been abandoned for nearly a thousand years.
The closest thing the ship had to a crew was a sentient AI named Zora, and she rescues a mysterious man named Craft, seemingly falling in love with him before reluctantly letting him take the ship’s last shuttle to return home to his wife and child.
Zora’s Long Mission
“Calypso” is captivating from beginning to end, but it left fans with many questions. For example, what happened to the crew, and how did Discovery both get a fancy AI and end up in the middle of nowhere on the orders of its captain?
Plus, we had to wonder if there was anything special about Craft or if he really was just a random guy that Zora decided to rescue.
Once the crew of Star Trek: Discovery knew they wouldn’t get a season 6, they filmed a kind of coda for the series finale that helped wrap up some of these questions. We had already met Zora (the name the ship’s computer took after merging with the Sphere data in season 2, eventually becoming self-aware), but the finale showed that Zora was sent on a long-term mission to deep space by Admiral Burnham.
The ship was inexplicably returned to its original configuration, and Burnham instructed the ship to wait out in space for nearly a thousand years as part of a secret Red Directive mission.
Season 6 Would Have Solved The Mystery Of Calypso
Now, Star Trek: Discovery showrunner Michelle Paradise has confirmed that if the show had gotten a season 6, “The story, nascent as it was, was eventually going to be tying that thread up and connecting Discovery back with ‘Calypso.’”
Frustratingly, she didn’t reveal any details beyond that, but we would have presumably gotten plenty more context for the abbreviated events of the finale’s last scene.
For example, we might have learned why the Discovery needed to be returned to its 23rd-century configuration (it had gotten major upgrades after jumping into the far future) for a mission that wouldn’t truly begin until sometime in the 33rd century.
Zora And Craft
In all likelihood, the biggest mystery that Star Trek: Discovery season 6 would have explored is who Craft is and what makes him so important. “Calypso” made it seem like he was just a random guy that Zora found and fell in love with, but in the finale, Burnham clarifies that she heard the name “Craft” mentioned (though she doesn’t know who or what it might be) in the context of this Red Directive mission.
This made the finale feel like a soft retcon of “Calypso”–after all, Craft went from being a random guy to someone so important the Federation devoted a millennium-long mission to him.
Life, Itself
Despite getting so few details about Star Trek: Discovery season 6, we’re still a little sad we’ll never see what the writers were cooking up regarding “Calypso.” Of course, the final season was good enough that we’re happy to enjoy what we got with this Paramount show.
If Burnham can learn that “life itself is meaning enough” and what is most important is “how we choose to spend the time that we have,” then we can only devote so much of our own time fretting over the past rather than enjoying the present, which happens to be a golden age of Star Trek.
Source: Variety
