Story: Calypso
Written By: Michael Chabon
Series: Star Trek: Short Treks
Year: 2018
The second installment of Discovery's "Short Treks" is a tale that takes place 1000 years after the series proper, with the shift adrift somewhere, and the computer evolving beyond it's normal capacity...and the ship rescues a man adrift in an escape pod. The man, who calls himself Craft, ends up living aboard Discovery alone for a while, becoming friendly with Zora, the ship's now highly evolved computer system.
It's a simple tale, but a rather good Trek story. It feels less like a lost b-story, which the first Short Trek installment felt like, and more like a short film that takes place within the Trek universe. It has no villain, no evil plot, nothing that resembles the kind of Trek Discovery had presented in it's first season. Instead...it feels like legit Star Trek. Classic sci-fi storytelling...a man and a computer become friends, nearly fall in love.
What I really liked, is that I was so ready for this to fall apart on me, and it never did. I was thinking the computer would fall for him, and when he didn't return the affections, the computer would snap and kill him or something equally lame and lazy. I feared it would become a generic action story...because that first season of Discovery, for all I legitimately liked, did tend to favor the gritty dark action heavy plots. This never falls into those trappings. The computer does fall in love with the man, and the man nearly returns the affections...but it is only when he gets close enough to those feelings that he recalls his own family out there. And instead of the computer feeling jealousy, she decides to help him...and send him on his way to find his own family. It's actually really touching!
The story was written by Michael Chabon, the man who is currently the head of the newly announced (and yet to be titled) Picard-centered series. If this is the kind of storytelling he is interested in telling...sci-fi stories that have heart and aren't about action and evildoers and lasers...but are about the human condition and find a way to tell stories without antagonists...and star the captain from my childhood? Well holy hell I am in.
I can only hope that moving forward Discovery takes this kind of path. I don't need sprawling war dramas with dark lighting, I don't even care about the lingering thread of how the Discovery ended up empty and drifting in space for 1000 years. I want some Star Trek...and this was just that.
NEXT TIME: Saru's World
Written By: Michael Chabon
Series: Star Trek: Short Treks
Year: 2018
The second installment of Discovery's "Short Treks" is a tale that takes place 1000 years after the series proper, with the shift adrift somewhere, and the computer evolving beyond it's normal capacity...and the ship rescues a man adrift in an escape pod. The man, who calls himself Craft, ends up living aboard Discovery alone for a while, becoming friendly with Zora, the ship's now highly evolved computer system.
What I really liked, is that I was so ready for this to fall apart on me, and it never did. I was thinking the computer would fall for him, and when he didn't return the affections, the computer would snap and kill him or something equally lame and lazy. I feared it would become a generic action story...because that first season of Discovery, for all I legitimately liked, did tend to favor the gritty dark action heavy plots. This never falls into those trappings. The computer does fall in love with the man, and the man nearly returns the affections...but it is only when he gets close enough to those feelings that he recalls his own family out there. And instead of the computer feeling jealousy, she decides to help him...and send him on his way to find his own family. It's actually really touching!
The story was written by Michael Chabon, the man who is currently the head of the newly announced (and yet to be titled) Picard-centered series. If this is the kind of storytelling he is interested in telling...sci-fi stories that have heart and aren't about action and evildoers and lasers...but are about the human condition and find a way to tell stories without antagonists...and star the captain from my childhood? Well holy hell I am in.
I can only hope that moving forward Discovery takes this kind of path. I don't need sprawling war dramas with dark lighting, I don't even care about the lingering thread of how the Discovery ended up empty and drifting in space for 1000 years. I want some Star Trek...and this was just that.
NEXT TIME: Saru's World
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