Spoilers Star Trek: Short Treks 1x02 - "Calypso"

[Noname Given]

No, I began this because you said the A/B plot structure was because the TNG writer's room couldn't figure out how to write an A plot which stretched across the entire episode. This is false. This was just the preferred style of writing - reportedly Micheal Piller would reject spec scripts without B stories.

TOS and TNG have different strengths to me, but DS9 is far and away my favorite Trek

Maybe you confused me with a different poster?

No - YOU started with what I posited. I came back with a response to you as to WHY I thought TOS was superior, and the fact that one of the things I didn't care for in TNG (IE something that to me made it inferior to TOS) was my dislike of the A/B p[lot stucture; but the INITIAL response of mine was in response to you posty that many fans must think TOS was the best just because it was first.

TLDR: No, I'm not the one who forgot the genesis pf your side track discussion here. My responses have been in response to yours, but all still related to that point as to WHY I find TOS superior to every other Trek series (and TNG in particular).

 

[eschaton]

No - YOU started with what I posited. I came back with a response to you as to WHY I thought TOS was superior, and the fact that one of the things I didn't care for in TNG (IE something that to me made it inferior to TOS) was my dislike of the A/B p[lot stucture; but the INITIAL response of mine was in response to you posty that many fans must think TOS was the best just because it was first.

TLDR: No, I'm not the one who forgot the genesis pf your side track discussion here. My responses have been in response to yours, but all still related to that point as to WHY I find TOS superior to every other Trek series (and TNG in particular).

My first post in response to you was literally:

The A/B format became the norm because the larger casts were unwieldy. TOS really only needed Kirk/Spock/McCoy to have plot critical roles. Everyone else was just a step above guest cast. But the later shows tried to give everyone a relatively weighty role each week even if they didn't fit into the plot. Hence B plots were invented.

The poster you replied to immediately before this was Arch101, not me. I'd never attack anyone for thinking one series or another was superior. Okay, maybe Enterprise.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Well, now we know ahead of time that the Discovery will never be destroyed, but will at some point drift off abandoned and gain sentience because...stupid writing, basically.

The angular vertiform holodeck lovechild of the USS Enterprise-D is frowning at you, you know that?

 

[Aeolusdallas]

I totally forgot about this until today, so I watched it. What a stupid, incoherent mess. Why was the ship empty? Why was it possessed by an AI which definitely shouldn't exist? Who was the random guy, why does he claim he's from some random planet where people name each other if his escape pod was showing ancient cartoons from Earth? What idiot(s) got paid to write this?

This was less annoying then the last one, but much more incoherent, so I'd say its a bit worse.

Edit: Just checked the wiki. the short takes place in the future, because...reasons. Well, now we know ahead of time that the Discovery will never be destroyed, but will at some point drift off abandoned and gain sentience because...stupid writing, basically.

So you literally didn't pay any attention at all?

 

[Tuskin38]

So you literally didn't pay any attention at all?

The angular vertiform holodeck lovechild of the USS Enterprise-D is frowning at you, you know that?

Kirk5s treats everything he doesn't like very personally, as if it kicked his dog, or child or something.

 

[arch101]

We knew more about Yar’s backstory in half a season than we knew about Chekov, Uhura, Sulu and Scotty’s backstories in 3 years. Heck, Sulu didn’t even get a first name until the 6th film. Uhura didn’t get one until the 2009 reboot! TOS was a miracle of Sci Fi tv in the 60s, but TNG and the later shows are just better at developing characters.

 

[Vger23]

TOS was a miracle of Sci Fi tv in the 60s, but TNG and the later shows are just better at developing characters.

Well, 7 seasons and 25 years of progressively developing writing styles for the medium of television will potentially do that.

And, even if what you said is true, it only serves to make it even more amazing that TOS is still a massively more influential and entertaining series than most of what was derived later.

 

[Rahul]

We knew more about Yar’s backstory in half a season than we knew about Chekov, Uhura, Sulu and Scotty’s backstories in 3 years. Heck, Sulu didn’t even get a first name until the 6th film. Uhura didn’t get one until the 2009 reboot! TOS was a miracle of Sci Fi tv in the 60s, but TNG and the later shows are just better at developing characters.

TNG was an ensemble piece. TOS had a trifecta of main characters. That's a difference. Sulu, Chekhov and Uhura simply rarely got centerstage focus like TNG did with it's regular "this character episodes" did. But that doesn't mean we didnt learn anything about them: Sure, we had less wikipedia-like facts about their backstories. But everyone of them was heavily involved in enough major events, that we got a good grasp on what makes each character tick. We certainly knew more about them after a few episodes than about the entire bridge crew of DIS in one season, even though they play similar roles in the grander scheme of things.

 

[Tim Thomason]

I totally forgot about this until today, so I watched it. What a stupid, incoherent mess. Why was the ship empty?

It's (at least) 1000 years in the future.

Why was it possessed by an AI which definitely shouldn't exist?

Zora says that she evolved over time. Presumably from the library computer already present on the starship, or perhaps they install another AI in the coming seasons.

Who was the random guy

He calls himself Craft. A new character created for the short.

why does he claim he's from some random planet where people name each other if his escape pod was showing ancient cartoons from Earth?

It wasn't his escape pod, as stated in the short. But regardless, he was identified as human and comes from a random planet (Alcor IV) that is uninhabited in Discovery's time, and thus colonized within the last 1000 years. It's not out of the question that he or his enemies (the V'Draysh) might be familiar with Earth, even if they have never been there.

What idiot(s) got paid to write this?

Michael Chabon

Edit: Just checked the wiki. the short takes place in the future, because...reasons. Well, now we know ahead of time that the Discovery will never be destroyed, but will at some point drift off abandoned and gain sentience because...

Intriguing, isn't it? I love flash-forwards, even though they are so rarely used. While they sacrifice a little bit of drama, they gain a lot of questions and help spur on creative challenges to the creators and writers that may lead to prime storytelling opportunities.

I just hope this short isn't forgotten when the ultimate fate of the Discovery is revealed.

 

[Rahul]

Intriguing, isn't it? I love flash-forwards, even though they are so rarely used. While they sacrifice a little bit of drama, they gain a lot of questions and help spur on creative challenges to the creators and writers that may lead to prime storytelling opportunities.

You know, I loved 'Calypso', but I think this is one case where it would have been massively better to have it as a one-off, instead of a flash-forward for the series' main ship: Like, have it all take place on the USS Atlantis, NCC-1032, the third sister-ship of the Discovery, or something.

Because as it stands, it means not only "Discovery won't get blow'ed up" at the end of it's series: It means: "Discovery didn't even gets a major upgrade" during it's entire run! But you know, I'd like that! Changing the nacelles to more TOS-like orange ones in season 4. Have new consoles and working places added to the bridge set in season 3. Add colors to the doors and hallways in season 5. All that is now either impossible, or creates continuity isses where it ever to happen. But all that wasn't exactly necessary: The story of Craft and Zora would have been exactly as intruiging where it not set on the Discovery, but a sister ship.

 

[Lord Garth]

We certainly knew more about them after a few episodes than about the entire bridge crew of DIS in one season, even though they play similar roles in the grander scheme of things.

That's something they need to fix in S2. I don't even know all their names offhand.

 

[marlboro]

This didn't seem all that great to me. Good FX, but the story didn't grab me.

p.s Nice to see a clip from one of the classic Fleischer Brothers cartoons. Those early Popeye, Betty Boop, KoKo, and Superman cartoons were brilliant. As I'm sure someone has already mentioned, the clip is from Snow White 1933 and features a great sequence with a Rotoscoped Cab Calloway performing St. James Infirmary.

 

[Mechanoid1]

I just hope this short isn't forgotten when the ultimate fate of the Discovery is revealed.

CALYPSO has given me hope for a much better Discovery season 2. I agree with others that this 1 short clip for me was more intriguing and left me wanting more than any of Disco season 1 episodes except for possibly the finale.
Somehow I hope that the season 1 Star Trek Discovery story gets locked up in the computer memory banks and the entire ship gets lost for at least 1000 years in deep space.

 

[nickyboy]

That was better than all of season 1 of discovery.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Exactly so. TOS was a lot of things besides a story about a spaceship.

If the choice is between a great story and canon, canon should be thrown overboard without hesitation. The frequent insistence on doing the opposite is one big reason that after 50 years Trek is so empty and uninteresting.

Yes, for a number of reasons that have been discussed ad nauseam on this board over the years.

Perfect continuity and "canon" are mostly a fixation on the part of some hard-core Trek fans. It's just not important to the quality of storytelling. Some people claim that professional writers who won't adhere to it are "lazy," but the opposite is true: privileging continuity as if it's a key element of the fiction leads eventually to lazy fill-in-the-blank plotting of the kind that - not by accident - dominates fan films.

In essence, when "canon" concerns dominate the result is a long, unfunny in-joke.

If "Calypso" is a good hour of storytelling, its putative violations of continuity mean nothing.

#truth

 

[MarsWeeps]

Good story but the set up was absolutely confounding. If you don't ask any questions and just accept everything given to you this is a 9 or 10. As I can't help but ask questions....its a 7/10.

I think that's what makes it brilliant, it forces you to ask questions and use your imagination to fill in the blanks. Those with a wild imagination will probably enjoy it more than those without.

 

[Rahul]

I think that's what makes it brilliant, it forces you to ask questions and use your imagination to fill in the blanks. Those with a wild imagination will probably enjoy it more than those without.

I just wish there was a bit more clarity in the depiction: Like, when I watched it the first time, that Craft was actually part of the faction fighting against the Federation/future humans completely went over my head - I just thought it was "weird" that his escape pod played Betty Boop cartoons, but he himself didn't even knew what "tuesday" was.

There was a bit of a disconnect here, as if the work really belonged to a much different sci-fi universe - one without Star Trek-like aliens, but indeed a future with many human tribes along the stars.

Other than that: I completely agree! And I loved the short, simply for how wild and out there it was. Certainly so far the best of the shorts, and IMO one of the best pieces coming from DISCO entirely.

 

[bookworm8571]

This was my favorite of the three Star Trek shorts they’ve released so far. Touching, romantic, great character development, good story telling. I have never been all that interested in ship design or strict adherence to continuity, etc. The story can get lost in obsessive attention to detail.

As for the planet that Craft is from and the enemy he is fighting, there would be plenty of explanations after 1,000 years. It could be a lost colony that has had no contact with the rest of humanity for a millennium. We could be talking about two neighboring lost human colonies that have been at war for generations over differing cultures and resources, neither in contact with the rest of humankind. Maybe the neighbor identified with the Federation and assumed its name and maintained its traditions and Craft’s planet is culturally distinct. Maybe Craft isn’t completely human and his people have merged with an alien humanoid race.

 

[johnjm22]

I just got around to watching this today.

I've made feelings on Discovery known previously (I think it's mostly trash and hated season 1).

With that being said I liked Calypso. Thought it was real solid. It left me wanting answers, but the fact that it leaves me wanting is a good thing. That means it was engaging.

I liked the main character. In 15 minutes of screen time he was better and more interesting than nearly every character on STD.

This is what you get when you keep things focused and simple instead of an action schlock fest like STD season one.

 

[Lord Garth]

Nixon just went to China.