Star Trek Needs To Solve One Mystery Before This Series Ends
The fifth and final season of Star Trek: Discovery is still months away from premiere, which is expected in early 2024. One Star Trek mystery we’re still waiting to be solved is exactly what happened to the crew of Discovery in the Star Trek: Short Treks episode “Calypso.”
An important question remains: what happened to the crew of Discovery, and why is the ship seemingly abandoned?
“Calypso” opens with a man alone in V’draysh escape pods. His life signals reach critical levels, the escape pod is suddenly caught in a tractor beam, and the man wakes up on USS Discovery, only to find that the ship is empty—it has been empty for nearly a millennia, and there’s no one aboard but Zora, Discovery’s on-board AI that has integrated itself with the ship in the previous seasons of Star Trek: Discovery.
The Season 4 of Star Trek Discovery only got as far as answering Zora’s origins and her integration with the ship, but not what actually happened with the crew, and the fans are hoping for an answer in the upcoming season.
From what we gathered from the “Calypso” episode, Zora was ordered by her captain to maintain position by her captain a millennium ago, before the crew left the ship. However, the question remains whether the crew actually left the ship or they were beamed temporarily into the transporter’s pattern buffers, making it appear as if the ship is abandoned.
And if that’s the case, why would Burnham order such action? Did she even order it, or has Zora purposefully failed to follow orders by her captain and decided to capture the crew inside the buffer? And finally, will this be addressed in Star Trek: Discovery?
Those are the questions that require answers. The recent iterations of the whole Star Trek universe revealed that transporter pattern buffers could basically act as Network Attached Storage for basically everything, including biological matter and sentient life forms.
The Season 4 of Star Trek Discovery only got as far as answering Zora’s origins and her integration with the ship, but not what actually happened with the crew, and the fans are hoping for an answer in the upcoming season.
One could load a severely injured individual into the transporter pattern buffer, which apparently pauses all biological functions indefinitely, acting as a sort of suspended animation. We even saw it happen in the Star Trek: Discovery episode “Stormy Weather.”
According to Johnatan Frakes, aka William Riker, who directed that particular Star Trek Discovery episode, the “Stormy Weather” actually sets up a solution to the “Calypso” mystery, suggesting that the crew didn’t abandon the ship—instead, they’re stored inside the transporter pater buffer. But this only poses further questions of why they’re there and, even more importantly, why they’re inside the buffer for that long.
Discovery Season 5
Season Five of Star Trek: Discovery still hasn’t received an official release date, but the current release window places the premiere in early 2024. Considering that the crew of Discovery already made one temporal jump, we wouldn’t be surprised if the series breaches into the 4th millennium by suspending the crew and sleeping the journey off.
