This is the longest article I’ve ever written - maybe the longest one I’ll ever write! As such, I understand that many people, no matter how devoted fans of Star Trek they may be, might not feel they want to read it - or that they might read it if it were shorter. So if you want to give it a miss and simply watch some Star Trek instead, then I totally get that!
At the same time, it’s truly been a labour of love, and the culmination of years of thinking about Star Trek: Discovery, and about Zora’s development in particular. So I couldn’t shorten it; it feels as long as it wants to be. And now I’m putting it out there at last, for whoever may come across it and want to read.
As you can see, it’s divided into headed sections, which should make it easier to digest. Just take a break and come back to it later. I think it has consistent themes threading through it, so I do think of it as one piece, but one can also easily take breaks and come back to it another time.
And to anyone who does read it, a heartfelt thank you! I truly put my heart and soul into this one, and I really hope you get pleasure from the read.
PRELUDE: ON CALYPSO’S ISLAND
It starts with one of my favourite opening shots in all of Star Trek. A Betty Boop cartoon, flickering from draining power or perhaps countless generations of copying. A traveller’s face suggests fading consciousness, and the camera pulls back to show us a strange, alien-looking escape pod, behind which moves the spine of a huge starship. It looks familiar, and as the pod glides above the saucer section, we finally see the name and registry number. U.S.S. Discovery, NCC-1031.
The music score, in these opening seconds, is tremendous. And we don’t cut to see the crew on the bridge; before long we realise there is no crew. To me, somehow, this opening to “Calypso”, the jewel of the Short Treks, already suggests that the ship is alive. Which of course she is! (Though she claims not to be, of which more later.)
This eighteen minute short, and Zora’s later exploration of self through Star Trek: Discovery, is a very personal aspect of Star Trek for me to write about. I fell in love with Zora’s character from the start, and throughout Discovery I watched each new episode in the hope of her making an appearance. The benign, caring, gendered female AI is of course a science fiction trope that some may find problematic, and I understand that. But that doesn’t stop me from having an emotional affinity with it, and there’s something about Zora that affects me very deeply. What’s also important to me is what Star Trek does with this trope, and as Discovery has developed it’s become clear that Zora is the ultimate conclusion of a theme that’s permeated Star Trek from the beginning, and especially since Data whistled onto the scene. No longer an android who longs to be human, but the titular starship itself - the hero ship! - who in all the important ways, actually is human. We’re used to thinking of the “ship as a character” - here it becomes literally so.
“Calypso” itself is so rich, packing so many layers and details into its brief but gently unhurried running time, that there’s really too much for me to write about. It would fill the chapter of a book. There’s the Homeric element for a start, with The Odyssey as background to “Calypso”’s foreground. The sheer number of references and thematic connections to The Odyssey are delightful the more you know Homer’s poem; from Craft’s name, to the Cyclops Owl tattoo on his back and his scar from an old hunting injury; the war that’s been going on for ten years; the wife and child he’s left at home; the repeated name-calling of “liar”; the ship as an island in the ocean of space… It’s a beautiful story in its own right, but the Homeric element definitely adds to my own appreciation; it was “Calypso” (and “Darmok”) that led me to read ancient myths in the first place. It’s also in line with the theme of Star Trek: Discovery itself, which is that of self-discovery - primarily Michael Burnham’s. That the starship is on its own journey of self-discovery, and that the show ends with her embarking on the next phase of that journey, bringing her story full circle while raising new questions, is entirely apropos.
(There’s also a wonderful little joke which just could be coincidental, but surely isn’t. Craft arrives in a craft and leaves on another craft, spending the whole episode on a much bigger craft, falling for someone who is herself that craft! Just thinking about it makes me giggle!)
Michael Chabon and Sean Cochran wrote “Calypso” as a stand-alone episode. Apparently the setting was only Discovery because the sets were there; Chabon could easily have set the story somewhere else. The element of contingency here blows my mind. This perfect short story could have been just left to stand, rather mysteriously! At some point in the far future, long after the crew are dead, Discovery’s computer has become a person? It’s a thought that would have haunted me all through the series, as I wondered how on earth it happened.
But the writing team on Discovery were clearly intrigued as well. There was potential here for a Star Trek story that could become part of the tapestry of the series. Considering the huge season-long stories and series-long character arcs, it’s amazing that they were able to squeeze Zora’s development in at all. But in fact every aspect of the character’s growth is drawn from “Calypso”. And one of these is the recurring theme, like momentary glimpses of Zora through the looking glass, of the “sinister AI” trope so common in science fiction. It reappears again and again, in every episode where Zora features prominently, and in each case it’s quickly subverted.
Here in “Calypso”, we start with the distinct impression that whatever, whoever is watching Craft may be malevolent. Craft is certainly scared and suspicious, and Zora isn’t even heard at first; we just watch Craft through her “eyes”. The filming technique here is lifted from 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the all-seeing, all-controlling computer actually is a threat. This use of Kubrick’s masterpiece (itself a nod to Homer!), with its implicit background contradicted by Zora’s story in the foreground, recurs to wonderful effect in Season 4. And it makes Zora a very Star Trek idea. With a few exceptions, Star Trek (and certainly Starfleet) is dominated by the “benign AI” archetype exemplified by Data, who is curious, helpful, moral and on a quest for self-actualisation (although we sometimes get glimpses of that dark mirror world when things temporarily go wrong, as they do with Voyager’s EMH as well).
It also works, given Homer’s precedent. Calypso, the goddess who keeps Odysseus on her island, does so for selfish reasons. (And he’s quite happy to sleep with her every night! - but eventually tires and pines for home). She only relents when Zeus sends Hermes to order his release, whereupon she lets Odysseus build a raft. And in “Calypso” we can feel Zora’s longing to keep Craft with her; her concern that the only shuttle left on the ship might not get him to Alcor IV feels like an excuse - though of course she might also be worried for his safety, which would be totally in line with her nature. But either way, her love and compassion for him, knowing that he cannot truly love her and is desperate to return to his family, leads her to a change of heart. She’d tried to make him feel at home, even creating comforting illusions that inspire him to make her happy in return. But ultimately she lets him go, by her own choice. (Or perhaps not! - the very end of Discovery raises other possibilities.)
It doesn’t take long for the mood to lighten, and we’re quickly reassured. From Zora’s first words, we sense a playful and likeable character. The writers expand on this with charming snapshots of Zora’s life with Craft. Zora is both fun and funny, and we care about her very quickly; by the end, our hearts actually break for her. And yet she claims not to be a real person! As Craft knows, she’s lying; and again, the final few minutes of Discovery will shed a confirming light on that.
This preoccupation with identity - who’s “real”, who these characters really are, who’s lying, is Zora benign or malevolent, is Craft on the “wrong” side if he’s fighting against the Federation, and what’s his “true name” (in The Odyssey he lies that his name is No One) - also underlies the recurring feature of Zora’s favourite film, through which we see the development of her love for Craft. I don’t think the fact that it’s the Astaire/Hepburn musical Funny Face is a coincidence. On first seeing the film on Discovery’s bridge, Craft asks if the Astaire character is Funny Face. Zora laughingly replies that Hepburn’s character is, but no - surely Craft is right! Audrey Hepburn is beautiful! This is a mistake the film itself seems to make, when Astaire’s character sings, “I love your funny face…” It’s a confusion, or at least ambivalence, over identity.
It also makes sense that this is Zora’s favourite film. Hepburn’s character is meant to be unromantic on the surface, working in a stuffy bookshop, but deep down she longs for romance and finally blossoms forth, falling in love with Astaire’s character. There *may* be a problematic aspect to this trope! But Zora too is unsensual on the surface, as she has no body (and no face, either). Her job is to maintain every system on the ship, even though she says she’s been alone for nearly a millennium. But of course she has an inner life - probably a very rich one - and just as Hepburn’s character immerses herself in books, Zora’s been absorbing herself in Earth’s vast cultural database. If Funny Face is her favourite, then perhaps she too longs for love, and when her loneliness is relieved by the presence of an actual physical being it doesn’t take long for her to fall for him.
A word here about Annabelle Wallis’s performance as Zora, especially in “Calypso”. She’s astonishingly moving, and has wonderful chemistry with her co-star Aldis Hodge - amazing, since I imagine their lines were recorded separately! Wallis has to create Zora’s character through her voice alone, and does so with great expressiveness. Even lines such as “it’s a waffle. You pour syrup on it”, are spoken with such gleeful joy that it brings tears to my eyes. (Again, that longing for physicality; she will never be able to experience the taste of a waffle and syrup, though she selflessly delights in Craft’s discovery of it!). Zora exudes a sense of fun, empathy, caring, regret, and a deepening sense of loneliness and love. And she’s more human even than Data used to be, in her easy use of contractions and casual speech. (Near the end of Season 4, she even expresses intuition with the phrase, “something feels off”). It’s a wonderful performance, without which “Calypso” would never have worked. We have to be able to sense this character’s multitude of qualities through her voice alone, in about fifteen minutes of screen time. If we don’t, we won’t care about her, and the story will be lost. Wallis gives us all of it - the most moving portrayal of an AI in screen media I’ve ever heard.
Craft’s words near the end - “you reminded me what it means to be human” - confirms that this is a Star Trek story to the core. Zora calling it a “poignant irony” is another lie, underscoring how human she is and the transformative effect Craft has had on her. But she was human from the start, in all the important ways. She just hadn’t (as far as we know) fallen in love before.
And it’s in Zora and Craft’s farewell that the story’s preoccupation with identity ends with a jokey little flourish. Zora asks Craft, in a voice filled with palpable emotion:
“Craft… on your world, if we… were lovers, would you tell me your name? Your true name.”
And Craft replies:
“If we were lovers, on my world, you would give me my true name.”
“Oh. Well… then I already did.” And as Craft boards the shuttle she’d given him, its doors slide shut behind him, to reveal his true name, Funny Face.
Even as her heart is breaking, Zora retains her teasing sense of fun without denying what Craft means to her!
And so… let’s take ourselves back in time to 2018, when “Calypso” was released. Season 1 of Discovery had recently ended; Season 2 was about to begin. Thanks to this Short Trek, we knew something very special about the USS Discovery that its own crew hadn’t the slightest inkling of. The NCC-1031 was the first Starfleet starship we’d ever seen, in over fifty years of Star Trek, that would become a literal character, a genuine person. And the story might have been left where it was, leaving us wondering forever about how Zora came to be. And the story stands perfectly on its own. But for me it would have been an itch I was longing to scratch.
Thankfully the writers didn’t leave it there. And Zora’s genesis would occur sooner than we thought, only a few episodes into Season 2 - but we wouldn’t realise it at the time.
ZORA’S GENESIS: THE SPHERE, “SUCH SWEET SORROW” AND CONTROL
The sense of perceived threat, always subverted, is a pervasive theme in Zora’s story, which chronologically begins in Episode 4 of Season 2, “An Obol for Charon”. This marvellous episode (its title another Homer reference, as Charon is the ferryman who takes Odysseus to the underworld!) threads together three contrasting stories with themes of threat, death and new life. Tilly’s story is thematically related though a little different, but Saru’s vahar’ai is triggered by the presence of the Sphere, a gigantic lifeform with both organic and artificial components, trying to pass on its 100,000 years of memories to Discovery. All three stories involve trust/distrust, the overwhelming of one organism by another, and the realisation that what appears threatening actually means no harm.
The Sphere, rather than killing Saru as he expected, actually gives him new life. At first Saru, who Michael Burnham says is the most empathic person she knows, is overwhelmed both mentally and physically by the Sphere’s immense presence. It triggers the vahar’ai process, unique to Kelpiens, that causes madness and excruciating pain that ends with their culling by the Ba’ul. Or so Saru thinks. Still desperate to help while he has life left, he and Michael together work out what the Sphere’s intentions are; it’s simply trying to preserve its store of memories before it dies. In doing so, it’s overwhelming the ship’s computer as the crew try to fight it as a virus. This is the breakthrough moment; the crew listens to the Sphere’s attempts to communicate, to teach them its language, and drops the shields to let the data through (Michael: “this falls under Discovery's original mission statement as a science vessel”). The Federation ends up with 100,000 years of galaxy-spanning memories - an absolutely immense treasure. And Saru discovers that vahar’ai does not kill after all; if endured it brings a new stage of life, free of the fear that until now has dominated his every waking moment. Saru is reborn, the same person but different, and free in a way he could never be before. This knowledge will soon be transformative for his whole species, and for the Ba’ul who harvest them as well.
The Sphere too wanted to survive in some form, as the Sphere Data later does in “Such Sweet Sorrow” and Zora does in “…But to Connect” (where she has become attached to her bodily form as the ship). Pushing the ship clear of its detonation is an act of survival; the ship holds its memories. But memory has what Data would call an “ineffable quality”; we are made of our memories, so the combination of Sphere Data and Discovery essentially creates a new life form which gradually develops sentience. (The ship’s computer has its own “memories”, of course - memory is another theme of Season 2 and the series as a whole.)
Whether the Sphere did all this through instinct or a more complex, choice-driven cognition, is uncertain. But it is completely benign in intention. It explored the galaxy for a thousand centuries, apparently harming nothing. The ship’s computer’s programming is also benign; it exists primarily to support its crew. The merging of these two systems creates another new life - as far as we know, a completely unique lifeform. Which will one day become a person.
Again, the dark mirror to Zora’s emergence is present in Season 2, in the form of Control. Section 31’s AI is developing a sentience of its own, and seeks to gain the Sphere Data through which (we later learn) it will destroy all organic life in the galaxy. This is a very common trope that interests me less because, like the Mirror Universe, it’s fundamentally dystopian! But also like the MU, it throws Star Trek’s utopia into relief. So it feels kind of appropriate that Control’s story is tied closely to the origin of Zora, its complete antithesis. In “Such Sweet Sorrow”, the two-part finale of Season 2, the united crews of Discovery and Enterprise realise that the only way to stop Control is to destroy Discovery, and with it the Sphere’s memories. That the Sphere Data has other ideas, and prevents its own auto-destruct out of a will to survive, is the hinge on which the whole show’s leap into the 32nd Century turns!
The ship’s desire to survive feels, once again, threatening at first. We’re not entirely sure what it means for Discovery’s crew as they follow Michael Burnham far, far into an unknown future where all may be lost. As we know, they succeeded, though the future still needs some fixing when they arrive! But it’s this moment that marks the first glimpse of what will one day be Zora, a person they presently have no inkling of but who we have met “before”.
For me, the fact that we can only recognise Zora’s origin and emergence in hindsight makes these episodes all the more moving. And Zora celebrates that she’s a unique and special life form. In “Stormy Weather”, she tells Gray that the name she chose for herself is common to several languages on Earth, Ni’Var and Ba’ku. In all of these cultures, it means “new day”.
EMERGENCE: “FORGET ME NOT”…
I vividly remember my excited delight on hearing Zora’s voice in the Season 3 episode “Forget Me Not”. It was so completely out of the blue that I almost shrieked with delight! And yet, while surprising, it isn’t coincidental that Zora briefly emerges for the first time in that moment, with aspects of her personality already present. For Saru has just asked the computer for suggestions on how to help heal his crew.
“Forget Me Not” is a story about reconnection, perhaps the most pervasive theme of Star Trek: Discovery. Adira Tal, a new, human non-binary character who has merged with a Trill symbiont (the theme of “merging” again!), has lost access to some of their memories, including all those of Tal’s previous hosts. To help them connect with Tal (memories again!), Discovery takes them to the symbiont pools on Trill, only seen once before 800 years earlier, in the beautiful Deep Space Nine episode “Equilibrium”. Inside the pools, Adira faces the traumatic memory of the death of their boyfriend Gray, who was Tal’s previous host. It was that trauma, as well as perhaps some initial incompatibility between human and Trill biology, that had dissociated Adira from their memories. Once that memory is regained, faced and accepted as a past reality, Adira is reconnected with Gray and welcomed by all the previous hosts and their memories spanning many centuries. It’s a deeply moving, beautiful scene, and it’s easy to see the story’s thematic links to “An Obol for Charon”, as well as the DS9 episode.
In the “B” story, Discovery’s crew have likewise suffered an unprecedented trauma. Having willingly accompanied Michael Burnham into the far future to protect the Sphere Data from Control, their connections to the past have been severed almost in an instant. Everything and everyone they had known and loved is gone, including perhaps the Federation itself, and some of them have symptoms of PTSD. Acting captain Saru is well aware of this, and perplexed as to what to do. It’s only when he pleads with the computer, “help heal my crew”, that Zora emerges - a voice he’s never heard before but that we recognise immediately.
Almost everything about her is already here - her intelligence, insight and humour. Later, in Season 4, she will say that she assigned herself the purpose of caring for the crew; here she suggests to Saru that he makes the crew feel appreciated, such as giving them a night off and inviting them to a meal. The meal itself doesn’t seem to go well, but it does help the crew to let off steam in a social situation. They abruptly disperse before even eating and Saru feels disheartened, but this brief connection ultimately seems to help, and Detmer for one admits to Dr Culber that she’s struggling. As with Adira, facing the fact that they’ve been traumatised and disconnected is the first step towards healing.
The episode ends, wonderfully, with Saru acting on another of Zora’s suggestions. The crew gather in the shuttle bay to watch an old (by this time *very* old) Buster Keaton movie - Zora delightedly, and accurately, refers to him as “The Great Stone Face”. The crew laugh hilariously together; Detmer and Stamets touchingly embrace, and even Georgiou good-humouredly accepts popcorn from Linus. Everyone feels connected to each other - all they have from the pasts they’ve left behind - and Saru has a theory that the Sphere Data, having once been saved by the crew, now wants to help the crew in return. He’s right, and this marks our own realisation that the Sphere was the origin of Zora.
Two things are especially touching about this ending. One is that Zora’s interest in cultural artifacts from Earth’s past is already present. Here she suggests an old movie; one day, alone and disconnected, she will pass time enjoying them herself. The other thing is that it’s a work of art from the past that helps the crew to reconnect with their own past, and with each other. Thanks to the fusion of the Sphere Data with Discovery’s computer, the crew have begun to bridge the gap of centuries, just as Adira did when they reconnected with Tal.
Movingly, I think that this may also be a kind of metaphor for Star Trek, which is itself a cultural artifact that connects people - including many who are lonely and isolated. (I speak from personal experience). It certainly wouldn’t be the first or last time that an episode seems to be conscious of this, often with a sense of humour but also with compassionate respect. The writers and actors are fully aware of how deeply they’ve impacted countless lives!
…AND “THERE IS A TIDE…”
True to form, each time Zora appears in the story of Discovery - at least until after “…But to Connect” - she’s met with uncertainty if not suspicion. Saru’s reaction in “Forget Me Not” is one of mild (if hilarious) consternation. But Saru has grown in experience and wisdom since “An Obol for Charon”, and he quickly trusts She-who-will-one-day-be-Zora. The Sphere Data, which is what he theorises Zora’s voice to be, has indeed helped to heal his crew.
By the end of Season 3, Discovery has found what remains of the Federation, and it too has begun to reconnect and heal from the cataclysm that scattered it a hundred years before. The cause of that catastrophe (a wonderfully left field and unexpected one, deeply Star Trek in feel) is also discovered during the three-part finale, and that accelerates the process. But as Hugh said, it’s never easy, and there are other powers that threaten the rebuilding of utopia. In “There is a Tide…”, Osyraa’s forces are now in charge of Discovery, and Acting Captain Tilly and the bridge crew have to break out of their captivity and take back the ship. It’s at this moment that Zora makes another unexpected entrance, having hidden herself (a significant part of herself, at least) in three DOT-23s in a covert - one might even say Craft-y! - operation to help the crew of Discovery.
The officers are immediately uncertain and defensive, pointing their phasers at the three hovering robots. But reassuringly, one of the machines projects a scene from the Buster Keaton film. And realisation dawns on Tilly’s face as she gasps softly:
“You’re the Sphere Data, aren’t you?”
And Zora’s inimitable voice, distorted slightly by her mechanised bodies: “Indeed we are. Hello. Greetings.”
“You’re here to help us?”
“I’m at your service, Captain. Shall we take back the ship?” And with an uplifting little orchestral fanfare, the penultimate episode ends.
I love this scene because it’s one of many examples where Zora shows agency and wit. Because of “Calypso”, she can seem a slightly sad and passive character, but at heart she is so much more than that. In “That Hope is You, Part 2”, which closes the season’s arc, the last remaining DOT-23 is actually willing to sacrifice itself to save the ship and crew, at the cost of the Sphere Data’s fast growing sentience and (possibly?) 100,000 years of memories. As always in our own, real world, this is a staggering thing for a unique, irreplaceable intelligence to do. The machine is revived thanks to Owo and Reno, but the fact that Zora does this willingly, without even being asked, shows that she has already given herself the parameters she describes later in “…But to Connect”.
They’ve barely even begun to realise her existence and true nature, but already, caring for the crew is Zora’s primary mission.
EMOTION, RELATIONSHIPS AND TRUST: “THE EXAMPLES” AND “STORMY WEATHER”
In the unfortunate absence of a Season 6, the fourth season is the one which allows Zora the most room for expression. In just two and a bit episodes, she undergoes significant development, and “comes out” about her sentience. By Episode 5, “The Examples”, she’s developed a kind of relationship with Michael Burnham, and chosen her name some weeks earlier. And again, being open about her capacity to feel emotion raises trust issues; the dark shadow of a sinister AI looming behind Zora’s gentle concern. Michael responds to their conversation in the turbolift with a kind of wary puzzlement. And Zora must have brooded on this a little afterwards, as she says in the following episode that she senses the captain doesn’t quite trust her.
It’s a moving part of the conclusion to a moving episode. As Michael feelingly says to Zora, “it’s been a tough day”. And Zora responds with empathy and concern, as we - but not Michael - would expect. But she does so by taking the enormous risk of revealing her own capacity for feeling; we can’t truly empathise with others if we don’t have emotions ourselves. For some of the other characters, their doubts about Zora aren’t resolved until “…But to Connect”; not surprisingly, given their experiences with Control. But for Michael and Gray in particular, it happens more quickly, resolving this aspect of Zora’s identity and trustworthiness just as Craft’s relationship with her did in “Calypso”.
It’s in “Stormy Weather” that Zora develops her first significant relationship - at least, it’s the first one we see. Discovery is inside a subspace rift, and director Jonathan Frakes and the VFX team create a wonderful sense of total darkness and aloneness, with even the huge starship seen as tiny and insignificant. Zora is scared and struggles to focus, overwhelmed with data that she’d normally process efficiently. It’s a kind of sensory overload; just like us, she feels with her body, and her body is the ship itself. So it’s appropriate that the Trill character Gray, who is himself in a new synthetic body (and is a transgender character played by a trans actor, just as joined Trill can themselves be seen as an allegory for trans experiences), is the one who helps Zora with these new and difficult sensations. As they play a board game in Red’s bar, the distraction helps Zora to focus, and she detects micro-variances on the external sensors which can help to lead them out of the rift. Gray transports instantly to the bridge, where Zora greets the captain and bridge crew with a kind of holographic image to represent herself. It’s very moving. Bryce says with wonder, “that’s Zora?”, to which Zora replies in her friendly tone, “it is. Hello.” And she presents her solution to the fix they’re all in.
A few minutes later, the crew have all dispersed into the transporter buffer for safety, leaving only Michael and Zora to take Discovery out of the subspace rift. Zora is still frightened, so just like Gray, Michael helps her to focus, while Zora helps Michael endure her physical pain by singing her a song - the one that gives the episode its title. Old movies, old songs; it’s another pick from Discovery’s immense cultural database.
This scene is another subversion of 2001: A Space Odyssey, referencing a specific scene so closely, from the trust issue, the spaceship’s name, and its pivotal encounter between a lone, spacesuited human and a sentient, singing AI, that it can’t possibly be accidental. At first I wasn’t sure if I liked the way the old standard was sung, as it didn’t immediately sound like Zora. But it is period-specific, and it is sung by Annabelle Wallis, so I’ve come to find it emotionally moving in context. And just before the song, Michael reassures Zora that she does indeed trust her.
But not everyone does - yet!
TRUST AGAIN, AND ZORA AS A QUEER CHARACTER: “…BUT TO CONNECT”
In the previous section, I used the phrase “coming out” intentionally, to describe Zora’s admission about her capacity for emotion. I’m aware that I may not have any personal authority to write about queer issues, but I do think that in some way Zora can perhaps be read as a kind of queer character. I think it’s why Gray was so quick to reach out and empathise with Zora in “Stormy Weather”, and this is taken further in the following episode, where Adira and Gray are the ones who forcefully advocate for Zora as she is, in effect, placed on trial over whether she can be trusted or not. It’s one of Star Trek’s takes on its own much earlier classic, “The Measure of a Man”, and one which (very originally) juxtaposes the story with a more galactically scaled one exploring the same themes. The whole episode is people talking to each other, but it's absolutely pivotal and never boring for a second. All through Season 4, and arguably Discovery as a whole, trust and regaining trust are a major theme, just as connection and reconnection are. And the show was also groundbreaking for Star Trek in its inclusivity. I think it's probably more feminist, more inclusive of black characters, and more aware of LGBTQIA issues, than Star Trek had ever been before.
Zora is explicitly analogous to Adira and Gray. When asked when she developed the capacity for emotion, she replies, “I'm not sure, Doctor. I believe it was inevitable once Discovery merged with the Sphere Data. But the introduction of present-day technology into my systems must have accelerated the process.” Like Adira, she’s the product of a merging of two systems, and also like Adira, she is uncertain and has questions about this. Kovich: “You're aware that there's a proscription against sentient AI being fully integrated into Starfleet systems?” Zora: “I am, but given the unusual way in which my sentience developed, I don't know what that means for me.”
Here there’s an analogy with Gray, who has transitioned twice - first into a physical expression of his true gender, and later into a synthetic body. But there’s a difference; when the possibility is raised of Zora choosing her “new” form, she expresses a desire not to, while at the same time movingly expressing empathy for the crew and an admission of her capacity for fear and attachment. “I'd never bring harm to any of you. I understand why you'd fear my potential to do so. I do recall your experiences with Control. And recently, I felt fear myself in the subspace rift. I feel that again now when I consider the possibility of leaving this ship; it is my form. I am as attached to it as you are to yours.”
This is amazing. Zora’s body, as we realised in the previous episode, is the ship itself. What does this mean exactly? We can’t really imagine what her bodily experience is like. But she presumably “feels” with her sensors, both her internal systems and those on the ship’s hull, which explains her fear, discomfort and emotional overwhelm inside the subspace rift. And the ship is so much a part of her that she can’t imagine existing in any other form, nor does she want to. I’m not sure if this is deliberately analogous to the pain that transgender people experience when their true gender is dismissed or unrecognised by others, but to me it certainly feels that way.
And at this point we realise just how far Zora is willing to go to allay her interlocutors’ fears, how much she’s willing to sacrifice. And indeed how sure she is of her own nature. “And so, I offer a compromise. I have created a failsafe. Should I exhibit any threatening behavior, this device will immediately expunge my sentience. I hope this will ease your concerns and persuade Dr. Kovich to let me remain.” Stamets: “Zora, do you mean to say this failsafe would...” “Terminate me? Yes.”
This is the climax of the whole question of trust. Unlike Control, which sought unlimited power and… well, control, Zora is willing to surrender control in advance if she should ever be a threat to the crew. She’s caring for the crew to the point of self sacrifice. Kovich points out that this willingness to end her life runs counter to her core programming, but Zora replies that her primary function is “to care for the crew of Discovery.” “That's not the core programming of a ship's computer. Who gave you those parameters?” “I did.”
Zora is expressing agency here: the ability and willingness to decide her own purpose in life. Like all of us, she cannot explain her own consciousness; she just knows that it’s there; she knows what’s important to her and what she wants to do. So the crew search for an answer as to whether her operating system has evolved, and discover an area which appears to be new. “It seems to have appeared spontaneously”, she says. “It is part of me, but I didn't intentionally create it.” And Zora gives Adira permission to perform a complete diagnostic on that area. What they discover is extremely moving.
We see a visual, holographic representation of a selection of Zora’s memories - very specific ones. We see Discovery making the time jump to the future, and also its encounter with the Sphere, in a certain sense Zora’s conception. We see snapshots of her experiences with the crew, the shuttlecraft taking Adira to Trill, Tilly hugging Burnham as they are reunited. Since Zora was unaware of this part of her, the images are not cherry-picked; they’re spontaneous emergences of what Adira believes to be her subconscious. Zora is the first AI in Star Trek (as Kovich notes) who can dream without being programmed to do so. “She's filtering the Sphere’s memories and her own experiences through her new emotional understanding…. These images are a window into what she values and prioritises.”
And what she prioritises is her care for and relationships with the crew. As Culber says, with an understated sense of wonder, “Connection. Love. This is who she is.”
It’s the answer to the question of Zora’s identity that’s preoccupied the writers from “Calypso” onwards! We knew it already, but Hugh finally says it explicitly.
As Zora suggests, “perhaps "artificial intelligence" fails to fully define me.” “How would you define yourself?”, her questioners ask (again the queer analogy; they are inviting her to speak up for her own identity as a person). And Zora replies, “I am the sum of the Sphere’s life and the entirety of Discovery's systems, logs, missions and history. I am also more than the sum of those parts.” “Like an entirely new life-form.” “Yes. And this is where I belong. This crew is my family.”
This is why Zora hid the coordinates to the source of the DMA. The crew were so much a part of her that they permeated her inner life; even her dreams were about them. Which meant, given the power of Species Ten-C, that she couldn’t risk them coming to harm. Zora has 100,000 years of memories, but because her relationships coincided with the development of her sentience, what’s most important to her are her memories of Discovery’s crew. They’re an essential and treasured part of her inner life.
In a way, we’ve already seen a visual representation of this. “Stormy Weather” began with Michael Burnham creating a holographic “family tree”, based on the Akaali tradition shown at the end of “The Examples”. The faces on the tree represent not only her biological and adopted families, but other people she’s become close to - friends and crew members. At the end of the episode she shows the finished tree to Zora, with whom she’s just shared the experience of escaping the subspace rift, and this conversation follows:
ZORA: “Past, present and future as one. It’s a powerful image of hope and connection. A fitting way to end this day.”
MICHAEL: “Yeah. Yeah, I think so, too.”
ZORA: “I’ve witnessed many examples of such connectedness, but I’ve never before experienced it myself.”
MICHAEL: “I’m glad you did today.”
ZORA: “I’d like to create a tree of my own, if you don’t mind.”
MICHAEL: “Of course”.
And within seconds, Zora’s tree grows up from the table, filled with the faces of the people she’s come to care about: Tilly, Gray, Adira, Bryce, Stamets, Culber, Pollard, Rhys, Owo, Detmer, Saru, Michael.. all of them. It reaches above Michael’s head.
MICHAEL: “It’s beautiful.”
ZORA: “I hope the crew would agree.”
MICHAEL: “I think they will. This is different, but it’s good. It’s special. I’m so glad you’re with us, Zora.”
ZORA: “As am I, Captain.”
The scene was a beautiful expression of the journey of trust Michael and Zora have travelled in just one episode, as well as Discovery’s theme of connectedness that Zora exemplifies simply by being the ship, the system that connects all the characters who live and work there. And by the end of “…But to Connect”, Zora’s interlocutors trust her too, although Stamets at least needs just a bit more convincing when he says, “I'd like to trust you, Zora, just like I trust the rest of the crew. I want to get there, but it's really hard. I'm trying to understand you. Trust is a choice, and I can make that choice if it goes both ways. And that means you need to trust us, too, Zora. We need those coordinates.”
After taking a moment to consider, Zora says, “I've reflected on what you've said, Commander. As trust is both an emotional and logical act, I began with a behavioural performance assessment. Data shows your actions and the crew's to be consistently taken with care for others and the Federation. I hadn't considered that earlier. Even if some fear remains, this new realisation is... quite calming. And your request for reciprocity understandable. Thank you, Commander, for reaching toward me.”
And the coordinates to the DMA’s source immediately appear on screen!
The editing in this scene is magnificent, as it cuts back and forth between Zora’s personal questioning and the matters of galactic import at Federation HQ. At the climax, Michael Burnham is asking the delegates of dozens of worlds to trust each other and to respond thoughtfully to the crisis instead of lashing out in fear - just as Stamets and Zora are trying to find their own common ground in search of a resolution. For Stamets, there’s just one more hurdle to overcome:
“I know you mean well. And I-I know you-you value and respect Starfleet. And us. But you could still prioritise your feelings over our needs and our captain's orders. Everyone on this ship is in a chain of command. That's the agreement we make to work together and keep each other safe. And you're not part of that.”
“I would very much like to be.”
Stamets’ recommendation is that Zora officially join Starfleet, as a specialist. It’s remarkable that until now, Zora hasn’t been an actual Starfleet member; how could she be - she’s a spaceship! By offering her a commission of sorts (and subject to higher approval), Stamets is asking that Zora work within a chain of command and accept the same rules as any crew member. She could thereby be trusted like any crew member, just as she would trust that while there will sometimes be risks, they will all take care for each other’s safety as well as hers. She would also be swearing an oath, a very “human” thing to do! Starfleet would be officially recognising both her identity and personhood.
Zora’s eager willingness to agree to this is very touching. “I would like that very much”, she says. And when asked if she could dispose of her self-created failsafe device, she responds with a marvellous expression of her gently teasing sense of humour, which we saw all that time ago with Craft. “It wouldn't be much of a fail-safe if I could dismantle it myself, Mr. Saru.” So Stamets does the honours!
This acceptance of Zora into Starfleet feels to me like one of the most Star Trek things ever. It’s a perfect expression of Starfleet’s acceptance of Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations; for the first time ever, it has recognised and welcomed a starship - a starship! - as a living, sentient person. It’s episodes like this which leave me wondering how anyone can perceive Star Trek: Discovery as a dark series lacking in hope. Season 1 begins in darkness, that’s for sure, but the trajectory is always utopian, especially following the show’s soft reboot at the start of Season 3. The series for me has a kind of wide-eyed, idealistic hopefulness that is notable even for Star Trek, and definitely more so than Deep Space Nine or Picard, for example.
It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that even before Stamets’ proposal Kovich has already made up his mind. “My evaluation is now complete. It's my official determination that Zora is, indeed, a new life-form.”
And Zora’s response to this resolution of the trust issue as well as her identity being recognised and accepted, contains more than a note of joy. “It feels marvellous”, she says.
“What does?”, asks Kovich.
“Being seen.”
THE END IS THE BEGINNING: “THAT” CODA, AND WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN
After the moving heights of her episodes in Season 4, Zora doesn’t feature much in Season 5. And while I loved the season anyway, I did miss Zora. She had a brief but touching scene in “Face the Strange”, where Burnham and Rayner find themselves on Discovery in an alternate future where the Federation has been destroyed, and in a haunting recollection of “Calypso”, the ship has been deserted for years. Zora, alone for a long time, is so surprised to see Burnham and Rayner that she questions if it’s “another dream”. Reassured that they’re real, she gives them vital information that enables them to prevent this disastrous future from happening. But it does raise the possibility that the events of “Calypso” are themselves one of Zora’s dreams, whether she’s actually been alone for a millennium or for just a couple of decades. It would explain the discontinuities between the series and the Short Trek, such as Discovery’s 23rd Century configuration and the mix up over how long Zora’s been alone for - these being just the kind of incongruities that show up in human dreams! I might have settled for that explanation, even if I might ideally want something more imaginative to connect the series with “Calypso”.
Apart from this scene, Zora’s occasional presence in Season 5 lacks the emphasis on personal relationships that was so moving in Season 4. But now that we know the writers had big plans for the character in Season 6, it feels less painful somehow. Zora wasn’t forgotten about; she was still important to Star Trek: Discovery. There just wasn’t a big role for her in the Progenitors story of Season 5 - which was also a much shorter season than previous ones.
The sudden cancellation of the show, which came as a complete surprise to everyone involved (the actors apparently expected a full seven seasons), created a very difficult problem for Zora’s story. The intention had been that in Season 6 another serialised story would have led ultimately to a connection with “Calypso”. What this could possibly have involved makes my mouth water - a mind-bending timey wimey narrative to rival Season 2 of Star Trek: Prodigy? Alas, this was no longer possible. Which left Zora’s story without an ending. And unlike some of the other characters, that lack of a resolution was always going to be unsatisfying, because Zora’s very particular, Star Trekky development was unfinished, and we had a whopping great big question from six years earlier, before we even met her in the series!
The green lighting of extra time and money to film an epilogue to the show was a lifeline, but how could Zora’s story be resolved at such very short notice and a very brief screen time? Judging by interviews I’ve read with them, Michelle Paradise and Alex Kurtzman seem to have felt the same way I do: that Zora simply couldn’t be left out of this epilogue. After committing to her story and presence in the show, following through was non-negotiable. And to me it feels very significant that along with the beautiful scenes between Michael Burnham, Book and their adult son, the only character we actually see in this future - set a few decades later - is Zora. And it’s funny because right up until the end I was thinking, “but Zora? Where’s Zora?” And then Michael Burnham walked softly onto that darkened bridge just like Craft did (will do!) and I whispered, “oh, YES!!!”
This brief coda, only a few minutes long, did not please everyone. How could it? This was not the ending the writers had planned, either for Zora’s arc or the series as a whole. But I think the solution was about as elegant and satisfying as it could be, especially given the time and production limitations. And that was to turn it into a kind of open question, like the end of the Progenitors story itself.
How do you end a movie like 2001: A Space Odyssey, which begins four million years ago, leaps into humanity’s early exploration of the solar system, and finally into an experience so unimaginable that it could only be expressed with unearthly visuals and Gyorgy Ligeti’s music? How can you possibly follow that in any way that makes sense, yet isn’t an anticlimax? Kubrick’s solution was to present us with something so utterly enigmatic that it only slightly touches rational comprehension. An ending which is virtually all subtext, there being no text of any kind. The very final shot of the film is overwhelming and a total surprise, one which no one who saw it for the first time could possibly forget. It doesn’t “explain” what we’ve seen; it poses a question, in a stunning and poetic form.
Discovery’s epilogue does not, of course, scale those dizzying heights. But it’s similar in a way. Having run out of time to finish telling Zora’s story (through no fault of her own), Michelle Paradise ended the show with a question mark. It doesn’t explain what leads to Zora’s future encounter with Craft - how could it? Instead it gives us the barest hints, and invites us to wonder. And instead of the tedious info dump of a story that there wasn’t enough time for anyway, the series ends with a brief, moving reunion, where Michael and Zora reflect on their times and accomplishments together. I’ll include the full transcript of the scene here, since very little is actually said. And yet so much!
ZORA: “Welcome back, Admiral Burnham. It’s been a while.”
MICHAEL: “It’s been too long, Zora.” She chuckles softly. “Wow! So happy to hear your voice.”
ZORA: “I’m happy to hear yours, too. If you don’t mind my asking, what exactly is our mission?”
MICHAEL: “I’m gonna bring you to a set of coordinates in deep space. Then me and your crew will leave. After that, you wait.”
ZORA: “For what?”
MICHAEL: “This is a Red Directive. We both know how transparent those are. I did hear a word in passing. “Craft.” I’m not sure if that’s a person or a vessel or…”
ZORA: “Well, I’ll find out eventually.”
MICHAEL: “Mm-hmm. Really gonna miss you, Zora.”
ZORA: “I won’t see you again after this, will I?”
MICHAEL: “I’m guessing your wait will be longer than my lifetime.”
ZORA: “I’m not sure how to feel about that.”
MICHAEL: “Everything ends someday. But there will be a new beginning when you come back. You can find our descendants. Meet the next generation of your family.”
ZORA: “I would love that.”
MICHAEL: (she chuckles again) “It has been a hell of a journey.”
ZORA: “Indeed it has. The Federation has so many wonderful possibilities ahead because of you and your crew.”
MICHAEL: “Because of all of us.”
ZORA: “I’m told we’re nearly ready for departure. Perhaps you’d like to sit.”
MICHAEL: (she sighs, and chuckles softly, sitting in the captain’s chair one last time) “Feels like home.”
With a warm, golden colour palette, we see Tilly, Saru, Stamets, Bryce, even Owo and Detmer, laughing and smiling and crying as they embrace Michael and each other. Seeing rather than hearing about Michael and Zora’s feelings for the crew is again a wonderful way of conveying something important in just a few moments. It’s the theme of connection and found family, one last time.
Finally…
MICHAEL: “So many memories.”
ZORA: “For us both.”
MICHAEL: “All right. Are you ready, Zora?”
ZORA: “I am.”
MICHAEL: “Last time, then. Let’s fly.”
So what new do we learn about “Calypso” in the final moments of Discovery? Surprisingly, not nothing, though they mostly remain possibilities rather than “facts”. For a start, we learn that Craft’s arrival was not a surprise; Zora was expecting him all along, though she had no idea what to expect. This raises one of many interesting questions: did Zora fail in her mission when she gave him a shuttle to return home, or did she succeed? We can’t know. And why Craft is important, beyond being Zora’s first love, is a mystery. We also don’t know what Zora knew about her mission. Perhaps, once she had met Craft, she could return home, but we don’t know what she would have learned from him, beyond what it’s like to love someone. Maybe Craft’s encounter would lead him to somehow end his faction’s war against the Federation? He did tell her, “You reminded me what it is to be human.” And Zora would one day see her “descendants” - the Starfleet ships of the future. I hope the mission was worth it, both for the Federation and for Zora personally!
One thing seems certain: Zora’s mission is going to be one of discovery. We can only speculate about what it means on the wider galactic scale, but even if it’s just about her own nature then she’s living up to the show’s name in terms of self-discovery, which has always been central to the series. And while Discovery is primarily about Michael Burnham’s journey, in a sense it’s about the ship as well, especially since it became a conscious being. So it makes perfect sense for Discovery to end with questions about the USS Discovery herself.
Her final scene with Michael on the bridge is beautiful, a bit like a similar scene in “The Last Generation”, where we movingly hear Majel Barrett’s voice as the Enterprise computer again. But for me this goes beyond nostalgia, and is even more touching because (in universe) Zora is an actual person. I found it so moving that this was how it ended, with just her and Michael together. I wonder what they went on to talk about? If there’s one thing here that I wish there’d been a little more of, it’s an exploration of Zora’s feelings about her mission. Since “Stormy Weather”, she’s always been open about expressing her emotions with the crew she loves and trusts. As she tells Michael here (who is nothing if not compassionate to her crew), “I’m not sure how to feel about that.” Zora is being left on a solitary mission for a long time, and she’ll probably never see her found family again - or anyone, except for Craft. I hope that there’s a conversation ahead between Zora and Michael that were not privy to, one in which she’s able to explore and express her feelings. What we do get is her total and selfless acceptance of the mission, as well as her touchingly generous words about Michael and the crew. Both of these are totally in line with Zora’s character. But Michael herself seems curiously casual, almost blasé about what Zora’s being expected to do. It’s the only aspect of this coda that gives me a little discomfort - although it’s always possible that Zora had previously been made aware that it was a long, solitary mission, and given the choice to accept it - which of course she would!
But if, like a few people I follow on social media, you think that giving Zora this mission was cruel on the part of Starfleet, then I invite you to trust Michelle Paradise and think of some of the myriad of other things it might be.
Discovery’s refit as a 23rd Century ship brings the series full circle (as both Zora & Michael recall their many memories), almost as if the show is looking back on its own history. In various ways, Season 5 as a whole does this too. It’s also crucial, because Craft will think it’s a 23rd Century ship, and believe Zora’s claim that she’s been alone for a thousand years. But it may have been more like decades. Craft always did call her a liar (as with Odysseus, it takes one to know one!), and I think Zora’s quite capable of lying about all kinds of things in the service of her mission. Including how long she was on her own for.
It also connects “Calypso” to Homer’s story in another way. I believe that Zora would have let Craft go anyway; it’s in her nature. But if letting him go was part of the mission, then she was also following her orders from Starfleet - just as Calypso herself had to obey the higher authority of Zeus. So she may have been lying, but it’s also possible that she did indeed “have no choice.”
The rest is an open question, and not even an entirely comfortable one. Zora’s venture into deep space alone (after she’s said goodbye to Michael) is a slightly painful image of disconnection to conclude a series which has always emphasised connection and reconnection. I find comfort in the thought that we don’t know how long Zora’s solitude will last for, whether she’ll have contact with Starfleet and her friends during that time, or even how Zora experiences time. (This is appropriate, because what very little Michael knows about Craft presumably comes from Kovich, one of the most inscrutable human characters in Star Trek and otherwise known as Agent Daniels!). The being that led to her emergence had lived for a thousand centuries. A mere thousand years may not feel anything like as long to her as it would to us. We do know that she’ll return someday, to reconnect at last. But for the rest, we’re left to wonder and speculate. Not everything has to be spelled out. This is beautiful, because it enlarges the Star Trek universe. As in our real universe, we don’t know it all, and some things we can only wonder about.
Hugh said it earlier on; there’s always more to know, and some of it we may never know. Learning to be okay with that is part of life, right up until the moment it ends. The end of life, like the end of Star Trek: Discovery, is an open question. (And there’s a real beauty in that, which in my own life is a private mission - to learn to come to terms with the uncertainty). In that sense, the final few minutes of the series reflect the arc of Season 5 as a whole, which ends first on a whopping universe-sized question mark (what in all the time-jumping wormholes of the galaxy could have created the technology the Progenitors found?), and then on a “small”, character-centred one.
Zora is a product of connection (Discovery’s pervasive theme) between an immense life form and a Starfleet supercomputer. And this is reflected in her choice of name; Ni’Var and Ba’ku, after all, are both reconnected cultures. Yet Zora’s fate seems to be disconnection - from her crew and from Craft. This gives a somewhat melancholy tone to her story, perhaps enhanced by its open-ended quality, its lack of a resolution. In a way, I think this is a consequence of Chabon and Cochran’s original story; “Calypso” is a Star Trek story, but its ending is wistful and bittersweet. If we take “Calypso” as the end of Zora’s story, then it was always a melancholy one. But the end of Discovery raises so many possibilities that we can’t be certain of that.
Would there have been a resolution, ultimately, had the writers been able to finish telling the story of Discovery? How long might Zora live for, anyway? There’s no reason why she might not outlive many successive crews, with the ship being refitted over and over again with developing technologies. This reminds me of Data’s words to Geordi in “Time’s Arrow”, he had expected to outlive his friends, but then to make new ones and outlive them as well. Is that a melancholy fate? We’d have to ask him - or indeed Zora!
Maybe one day, Zora’s story will be complete. For now, it’s that open question again. For me, the questions and possibilities (as well as tantalisingly partial answers) are what this ending adds to the story of “Calypso”. I can’t see that Short Trek in quite the same way again. And maybe, like in “Life, Itself”, mystery too is a part of the story.
Either way, Zora’s adventure may be just beginning.
