Star Trek: What Happens When a Pulitzer Prize Winner Writes an Episode

Full spoilers follow for this episode.

The second of the Short Treks, “Calypso,” is not only a huge improvement over the first installment, which debuted last month, but also a high watermark for CBS All Access’ Star Trek output in general, which began with the debut of Discovery last year. And it makes its stylish and poetic impact with a story about just two characters, trapped together on a lost ship, neither of whom we’ve ever met before (and quite possibly won’t ever meet again).

Watch the trailer for “Calypso” above.

Scripted by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon, from a story by Chabon and Discovery writer Sean Cochran, “Calypso” is on its face a fairly simple story, a 16-minute rethinking of the titular tale from Homer’s The Odyssey, and yet Chabon elevates the material to an almost sublime degree, offering up a lonely hero and a perhaps even lonelier nymph… who happens to be a computer.

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