Zora's already demonstrated the capacity to disobey an order if she wants to.
So we don't know if Zora's being "tortured" from her perspective, and we have pretty solid evidence that she could just leave if she wants to.
At this point, you're just describing a Starfleet officer.
Whoops, fixed a typo in my comment.
What I'm trying to say is, I don't think it can be called cruelty if Zora, in her capacity as an artificial intelligence, doesn't mind. It may not be accurate to assume she will react in the way a human would.
Nope - after they were cancelled, they were allowed to go back and film some additional scenes to add to the end of the finale to give it some closure.
I think that makes certain assumptions about how Zora engages with the world, which may or may not be correct. I'd really like to rewatch "Calypso" as it's been ages, but Paramount+ seems to have...misplaced the Short Treks in my country.
But it took how many months of retooling to give us the last season?
Less than one, as far as I'm aware. They got permission to write and film an additional three days' worth of footage, which became the epilogue to the episode. Everything else is exactly as they orginally shot it, from what they've said.
It would have been interesting to see Walking Dead L'ak, but it was also kind of nice to see Moll accept the situation and start to trust Burnham.
I think that's a good thing - not just for the reasons Kurtzman highlighted, but because Starfleet being in a "rebuild" phase gives them a nice excuse to put cadets to work.
I also just enjoy the 32nd century setting, so I'm glad to stick with it a while longer.
I really like his answer to a question about Academy's setting:
So you’re setting this —
In the “Discovery” era. There’s a specific reason for that. As the father of a 17-year-old boy, I see what my son is feeling as he looks at the world and to his future. I see the uncertainty; I see all the things we took for granted as given are not certainties for him. I see him recognizing he’s inheriting an enormous mess to clean up and it’s going to be on his generation to figure out how to do that, and that’s a lot to ask of a kid. My thinking was, if we set “Starfleet Academy” in the halcyon days of the Federation where everything was fine, it’s not going to speak to what kids are going through right now.
It’ll be a nice fantasy, but it’s not really going to be authentic. What’ll be authentic is to set it in the timeline where this is the first class back after over 100 years, and they are coming into a world that is only beginning to recover from a cataclysm — which was the Burn, as established on “Star Trek: Discovery,” where the Federation was greatly diminished. So they’re the first who’ll inherit, who’ll re-inherit, the task of exploration as a primary goal, because there just wasn’t room for that during the Burn — everybody was playing defense. It’s an incredibly optimistic show, an incredibly fun show; it’s a very funny show, and it’s a very emotional show. I think these kids, in different ways, are going to represent what a lot of kids are feeling now.
Oh wow, I'm glad you were able to attend - how was the crowd?
I guess we will never find out where it actually came from
This was something that caught me off-guard, but the more I think about it, the more appropriate it seems. Some things are just unknowable.
I wouldn't say I found it distracting, if only because I knew it was coming, but I can definitely see the argument that it wasn' t necessary.