Star Trek: Short Treks is an American science fiction anthology television series created by Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman for the streaming service CBS All Access. Originating as a companion series to Star Trek: Discovery, it consists of several 10- to 20-minute-long shorts that use settings from various Star Trek series.
001 Short Treks 09 S02E05 The Girl Who Made the Stars (December 12, 2019)
This installment can be viewed on Paramount+ HERE.
It can also be purchased on on Blu-Ray via Amazon as part of the complete Short Treks collection located HERE.
In this short (just under 8 minutes) animated story, a young girl named Michael living on a space station with her father and mother in the 2230s awakens from nightmares. She has a toy of a colorful tardigrade? To calm Michael, her father tells her the story of the girl who made the stars.
Featuring Kyrie McAlpin as Michael and Kenric Green as her father.
Michael’s mother is mentioned, but not seen and her father is not named.
Questions:
Who are Michael and her parents in the grand scheme of things? What’s with the Tardigrade? Why are they on a space station? Is the story of the girl who made the stars important in this new era of Trek? The 2230s places this newest adventure after the events of Star Trek: Enterprise, which ended in the 2150s.
002 Short Treks 03 S01E03 The Brightest Star (December 6, 2018)
This installment can be viewed on Paramount+ HERE.
It can also be purchased on on Blu-Ray via Amazon as part of the complete Short Treks collection located HERE.
A short story set on the previously unknown planet of Kaminar in the year 2239. We meet Saru (Doug Jones) and his family, including his father Aradar (Robert Verlaque) and sister Siranna (Hannah Spear). Saru wants to learn about life outside the pre-warp society of his village, where his people are harvested as food by the predatory Ba’ul. Saru is able to send a distress signal into space that is answered by Lieutenant Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh), who invites Saru to join Starfleet.
This feels like a typical old school Star Trek episode but with a clear advancement in makeup and special effects. Nice! Speaking of, that’s an interesting makeup design for the Kelpians. Is this a one-off or will we see Kelpians again? What about all of these new characters?
003 Short Treks 05 S02E01 Q&A (October 5, 2019)
This installment can be viewed on Paramount+ HERE.
It can also be purchased on on Blu-Ray via Amazon as part of the complete Short Treks collection located HERE.
Set in 2253, Ensign Spock arrives onboard the Enterprise 1701 and meets Una, the First Officer and eventually Captain Pike, in this delightful TOS (The Original Series) prequel!
I loved this! I always liked Captain Pike from the only TOS 2-part story, “The Menagerie”. He was mentioned a few times after that but it’s nice to see him again. And Spock and Number One! This was fun.
004 S02E03 Ask Not (November 14, 2019)
This installment can be viewed on Paramount+ HERE.
It can also be purchased on on Blu-Ray via Amazon as part of the complete Short Treks collection located HERE.
Another story on Pike’s Enterprise! Spock is a member of the crew, placing this after “Q&A” (2253) but the uniforms being used here were phased out by 2259, placing this story sometime between those years. I like the idea of it being set earlier rather than later, giving Spock another adventure before his “Menagerie” flashbacks.
DOTs are introduced here, a type of worker robot utilised by Starfleet, for repairs, refits and maintenance; a bit like the astromech droids in Star Wars. I hope we see more of them!
005 Short Treks 01 S01E01 “Runaway” (October 4, 2018)
This installment can be viewed on Paramount+ HERE.
It can also be purchased on on Blu-Ray via Amazon as part of the complete Short Treks collection located HERE.
Set in 2257, aboard the USS Discovery (the ship featured in the opening credits of all the Short Treks episodes), following a discussion with her condescending mother (Mimi Kuzyk) concerning her participation in the Command Training Program, Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman) encounters a young royal Xahean stowaway, Me Hani Ika Hali Ka Po (Yadira Guevara-Prip). Tilly, who is accustomed to taking orders, decides to make her own decisions to help Po return home in time for her coronation.
More interesting characters that we’ve never seen before, having adventures on a ship we’ve never been on before – outside of the aforementioned credit cameos. I wish we had more of a context for the story and that we could see more of these fun characters.
006 Short Treks 06 S02E02 The Trouble with Edward (October 10, 2019)
This installment can be viewed on Paramount+ HERE.
It can also be purchased on on Blu-Ray via Amazon as part of the complete Short Treks collection located HERE.
A live action comedic short set in part on Pike’s Enterprise, seemingly set late in 2258. The story sees Pike (Anson Mount) assign Lynne Lucero (Rosa Salazar) as Captain of the USS Cabot, where science officer Edward Larkin (H. Jon Benjamin) experiments on Tribbles against his new captain’s orders. Many officers wear the bright colors associated with SNW / TOS but other flag officers wear the blue and gold uniforms which Lieutenant Philippa Georgiou sported in “The Brightest Star” & Tilly wore in “The Runaway”; those uniforms were completely phased out by 2259 (and we’ve never seen them in ENT, TOS, TAS, TNG, DS9 or VOY) and their appearance in this story may imply that this process of being phased out was already well on its way. Spock would have been serving on the Enterprise at this time but he isn’t seen…that’s interesting.
It should be noted that the first known encounter between Tribbles and Humans was in 2153 (in Enterprise S02E21 “The Breach”), when the Denobulan doctor Phlox brought a small number aboard Enterprise NX-01 as an easily sustainable food source for his pets. Phlox stated: “All it’s capable of doing, really, is eating and breeding. The problem is they breed quite prodigiously.” So it would seem that they already bred quite quickly, or at least fast enough that Phlox could use them as an easily sustainable food source for his pets, but how fast they actually breed isn’t discussed and it’s possible that during their previous appearance they needed partners to reproduce. Dr. Larkin, which the episode goes out of its way to describe and present as an idiot, alters the Tribbles so that they are the “born pregnant” variety that are later encountered by Kirk’s crew and the Klingon Empire.
007 Short Treks 04 S01E04 The Escape Artist (January 3, 2019)
This installment can be viewed on Paramount+ HERE.
It can also be purchased on on Blu-Ray via Amazon as part of the complete Short Treks collection located HERE.
We catch up with Harcourt “Harry” Mudd, sometime after TOS episodes “Mudd’s Women” & “I, Mudd” (2268), possibly before TAS episode “Mudd’s Passion”. The character is played by Rainn Wilson here. There are visual references to some of his previous stories; likewise there are visual cues to stories we’ve never seen before and a reference to Harry having “Penetrated a space whale.” WTF?
008 Short Treks 08 S02E04 Ephraim and Dot (December 12, 2019)
This installment can be viewed on Paramount+ HERE.
It can also be purchased on on Blu-Ray via Amazon as part of the complete Short Treks collection located HERE.
“The Tardigrade in Space” appears to be an educational film released by Starfleet Science no earlier than 2285. The film starts out in old-fashioned black and white before transitioning to color. It follows a tardigrade named Ephraim in a series of wacky adventures with Dot, a DOT-7 (a type of worker robot seen previously in SNW S03E02 “Wedding Bell Blues” & Short Trek S02E03 “Ask Not”). The plot of the film takes place over the course of two decades (implying that the Tardigrade is somehow able to travel in time and space), and centers around Ephraim searching for a place to keep her dormant eggs safe aboard the USS Enterprise 1701.
009 Short Treks 10 S02E06 Children of Mars (January 9, 2020)
This installment can be viewed on Paramount+ HERE.
It can also be purchased on on Blu-Ray via Amazon as part of the complete Short Treks collection located HERE.
This story centers on two schoolgirls (Ilamaria Ebrahim and Sadie Munroe) on Earth on April 5, 2385 (6 years after the final Next Generation film, “Star Trek: Nemesis”) who develop a fierce rivalry but are drawn together by a tragedy.
Really lovely short that makes good use of the anthology format. There’s a Picard cameo and some fun story that I’d love to see expanded on in future, but will we?
010 Short Treks 02 S01E02 Calypso (November 8, 2018)
This installment can be viewed on Paramount+ HERE.
It can also be purchased on on Blu-Ray via Amazon as part of the complete Short Treks collection located HERE.
Set in the distant future, likely during the 4200s, the USS Discovery is back again, and has held position in space for nearly a thousand years, and its sentient computer system Zora (voiced by Annabelle Wallis) encounters a man named Craft (Aldis Hodge).
Beautiful. Fascinating. Really lovely. How does this story come to be?
Another story about the mythic Discovery and the tales of this ship get stranger and stranger. Fascinating. I dig this anthology series.