Category: Short Treks

Stardate not given: On the planet Kaminar, the Kelpien race ekes out a simple but productive existence, each of them knowing that they will die, and soon: adult Kelpiens are required to “maintain the great balance” by submitting themselves to the harvesting of an alien race called the Ba’ul. The Kelpien priest, Aradar, leads Kelpiens who have reached a certain age to a stone circle where they are sacrificed to a Ba’ul ship. Aradar’s son, Saru, does not understand the great balance, and does not heed his father’s instructions to dispose of a scrap of Ba’ul technology that fell off of one of their ships. Instead, Saru studies and reverse-engineers the device, sending a simple greeting into space. When that greeting is answered by a human Starfleet officer from the Federation, offering Saru the chance to leave Kaminar and see the stars, can he leave behind everything, including his sister Siranna, to see them?

written by Bo Yeon Kim & Erika Lippoldt
directed by Douglas Aarniokoski
music by Jeff Russo

Cast: Doug Jones (Saru), Hannah Spear (Siranna), Robert Verlaque (Aradar), Michelle Yeoh (Lt. Philippa Georgiou), Lisa Auguste (Female Villager #5), Krista Deady (Female Villager #4), Clayton Scott (Male Villager #3), David Benjamin Tomlinson (Male Villager #1), Adam Winlove-Smith (Male Villager #2)

Notes: Saru mentions Siranna in the second season Discovery episode Brother, noting that there is “terrain” between them that cannot be crossed, referring to Lt. Georgiou’s insistence that Saru cannot be returned to Kaminar without contaminating the natural development of his pre-warp society. David Benjamin Tomlinson appears in Discovery’s second season as Saurian crewman Linus.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Stardate not given: A new science officer beams aboard the Enterprise to begin a life-changing tour of duty. Ensign Spock, a young half-Vulcan, proves to be surprising to Number One as she escorts him to the turbolift that will take him for his first visit to the Enterprise‘s bridge. A turbolift malfunction strands the two in an almost inaccessible space within the ship, and this gives Spock time to ask his new superior questions – lots of them. And every question he asks gives Number One more answers about the Enterprise‘s newest officer.

written by Michael Chabon
directed by Mark Pellington
music by Nami Melumad

Cast: Rebecca Romijn (Number One), Ethan Peck (Spock), Anson Mount (Captain Pike), Samora Smallwood (Lt. Amin), Sarah Evans (Upjohn), Jenette Goldstein (Enterprise Computer)

Notes: This episode is set an unspecified number of years prior to The Cage, and even longer before the second season of Star Trek: Discovery. Other senior officers sitting on Spock’s shoulders will have similarly bad luck tampering with the Enterprise‘s wiring (Star Trek V: The Final Frontier). Spock’s shouting is a callback to Leonard Nimoy’s atypical first performance as the character in The Cage. Number One’s name is acknowledged here to be Una, a name first established in the 50th anniversary trilogy of novels published under the banner Star Trek: Legacies; the name was picked as a tribute to occasional Trek novelist Dr. Una McCormack. Though asked never to divulge it, Spock would later reveal Una’s Gilbert & Sullivan affinity under oath (Ad Astra Per Aspera, 2023). The episode is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Robert Chabon, the late father of writer Michael Chabon, and was premiered with no prior warning during the weekend of 2019’s New York City Comic Con, which featured a heavy Star Trek presence. It’s also the first Star Trek episode title featuring the letter Q by itself which does not feature John de Lancie’s character from Star Trek: The Next Generation and Voyager, and the first Star Trek television story in 53 years whose music was composed by a woman, Nami Melumad, who would go on to become the composer of both Star Trek: Prodigy and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds..

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Stardate: breakfast: Former Enterprise science officer Lynne Locero is promoted to Captain and given her own command – the science vessel U.S.S. Cabot. Her pre-departure pep talk from Captain Pike, however, barely begins to cover the realities of command – in particular, a problematic science officer aboard the Cabot, one Edward Larkin. The ship’s crew has been tasked with finding a solution to a planetary food shortage, and Larkin obsessively fixates upon a defenseless species called tribbles as a means to ending the famine. Larkin proposes genetically manipulating the creatures so they reproduce rapidly, but Captain Locero wants to explore options that don’t involve killing and cooking the tribbles, or otherwise violating their rights to exist. Unbowed, Larkin proceeds with the experiment anyway, adding his own DNA to the tribbles…and creating a species that, far from solving a food shortage, now threatens to devour everything in sight, including the Cabot itself.

written by Graham Wagner
directed by Daniel Gray Longino
music by Sahil Jindal

Cast: Anson Mount (Captain Pike), Rosa Salazar (Captain Locero), H. Jon Benjamin (Edward Larkin), Lisa Michelle Cornelius (Sarah), Matthew Gouveia (Noel), Krista Jang (Rob), John Jarvis (Admiral Quinn), Loretta Shenosky (Cabot Computer)

Notes: This episode significantly rewrites the DNA – quite literally – of one of Star Trek’s most beloved alien species. As they originally evolved, Tribbles were harmless and largely helpless (Edward notes that one died simply by falling from his desk to the floor). It was only with the addition of Edward’s own human DNA and some other genetic engineering on his part that led to Tribbles that are born ravenously hungry and pregnant, as first seen in 1967’s The Trouble With Tribbles. (This also explains why Captain Lorca had a tribble in Star Trek: Discovery‘s first season which wasn’t chowing down on everything in sight.) H. Jon Benjamin may be more of a familiar voice than a familiar face; he’s the voice of Sterling Archer in the FX animated series Archer, and his voice has been a mainstay of numerous series in Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim block. Stick around after the end credits for a fourth-wall-busting Star Trek first, a “commercial” for Tribbles cereal!

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Stardate not given: Cadet Thira Sidhu is serving at Starbase 28 when it is attacked. Security officers escort a uniformed (but masked) Starfleet officer into the room, hand Sidhu a phaser, and order her to keep the officer prisoner without letting him leave. That officer is Captain Christopher Pike of the U.S.S. Enterprise, and he immediately asks Sidhu to let him contact his ship, to leave and help defend the Starbase – in short, asks her to violate the orders she’s just been given as well as key parts of her oath as a future officer. Whose orders Sidhu decides to follow will be a very real test of her Starfleet loyalty.

written by Kalinda Vasquez
directed by Sanji Senaka
music by Andrea Datzman

Cast: Anson Mount (Captain Pike), Ethan Peck (Spock), Rebecca Romijn (Number One), Amrit Kaur (Cadet Thira Sidhu), Steve Boyle (Security Officer #1), Colette Whitaker (Station 28 Computer)

Notes: Reserve activation clauses remain seldom-used in Starfleet, though they seem to be enacted more often upon Enterprise officers who have retired from (or been relieved of) duty (Star Trek: The Motion Picture). The Enterprise may have tangled with the Tholians long before The Tholian Web (1968), though the events recounted by Captain Pike are part of a Starfleet Academy training simulation, very similar to the “psych test” endured by Wesley Crusher in Coming Of Age (1988), and may have no bearing on reality.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Young Michael Burnham is scared of the dark, but her father reminds her of a time when the first people to walk upright and farm the land on Earth also faced that fear – until a little girl from their tribe worked up the courage to venture forth to satisfy her curiosity, and filled the sky with stars.

written by Brandon Schultz
directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi
music by Kris Bowers

Voice Cast: Kenric Green (Mike Burnham), Kyrie McAlpin (Michael Burnham)

Notes: Actor Kenric Green also portrayed Mike Burnham, father of Commander Michael Burnham, in live-action flashbacks in the Star Trek: Discovery episode Perpetual Infinity. (He’s also married to Sonnequa Martin-Green, the actress who plays the grown-up Michael Burnham on Star Trek: Discovery.) This short is the first Star Trek episode of any length, in 53 years, to feature an entirely African-American cast, writer, director, and composer.

Along with another animated Short Trek, Ephraim And DOT, released on the same day, The Girl Who Made The Stars is the first animated Star Trek adventure produced by either CBS or Paramount since the early 1970s animated series.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

A member of the tardigrade species that travels the mycelial network is looking for a place to lay her eggs when a chance collision suddenly turns the starship Enterprise into her next nest. This doesn’t sit well with one of the ship’s DOT7 maintenance robots, more concerned with keeping the ship free of any infestations than with providing a safe nesting ground. After the tardigrade lays her eggs in engineering, she is forced out of the ship by the DOT7, and then uses her own means to try to catch up with the ship at various points in its future. But little does she know that the Enterprise, still carrying her slow-incubating eggs, has a date with destiny at a nameless world in the Mutara Sector…

written by Chris Silvestri & Anthony Maranville
directed by Michael Giacchino
music by Michael Giacchino

Voice Cast: Kirk Thatcher (Narrator), Jenette Goldstein (Enterprise Computer)

Voice Cast appearing in footage from classic Star Trek episodes: William Shatner (Captain Kirk), Ricardo Montalban (Khan), George Takei (Sulu)

Notes: Ephraim spent several years trying to catch up with the Enterprise, ranging from her arrival (apparently during the events of 1967’s Space Seed) through a rapid-fire succession of the original series’ greatest hits, including The Trouble With Tribbles, The Naked Time, Who Mourns For Adonis?, The Doomsday Machine, The Tholian Web, The Savage Curtain, Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan, and Star Trek III: The Search For Spock. These events sometimes appear in a different order from their original broadcast, but as stardates were seldom consecutive (or, indeed, really meaningful) in the original series, there’s some wiggle room for interpretation there. (How Scotty’s engineering crew missed a nest of large tardigrade eggs for years – including throughout the Enterprise‘s refit between the end of the original series and Star Trek: The Motion Picture – is left for the viewer to imagine. There’s also an error in shots of the movie-era Enterprise with the registry number NCC-1701-A – a ship that didn’t exist until Star Trek IV.) This is the second directorial credit for Michael Giacchino, better known as a composer with dozens of high-profile credits, including Rogue One and the trio of Chris Pine-led Star Trek movies between 2009 and 2016. The DOT7 repair robots were established in the Star Trek: Discovery episode Such Sweet Sorrow Part 2. Kirk Thatcher, one of the producers of Star Trek IV, also appeared in that movie as the boom-box punk on the bus; Jenette Goldstein has also made an on-screen appearance before as a member of the Enterprise-B crew in Star Trek: Generations.

Along with another animated Short Trek, The Girl Who Made The Stars, released on the same day, Ephraim And DOT is the first animated Star Trek adventure produced by either CBS or Paramount since the early 1970s animated series.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Kima and Lil have little in common; they’re schoolgirls on Earth, one human, one alien, who both have parents working on or near Mars. A series of chance encounters become accidental collisions and, with a little bit of time and resentment, leads to a real rivalry between the two. Before their school’s Vulcan headmaster can take action, however, word reaches Earth of a surprise attack on Federation civilians and Starfleet facilities on and near the planet Mars.

written by Kirsten Beyer and Jenny Lumet & Alex Kurtzman
directed by Mark Pellington
music by Jeff Russo

Voice Cast: Joy Castro (Mom), Andrea Davis (Teacher), Jason Deline (Dad), Ilamaria Ebrahim (Kima), Alix Kell (Secretary), Sadie Munroe (Lil), Robert Verlaque (Principal)

Notes: Intended to be a prologue to set the stage for the series Star Trek: Picard, this Short Trek has an unusually large number of writers for an eight-minute story (of which only six and a half minutes is story as opposed to credits). The music for much of that running time, while credited to Jeff Russo, is actually a Peter Gabriel cover of David Bowie’s Heroes (from Gabriel’s 2010 album of covers accompanied by orchestra, Scratch My Back); the end credits, however, are the first appearance of Russo’s theme music for the Picard series, here played on solo piano as opposed to the orchestral version seen in that series’ opening credits.

LogBook entry by Earl Green