Runaway

Stardate not given: Freshly promoted from Cadet to Ensign, Sylvia Tilly is still aboard the Discovery, and she still can’t convince her mother, via communicator, that she can handle the rigors of command training without washing out of Starfleet. When she retreats to the mess hall to drown her sorrows in a snack, Tilly makes a new friend. Tilly’s new friend is a stowaway aboard Discovery, and worse yet, she’s a stowaway who belongs to the royal family of a strategically important planet. Tilly has to keep her new friend from running and going into hiding, a test of her diplomatic skills that just isn’t part of the command training program.

written by Jenny Lumet and Alex Kurtzman
directed by Maja Vrvilo
music by Jeff Russo

Cast: Mary Wiseman (Ensign Sylvia Tilly), Vadira Guevara-Prip (Me Hani Ika Hali Ka Po), Mimi Kuzyk (Siobhan Tilly)

Notes: Devised as a means of keeping Star Trek fans subscribed to the CBS All Access streaming service, rather than cancelling their subscriptions the moment Star Trek: Discovery’s first season ended, Short Treks was the tip of the iceberg of a new deluge of Star Trek spinoffs to go into development following the success of Discovery’s first season. Each Short Treks episode runs approximately fifteen minutes, and the first four typically involved a very small cast on existing sets from Discovery (with a promise that later installments would venture further afield in the franchise) – in a way, almost as if the producers had to abide by most of the rules and guidelines CBS had set down for Star Trek fan films as a direct result of the contentious lawsuit over the fan-made project Star Trek: Axanar, which came under legal scrutiny after it raised over half a million dollars in crowdfunding. The shorts also served as a proving ground for future talent to be associated with later spinoffs, including writers Michael Chabon and Mike McMahan.