Bring Back ‘Short Treks’
This small series packs a big punch in its storytelling
At a time of financial stress and uncertainty about the future of new Star Trek series, Short Treks could help fill a big hole for fans and Paramount Plus alike.
First premiering in October 2018, Short Treks is an anthology series of shorts set in the Star Trek universe.
The series, consisting of episodes lasting about just 10 to 20 minutes each, streamed a first season of four live-action episodes released monthly before returning the next year for a six-episode second season.
The series was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2020 for Outstanding Short Form Comedy Or Drama Series.
But while franchise executive Alex Kurtzman said back in 2020 that he hoped more Short Treks would be made, further episodes never materialized.
The time for that long-awaited third season is now, just as soon as the studios come to terms with striking writers and actors.
What Short Treks didn't have in elapsed time per episode, it more than made up for in the size and scope of its stories.
That includes fan favorites like “Q&A” which was a delightful pre-Star Trek: Strange New Worlds encounter between Ethan Peck’s Spock and Rebecca Romijin’s Number One in a malfunctioning turbolift aboard the Enterprise:
And “The Trouble with Edward,” a brilliant look at H. Jon Benjamin as Lt Edward Larkin, a Starfleet scientist aboard the USS Cabot, whose carelessness spawns the origin story for the overbreeding tribbles we've known and loved for decades:
A third season of Short Treks would help solve problems Paramount is confronting for both its original content offerings generally, as well as for the future of the Star Trek franchise specifically.
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That Paramount — the home of Star Trek — has been hemorrhaging cash for a long time is no secret; that's been well-covered here and elsewhere.
The studio could produce a new season of these mini episodes much more cheaply than a full-length series, and a number of the Short Treks stories have already proven to be fan favorites.
(Not to mention that new Short Treks could well be faster to get out into the hands of eager fans once the ongoing Hollywood strike is resolved.)
A third season could fill the gap to keep fans coming back for new Star Trek at a time when established series like Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Prodigy and others are leaving — or have already left — and it's not clear what will take their places.
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