Star Trek: Short Treks Focusing on Picard, Pike, Spock Announced

CBS All Access and Star Trek producer Alex Kurtzman offered an update on the future of Star Trek: Short Treks during the Star Trek Universe panel in Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con. The panel included a trailer for the next set of Star Trek: Short Treks, which includes an episode featuring the Enterprise crew of Capt. Christopher Pike (Anson Mount), Mr. Spock (Ethan Peck), and Number One (Rebecca Romijn). Their Short Treks episode will see the crew having some trouble with Tribbles. The adorable and bountiful aliens are back, but this time they’re just crowding people out, they’re eating humanoid species.

Kurtzman also confirmed that there is six new episodes of Short Treks in the making. Three of them will focus on Pike’s Enterprise crew — one of them features guest star H. Jon Benjamin (Bob’s Burgers) and another, written by Michael Chabon, involves Spock and Number One getting stuck in a turbolift. Two of them will be animated and another will be a prequel to Star Trek: Picard.

The first season of Star Trek: Short Treks consisted of four episodes used as lead-ins to the second season of Star Trek: Discovery. At the TCA Winter 2019 Press Tour, Kurtzman said he hoped to continue with them and that they may be applied to upcoming series outside of Discovery.

“I’d love to expand beyond,” Kurtzman tells ComicBook.com. “I mean, Discovery has been the foundation. [The first season of Short Treks] was a test. We wanted to see if they worked, and they ended up working really well. And so, the idea that we can apply those to all of our shows. Maybe we’ll do one before Picard. Maybe we’ll do one before Section 31. Maybe we’ll do one before the animated, just so that we can start getting audiences talking and thinking about what we’re doing, and setting up mysteries. That’s the other really fun thing about those is we get to set up these mysteries that play out over the course of the season.”

Kurtzman already announced plans for two animated episodes of Star Trek: Short Treks. One will be directed by Academy Award-winning composer Michael Giacchino, who scored all three of the Kelvin timeline Star Trek movies. The other animated Short Trek will be directed by Star Trek: Discovery executive producer Olatunde Osunsanmi. Each short will feature a distinct animation style, which will also be different from what’s being used for the upcoming animated comedy series Star Trek: Lower Decks.

Star Trek: Short Treks is a series of short films, each about 15 minutes long. The episodes so far mostly focused on characters from Star Trek: Discovery. They debuted monthly on CBS All Access in the United States and on Space and Crave in Canada. They became available on Netflix in regions where the streaming service carries Star Trek: Discovery just before Discovery‘s second season premiere.

Are you excited about the future of Star Trek: Short Treks? Let us know in the comments! The first four episodes of Star Trek: Short Treks are streaming now.