Star Trek: Short Treks

I think over the years quite a few people have been itching for a Star Trek anthology show, and I think Short Treks was a good way to do it. They are short, so they are inexpensive to make. They often use the casts and sets from the other current Kurtzman-era shows which makes them additionally cost effective. And sometimes (like in the cases of "Q&A" or "Ask Not") they ultimately boil down to a couple of scenes with little to no action attached. I think the day Star Trek does an hour-long anthology series is the day a lot of fans will be very happy. But these ten episodes will tide us over in the meantime.

Did I say ten? Actually the final episode ("Children Of Mars") is left off the set, although it IS on Star Trek: Picard's first season set, probably as an incentive to get it. It happened to be the best of the Short Treks and a complete series set doesn't feel complete without it.

Best episodes are the Pilot focusing on Sylvia Tilly (Runaway), the love story in outer space (Calypso), the Harry Mudd spotlight directed by Rainn Wilson (The Escape Artist), and the short giving us a brief look at part of Spock's first day on Pike's Enterprise (Q&A). The only short I don't like is "Ask Not", but that's probably because I'm weird. I'm betting it was pure catnip for other Star Trek fans. Series Overall: 5 stars. Set Overall (for missing the last episode): 4 stars.

Runaway

Po has a lot more superpowers here than when she later returned to Star Trek: Discovery. She's also a lot less chill.

Speaking of which, Tilly's mother sucks. When she says "I love you," there is a weight of disappointment attached. She stores Tilly's bad memories like acorns and ALWAYS brings them up. Her talking up the step-sister who can do no wrong is another red flag. When Tilly screams into her pillow I know exactly how she feels.

Tilly describing the hormonal space rabbit (with mood swings) is probably her worst excuse ever. Which is a statement.

Why is Po's skin purple-ish and her blood bright orange? Is it hot because she and her species' planet were supposedly born at the same time?

Po is a very sniffy person. I like that in a chick.

I love when Po hisses at her, Tilly hisses right back. I also love that when Po is an asshole and brags that she built a Universal translator when she was 9, Tilly talks about the Spumoni machine she created as a kid and throws in Po's face that until 30 seconds ago she didn't even know what ice cream was. Tilly is kind of insightful. She immediately understood that it was THIS specific brag, described in detail, that would humble Po, and put her in her place. Pretty smart and kind of amazing.

Po saying "My name is Keep Your Human Digits To Yourself," was great too.

I loved the food dispenser sarcastically saying, "Have a glorious day," after Tilly gets the expresso she demands.

I love how tightly the Discovery finale "Such Sweet Sorrow" tied into it. Good synergy between projects, and a case of the left hand knowing what the right is doing. 5 stars.

Coming Of Age

The idea of giving the story an O Henry ending felt right and I think it worked. 4 stars.

Calypso

This is excellent, but it's also something I kind of want to smack the producers upside the head for.

The premise of an empty Starship Discovery set a thousand years in the future, which is technically TWO thousand years if you factor in the time jump in season three, where a man falls in love with the ship's computer is simply amazing. And completely boneheaded in the fact that if they followed this continuity, the entirety of Star Trek: Discovery would be totally boxed in.

Thankfully in Star Trek: Discovery's series finale, Dr. Kovich sends the ship on this specific wild goose chase to "preserve the timeline", when in reality it's done to preserve the Star Trek canon. Kovich / Agent Daniels takes both jobs equally seriously.

In the opening shot, when they do a slow pan over the ship, you know you are in for an intriguing episode when you see the Discovery's name on the hull upsidedown.

Aldis Hodge is perfect casting as Craft. One of the best Star Trek One-And-Done roles of all time.

Short Treks is the Star Trek show deliberately done on the cheap. You couldn't tell it by the hologram effects in the climactic dance. It looks quite beautiful, and even haunting. The moment ends perfectly when you see a tear running down the frozen Zora's face.

I love him asking her if anyone has done anything nice for her, and Zora says it's never come up.

I love Zora telling Craft she's not a real person and it doesn't mean anything. His response is right: "Liar." She's definitely the most empathetic A.I. we've ever encountered on Star Trek. Mostly because she's spent a thousand years by herself evolving. It would be weird if she wasn't.

What's interesting about "Liar" being a go-to insular phrase with each other, is that they both understand to ONLY use it when the other person is putting up emotional walls. It's a very intriguing and cool concept a computer understands these unspoken rules intrinsically as well.

"What IS Betty Boop?" I can't give a good explanation for that either except to say it's the LAST old-timey piece of film history I'd want to have play on a loop. Craft couldn't even shut it off. That tears it, Zora didn't just save his life, she rescued him from pure Hell.

It's a bit silly it sounds like Zora believes that might have been played on a loop because he really enjoyed it. Really, Zora? I mean I know you haven't been around people for a millennia, but if you thought that, you didn't understand them at all.

On that subject, the way Zora says the word "Lovers" at the end is a bit cringe and unintentionally funny. And the reveal of the pod's name being "Funny Face" is similarly corny. However, considering how cheesy the premise is to begin with, as far as the second thing goes, The Court Will Allow It.

I also like when Zora introduces Taco Tuesdays he's like "What's a Tuesday?" Very curious what humanity's future is in this scenario.

It's interesting this is our first introduction to Zora, who became a major player later in Discovery: Season 3. Even the continuity headache of the scenario was followed up on bit by bit.

It's really a beautiful short showcasing the selling point of doing a Star Trek anthology. But I think Michael Chabon was nuts to box in Discovery the way he did. This short was always nagging the back of my mind too during Discovery's entire run. It's amazing, and also a total continuity headache. 5 stars.

Shall We Dance

Alex Kurtzman describes a lot of "Calypso" being The Twilight Zone, and Michael Chabon says he took inspiration from Odysseus. 4 stars.

The Brightest Star

This also tied perfectly into the Discovery episode "The Sounds Of Thunder". Short Treks seems to be the one Star Trek show that is a perfect crossover / tie-in. All of the other stuff (particularly the sequel series of the Rick Berman era) sort of tied to continuity armed only with the Okudas, and more often than not, blind luck. And as valuable as the Okudas are, it's the blind luck thing that made most of those crossovers work.

The ending is very "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind" (which I think is deliberate on the producers' end) except the alien is going off with the human. Can I be blunt? I can't STAND the ending to Close Encounters. Richard Dreyfuss has a fucking FAMILY he just abandons, and leaves them at the drop of a hat without even saying goodbye. Even if I agreed with him doing that (and unlike Steven Spielberg, I most assuredly do NOT) the fact that that wasn't even portrayed as a controversy, or even a struggle, is a failing of that film. In fact Saru's decision here, while miles more understandable than Dreyfuss' (Dreyfuss was never under constant threat of death) in fact had serious consequences for the planet and family he left behind, which is the right lesson.

I strongly dislike Saru's father. He's a zealot, which might not be so bad if every single one of his beliefs wasn't just wrong, but self-destructive for both him and his entire family. The most dangerous thing Saru does in the entire story is question the logic of the status quo. I see a lot of Babe the pig in Saru's question of "Why?"

The father does have a cool voice though. He says things a shade too precisely in a stoic British accent (see "You know this"). He sounds both human AND alien for that reason. It's weird him slamming down the bowl is kind of a legit jump-scare. When Saru asks what would happen if he were culled next, his father probably decided him leaving right then when he recites the meaningless platitude that it would mean it was his time and he should be honored. The Kelpians are so completely broken as a society it doesn't even occur to them that they ought to be fighting for their own fucking children's lives. It doesn't even occur to the asshole father that that's all Saru ever wanted to hear from him.

Georgiou's appearance at the end suggests why Saru bonded with her, why he took her death so hard, and also why he was furious at Michael Burnham, not only for that death, but for betraying her in the first place. It also gives yet another good reason for why Saru seems so utterly repulsed by Terran Empress Georgiou to begin with.

Honestly, it was good to get back to the good Georgiou, even if just briefly. This just made me remember how strongly I actually dislike the Empress.

Neither the short NOR "The Sounds Of Thunder" give us any real idea of what the culling entails, but the brief mysterious glimpses outside of it we ARE allowed here are terrifying. It's probably for the best this remained an unanswered mystery.

The Kelpians' life isn't just dreary and tedious, but them accepting terrible lives ending in horrible deaths for the sake of a Sky Daddy who doesn't even exist shows that evil is banal, and the banality of it is most expressed by wimps who aren't even AWARE they ought to be fighting it. I pity the Kelpians on some level, but the fact that their abusive lives are something that everyone else besides Saru just goes along with means I shall never admire them.

All revolutions are started with the most dangerous single word question of all: "Why?" Saru may not know it yet, but all this is going to lead to the eventual freedom of his planet. It's a fascinating study in the mundane lives of people living under a fascist dictatorship who have accepted their own genocide as the price of their entire belief system. If I were Saru, I'd want out too.

His monologue at the end about the light in the stars being hope and for the first time stronger than fear is the character taking his power back for the first time ever. It kind of gave me chills. Doug Jones played it absolutely perfectly. 4 stars.

First Contact: Kaminar

I liked the interviews with both Doug Jones and Michelle Yeoh. 4 stars.

The Escape Artist

That is probably the single funniest thing Star Trek has ever done. It is not surprising the writer Mike McMahan went on to create Star Trek: Lower Decks. But this is WAY funnier than Lower Decks. And Lower Decks was already pretty funny.

This is almost certainly Rainn Wilson's final performance as Harry Mudd. No place else for him in the current canon. And he directed the short himself. It goes to bonkers and ridiculous places (including the room full of Mudd robots at the end). The best part of the robots is that Mudd definitely had a thing for building androids on The Original Series, and it was never brought up in either of his appearances on Star Trek: Discovery.

I loved the robot sincerely asking what a cudgel is, and the real Mudd at the end offering to sell a slightly used one. It's a perfect closing line. I love his old lady line delivery. Rainn Wilson nailed every inch of that scene. I truly think he's even better in the role than Roger C. Carmel was. And Carmel was nearly perfect himself.

Him asking what a cudgel was was great, because it was a human reaction, which Harcourt Fenton Mudd, usually refuses to give. It was funny because he dropped the veil of theatricality to point out nobody either values a weapon like a cudgel, or refers to a truncheon / club by that specific word. It was endearing.

The use of disco in the framing scenes was effective. Goddam, those fucking symphonies on The Next Generation were SO fucking TIRING, weren't they? Here, let's listen to people music for once.

Confirmed that non-Federation worlds in the 22nd Century also use Latinum for currency. The Deep Space Nine episode "Who Mourns For Morn?" really raised questions about why this liquid is valuable to begin with.

You kind of had to be there for the penetrating the space whale bit.

And attempted murder? Do they give out Nobel Prizes for attempted science?

Honestly, the fact that Mudd's never actually successfully killed anyone sets him FAR more in line with The Original Series than his out-of-character murderous rampage on his final episode of Star Trek: Discovery ever did. And Regicide? Guy was a Duke.

We are led to believe the other scenes of Mudd's degradations we see are flashbacks of all the times he was in this exact same mess, but the ending suggests these are flashsideways instead, and simply detailing similar fates for all of the different Mudd robots. I like that it plays differently the second time you watch the episode.

The fact that Mudd got the best of the Tellarite is funny, but the truth is every time you think Mudd might be getting the upper hand in his arguments, the show pulls back to say the Tellarite isn't falling for this bullshit for a minute. And I have to say, before this, this would not be Star Trek's inclination when portraying a fast-talking human trying to con a violent alien species. The cleverness of humanity cannot be questioned, and no inferior stand-in alien races can withstand the brilliance of... James T. Kirk... Do I have that right? Sheesh. It's almost like this episode actually believes alien races are like fucking people, diverse, and not one size fits all. Truly must be a total outlier in the canon for that fact. I bet somebody got fired.

"Does that line ever work?" I love it.

Mudd fondly reminiscing about nuzzling the dude's sister's tusks and stubble suggests romance is DIFFERENT in the future.

The Orion Pirate in the skimpy costume was totally hot. What a babe.

The non-comedic moment I liked the most was Mudd's insistence that he was part of an imaginary Federation Resistance. What I love about it is that it frustrates me that Mudd is the first human we've heard talk poorly of the Federation, and suggest they are bad. On the old shows, even human criminals who operated outside of the system never bashed the system itself (including the original Mudd himself). I love this Mudd having a contrary political opinion here because that shit should be normal. A homogenized future humanity who ALL think the Federation is The Tits is NOT how the diversity of human opinions actually work. In fairness to the producers of the first five live-action shows, most humans we see there ARE Starfleet, so every single one of them is obviously a total convert to the Federation's ideals. The messed up thing to me is the rare civilians we saw back then were ALL entirely sold on the Federation at all times, which is not remotely realistic OR believable. Mudd seems to believe the Federation's ideals are too good to be true, and even if he's wrong, believing that is the mark of a cynic, and in the real-world, cynics are usually right. If the 23rd Century cynics are wrong specifically about the Federation, it's not because they are foolish. Their wrongness happens to be a total coincidence in that specific instance alone.

The comedy in this episode is broad, bordering on cartoonish, and entirely outside of the rest of Star Trek. And I love it unreservedly for those reasons. 5 stars.

Covered In Mudd

Rainn Wilson said the producers came to HIM with the idea of directing this, and I think that was brilliant. Wilson suggests it's a cliche for an actor to call directing for Star Trek a dream of a lifetime, but I think Star Trek is FAMOUS for letting the actors play behind the camera, so it's probably true. 4 stars.

Q&A

It's weird.

I love how the opening of Spock being excited to beam aboard the Enterprise for the first time is played for the huge moment it was.

Number One singing H.M.S. Pinafore was cringe, until Spock joined in at the end and they both burst out laughing. Honestly, this is the first and so far only time sexual sparks have flared between Spock and Number One. Their chemistry is real.

And the thing about the cringe is it is genuine awkward tension until Spock does what he does. Usually when you get cringe on The Office, you have live with it. Here, it's wonderfully broken and you only realize how tense the singing made you once Spock sings the chorus.

It's played beautifully by both actors. Rebecca Romijn closes the performance with this triumphant and expectant grin and when Spock leaves her hanging for a few seconds (because Spock is gleefully an asshole) you can tell she believes she just experienced the biggest mistake of her entire life.

The close quarters will do that. But when she asks Spock to "keep his freaky to himself" I wished I was in those specific close quarters with her. What a dish.

Spock smiling and laughing is a really cool detail, but you'll remember Spock did that in "The Cage" too, and this was set before that. Both this and Star Trek Discovery say that before his time with Kirk, Spock was still exploring his humanity and his emotions.

One of the reasons pairing up Spock and Number One is interesting is because Number One was dropped from the show due to her unpopularity with focus groups. She was a woman Boss who fucking took care of business and nobody back then could stand her for it. I believe the note from most women back in the day was "Who does she think she is?" Well, originally Number One's shtick was gonna be that she was cold-blooded and rational, and once the character was dropped, the logical nature of the character was transferred to Spock. We are allowed to see some of it here.

She says "Bullshit," which hits the ear wrong on the Enterprise (it did on Star Trek: Discovery too) mostly because Strange New Worlds softened the profanity to be similar to network television decades ago.

Number One mentions people rarely talk in elevators and Spock has noticed that too. I love the moment, because it's something that's true, but not something I especially noticed or was mindful of before this. But also because the word "elevator" is used. Elevator is a real word describing an actual human thing, and "turbolift" is a ridiculous made-up word designed to make viewers think a totally mundane and human thing is futuristic and alien. Guess which word actually impresses me more.

Bad things? The debate about the Prime Directive doesn't fit. At this point the only rule they have close to it is General Order One, but the Prime Directive was only established in the very first episode of Strange New Worlds, which is still a few years away in the canon.

But despite the fact that the debate is wrong for the canon, the truth is the debate is interesting. Number One shuts it down because she sucks, but the thing is when Spock is arguing it's illogical, unethical, and even morally indefensible he's actually fucking rigjht! Damn, kind of wish characters in this franchise were EVER allowed to poke holes in that sacred cow in such unforgiving terms. It's a cool debate to have and damn Number One for telling us it isn't and making Spock drop it.

Pike is sentimental about horses. That tracks, although it's odd that's the specific thing she warns Spock about.

I love Pike calling Spock "The New Boot".

Vulcans do see awe in things. They just tend to keep it to themselves.

Seeing the insides of the turbolift workings is pretty amazing, but I have a very hard time believing this is what was actually going on in the shafts of the Enterprise on The Original Series the entire time. Loved the orchestral march as it swoops through the ship. Very Star Trek Movies.

Intriguing character study that is by turns amusing and off-putting. 4 stars.

Ensign Spock's First Day

Very interesting featurette. I find Michael Chabon having written the short at his father's deathbed quite odd (I could never have done the same) but when he's describing it as a very personal experience, and part of the loss, I was amazed, because just because I would never see it that way, doesn't mean another person wouldn't. And I found the fact that he did utterly fascinating, made even more intriguing and even enticing by the fact that I didn't understand it at ALL. Which was the coolest thing about the idea.

I love Rebecca Romijn is a professional Gilbert and Sullivan performer. Romijn is essentially a supermodel. There is NO need for that woman to be as multitalented as she is, which is why the fact that she is is so freaking awesome.

Great featurette. 5 stars.

The Trouble With Edward

I've never liked this one. For several reasons. First of all I have to admit H. Jon Benjamin is dynamite in the role of Edward. His ill-social graces are very Bob Belcher. And the idea that he's eaten Tribbles and believes they'd be easy to hunt shows he's a dirtbag. And his ethical solution to Tribbles potentially being intelligent is to suggest genetically altering them to make them brain damaged.

Funny stuff, right?

Yeah. Also entirely outside of what Star Trek is supposed to be. Unlike Gene Roddenberry, I am perfectly fine with imperfect, and even underwhelming human beings existing in the future. But they shouldn't be in Starfleet, much less scientists in Starfleet.

As cute as the premise is, the truth is I think Tribbles are so beloved that if the episode isn't a five star deal like "The Trouble With Tribbles" or "Trials And Tribble-ations", that is a bad thing. Not only should the Tribbles only be used for special occasions, but only for amazing episodes. This episode was WAY too mean for the premise.

Under the fur Tribbles are all meat. Like scallops. Blood red. Edward is weird. And he uses his own DNA to prove it.

You know what? Rosa Salazar is a VERY pretty actress. But the thing that has me crushing hard on her is her gifted sense of comedic timing. There is a fierceness to the smiles she is forced to grimace at Edward. She don't take shit and I love her for it. She doesn't ONCE let him get the upper hand in Edward not being able to admit the conversation is over.

Pike suggesting that on her new ship a lot of people wouldn't be on her level is good foreshadowing. But the truth is I have NEVER heard a Starfleet Captain warn such a thing before. Every other time a Captain says goodbye to a promoted colleague they warn they are in the big leagues now, and will need to up their game to be noticed. Frankly, Pike's advice seems to be more realistic, especially considering Lucero is hinted to be an overachiever herself.

The woman crew member being buried in Tribbles is funny, but it's also played as a horror movie moment.

One of the most annoying things about Edward isn't just that he's a idiot, or that he's bad at his job (although both things are true). He's a terrible coworker. He makes everyone uncomfortable, they have to do all the work, and he forces them into embarrassing situations like the supposedly "anonymous" letter he wrote about Captain Lucero being dumb and needing to be fired. That specific thing is SO fucking stupid, not just because it's bad for morale. But he actually thinks who wrote that inane complaint is a total mystery. He's a nightmare on every level.

And I appear to have missed the Tribble cereal commercial when I first saw this on CBS All Access. And it sucks not just because it's totally unfunny, but because it's so over the top there is absolutely no place for it in the Star Trek canon. The Escape Artist definitely pushed the boundaries of outrageous Star Trek humor. The difference there is it didn't actually break them or the reality of the premise.

This short is sometimes amusing, but the truth is it is a failure on multiple levels. "He was an idiot," is NOT a good closing explanation at all. 2 1/2 stars.

Here Comes Tribble

Little surprised they didn't talk about the commercial at the end of the short. But I hated the commercial so no foul. 3 1/2 stars.

Ask Not

Honestly, didn't dig it.

Pike being the guy under the mask is a great twist but I have always detested the Starfleet Academy mindfuck tests as seen on The Next Generation. The Kobayashi Maru is one thing. Everyone knows what they are getting into with that. Pike himself seems to believe this test is extreme and inhumane, and it is, and so are the similar bullshit Academy simulations on The Next Generation too.

Anson Mount says in the commentary he played it as if the phaser was loaded at the end because if she WAS gonna shoot him, they needed to know that. That makes sense to me.

One of the reasons I hate the future of Star Trek is something the Kurtzman stuff usually admirably avoids, but in the bullshit training scenario they brought it back. When Pike suggests Sidhu's husband could likely die if she didn't free him, I fucking HATED that her reaction is "He knew what he was getting into when he joined Starfleet". Goddam, is it TOO much to ask for for Star Trek characters to act like fucking human beings when their loved one's lives are on the line?! Her choosing Starfleet over her husband's life is done to show she's principled. I think it makes her despicable, and it makes the franchise crazy for trying to believe it is any other thing but that. It is the mindset of a self-serving career-oriented sociopath who cares more about getting ahead than her fucking husband. And the show expects me to see this and ALL of the similar scenes it has ever done over the decades as a virtue instead of the sociopathic red flag it would be in real life with actual fucking people. It pisses me off.

I don't believe a fair-minded and supposedly righteous organization like Starfleet would manipulate and traumatize its Cadets just to test their command performance, much less for them to force them all to admit they would prefer serving their organization to their own families getting killed. It's cruel, stupid, and counterproductive. It's one of the reasons I find the future of Star Trek cold and uninviting, instead of the perfect Utopia I am supposed to view it as.

Star Trek, particularly Deep Space Nine, has a history of pairing up a couple of great actors against each other in riveting conversations and letting them chew the furniture. But unlike Kira and Marritza and Sisko and Dukat, we are rooting for the wrong person. Worse, at the end, it's essentially telling us the bad guy is right all along. He's basically using her trauma against her in this manipulation and it's fucking gross. It's not a cat and mouse scenario between between two wily foes. It's simply psychological abuse done under the idiotic guise that this "test" is for the abused person's own good. This aspect of Star Trek has always been wholly immoral and it pisses me off it's still around. It's not like the Kurtzman era hasn't totally dropped a ton of other problematic messaging. How the HELL does this one still pass muster? 1 star.

Ephraim & Dot

Short Treks was the one modern show designed to be done on the cheap. And yet this episode is STILL the best looking Star Trek cartoon of all time.

I got a little confused about the timeframe and timeline of all this, and whether time travel is involved, or if Ephraim's struggle simply lasted decades. I THINK it's the second thing.

The black and white newsreel footage smashcutting into the extreme full-color close-up of the Enterprise was a great moment.

Kirk R. Thatcher (the Narrator) is an old hand at the franchise. He played the guy on the bus who gave Captain Kirk the finger in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. He also wrote and directed a ton of Muppet / Jim Henson stuff, and was a Muppeteer as well.

Ton of Easter Eggs and archival voice performances taken from The Original Series. I noticed the hand of Apollo, the Salt Monster from "The Man Trap", Khan being revived in Space Seed, Tribbles, the Doomsday Machine, the Tholian Web, Abraham Lincoln in space (Seriously, there is NO part of the episode "The Savage Curtain" that isn't totally shitty on every level), and the Enterprise's battle with the Reliant in "Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan". The Enterprise self-destructing is from "Star Trek III: The Search For Spock".

During the climactic fight between Ephraim and Dot the music is deliberately channeling the Pon Farr battle rituals from "Amok Time".

And we get the full original Star Trek Theme in the end credits because it's 100% the right music to leave us off on. The music is great in general in this short.

The entire thing has a Wall-E / Pixar vibe, which might explain why Michael Giancchino directed it. 4 1/2 stars.

Score!

I mentioned it makes sense Michael Giancchino directed the episode most like a Pixar short. It also makes sense that he directed it, just based on how important the music and score was.

I am not digging the idea that Ephraim is the same Tardigrade we saw on Star Trek: Discovery. Just because that one there bloodily killed a bunch of people. In self-defense, yeah, but Ephraim as seen there was horrifying, not cute. 3 1/2 stars.

The Girl Who Made The Stars

Like Ephraim & Dot, this cartoon is G-rated, which makes the Short Treks feel incredibly well rounded to me.

Sadly, you can actually kind of see the low budget in the CGI animation. The style they decided to use (close to Pixar) is one that doesn't much forgive shortcuts.

Little Michael sure is cute though. I love her outrage at the little girl being told to go play. That's just rude!

Mike Burnham is pretty much the best Star Trek dad ever.

This short ties into a voice-over monologue Michael Burnham gives at the beginning of Discovery's second season. She relates the broad strokes of this African fable there. This short says she heard it from her dad (and we get to hear the entire thing).

I love that Michael's plushie is a tardigrade. Is that why she had the empathy for it she did on Discovery?

Cute. 3 1/2 stars.

Bedtime Stories

I had totally forgotten Michael talked a bit about this fable at the beginning of Discovery: Season 2. It's really cool that got back Kennic Green to play Michael's father, although both the casting and the character are a little strange to me.

Green is Sonequa Martin-Green's husband in real life, and plays her as a young girl's father. Even stranger is Mr. Burnham's first name is Mike, which meant he named his own daughter after himself, which is kind of a weird thing to do.

Interesting featurette though. 4 stars.

The Making Of Short Treks

This was a little shorter than I expected, but it was pretty cool. 3 1/2 stars. 

Blu-Ray Menu

Very similar to the Blu-Ray menus for Star Trek: Discovery. 3 1/2 stars.