Because you don't have CBS All Access and can't watch the new Star Trek but you desperately want to stay in the loop and read all about the latest episodes: That's right, Captain's Blog is back in full swing as Discovery Season 2 kicks off 2019 the only way we could ask: long and... prosperous? Okay, I don't know what that means, but it suddenly sounds dirty. Anyway, let's just dive in... Short Treks In an attempt to build anticipation between seasons (and in a totally embarrassing cash grab which failed to lure any fellow online investors) CBS commissioned a couple brief mini-episodes during the filming of Season 2 when they thought they could make them for cheap. Turns out nobody wanted to pay for them (unlike the ridiculous amounts of money Netflix paid for Season 1 international streaming rights, the hype around Discovery has mitigated to say the least) so the experiment was a financial failure. But who cares about that. It's more Star Trek for me! So... Are they any good? 1) Runaway (October 2018) In a brilliant maneuver, they kick off the series with their latest fan favorite character, Ensign Sylvia Tilly. Mary Wiseman gave a breakout performance as the idiosyncratic, self-doubting cadet in Season 1 and she's no disappointment here. The charm about Ensign Tilly is her hyperactive vulnerability and you don't get any more vulnerable than being lectured at by your overbearing mother about how you'll probably never cut it in command school. "Remember how you always used to run away from your problems?" she scolds. Cue the title. We hardly see the mother. Like everything else in this 13 minute story, it's succinct. We only have time to focus on Tilly and how this undercuts her aspirations. Jump to the mess hall and a quadruple espresso and you can see how toxic parental stress and all that caffeine gets Tilly so wound up. That's where the invisible monster from the shuttle bay returns. Did I not mention there was an invisible monster from the shuttle bay? CBS blew all their budget for the episode on a really fancy special effects shot of the shuttle bay, which I got to admit, really worked, even though it was really gratuitous. Gone are the days of reusable stock footage on Star Trek. Instead we get a nice beauty shot of Discovery that genuinely made me miss the show and pine for the new season. Damn, the ship looks so good. And we rarely get to see so much activity in a shuttle bay like this. In fact, we never do. So we're totally engaged when a cargo container opens up, a clawed hand reaches out and quickly turns invisible. The invisible creature turns out to be all of the following: A teenage alien girl; a stowaway; a techno-prodigy who can make things go haywire when she's angry; a wanted fugitive from a recently warp-capable race; the inventor of renewable dilithium; the new Queen pending coronation. In other words, too many things for a 13 minute mini-webisode. Too many things to explain in dialogue while also trying to use the interaction between the alien and Tilly to foster some kind of relationship that they both can learn from. Discovery has run into this kind of clunky dialogue before, where they're trying to be too slick and too efficient and honestly just saying too much too fast. In the span of a couple minutes, they have a heart to heart and learn to basically stop running away from their problems. It's sweet and intuitive, but a little vague and a lot rushed. There's enough meat here to make a whole episode, and it might've benefited from some room to breathe. But as a micro-short story, it succeeds in it's job. It reminds me how much I like Tilly and adds to her character while advancing her arc. And it also makes me really want more Discovery. Well done. 2) Calypso (November 2018) A thousand years in the future, Discovery is abandoned and afloat when an escape pod happens across her path. Instead of any regular crew members or even a known guest star, we meet someone completely new. Aldis Hodge plays the wounded solider Craft, completely alone aboard the empty ship, with no one to talk to but Zora, the computer, voiced by Annabelle Wallis. She rescues him, heals him up, makes him new clothes and cooks him food as they become friends. It's unclear if the story matters in any particular way, and it's fascination rises and falls with it's relevance to the pending Season 2 of Discovery. What mission is the crew fated never to return from (after a thousand years!), and is there still hope for them? Will it involve time travel? Alternate dimensions? Will it even connect to the new season at all? This is not clear because these episodes were not advertised with any promise of relevance and we're given no details. These shorts were not teased as hints of the stories to come. It's quite possible (probably?) that we won't see Craft ever again as a guest. And even Zora's character development may be moot, unless some upcoming plot-line triggers her self-awareness and expression or an early form of it. I wouldn't mind a time-traveling, dimension-hopping adventure that sees Discovery or an alternate version of her trapped and/or rescued in the distant future, but short of that or some other clever tie-in, it's unlikely anyone will remember any of Calypso by spring. Nothing happens. Eventually Craft leaves Zora to go be with his family again. The end. I'm all for standalone episodes of Star Trek, but with such brevity, these shorts just don't have enough substance to stand on their own without any connective tissue. 3) Brightest Star (December 2018) Brightest Star works because it functions as an origin story for Saru. Doug Jones is famous for his prosthetic outfits and he managed to give unexpected life to this new Kelpian species in Season 1, oftentimes stepping in to take command of the ship (and our hearts! ...sigh...). This short story shows us where he came from and why we never see his species again in Star Trek. Saru is an outlier, an independent thinker from a primitive world who dares to question the status quo of a society that tolerates their own religious self-sacrifices. Like literal sacrifice. They gather in a circle around a weird spire and a bunch of them just vanish forever. When he stumbles upon some strange space technology, he just sorta fiddles with it until he can send a message into the cosmos, "Hello". He communicates with and eventually is taken, (rescued? set free? invited?) to travel the stars by none other than a young Lieutenant Georgiou. We know the two will go on to serve together in Starfleet and now we see how they met. The story is a familiar tale of dreamers and stargazers who want more than they're given. There are religious undertones about suppressing free-thought and settling for the status-quo but these are just background details. Saru's father is the tribal chief who oversees the sacrificial "abductions" by a more advanced, unseen alien race, but this tension mostly hangs unspoken. There is no confrontation or drama except by implication, and once again, it's unclear if Saru will return to his home planet in Season 2 to revisit that exact drama, or if it's at all possible they built these sets and all these alien costumes for just this short. Whether they did or not, it still makes for a meaningful peek into the backstory of a popular character. And at least we got to see his planet, which was cool. 4) Escape Artist (January 2019) I love Rainn Wilson and I think he is totally underappreciated for his work outside The Office. Wilson returns to the role of Harry Mudd once again, not only as actor but also as director for a change, and it might be the best of all the Short Treks. He's captured by a Tellarite bounty hunter and of course he spends the entirety of the story trying and failing to talk his way out of it, much to our humor and delight. Some good jokes are had about "accuracy", cudgels and Tellarite stubble while the narrative is spliced with flashbacks to the many other times Mudd has found himself in similarly hopeless situations, with a similar lack of success. But let us not think, as Mudd finally surrenders near the end and resorts to naked begging, that he is learning any valuable lesson here, or that he is experiencing any emotional growth. Just as Starfleet arrives to collect him, we learn this is not in fact the real Mudd. A door is abruptly opened to reveal a whole room full of Mudds, who all begin to glitch and repeat the same quote about "sipping jibbers on a beach somewhere" while the Tellarite bounty hunter cries in anguish. Cut to actual Mudd, sipping a jibber (whatever that is) on his space ship, whilst tended to by a dozen more replicant copies as he arranges another deal to sell "himself" to another bounty hunter. It's a playful twist, visually well executed that manages to have a little fun without trying to express any theme or message or forced drama. I don't know if we'll get any more of Wilson's Mudd in the upcoming season, but I'll take what I can get. His second appearance in Season 1 was easily my favorite episode and this is easily the smoothest of these Short Treks. It seems the most comfortable and confident in its 15 minute run time. It also neither builds upon anything nor necessitates any follow-up in the larger Discovery narrative, yet avoids feeling irrelevant. Overall Conclusion: Ya know, I think I kinda loved them. While I'm afraid the financial uselessness of these shorts means we probably won't get any more of them after Season 2, I'd still consider them a success, if only because I kinda want to watch them again. Being short, that isn't that hard to do. Their production value was equal to the show, with no evidence of penny-pinching or cut-corners. And though they exhibited the same writing and conceptual shortcomings as Discovery proper (ie. overly dense dialogue, dim lighting, abrupt narrative resolutions, overly sentimental but vaguely underdeveloped themes, etc) they still also had the same strengths. Namely that a strong actor can really stand out and make their character matter. Each short takes risks and suffers more from over-reaching than settling, but I'll always give more grace to narrative ambition when I can find it. I'm looking forward to whatever plot threads connect these shorts to Season 2, but even if there aren't any, they're quick and fun and they have me seriously hyped for some new Trek in only about a week. Hopefully they'll at least pop up on the DVD. Check out my Review of Discovery Season 2 Episode 1 Miss my reviews of Season 1? Check them out here! Remember to Like and Subscribe (along the side) to stay in the loop!
1 Comment
C
1/20/2019 10:56:49 pm
Captain's Blog Supplemental: CBS has announced the addition of two more Short Treks to appear after the close of Season 2 of Discovery. Furthermore, Netflix has finally agreed to pick up the shorts for international viewing. In business terms, this means the shorts are not being brushed under the rug as a failed experiment. They appear to have proven their worth, broken even monetarily, built up favorable buzz leading into Season 2, and are part of the ongoing Star Trek agenda. The new shorts will relate to the new ST animated series that were recently announced. With any luck, we'll get a few more Discovery related ones before Season 3, as well. Live Long and Prosper!
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