SDCC18: ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Mini-Episodes, Spock and Number One Confirmed for Season 2

The panel for Star Trek: Discovery is going on right now in Hall H in San Diego. Executive Producer Alex Kurtzman has dropped some exciting news on the crowd today. The panel started with a trailer, which will be released online later this afternoon, check back shortly for our article.

Discovery universe mini-episodes

“Short Treks” are mini-episodes to help tide fans over until Season 2.

UPDATE: More information from The Hollywood Reporter:

Called Star Trek: Short Treks, each of the four-episode series will run between 10-15 minutes and feature deeper storytelling surrounding the characters and themes from Discovery and the expanding Star Trek universe. The series will launch in the fall and roll out monthly, helping to keep awareness of Discovery high before its return in January 2019.

More about the 4 episodes:

Rainn Wilson will return to reprise his role as Harry Mudd in a short he will direct. Aldis Hodge (Hidden Figures, Showtime’s upcoming City on a Hill) will star in another installment as Craft, a man who finds himself the only human on board a deserted ship. Additional episodes will explore Saru’s (Doug Jones) backstory as the first Kelpien to join Starfleet and Tilly’s (Mary Wiseman) journey aboard the USS Discovery and her friendship with an unlikely partner.

Number One confirmed

Spock on Discovery

As we’ve been guessing for a while now, it looks like Spock will be coming to Discovery. We’re not sure if this refers to an adult Spock, or the young Spock that will appear in flashbacks that Jonathan Frakes confirmed a few months ago.

However, maybe not right away?

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I suspect the mini episodes will be cutouts of season 1 with narration.

That’s a good bet.

One of them is on Saru’s origins. I don’t know how that would be possible with material from S1.

they will just talk about it and show him talking about it and show some mirror universe stuff

The mirror universe is currently being covered in an IDW series. It’s cool, but a LOT is happening there.

No its pretty clear its new material. They are even introducing a new character we haven’t seen before stuck on a space station. I’m guessing he will make an appearance in season two somewhere.

Nope, new material.

Harry Mudd? What are they… Comedy skits?

Nothing funny about “Mudd’s Women”.

Nor the Mudd episode in DSC last year. I agree that that post was nonsensical.

As Magic to Make the Sanest Man Mad has been widely declared to be one of the best episodes of Discovery’s first season I doubt anyone much cares that you didn’t like it.

@Who cares

Exactly! Lol

Likely his admission to the treatment facility his data file in TOS said he had stayed at before encountering the Enterprise.

Sounds a little like Solo. Backstory for someone we really didn’t need one for.

Oh shit! I wish I was there!

Are they red uniforms or the sandy coloured ones they had in The Cage. Does it look respectful of TOS?

They look like the Discovery uniforms but in a more familiar color scheme and with that same annoying collar.

Are they going to be releasing the trailer so that those of us not at ComicCon can see it?

Available now on Youtube.

Rebecca Romijn in Star Trek! YAY!! So excited!

So, let’s see, Spock takes a leave of absence from Starfleet after making a connection with some unknown deep space entity in an attempt to gain better insight into himself. This is all sounds a bit, I dunno, familiar in some way…

Entities, not one. So doubtful it’s Vger if that’s what you’re implying.

As I’ve said elsewhere, pity they couldn’t have done the same with the crew of TOS. I would’ve loved to see little stories starring Scotty, Sulu, Chekov, Uhura. Even minor characters like Dr. M’Benga who interned on the Vulcan ward during his medical residency. Even on their most boring days it could be more exciting than some of my day to day activities. Lotta potential for good story telling there that never was.

You could still do some of that in the Kelvin movies.

Once again, we’ve been taken for rubes. “We’re going to respect canon”; art director says, “JK, you were never going to get TOS.” Now it’s “We don’t really see Spock being recast”, followed, unsurprisingly, by Spock being recast. The harder they deny something, the more we know they’re lying. Remember “Is Tyler Voq?” “Oh no, no, no, no.” Lies, misdirection, and obfuscation. I get enough of that $#!^ in real life, thankyouverymuch.

The Short Treks may turn out to be fun or enjoyable, but I tend to cynically think that parsing them out on a monthly basis is solely to stem the tide of cancelled subscriptions between seasons. I honestly wonder how many people cancelled after Season One with the intent of coming back for Season two.

“Called Star Trek: Short Treks, each of the four-episode series will run between 10-15 minutes and feature deeper storytelling surrounding the characters and themes from Discovery and the expanding Star Trek universe. The series will launch in the fall and roll out monthly, helping to keep awareness of Discovery high before its return in January 2019.”

So they are plainly aware that the break between seasons does not sit right with fans, on top of short seasons too.
Fix it the right way.. longer seasons with shorter delays.

Well thats where all the new Trek shows come in I guess. But they are probably still too far with those to announce anything. The webisodes sounds fine but I highly doubt its going to get that many people to pay for it monthly when most can just wait until the season start and watch them then.

But I wouldn’t be surprised we wouldn’t get a new Star Trek show by next year.

If the webisodes are exclusive to CBSAA then I’m not going to see them until the regular show starts.

What I don’t get is, if they don’t have enough space in the regular season for the mini episodes why didn’t they just ask for more episodes from CBS. I am not a big fan of mini episode formats, but will check them out when released.

My guess is that these mini episodes were requested by CBS to bridge the long break between seasons. It’s not some left-over scenes that the producers had to cut from the episodes for time reasons. I’m not a big fan of mini episodes, either, if they are only 3-4 minutes long. Some TV shows have done small webisodes like that. I feel those are mostly pointless filler because the time is just too short. However, in 10-15 minutes you can actually tell a meaningful story. Let’s see.

Well, they could have easily added them to the regular season as one-off stories in between the main arc of the season and have them like normal episodes. This could have been a better approach I think and more bucks for the money.

I agree. I’d rather have more episodes than have the webisodes.

The mini-episodes should be perfect for any fans who have demonstrated that they prefer a Star Trek Continues approach for DSC (wink!)