The trailer for the next Short Treks episode is out, with EW getting a first look at trailer and a photo from the short. On December 6, the Saru-centric episode “The Brightest Star” will debut.
Episode Description:
In “The Brightest Star,” Saru (Doug Jones) lived a simple life on his home planet of Kaminar with his father and sister. Young Saru, full of ingenuity and a level of curiosity uncommon among his people, yearns to find out what lies beyond his village, leading him on an unexpected path.
Trailer:
Alternate player from EW (may work outside of US):
Photos:

“The Brightest Star”– Episode SF-003– Doug Jones as Saru of the CBS All Access series STAR TREK: SHORT TREKS. Photo Cr: Michael Gibson/CBS é 2018 CBS Interactive. All Rights Reserved.

“The Brightest Star”– Episode SF-003– Doug Jones as Saru of the CBS All Access series STAR TREK: SHORT TREKS. Photo Cr: Michael Gibson/CBS é 2018 CBS Interactive. All Rights Reserved.
Star Trek: Short Treks is available in the USA on CBS All Access. It airs in Canada on Space and streams on CraveTV.
That looks like Pahvo.
There’s a good chance they filmed on the same location.
Saru did seem to feel at home on Pahvo, so that makes some sense.
Hmm, I don’t remember Pahvo having pink soil.
Because there are only so many colors allowed on this show ;)
More like Nibiru
Looking forward to this one.
Saru.
Metal.
Saru.
MEEEETAAAAAL!!!
Laughable music, considering the character. It seems everything CBS touches turns to cheese.
So Saru is a kelp farmer? He’s literally a Kelpian?
I don’t know why they didn’t just call the planet Kelpinar. Maybe the show is eventually planning on replacing the spore drive with the seaweed drive.
Why don’t they call our planet Mensch?
@odradek
Untermensch. At least lately.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the “Kaminarians” are the predator species.
Would make sense. We call our planet “Earth” because we are the top of the food chain. Who cares what cows or chickens call our planet? My point is the dominate species of any planet would be the ones to name it.
Smash Ultimate. The Game Awards. Short Trek.
I’m beginning to wonder if Christmas got pushed forward a few weeks.
These Short Trek’s keep getting more and more compelling with each new episode. From the looks of things this one will continue that. Just from the short glimpse of Suru’s home here it already builds on what drives his character. I’m so very interested in seeing more of his back story. Plus his planet looks like a “strange new world” which one course I love.
This makes it look like his involvement with starfleet might be a breach of the prime directive
What if the other, dominant species on his planet are technologically advanced and Starfleet didn’t know about the Kelpians or if the dominant species over time had suppressed the Kelpians’ advancements. I’m legit curious to know the Prime Directive rules on that because if I remember correctly from the book and the show, Saru says that Starfleet officers rescued him from being killed by the predator species on that planet. If he wanted to seek asylum, does that allow Starfleet to help?
Remember when Nikolai Rhozhenko snuck a bunch of primitives in danger of extinction onto the Enterprise? One of them found the Holodeck exit. While he eventually comitted suicide as he could not adjust to the culture shock had he lived he could have found a place in Federation society.
In short, while a Prime Directive violation of some kind seems likely here, it would not neccessarily impact his eventual Starfleet career.
Looks rerally good! I love Saru
In my opinion Saru is Star Trek’s most inspired alien character since Spock.
He’s certainly unique, and Doug Jones is awesome. Saru is a fine addition to the universe!
I would agree. And in the end, he became the most interesting character on the show! I didn’t care for him at first but the character grew on me.
Saru is the only character/performance in the first season of ST:D that really stays with me. He’s amazing, delightful, and they *need* to do “surgery” to his feet for Doug Jones’ comfort…if for no other reason!
This looks interesting and very nice visually. I think I like this because that fugly pizza cutter of a ship wasn’t shown.
Original new species, a new planet, what is thus far a compelling new character (the most compelling on the show, arguably). “To seek out new life, new civilizations.” This is Star Trek. The only setback – Saru is limited to the time period the show is placed in. He’s presumably either dead or lost by the time of TOS (yay, prequels) – never spoken of again in any Trek incarnation. Solution – change the time period the show is placed in. Send Discovery into the future, thereby giving Saru a future, and let the show stand on its own merits.
Saru could easily still be in Starfleet during TOS. They would have no reason to mention him since he doesn’t serve on the Enterprise.
I’m simply suggesting the character’s future could actually be witnessed by an audience if circumstances were different.
You know I agree about the time-frame change, but we got a new species every week. I’m okay with never having heard of Kelpians before now, especially if other Kelpians are afraid to leave their planet, and only Saru left.
Same thing with the xidni, they never mention them in the future except for one line in startrek behond.
Why would circumstances have to be different? Discovery (or wherever Saru is posted in TOS time) could continue right through the TOS years and, as long as it didn’t cross paths with Enterprise or other TOS participants, Saru wouldn’t be out of place wherever he was.
In fact, if the character is strong enough, no reason they can’t give him his own show. Make him the captain of the Lexington or some other ship we saw in TOS (but never saw its crew).
This is not unique to prequels. How many races did we meet in TNG and DS9 and that had supposedly been active in interstellar politics for decades or centuries, but we’d never heard of them before? Very rarely did a new major alien race show up in an episode and actually see our first contact with them (Ferengi and the Borg, being two notable exceptions).
Likewise, Andorians and Tellarites were never shown in any of the post-TOS shows, but we know they were still around.
So silly to pick on this sort of thing.
Agreed, the nitpicking on this site since I first came visiting (for the 2009 movie) drives me insane and has gotten steadily worse over the years. It’s the reason why I hardly post now, I don’t really feel like getting into bitter arguments over ridiculous stuff. Too many people seem to be wanting to tell others how they should feel about something rather than them being able to decide on their own. However, I still enjoy the posts and regularly read them.
I find much better conversations and less specious arguments on the Trek sub on Reddit.
This one in particular seems to be a case of ‘does a tree in the forest still make a sound?’
I agree. I love this site for the posts, but the so called-“discussions” remind me of something I read about when they taught apes to use sign language. They would just talk at each other, by moving their hands faster and faster at each other forcefully, faster and faster, without listening to each other, just arguing.
But the posts are great. They are all great, and Matt Wright is the very best, in my opinion.
“Send Discovery into the future, thereby giving Saru a future”
It’s possible the ship will indeed end up jumping to the future, with DSC providing a link to the 25th century Picard show.
That’s pretty much where I was heading with that sentence, Jai, thank you. Instead I was criticized for suggesting it – go figure.
I don’t know anything about a time jump, but didn’t they explicitly state that the Picard show would have no connection to DSC?
“but didn’t they explicitly state that the Picard show would have no connection to DSC?”
In this interview in August, https://deadline.com/2018/08/patrick-stewart-star-trek-franchise-expansion-plans-cbs-all-access-executives-interview-tca-1202440492/, CBS said this:
“DEADLINE: Are the Star Trek extensions contractually obligated to go to Netflix internationally per the deal on Discovery?
STAPF: It’s complicated. Some are, some aren’t, depending on how it gets defined as series or a spinoff.
DEADLINE: So, the one announced yesterday with Sir Patrick, that’s a standalone series right?
STAPF: Yes, that’s a new series. Which I think is important to distinguish.”
So you’re correct if that position still stands. However, for all we know things may have changed since August (or will change) — or the Discovery will enter the 25th century by jumping into the same timeframe as the Picard show, but DSC will depict separate events.
All just fun speculation, of course.
That’s not what I meant. I believe there was interview with someone involved on the creative side and it was said that the story would absolutely no connection to DSC.
EDIT:
Kurtzman, during an event panel, talked about how the Picard will relate to Discovery. Responding to a fan question he said that the Jean-Luc Picard’s series “will not mesh into [Discovery].” Adding, “that will be its own thing.”
Yes, for now. They also said we wouldn’t see a grown up Spock on the show and now it sounds like he’s in half the season, so we’ll see. My guess if CBS wants some big crossover down the line, there will be a crossover.
No doubt, but I don’t think it’s fair to simply assume it will definitely happen.
I believe you’re correct, but regardless of that I’m one of the vocal few here who wish DSC would move beyond the TOS era into some future timeline where writers can stretch their legs a bit more without bumping into things already established in lore.
And I continue to maintain that moving forward in the timeline does not inherently allow writers any such ability to stretch their legs. Plenty of OTHER things that tie their hands in different ways.
Agreed but I think that ship has sailed unfortunately, barring a crossover with the Picard show.
“He’s presumably either dead or lost by the time of TOS (yay, prequels)”
First off, I’m not sure that’s a fair assumption. TOS didn’t show every character that exists in that fictional universe.
Secondly, even if he is dead by some future date, what’s the problem with that? All the TOS cast is dead if we set a show post nemesis. It doesn’t make earlier stories less interesting or compelling. A character’s story isn’t worthless just because we know their ultimate fate– after all, we ALL die eventually.
Saru could live for another hundred years, or he could die in the season 2 premiere. The fact that he is likely long dead by the time of TNG, and possibly by TOS, is utterly irrelevant.
Of course there’s nothing wrong with killing off a character if it serves the storyline well – shows do it all the time. And I’m all-in for moving the timeline forward. All I’m saying is that in the long-run in this case as Discovery stands now, the character (which I like) is at risk of being short-changed because of the prequel-nature of the show. This isn’t nitpicking, and relevant or not, it’s simply an opinion. If anything, I’m interested in his fate even more.
I agree with the concept of killing characters. Funny thing… Killing Culber was the one and only one “Holy Crap!” moment in the series. Yet seconds after the credits rolled we get official announcement of “Don’t worry, he’s coming back.” They couldn’t even handle THAT right. So glad that group is mostly gone now.
The character is at ZERO risk simply because it’s a prequel. His status is no different than any other character in any other series after the first season. I don’t even know where to begin responding to such a declaration.
I have no idea what declaration you’re referring to, Afterburn. I didn’t make one.
“the character (which I like) is at risk of being short-changed because of the prequel-nature of the show.”
You could have figured out what I was referring to simply by reading my comment, as I referenced it fairly directly.
We just see this from completely different angles. No harm no foul – moving on –
If you see it from another angle, you’re just obtuse. B’doom tish!
I’m just waiting for the novel from Kristen Beyer that shows Ambassador Saru on a mission aboard the USS Stargazer under Captain Picard. Just to prove that he doesn’t have to be dead before/during/after TOS, and could very well have had hundreds of years of stories left to tell after his time on Discovery.
At the end of the day only what’s on-screen counts, Afterburn. You know that. Otherwise, Prime Kirk was resurrected from the dead years ago.
Fair, then an episode of the Picard show that references an “Ambassador Saru” on a mission to Vulcan..
God I hope not. I’m kinda tired of the concept of “this species lifespan is well over 200 years” done just so they could have crossovers.
Considering a lot of species on earth live hundreds of years, your attitude towards it is misguided. In a galaxy of hundreds of thousands of species it’s likely many would have exceptionally long life spans.
plus medical science continuing to advance it would be no surprise to even see humans live to 200+ years by the era of TOS.
The attitude is based on the idea that the main reason thus far to give a species a very long lifespan was so they could appear in the TOS era and the TNG era. Further, why have we only met one species with an extremely short life span (that we know of)?
It truly is preposterous that humans would expand their life span to over 200 years. Even with medical advances.
I don’t think it’s preposterous at all. In 1950, life expectency at birth was about 70. In 2015, it was 80. They expect that by 2045 it will be nearly 100.
And those are averages. I recall when I was a kid in the early 80s it was astonishingly rare to hear of anyone living past 100 (hence why they would announce 100+ birthdays on the news)– and now I personally know at least a dozen people who are nearly or over 100.
Not only that, but we’re living longer and HEALTHIER.
200 years from now, who knows where medical science will be– I would not be at all surprised to see life spans into the 150s or higher.
Yeah I can get behind that, absolutely.
@danpaine
Incorrect. The Discovery novels have been declared canon by the IP owner, the only entity that gets to decide that.
Well, it’s pretty simple. It’s fiction and the character/species hadn’t been thought of yet in 1966. Fictional worlds do not spring into being fully-formed and consistent.
Can you imagine if we had been limited only to species and characters we met in The Cage?
Those Kelpians look delicious.
Everybody list their favorite Kelpian dish!
Interest piqued. Saru is one of my favorite characters on Disco. Can’t wait to witness his humble beginnings (though in truth I really want more Craft and Chabon’s Star Odyssey).
Since Saru can see his own death he probably came to the conclusion he’d rather die on the Discovery than die of boredom on his home planet.
slider,
What am I missing? If he can see his own death, then what choice does he have?
Saru cannot see his own death
He can “sense the coming of death”, not neccessarily his own. Nowhere has anything ever said he can see his own death.
Star Trek again proving global reach with a North America release only.
Keep it coming…