Alex Kurtzman Shows off New Short Treks, Teases Pike, Spock, Number One Spinoff Series

More details about upcoming Short Treks came out of Star Trek’s Hall H panel at Comic Con this weekend.

Star Trek head boy Alex Kurtzman started off by explaining where Short Treks came from and their place in Trek. Talking about the four shorts that came before Discovery season two, he explained, “We knew we weren't gonna be able to drop Discovery right away and we wanted to buy ourselves the time to get the season right, particularly because the visual effects takes so long [...] So we built these Short Treks, which was like a really interesting experiment in that we got to tell the stories that you otherwise wouldn't always get to tell in the main body of the story. [...] But then the reveal was that some of them connected to storytelling of season two. They seem like they were independent, but they really weren't. So we're going to do that again.”

Kurtzman then reaffirmed that there will be six upcoming Short Treks, and introduced a minute-and-a-half-long trailer showing them off. After the trailer, he explained further what to expect from the next six short stories. Three of the Short Treks will involve Pike, Spock and Number One, including one that featured prominently in the trailer, with Number One and Spock getting stuck in an elevator. Then two will be animated, but as Kurtzman pointed out, “not in the style of either of [the] animated shows”. One of those will be directed by composer Michael Giacchino, and one will be directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi, one of Discovery’s main directors. Then the final of the six stories will be a prequel to the Picard series. Kurtzman described it, “It will give you a sense of some background that happened to Jean-Luc, 15 years before we enter into the series. So everything connects.”

Later in that part of the Hall H panel, Kurtzman addressed directly the idea of Captain Pike, Number One and Spock getting their own show...kind of. He acknowledged that those three characters were key to setting the tone for Discovery season two, and he said that they would have taken them with Discovery, if they could have. But in his words, “that would have broken canon in ways that you would have been throwing tomatoes at us today.”

Kurtzman went on to tease the crowd though, saying “there's obviously been a lot of speculation about whether Pike and Number One and Spock would get their own show. So I guess my question to you guys is, do you want them to get their own show?” When the crowd finished cheering, he finished by saying, “Okay, well we'll think about it.”