Development said the series was designed to buy time for the
second season of
Star Trek: Discovery to be completed. In June 2018, after becoming sole
showrunner of the series
Star Trek: Discovery,
Alex Kurtzman signed a five-year overall deal with
CBS Television Studios to expand the
Star Trek franchise beyond
Discovery to several new series, miniseries, and animated series. A month later, he announced at
San Diego Comic-Con that a spin-off miniseries titled
Star Trek: Short Treks, consisting of four shorts, would be released monthly between the first two seasons of
Discovery. He said they would "deliver closed-ended stories while revealing clues about what's to come in future
Star Trek: Discovery episodes. They'll also introduce audiences to new characters who may inhabit the larger world of
Star Trek." The shorts were expected to be around 10 to 15 minutes long. Kurtzman said
Short Treks was devised as a way to buy time so they could get the
second season of
Discovery right. The shorts were designed to tie-in with the second season of
Discovery, but appear standalone at first so those connections would be a surprise for fans.
CBS CCO
David Nevins indicated in December 2018 that there would be more shorts released between the end of
Discovery second season and the release of the new series
Star Trek: Picard. A month later,
CBS All Access was confirmed to have ordered two new animated installments of
Short Treks to be released in that time period. Kurtzman described the shorts as expanding "the definition of
Star Trek" and allowing them to tell "very intimate, emotional stories that are side stories to characters. So you get the benefit of the experience in and of itself but then when you watch
Discovery you'll see that these were all setting up things" in the main series. Kurtzman suggested in February that future shorts could tie directly into other new
Star Trek series, and be used to introduce ideas to audiences and set up mysteries. At San Diego Comic-Con 2019, Kurtzman announced that the second season of
Short Treks would consist of four new live-action shorts in addition to the two animated shorts previously announced, including one that ties-into
Picard. After the second set of shorts were released, Kurtzman said the series was an interesting way to test both new stories and new filmmakers, with writers, directors, and composers on the shorts going on to work on other
Star Trek series. He also said this short-form story telling was satisfying, comparing the shorts to
those created by Pixar. He revealed that one of the first ideas discussed for
Short Treks was a story featuring
Nichelle Nichols in her original
Star Trek role of
Uhura. The short would have seen a young
Jean-Luc Picard visit Uhura in hospital and receive a mission related to the
Borg. These discussions led to the development of
Star Trek: Picard with an older Jean-Luc Picard, but Kurtzman said this story could still be told at some point.
Short Treks was reportedly ordered for a third season in January 2020, with production scheduled to take place from May to June. Chabon said in March that there were no plans for any shorts based on
Picard to be released between the
first and
second seasons of that series. No other shorts had begun production by July, when the series received an
Emmy Award nomination. Kurtzman said he hoped the accolade would lead to more
Short Treks being made and he wanted to use future shorts to expand the franchise in new directions such as a musical short or a black-and-white short. In January 2021, Kurtzman explained that further shorts had not been made due to the
COVID-19 pandemic, since the restrictions on filming meant they had to focus on what they definitely needed to film for the main series. He expressed interest in making more shorts in the future.
Live-action shorts Of the initial four shorts ordered in July 2018, three were set to each focus on a character from
Discovery:
Mary Wiseman's Silvia Tilly,
Doug Jones's Saru, and
Rainn Wilson's
Harry Mudd. Jones's short would explore the backstory of Saru, while Wilson would also direct the short that he was starring in.
Aldis Hodge was set to star in the fourth short as a new character, Craft. The shorts were produced on the set of
Discovery in
Toronto, Canada. In August, Wilson revealed that his short was written by a writer from the popular science fiction animated series
Rick and Morty and described it as "very funny and weird. You see some alien situations you have never seen before in the
Star Trek canon, and I am thrilled." He added that in making the short he assumed it was set after his last
Discovery appearance, "
Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad", but he was not certain of this since it is standalone and does not directly tie-in to
Discovery. The
Rick and Morty writer of his short was later revealed to be
Star Trek fan
Mike McMahan, who went on to create the animated comedy series
Star Trek: Lower Decks. Wiseman explained in October 2018 that her short, titled "Runaway", expands on Tilly's character and introduces her mother but otherwise would not affect the second season, so anyone who did not see the short could still understand the main series. Because of this, she did not have an exact placement of the short in the series' timeline though Jones pointed out that Tilly's hair style changes between the two seasons of
Discovery and her hair in the short matches with the style from the second season. Jones confirmed that his short, "The Brightest Star", is set before
Discovery and explores how Saru first joins Starfleet. He said the short has "breadcrumbs" and "hints" for the events of
Discovery second season, but the idea was still for the short and the second season to stand alone. Novelist
Michael Chabon joined the series as the writer of Hodge's short, "Calypso", through
Discovery executive producer
Akiva Goldsman who he had been working with on a film project. Chabon went on to be the showrunner of
Star Trek: Picard. This short was the first work Chabon wrote for television to actually be produced. "Calypso" is set in the far future when the
Discovery computer has become a sentient
AI named Zora. The
third season of
Discovery began building towards this future by introducing an early version of Zora. After
Anson Mount was confirmed to be leaving
Discovery with the second-season finale, fans began calling, including through online petitions, for him to reprise his role of
Christopher Pike in a spin-off set on the
USS Enterprise, alongside
Rebecca Romijn as
Number One and
Ethan Peck as
Spock. Mount and Peck both responded positively to the idea. In April 2019, Kurtzman also expressed interest, saying, "The fans have been heard. Anything is possible in the world of
Trek. I would love to bring back that crew more than anything." When announcing the second season of
Short Treks at San Diego Comic-Con in 2019, Kurtzman said three of the new stories would feature the
Enterprise actors, with the fourth live-action short being a "teaser" for
Picard set 15 years before the start of that series. Kurtzman said the
Enterprise-based shorts were a way to bring those characters and actors back now that
Discovery had jumped into the future for its third season, but they would not preclude a potential spin-off series from being made. When a spin-off series starring Mount, Peck, and Romijn was officially ordered by CBS All Access in May 2020, Dominic Patten of
Deadline Hollywood opined that the
Enterprise-set
Short Treks retroactively appeared to be "rehearsals" for the series, which was titled
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. For "The Trouble with Edward", Kurtzman brought in
Casper Kelly to work on the "faux Tribbles cereal commercial"
post-credits scene. This led to Kelly creating the comedic, non-canon shorts series
Star Trek: very Short Treks.
Animated shorts directed and composed the music for the animated short "Ephraim and Dot" and also supervised the composers for some other shorts. Kurtzman explained in February 2019 that the first two animated shorts would have a different animation style from the series
Lower Decks. He added that the first short would be directed by
Discovery producing director
Olatunde Osunsanmi and the second would be directed by composer
Michael Giacchino (who wrote the score for the
Star Trek reboot films that Kurtzman wrote). Producer
Heather Kadin said the animated shorts would answer questions that previous
Discovery seasons had left and "fill in some blanks", while Kurtzman elaborated that the two shorts would have different animation styles from one another based on the story and tone of each installment.
Pixomondo provided the animation for the shorts. The ideas for the two shorts were set before Giacchino joined, and he was able to choose which one he would direct. He chose "Ephraim and Dot", which focuses on a female tardigrade and a DOT-7 repair droid.
Discovery originally included a tardigrade named Ephraim as a starring character, but the idea was abandoned due to budgetary requirements. A male tardigrade named Ephraim was then introduced as a major character in the
Discovery tie-in novel
Dead Endless. DOT-7 repair droids were introduced in the second-season finale of
Discovery. Giacchino wanted the short to be like an episode of
Tom and Jerry set on the
Enterprise. The original designs for Ephraim were based on the tardigrades that Pixomondo created for
Discovery, which looked much more like real tardigrades, but Giacchino asked to add eyes and a mouth to the character model so she could express emotions clearly throughout the short. Similarly, the model for Dot was designed to stretch and move in ways that a real robot would not to help show more emotion from the character. This stretching was part of Giacchino's aim to use traditional animation techniques, such as those seen in the works of
Tex Avery, to give the short a more
retro style than modern, computer-generated animation generally has. The short takes place across 30 years of
Star Trek history, and Giacchino was excited to include several easter eggs to other parts of the
Star Trek franchise. The short recreates scenes from the
Star Trek: The Original Series episodes "
Space Seed", "
The Naked Time", "
Who Mourns for Adonais?", "
The Doomsday Machine", "
The Tholian Web", and "
The Savage Curtain", as well as the films
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) and
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984). Original audio from some of the episodes was reused for these scenes. The short ends with the USS
Enterprise labelled as
NCC-1701-A, which is a different ship from later in the franchise's timeline. Giacchino acknowledged this mistake after the episode's release and indicated that it could be addressed moving forward. Osunsanmi's "The Girl Who Made the Stars" originated from
Discovery writer Brandon Schulze wanting to expand on the character of Mike Burnham, father of that series' protagonist
Michael Burnham, as Schulze identified with the character as a black man with a young daughter. Schulze co-wrote the episode that introduced Kenric Green as Mike in
Discovery, and pitched an idea for the second-season finale where Mike would be shown in flashback telling the story of a young African girl to Michael. This would have mirrored the second-season premiere where Michael recounts that story herself. The flashback did not fit in the season finale, but Kurtzman liked the idea and it was developed into an animated episode of
Short Treks with Green reprising his role. The story is based on an actual African legend, but Schulze wanted to bring the ideas of the myth into the world of
Star Trek and embellish the original ideas based on Michael's imagination, which included introducing an alien being into the story. Osunsanmi was comfortable working with Pixomondo for the short after collaborating with the company on the visual effects for
Discovery as a director on that show. He explained that the short was animated to try capture the magical feeling they wanted the story to have, and because of this he did not want the style to be too realistic. The designs of the Burnhams were based on their appearances in
Discovery while the African part of the short was based on images of Africa and African tribes from across the continent.
Music Star Trek: Discovery composer
Jeff Russo returned for the first season of
Short Treks. He based the main theme for the series on his
Discovery title theme, and he was able to produce a different version of it for "The Escape Artist" which is not something Russo had been able to do for any episodes of the main series. Russo approached each short's underscore individually. He was unsure how to approach the score for "Calypso" at first, and whether to have it similar to the music for
Discovery due to that ship's presence or to intentionally make it different due to the different time that the short is set in. Russo was ultimately inspired for the music by the dance sequence in the short. Three cues from Russo's "The Escape Artist" score—"Many Mudds", "Star Trek Short Treks End Credits (Lounge Version)", and "Star Trek Short Treks Main Title (Disco Version)"—were released on the soundtrack album for
the second season of Discovery alongside Russo's score for that season. The album was released digitally by
Lakeshore Records on July 19, 2019. By the time work began on the second set of shorts, Russo was working on the score for
Picard and did not have time to score each of the new shorts, though Kurtzman still asked him to compose the music for "Children of Mars" since that short ties-into
Picard. Giacchino was set to compose the music for his short "Ephraim and Dot", and Kurtzman asked him to provide music for the rest of the shorts as well. Giacchino was busy with film projects at the time, but suggested hiring a diverse group of composers who had not been given such an opportunity which he felt was in the spirit of
Star Trek. Giacchino supervised this group of composers, which consisted of
Nami Melumad for "Q&A", Sahil Jindal for "The Trouble with Edward", Andrea Datzman for "Ask Not", and
Kris Bowers for "The Girl Who Made the Stars". Two cues from Russo's "Children of Mars" score—"Page" and "Children Of Mars End Credits"—were released on the soundtrack album for
the first season of Picard on February 7, 2020. Melumad went on to compose for
Strange New Worlds and
Star Trek: Prodigy. ==Release==