LizstarTrek - Short Treks 1-4
Every Sunday my Twitch subs and I watch Star Trek in my Discord. Here are my reviews and thoughts on each of the episodes as I see it. If you’re curious about a nerd’s views on Star Trek episodes, please read on, I go quite in depth with some of these episodes! I’ve watched some Star Trek before but not all of it!
While Disco was being made, they made Short Treks basically at the same time. We should watch those too I guess. This is a Disco side series about the Disco characters. Cool.
Runaway - ENT 4/10
Some weird alien gets on board, and Tilly is eating food alone in the mess hall. I know she’s alone cause they made these in a day with only a few people working on them but it’s just very funny that the mess hall is 100% empty.
After talking to her frankly very Lwaxana Troi coded mom, Tilly meets the alien, who makes a mess. It hurt itself on something, cutting and bleeding everywhere. It can cloak itself somehow and kinda turns itself humanoid, but is chittering all over the place. It actually seems to be a she. She likes ice cream! She is a “Xaheean” named Po.
Tilly has to hide Po like she’s a cat that she’s trying to keep, and not a sapient creature that people would treat with support, because they’re Federation?
There’s some weird thing about the Xaheean viewing their planet as their twins, I don’t really get it. Also some nonsense about her creating a “Dilithium Resequencer” or something. My brain is turning off.
She reveals she’s actually the princess and is gonna have her coronation tomorrow. She gives a special dilithium crystal to Tilly as a gift. They’re already setting up Dilithium as this special macguffin, huh? Not knowing wtf it is? Yeah.
A LITTLE closer to the vibes of Trek but still with a stink of Discovery nonsense.
Calypso - ENT 6.5/10
This episode is, immediately, VERY flashy for some reason.
A guy in a broken ship and life support pod floats through space then wakes up in the Discovery. He’s all alone, and it’s dark. He assumes he’s captured and tries breaking out, but is contacted by an AI who calls herself Zora. The guy’s name is Craft, he’s a Human soldier who’s only known war.
This episode is shot in a really creepy way. It’s like a psychological horror. The low lighting of Disco and the emptiness of Short Trek really fits here.
This appears to be a far, far time in the future. The Discovery is empty, and abandoned for years. Zora does her best to make Craft feel comfortable. It’s actually NOT creepy or scary, but it’s weirdly shot that way at times. Craft wants to do something nice for her.
He helps her get a holographic body, and they dance. They ALMOST kiss, but Craft remembers his original family and leaves. She’s like “wait, but I’m not a person, it doesn’t mean anything”, which is pretty sad. Realizing she can’t keep him, she helps him leave, sending him off home, and then playing the dance to herself over and over.
Mild spoilers but this episode will be KIND of retconned. It takes place in the 43rd century now, which is the furthest in the timeline we ever see. Neat!
The Brightest Star - ENT 8/10
It’s a Saru episode! He’s talking about his childhood. His people are prey animals, remember. So he’s talking about how his people kind of revere being hunted and dying to the Ba’ul, the other sapient people on the planet. Thats kinda fucked.
His father is like “Yes the Ba’ul fly with space ships. You cannot, Saru. If the great balance wanted us to fly he would have given us wings. We must keep the balance and be eaten because thats the way it always has been!” Hey look, a real life metaphor that isn’t terrible bad! It’s almost Trek-like!
Saru keeps some technology that fell even though it’s forbidden in his village. He’s a thinker, he wants to know more of the universe. So he keeps messing with it… and he gets a message back.
He says goodbye to his sister, and says he just “wants to watch the stars for a while”. And then he’s found by Georgiou. She explains that while they got his message and are here to meet and take him like he requested, he IS a part of a pre-warp society, so he won’t really be able to come back. He decides his place is no longer there, so he goes with Georgiou into the stars.
The Escape Artist - ENT 8/10
This was the first thing about Disco I had ever seen. I remember liking it, and it made me excited to see more Harry Mudd. I have never been so betrayed in my life.
Anyways Mudd is captured by a bounty hunter and given to an Tellarite who hates him cause Mudd fucked his sister and stole from him.
He’s also apparently wanted in the Federation for 30 attempts of homicide, and one attempt of regicide??? Harry Mudd is a con man and with used car salesman energy, why the fuck did they make him just straight up evil with no positive qualities whatsoever? Was he always like this, did I forget what Harry Mudd was like in TOS?
He’s also wanted for one count of “penetrating a space whale”, which at the time I thought was kinda silly, and now it makes me irrationally angry.
He spends this episode trying to worm his way out of custody. He claims he’s part of “The Resistance” against the Federation, which is very silly. The episode also keeps cutting back and forth to when he has done the same lines and been in the same situations previous times he’s been in custody.
He starts complaining about the Federation’s taxes, a thing the federation is famous for having.
In every previous encounter, he is seen fucking up and getting the shit beat out of him. Good.
And then we get the twist, as the Tellarite takes Mudd to the Federation, and they reveal that he fell for a scam. Bounty hunters have been turning up with these android fakes for a while. There’s some stuff about fake DNA skin. They even open a door and show a room full of Mudd clones.
Kinda a fun twist tbh.
We then find out the REAL Mudd was the lady alien selling Mudds to everyone. Tee hee.
If I liked this version of Mudd I think this’d be great. As it is, I’m not sure why the hell they wanted to make him chaotic neutral Han Solo, and even then they overshot that REAL far into chaotic evil han solo.