*SPOILERS*

“An Obol For Charon” begins, as have all season two’s episodes with a Spock-tease as Number One (Rebecca Romijn) visits her Captain to provide an update on her investigations into the unfolding mysteries surrounding Spock’s bizarre behaviour since the red bursts occurred and also grab something to eat. It’s a fun and intriguing preamble to the episode proper which effectively ramps up…

There’s something very metatextually Harry Mudd about “The Escape Artist” once you learn that it not only stairs Rainn Wilson but was directed by him too. Although, given the treatment he gets during the first ten minutes or so, it’s a relief to find it wasn’t written by Wilson too otherwise, you’d begin to wonder if he has some unresolved issues to work out.

Having resumed his life of grifting,…

*SPOILERS*

The third Short Trek brings us a pre-USS Discovery glimpse into the life of one of the series’ standout characters: Saru (Doug Jones). In doing so, it brings to light the weird contradictions in the species’ origins, especially in the Star Trek universe.

On the planet Kaminar, Saru feels unfulfilled by Kelpien life, living a simple agrarian existence while waiting to be harvested as…

*SPOILERS*

Where “Runaway” felt like an abandoned draft of a promising “Discovery” episode, “Calypso” feels like it could be the pilot for a whole new series of its own. Stretching the format of Short Treks, it tells what might be canon Trek’s most futuristic adventure, set some thousand years after the time of Discovery.

After waking up in an unfamiliar sickbay, Craft (Aldis Hodge) finds himself…

*SPOILERS*

Finally available on Netflix UK (although buried away in the ‘Trailers & More’ section of “Star Trek: Discovery”), Star Trek: Short Treks are intended, apparently, to give the franchise room to explore beyond the realms of its current single incarnation, something I’m sure they’ll get to even if the first crop seem to be staying pretty close to home.

“Runaway” brings an opportunity…