Star Trek: 10 Episodes That Wasted An Incredible Premise
2. All The Very Short Treks (Bar One)
The premise? A celebration of animation and Star Trek for the 50th anniversary of Star Trek: The Animated Series. The result? Five, to quote the teaser trailer, "anything but canon," exceedingly short non-episodes that seriously missed the point. In amongst them, only one, perhaps two, was doing any celebrating, i.e. Holograms All the Way Down.
It appears there were tonal problems from the start. Casper Kelly, the series' showrunner/creative consultant, brought on board by Alex Kurtzman, has described the Very Short Treks as both a "sort of an experimental low-pressure bet" and "even a little more [f**ked up than Lower Decks]." Kelly is clearly a fan of The Animated Series, but by his own admission in The Making of 'Star Trek: very [sic] Short Treks' with Casper Kelly, wasn't "that conscious" about "sort of celebrating" it and "just focused on what's funny." Sadly, most of us weren't laughing along.
Instead of a proper homage to the 1970s series and the more recent animated outings, the mini-minisodes were mostly an unfunny hodgepodge of fart jokes, snot, and a pun too far. Moreover, if you add the Very Short Treks up, they equal, or thereabouts, the length of an episode of The Animated Series. It might have been a better idea to just do that!
Apparently, a further five scripts were written that never made it to air. "Maybe next year?" Kelly mused in the Making of. If it's more of the same (bar one), I think we'll pass!