Q&A

With Star Trek: Picard about to begin, it was time for me to once again fire up my subscription to CBS All Access. And that meant I could watch the new installments of Short Treks that have been trickling out over the past few months. My thoughts on them will also trickle out, over the next few weeks -- beginning with the first of the "second season," Q&A.

It's Ensign Spock's very first day serving aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise. Right out the gate, he gets to know one of his superior officers in a very personal way, when he and Number One become trapped together in a turbolift with nothing but questions and answers to pass their time.

More than anything, this episode of Short Treks utilizes the charisma of Rebecca Romijn and Ethan Peck to eagerly and desperately make you want the Star Trek series set on Pike's Enterprise that season two of Star Trek: Discovery suggested. Actors and characters alike are just fun with each other here, and fun to watch. The two of them and Anson Mount would make an excellent "core three" to build a new show around.

Their rapport is so great, in fact, that it makes it possible to ignore a lot about this episode that's actually not good when you stop to think about it. They're good enough to make you not care that "trapped in the turbolift" has been done at least twice before on Star Trek. (But hey, it's just one of the classic TV tropes; it's how you use it, right?) They're good enough to make you overlook that "Modern Major-General" was sung already (in one of those very same episodes: Geordi to Crusher in "Disaster"). They're good enough to make you set aside that the transporter would be an easy and obvious solution to get them out of the turbolift. They're even good enough to make you not realize until much later they "hey, isn't 'suppress your freaky' a pretty antithetical message to 'Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations?'"

I can get past all that, because the core story here is pretty fun. Essentially, this is a story that tries to explain why Spock acts so unlike himself in the original Star Trek pilot episode, "The Cage." To account for why so many of the traits Spock would display in the series proper felt like they were more Number One's personality in that first episode. It's a neat idea that one person would make such an impact on a young, impressionable Spock -- and that it was the sudden and prolonged intimacy of this experience that made that impression so strong.

Supporting the great work between the two actors is a fun-loving score from first time Trek composer Nami Malumad. It slyly quotes phrases from the classic Star Trek theme as it quietly lies back in the mix... until unleashing with full force to support the singing of Gilbert and Sullivan. There's also great camera work, managing to keep the tight, single set interesting for the duration of the episode.

Is it the strongest Short Trek? Nah... thought I would say it's probably as good as a B. But like I said, more than anything: it really, really makes me want to see more of this incarnation of Spock, Number One, and Pike. And, I mean, they must want you to want it, right?