Tuesday, April 21, 2020

Star Trek: Short Treks -- Season 1 Episode 3 (The Brightest Star)


I remember seeing the coming attractions for Star Trek: Discovery.  I hadn’t seen Saru’s race and was intrigued by his claim that he could sense death and danger.  It turns out that he was the only member of his species in Starfleet.  We do learn quite a bit about his species during the second season.  To set us up for this, we were given a Short Trek between the first and second seasons.

This episode gives us a brief glimpse of what it was like for Discovery’s firs officer to have to leave his planet.  He always knew he didn’t belong.  When he finds a communications device, he’s supposed to bury it.  Instead, he learns how to use it and ends up contacting and meeting a then-Lieutenant Philippa Georgiou.

This short episode doesn’t get into the details of the Prime Directive.  It shows what life was like for Saru before Starfleet.  He didn’t really fit in and wasn’t content to live a simple life.  His father and sister were.  But Saru knows that there’s more out there.

It makes it a little easier to identify with the character.  I’m sure there are a lot of people now that would go out into space, given the chance.  We’re at a point that we’re just talking about going to Mars.  Could you imagine going to different solar systems?

It’s a little strange seeing this after the second season of Discovery aired.  I know that Saru does make it back to his home planet.  It must have been a tough decision not knowing that, though.  Given that his people aren’t warp-capable, Saru could never bring that knowledge back.

From what I understand, the Short Trek episodes are coming out on DVD in June.  I took the opportunity to watch these while I had access to CBS All Access, but it would be nice to have another option.  There are two “seasons” with the possibility of others.  I don’t know if future seasons will be released individually or if CBS wants to release ten episodes at a time.  Maybe they’ll include them with Discovery episodes.  Either way, they’re fun to watch.



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