Alex Kurtzman is responsible for overseeing the Star Trek universe on television, particularly Star Trek: Discovery. That series directly ties into Kurtzman's Short Treks series, and helps set up Season 2 of Discovery. Kurtzman said this happened due to the stressful schedule of Season 1.

"I said, 'Okay, well how about this? If you delay the drop of Season 2, what we can do is some Short Treks," Kurtzman said. "We’ll use our sets, and try this interesting experiment and see if it works, and it will buy us some time for Star Trek awareness to remain in the cultural conversation.' They said, 'Sure, okay. Let’s try it,' and we started out doing five, and people really liked them."

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Kurtzman also said he wanted Short Treks to span across several genres and tones, yet be self-contained. Ultimately, several storylines from Season 2 of Discovery would have their seeds planted in Short Treks. "We actually used that window of time between Season 1 and Season 2, where we knew we wanted to delay the drop of the second season, to build some storylines into the Short Treks that we were able to follow through on in Season 2," he said. "So, if you watch the Short Treks and then you watch Season 2, you’ll see all the seeds planted for stories that come to fruition later."

Short Treks has featured characters from across Star Trek canon, most notably Christopher Pike (Anson Mount). Pike will take center stage in the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds spinoff.

Streaming on CBS All Access, Star Trek: Discovery stars Sonequa Martin-Green as Commander Michael Burnham, Doug Jones as Commander Saru, Anthony Rapp as Lt. Commander Paul Stamets, Mary Wiseman as Ensign Sylvia Tilly, Shazad Latif as Ash Tyler, Wilson Cruz as Dr. Hugh Culber, Anson Mount as Captain Christopher Pike, Mary Chieffo as L'Rell, Tig Notaro as Chief Engineer Reno, Ethan Peck as Spock, Rebecca Romijn as Number One and Michelle Yeoh as Philippa Georgiou. Seasons 1 and 2 are available now, with Season 3 premiering on Oct. 15.

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(via Deadline)