Another Star Trek Animated Series Is Coming, And So Are More Short Treks

Another Star Trek Animated Series Is Coming, And So Are More Short Treks

Star Trek on the big screen might have tasked with ushering in a new age of non-stop Star Trek for the CBS All Access streaming service) confirmed that aside from Rick & Morty writer Mike McMahan’s already planned animated series Lower Decks — about the hapless support staff aboard a low-key Starfleet vessel — at least one more animated series set in the Star Trek galaxy is in the works.

The Hollywood Reporter frames this series as being “kids-focused” and could potentially have a home outside of CBS All Access, but no other details about the project were revealed by Kurtzman:

There’s other animated things that we’re building that are an entirely different perspective and an entirely different tone [from Lower Decks]. What’s exciting about it is not only looking at each animated series as what’s the different tone, but what’s the different technology we can apply to these things so that visually they’re entirely different?

On top of that, Kurtzman also confirmed the lovely news that two more entries of the excellent minisode series Star Trek: Short Treks, which just recently concluded its first four-episode run, will arrive after the end of Discovery’s second season in the spring.

Unlike the four Short Treks we’ve seen so far, these entries will actually be animated shorts instead of live-action:

Our goal is to not only expand the definition of Star Trek and what has qualified as traditional Star Trek, but also to tell stories that are both self-contained in a very short period of time that also connect to the larger picture of what we’re doing, not only in Discovery but in the world building of Trek in general. And you get to tell these very intimate, emotional stories that are side stories to characters. So you get the benefit of the experience in and of itself but then when you watch Discovery you’ll see that these were all setting up things in the world of season two.

Considering Short Treks has given us some marvellous vignettes of the wider world of Discovery, this is a very good thing indeed—and expanding the concept into other mediums like animation is an interesting way to diversify the sort of stories that can be told in the format.

Hopefully, there’ll also be more live-action ones to go with it in the future!

Star Trek: Discovery season two boldly goes where its first season went (CBS All Access in the U.S., and Space in Canada) on January 17, before debuting on Netflix internationally on January 18.


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