You can tell this one didn't exactly engage the fanbase by how little discussion we are having about it.
More it will be the same old arguments from the different factions: "Discovery is bad!" "We want a Pike show!" "This doesn't make sense in the 23rd century!" "This short is too dark. Starfleet would never do this!" At this point in time I find it hard to believe that actual discussion about the show exists. Its more presuppositions about how terrible the show is.
There is conversation to be had, as seen in both the "Q&A" and "The Trouble with Edward" threads. About the interpretation of Spock, Larkin's fitness for Starfleet. This one just kinda landed with a thud.
As I said in my mini-review, this really felt like a teaser to test the waters for the Pike series, more than anything else. I mean, who the heck looked at the story concept and said "This absolutely needs to be filmed!" I can see it with Q&A and The Trouble With Edward, but this one?!?
I personally loved the character interactions...not remarkable but entertaining. But, I'm also super weird because I don't think anything absolutely needs to be filmed in Trek. I think that watching the characters interact at more important than anything else.
Maybe this episode is the catalyst that brings about the "Kobayashi Maru" standard test at the Academy. Perhaps before Captain Pike, it was done just as a thought exam at the academy rather than an actual physical test of ones abilities and reactions to loosing. THAT would be cool if it WAS Pike that initiated this, especially if he went on to be the Star Fleet Academy Superintendent at some point for awhile.
Well, in the 2009 movie, Pike was slumming as a recruiter of some sort, nannying a bunch of draftees in Iowa event at Captain rank - a rank he retains though entitled to the stripes of a full Admiral just three years later. Perhaps after DSC, Pike went full throttle for a teaching career of some sort, volunteering out of promotions, perhaps because he felt he had no future anyway. Depending on the timing of "Ask Not", we might see the first steps down that path designed to lead nowhere slow. Timo Saloniemi
Probably because it was simple plot-wise, five minutes of spouting regulation numbers back-and-forth, then boom, it's a test (surprise!), followed by let's meet Spock and Number One, oh and have a look at the Discoprise engine room (which has generated its own discusion thread).
I like it, but it's cut-and-dried. I don't know what else to say after a certain point. Nice scenario.
This short was.... kinda' useless? I liked the actress, I goddamn liked Pike, I liked No. 1 and Spock in combination, I liked the whole "welcome aboard"-schtick. But the test-part was just bullshit, and the two parts (the test, and the welcoming) felt utterly disconnected. Essentially the whole thing felt like watching two unconnected deleted scenes. I really like the people on screen, and it really feels like behind the scenes they're trying. But they just aren't capable of telling a solid story, and that severely weakens all the good parts.
At Nine and a Half minutes including the opening and end credits..., As far as I'm concerned They did an exceptional job at showing us Pike's Version of the "Kobayashi Maru".
I would prefer if these shorts were all more like "we can't tell this story otherwise" stuff. Like that Mudd-short, or Calypso. Those were stories that otherwise would have been never told. I like the approach of this season's short Treks of having an unknown character or new actor in the foreground. I just wish they would tell more unusal stories. We have seen "Kubayashi Maru", "First tour through new ship", "Tribbles multiply" or "two unlikely characters stuck together" already a thousand times on Trek, and then usually much deeper explored. I want to see more unusual stuff. Little things. Somebody doing a desk job at the frontier. A funny encounter with a misunderstanding. A single conversation turning on it's head. Simple stuff, stuff that's "too small" to ever be told in a real episode, but worthwhile still. A more "short story" approach, rather than a "shortened story" approach.
To be honest, I'm not interested in a Pike-Spock-No.1-Enterprise retro prequel remake show. A Pike series should START with Pike's horrible accident, then him settling on Talos with Vina. And then should be about him leaving Talos, on a mission for the Talosians, accompanied by Vina, a Talosian, and a ragtag bunch of misfits / other Talosian prisoners. With the added threat that anytime their sole Talosian is in danger, Pike and Vina are in danger, too, because he's keeping up their illusion of being able to live normally.