Spoilers Star Trek: Short Treks 1x01 - "Runaway"

[daedalus5]

It was ok... but very rushed in the end. Where was that transporter beam going to!?!? I also didn't get the whole "born with the planet" thing either.

Still, Tilly was great fun to watch... its refreshing to see a Barclay-type average Joe doing the job, rather than the superhero officers we normally get to see. I think its a very interesting concept to see 15 min long episodes, but wish the writing/plot had been punchier, darker and more "Twilight Zone" ish.

Beautiful shot of USS Discovery though!

 

[Markonian]

Does the episode have an intro sequence?

 

[dommecracy]

Does the episode have an intro sequence?

You mean like opening titles?
A short 20 second one, yes.

 

[Crewman Commander]

It was cute and a lot of fun. Not a ton of substance, but that's to be expected from a 15-minute webisode. Tilly was her usual witty and adorable self, but I imagine for those who don't like her they will find plenty to not like here, since she reached peak Tillyness. I liked the introduction of her overbearing mother and the insight into Tilly's character and upbringing that gave us. You can see why she's unsure of herself at times, but then at other times has bursts of overconfidence to compensate and try and encourage herself to excel.

It seemed a little implausible, even on a "night" shift, for the whole mess hall to be empty and for Tilly to be able to escort the totally not the alien from VOY - Night back to her quarters unnoticed, even with the cloaking field. I did like the Leeloo Dallas Multipass... I mean Po character though. Although I kind of wish that even with the UT translating her words into English they had kept her speech patterns and references less obviously human. I really like the bit about her people's belief system contending that they are the same age as their planet and that they are all essentially twins of the planet.

I wonder if the Dilithium Regeneration device and how it will cause her people to likely be exploited will be revisited later on in the show proper. I hope these minisodes are meant to be set ups for something larger.

Anyway, I gave the minisode an 8/10.

This more or less sums up my reaction.

What I would add to this is that I found it exceptionally implausible that Tilly would not report this. There should be transporter logs that will need to be accounted for. It's protocol to report a stowaway, Tilly said so. She's on a command path, and she wants to succeed on that, not get kicked off for violating rules. Reporting the encounter might have happened after the end of the episode, but the story beats surely made it seem like that the encounter would be a secret between Tilly and the Queen. At least she said she was the Queen; she probably is.

Tilly is a fantastic character, and I echo it being a great thing that we were learning more about her family dynamics. This Short Trek just needed some tweaks to better account for how it is that Tilly gets to deal with this situation by herself.

 

[dommecracy]

She's on a command path, and she wants to succeed on that, not get kicked off for violating rules.

Technically, that APB specified "at all cost keep her safe and secure" or something, so it could be argued that bending the rules was required to do so...

 

[YellowSubmarine]

One thing that confused me is that I initially got the impression that we were in reverse Kes situation – she was a teenager, but just got out of her larval stage, and got the brain of a newborn. I even rewound the scene because it didn't quite make sense, but I still got the same impression. That was supported by Tilly's emphasis on “a teen and a kid”, her acting wild and toddlerish before the universal translator was activated, and my assumption that “post-larval” implied immediateness – that would be like referring to a human as “post-faetus” or a chicken as “post-egg”. And with each of her lines I pushed her brain age by a couple of years, at one point I though she was a 10-year old daughter of a royal long before that was revealed. I'm not sure if that made it better or worse, since misjudging another species' mental development may be a point in itself. In fact, very judgemental on my part – the species could be sentient and very intelligent in their larvae stage.

Another thing that stuck out for me is that the dialogue was weird. In the sense that you wouldn't expect a character to speak like that, yet with the automatic translation it would totally be accounted for by something lost in translation, or something that was good line in the original language – which appeared to be pretty fancy and different from the understanding of humans of how a language is structured – but sounded unusual in English. Some of those involved the relationship she felt with her planet. I feel that it would indeed have been served much better had the translated lines preserved some of the peculiarities of her original speech like they did in her first translated line, as it was earlier suggested; and that would have been explained by undertones that are untranslatable to English so the translator left them as-is.

I've always wondered if the some post-dolphins species develop a complex language based on their complex hearing that's far beyond humans', one that includes ability to relay distances, places and shapes through clicks, words imitating not only sounds, but shapes, and some complex unthinkable ‘grammar’ or structure. An automated translation would never do the language justice, and sound incredibly dull, and simplistic.

The Xahean language sounded like a different form of complex, you didn't even recognise it as a language when Po started speaking – I'm almost surprised Tilly right away and switched the translator on.

It was really good.

 

[shapeshifter]

What caused the food synthesizers to vomit food as they did during the episode?

Not explained other than an implication she was somehow activating the dispensers mentally.

One of the items is lycopene, which is the red color pigment in tomatoes. How did the machines vomit this?

This computer is prone to list ingredients used in its recipes, presumably to help users make healthy choices. Lycopene is good for prostate health. Mentioning it was just part of Po's computer caused malfunction.

For a species with a larva stage, I would have thought the Xatheans would have looked more insectoid.

They may have at an earlier stage of their evolution.

Some here seem to think their being born at the same time as the planet meant in humanoid form but I doubt that. Their first form may have been bacterial or viral or who knows what. Strange new world, indeed.

 

[johnjm22]

I find Discovery's on-the-nose computer dialog annoying. There's too much of it.

 

[Tuskin38]

I find Discovery's on-the-nose computer dialog annoying. There's too much of it.

On the nose?

 

[guyute03]

Gave it a 7. In all honesty.... I enjoyed Tilly immensely but this was so short, the exposition so fast that I barely had any f***ing clue what was happening or what had happened at the ten minute mark.

Do better CBS All Access.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

They didn't want to waste the reveal of Marina Sirtis as Tilly's mom on a webisode.

That wasn't Marina. It was Mimi Kuzyk.

 

[HGN2001]

Does the episode have an intro sequence?

Yes, and a much longer end-credit sequence where we get to hear more of the theme - 1 minute and 27 seconds worth!

 

[Guy Gardener]

Spock was born with a Planet.

 

[Markonian]

Yes, and a much longer end-credit sequence where we get to hear more of the theme - 1 minute and 27 seconds worth!

Is it the same theme as DSC’s or something new?

 

[Tim Thomason]

That wasn't Marina. It was Mimi Kuzyk.

Presumably he means that Sirtis will be playing Siobhan Tilly in the second season, and Kuzyk is just a fill-in. Maybe they even re-shot the scene after deciding to utilize stunt casting on Siobhan.

 

[Rahul]

One thing I'm retroactively impressed with is how much it felt like an actual stand-alone episode.

Like, 15 minutes is around 1/3 of a regular length episode. But usually webisodes are just a small amount of simple scenes - usually conversations stretched overly long to reach the runtime without much content.

This short episode felt like a complete story. With set-up, progress, and resolution. Probably not one of the best episodes. But a real, feature length one. The only thing differentiating it from a "real" episode was the number of cast members involved, and that the main plotline was a bit rushed (the immediate jump from "strange invisible alien" to "first contact conversation" to "teenager trauma therapy" was a bit jarring).

Overall, while neither the format, nor the content of this particular episode will be my favourite - I'm quite impressed in what they accomplished in 15 minutes!

 

[Tuskin38]

Where are people getting the idea that Sirtis is playing Tilly's mother?

 

[Mad Jack Wolfe]

Where are people getting the idea that Sirtis is playing Tilly's mother?

Beats the hell out of me. Whoever that was in the episode didn't remotely look, move, or sound like Marina Sirtis.

Overall, the minisode was... meh. The pacing was fine but the plot was pedestrian. Quite predictable. Tilly was at maximum Tillyness as the nerd girl you can't help but root for. Po would have been right at home in a middling VOY episode, but her character was a bit more interesting not having to spar with Seven of Nine or the EMH, or have Harry Kim fawning over her. Nice to see that the VFX team have started to sort out what the audience would actually like seeing what these ships look like rather than guessing through murk and shadow. 5/10

 

[Christopher]

Whoever that was in the episode didn't remotely look, move, or sound like Marina Sirtis.

It was Mimi Kuzyk.

 

[The Scottish Nightmare]

So they’re trying to take Scotty’s Achievements away now? This show is just evil.
I wish they would stop using those stupid holographic communications. It just looks wrong for Star Trek.