By nature I love brevity: A cute little story. It's cool to see Tilly as a mentor figure, and it's funny when it wants to be. Hits all the right beats, but there isn't much more to it. I was lightly amused for this Short Trek's brief runtime.
So in order to bide my time over the next month or so until Discovery Season Two boots up (as if I didn't already have more than enough to do), I decided to start my annual subscription to CBS All Access a month early in order to watch those neat Short Treks I've been hearing about. For those that don't know, Star Trek: Short Treks is a series of short films set in the Star Trek universe. The first four have ties to Discovery, and are dropping on All Access one-per-month in the four months leading up to DIS S2. At the time that I write this, the first three have dropped.
So on to the short. To start, it makes perfect sense to give the first Short Trek to Tilly. She was a fan favorite character in DIS Season One, and her character makes for a great lead-in to this little collection of vignettes. We got to see a neat side of her, too; Tilly's had to step up and play a big role in events so far, but she's never really had to play the part of mentor before.
Truthfully, she doesn't do it for very long here; it is a Short Trek, after all. Still, it's a nice relationship and a good sentiment, and the influence that Tilly and 'Po' (Yadira Guevara-Prip) have on each other's lives is positive, even if it is disproportional to the amount of time they spend with each other. I liked the dynamic they had, and the way the relationship was built felt right even as my brain questioned the speed at which it developed.
The Xahean culture was an admirable creation. It was simple enough to be communicated adequately in the brief screentime devoted to it, yet still deep and alien enough to feel somewhat real. I'm sure with more time, the Xaheans could be built up far better as an alien race, but this was exactly what a short of this length required.
I liked the mirror that Po and Tilly held up to each other. I say Tilly was a mentor figure, but she also saw herself in Po. As she helped Po to come to terms with the huge responsibility the girl would have to face, Tilly saw that the advice she was giving applied to herself. It's very easy to know the solution to a problem intellectually, and almost as easy to give that solution to somebody else. It's much more difficult to then apply that solution to your own dilemmas, and it's to Tilly's credit that she requires very little prodding from Po to reach this point.
I do have a few lingering logistical and continuity questions, but I care less about those than I do about the story and character work. I wondered how Po got in the ship in the first place, since it didn't seem like the Disco had been to Xahea any time recently. In the same vein, I wondered where Tilly beamed her to, since I doubt they were in range enough of Xahea for transporters to do much.
All in all, this was quite enjoyable, and I liked the story and characters for the most part. I really do like both Tilly and Mary Wiseman, and I thought Yadira Guevara-Prip did an admirable job creating her character and displaying her growth in such a short plan of time. If all the Short Treks are like this, I will not be disappointed.
Pensees:
-The Disco has at least five shifts. Interesting, since in 'Chain of Command,' it was a big deal that Jellico introduced the Delta Shift.
-On another continuity note, Po says she invented a device to recrystallize Dilithium. That's weird, since in Star Trek IV, Scotty says they can't recrystallize Dilithium even then. Now maybe he meant that they couldn't do it with the technology they had there on the Bounty, but it's worth noting.
Quotes:
Tilly: "Quadruple espresso with milk alternative."
Computer: "Ill-advised. That amount of caffeine is-"
Tilly: "Is my best friend. So shush."
Po: *eats ice cream*
Tilly: "And how did you subdue the alien presence, Ensign Tilly?"
Tilly: "There was a hormonal space rabbit. He escaped from the lab, and he got loose in here. He has... Mood swings."
Tilly: "Why didn't you tell me that?"
Po: "Because people stop listening after the word 'queen.'"
Po: "Xahea is so beautiful."
Tilly: "I'm sure. She's your twin."
3.5 out of 6 hormonal space rabbits.
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CoramDeo cannae change the laws of physics.
I saw Hormonal Space Rabbits on the side stage at Lollapalooza in 1997.
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