The Tribbles Will Return To The Star Trek Universe Next Year

The first season of Short Treks introduced us to a whole new way to tell Star Trek stories, as the six-part anthology series was made up of mini-episodes that hopped around the timeline of the franchise to bring us standalone Starfleet adventures. Now, season 2 is on the way and the brand new trailer, courtesy of Comic-Con, promises a lot of treats for longtime fans of the Trek universe. Including the return of the franchise’s most adorable critters: the Tribbles.

Those little brown balls of fluff caused havoc on the Enterprise back in The Original Series, with their dangerously high reproductive rates that made rabbits look lazy, and have turned up for cameos many times in subsequent series, including in a bunch of Star Trek: Discovery episodes. Now, they’ll have one Short Treks outing dedicated to them, too, as the trailer below reveals that H. Jon Benjamin (Bob’s Burgers) will star as a scientist who’s fascinated with them. No doubt that’s going to end badly.

As for the rest of the season, another episode will deliver what fans have been wishing for and give us an an appearance from Anson Mount’s Captain Pike and his cohorts Ethan Peck’s Spock and Number One (Rebecca Romijn). Hopefully this is just a tease for that spinoff show we all want.

What’s more, one installment will serve as a prelude to the upcoming Picard series starring Patrick Stewart, and a couple of them will even be animated, leading the way for those two Trek animated shows that are in development.

The titles for the six episodes have also been unveiled and they’re as follows: “Ask Not,” “Children of Mars,” “The Girl Who Made the Stars,” The Trouble With Edward,” “Ephaim And Dot,” and “Q&A.” Presumably, “The Trouble With Edward” is the Tribble one as it must be a play on their TOS debut, “The Trouble With Tribbles.” We don’t yet have a date for it, but expect Star Trek: Short Treks season 2 to land on CBS All Access relatively soon.