very Short Treks is the coup de grace of the Star Trek renaissance.
very Short Treks is a celebration of Star Trek: The Animated Series on its 50th anniversary. TAS is still an awkward oddity. Its jerky animation makes it hard to watch in parts, but when you love a fandom, you love it warts and all. We either embrace TAS or shove it down the memory hole.
By celebrating TAS, the Star Trek people are making a statement that they have enough confidence in the franchise to find joy in even its cringiest entries.
Of course, there’s only one way to celebrate something as silly as TAS, and that’s with a huge dollop of irony and irreverence. Very Short Treks demonstrates the confidence of modern Star Trek in one other important way; it takes guts for an institution as venerable as Star Trek to make fun of itself.
Vert Short Treks is a series of sketches celebrating TAS. Each one is animated, and seamlessly recreates the distinctive animation style of TAS.
Very Short Treks is a statement in more ways than one
The question of whether or not TAS is canon is another awkward question. It wasn’t considered canon for a long time, as Gene Roddenberry was notoriously disappointed with how it turned out. But though there’s never been any official recognition, since about 2007, TAS has slowly been accepted into canon.
In that regard, Very Short Treks’ celebration of TAS is welcome into the canon. It seems about as close as we’ll ever get to an official statement of canonization. This is why it’s significant that Very Short Treks places TAS alongside the other series’ and makes a point of including every other series.
So, even though Very Short is a little hit-and-miss, it’s significant for the franchise as a whole. not bad for a bunch of non-canon comedy sketches on YouTube.