The shorts were mostly produced by cast and crew members from Discovery, including composer Jeff Russo who provided an updated main title theme and original underscore.

Kurtzman expressed interest in continuing the series, but the producers chose not to begin work on any new shorts when the COVID-19 pandemic began.

[2] A month later, CBS All Access was confirmed to have ordered two new animated installments of Short Treks to be released in that time period.

[6] Kurtzman suggested in February that future shorts could tie directly into other new Star Trek series, and be used to introduce ideas to audiences and set up mysteries.

The short would have seen a young Jean-Luc Picard visit Uhura in hospital and receive a mission related to the Borg.

[9] Short Treks was reportedly ordered for a third season in January 2020,[10] with production scheduled to take place from May to June.

[14] Of the initial four shorts ordered in July 2018, three were set to each focus on a character from Discovery: Mary Wiseman's Silvia Tilly, Doug Jones's Saru, and Rainn Wilson's Harry Mudd.

[15] In August, Wilson revealed that his short was written by a writer from the popular science fiction animated series Rick and Morty and described it as "very funny and weird.

[18] Novelist Michael Chabon joined the series as the writer of Hodge's short, "Calypso", through Discovery executive producer Akiva Goldsman who he had been working with on a film project.

[20] After Anson Mount was confirmed to be leaving Discovery with the second-season finale, fans began calling, including through online petitions, for him to reprise his role of Christopher Pike in a spin-off set on the USS Enterprise, alongside Rebecca Romijn as Number One and Ethan Peck as Spock.

Kurtzman said the Enterprise-based shorts were a way to bring those characters and actors back now that Discovery had jumped into the future for its third season, but they would not preclude a potential spin-off series from being made.

[5] When a spin-off series starring Mount, Peck, and Romijn was officially ordered by CBS All Access in May 2020, Dominic Patten of Deadline Hollywood opined that the Enterprise-set Short Treks retroactively appeared to be "rehearsals" for the series, which was titled Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

[24] For "The Trouble with Edward", Kurtzman brought in Casper Kelly to work on the "faux Tribbles cereal commercial" post-credits scene.

[30] Discovery originally included a tardigrade named Ephraim as a starring character, but the idea was abandoned due to budgetary requirements.

Similarly, the model for Dot was designed to stretch and move in ways that a real robot would not to help show more emotion from the character.

[28][30] The short recreates scenes from the Star Trek: The Original Series episodes "Space Seed", "The Naked Time", "Who Mourns for Adonais?

The flashback did not fit in the season finale, but Kurtzman liked the idea and it was developed into an animated episode of Short Treks with Green reprising his role.

[32] Osunsanmi was comfortable working with Pixomondo for the short after collaborating with the company on the visual effects for Discovery as a director on that show.

Giacchino was busy with film projects at the time, but suggested hiring a diverse group of composers who had not been given such an opportunity which he felt was in the spirit of Star Trek.

[37] Giacchino supervised this group of composers,[36] which consisted of Nami Melumad for "Q&A",[38][37] Sahil Jindal for "The Trouble with Edward",[39][37] Andrea Datzman for "Ask Not",[40] and Kris Bowers for "The Girl Who Made the Stars".

[45] At the end of January the first set of shorts were made available to countries outside of the U.S. and Canada on Netflix under the "Trailers and More" section of the streaming service's Star Trek: Discovery page.

[8] The second season was made available for free in the U.S. on CBS.com, CBS mobile apps, and YouTube from August 17 to 31, 2020, as part of the series' Emmy Awards campaign.

[48] In September 2020, ViacomCBS announced that CBS All Access would be expanded and rebranded as Paramount+ in March 2021,[49] with the existing episodes of Short Treks remaining on Paramount+.

The collection also includes making-of featurettes as well as audio commentaries with writers Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet for "Runaway" and star Anson Mount for "Ask Not".