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The Return of Animated Trek [SPOILERS]
azrael605
Member Posts: 11,135 Arc User
in Ten Forward
Today saw the release of 2 animated Short Trek Episodes, Ephriam and Dot, and The Girl Who Made The Stars. This marks the first new animated Trek since the 1970s.
The first, Ephriam and Dot takes the form of a Federation Edutainment program for children, with a close to Spock narration voice. A Tardigrade, searching for a warm safe place to lay its eggs, which will take years to hatch, stumbles across the USS Enterprise as Captain Kirk is questioning Khan in Sickbay. After encountering a DOT repair drone the Tardigrade makes it inside the ship and after shenannigans with the DOT lays its eggs deep inside the warp core. There they remain as the two battle all the way to the Genesis planet where after finally ejecting the Tardigrade from the ship DOT sees the eggs, and recieves the self destruct signal. DOT rescues the eggs and unites with the Tardigrade.
The second, The Girl Who Made The Stars, is based (loosely I assume) on a real African myth. The story is framed as a bedtime story told to a young Michael Burnham by her father when the famiily is stationed on a starbase.
Frightened of an Ion Storm and afraid of the dark Michael is comforted by her father with a story set a thousand centuries ago. When the sky had no stars, and the night was utter darkness. The primitive people, just barely learning farming, were causing a dust bowl famine as they didn't understand crop rotation or fertilization. A young girl's suggestion to move was dismissed because they couldn't go far enough before night.
The girl snuck away on her own, and after nearly giving in to her fear, saw something crash down from out of the sky. Aproaching she saw an utterly non-human being in a crashed spaceship, she approached it, curious but unafraid. Her lack of fear impressed the being and before repairing its ship and returning to space it gave her a gift for her people. Returning home, she shared her gift, stars, to light the sky at night, and end her people's fear of the dark.
I watched both with my daughters, ages 13 and 6. Before starting the first one my 6 year old wasn't very interested, she was hooked quick, we watched them 2 more times tonight, lol. I enjoyed them quite a bit as well, the framing devices were neat, and the TOS to TSFS montage as a background to a very entertaining Tom & Jerry esq rivalry with the Childrens Tardigrade Nature cartoon narration is remeniscient of some old Disney shorts in a good way. The second was special, it sprinkled little parental talking points in, like the aformentioned crop rotation, verbally and visually tells a myth as alien encounter story very well, and giving them the stars could have been a device which cleared a post volcanic or meteoroidal cloud layer allowing the stars to be seen.
Overall I am.very pleased.
The first, Ephriam and Dot takes the form of a Federation Edutainment program for children, with a close to Spock narration voice. A Tardigrade, searching for a warm safe place to lay its eggs, which will take years to hatch, stumbles across the USS Enterprise as Captain Kirk is questioning Khan in Sickbay. After encountering a DOT repair drone the Tardigrade makes it inside the ship and after shenannigans with the DOT lays its eggs deep inside the warp core. There they remain as the two battle all the way to the Genesis planet where after finally ejecting the Tardigrade from the ship DOT sees the eggs, and recieves the self destruct signal. DOT rescues the eggs and unites with the Tardigrade.
The second, The Girl Who Made The Stars, is based (loosely I assume) on a real African myth. The story is framed as a bedtime story told to a young Michael Burnham by her father when the famiily is stationed on a starbase.
Frightened of an Ion Storm and afraid of the dark Michael is comforted by her father with a story set a thousand centuries ago. When the sky had no stars, and the night was utter darkness. The primitive people, just barely learning farming, were causing a dust bowl famine as they didn't understand crop rotation or fertilization. A young girl's suggestion to move was dismissed because they couldn't go far enough before night.
The girl snuck away on her own, and after nearly giving in to her fear, saw something crash down from out of the sky. Aproaching she saw an utterly non-human being in a crashed spaceship, she approached it, curious but unafraid. Her lack of fear impressed the being and before repairing its ship and returning to space it gave her a gift for her people. Returning home, she shared her gift, stars, to light the sky at night, and end her people's fear of the dark.
I watched both with my daughters, ages 13 and 6. Before starting the first one my 6 year old wasn't very interested, she was hooked quick, we watched them 2 more times tonight, lol. I enjoyed them quite a bit as well, the framing devices were neat, and the TOS to TSFS montage as a background to a very entertaining Tom & Jerry esq rivalry with the Childrens Tardigrade Nature cartoon narration is remeniscient of some old Disney shorts in a good way. The second was special, it sprinkled little parental talking points in, like the aformentioned crop rotation, verbally and visually tells a myth as alien encounter story very well, and giving them the stars could have been a device which cleared a post volcanic or meteoroidal cloud layer allowing the stars to be seen.
Overall I am.very pleased.
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.
You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.
Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events.
Robert Heinlein
#BringBackJoshuaRiker
One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.
You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.
Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events.
Robert Heinlein
#BringBackJoshuaRiker
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Comments
My character Tsin'xing
Even with CG getting so good as to make things look real for live action stuff... there's still some things that cartoons have more flexability with in terms of character design.
The Enterprise(s) in Ephraim & Dot looked really beautiful.
Tardigrades might be to Prophets what monkeys are to humans - all that non-linear time travel! (If it was time travel, and not parallel universe hopping)
> I overall enjoyed Ephraim & Dot more, because it was more focused on a Star Trek story. But I think both stories would have a nice appeal to children.
>
> The Enterprise(s) in Ephraim & Dot looked really beautiful.
> Tardigrades might be to Prophets what monkeys are to humans - all that non-linear time travel! (If it was time travel, and not parallel universe hopping)
It was emulating an educational program for Federation Childern, so its just artistic licence, not time travel, just show the moment of time and display important events in TOS like meeting Apollo.
And honestly both of these felt so much like high quality Disney productions to me, I was shocked. Disneyified Star Trek, but incredably well done. They fit soo much into such a small time frame that I find myself extremely impressed. If both of these were turned into childerns series it would bred a whole generation of new Trekkies and give Disney a run for their money.
> A neat tidbit.
>
> Fun fact: The narration is voiced by Kirk Thatcher, best known to Trek fans as “Punk on Bus” in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and the composer of the punk song (“I Hate You”) on the boom box in that scene. Thatcher was in fact an assistant to Leonard Nimoy and an associate producer on the movie; he’s also had a great career working in puppetry and miniatures at ILM and at The Muppets Studio and The Jim Henson Company.
Cool thanks for the Intel .
PUNK ON BUS! That was a good scene.
> > @reyan01 said:
> > I'm honestly amused by some of the feedback submitted on social media regarding these two short Trek episodes. The usual waffle about canon and how this, that and the other couldn't have happened because blah blah blah.
> >
> > I mean, to me at least, both of these Short Trek episodes shout "aimed at a younger generation". They are both very Disney-esq in terms of how they were produced and how inoffensive the stories are, and really do feel as if they are intended to attract a younger auidience. I, for one, applaud that - never any harm in trying to attract new blood to an old franchise - it's worked pretty darn well for Star Wars for example.
> >
> > Fact is, I was able to sit and watch 'Ephraim and Dot' with my five year old daughter; she actually quite enjoyed it - and therein lies the point - I was able to sit and watch Trek content wtih a 5 year old! That should NOT be underestimated!
>
> Yeah I don't get those people at all. I mean firstly they have antiquated (at best) or just plain wrong views of what animation can do/be used for. Then on top of that they seem incapable of having any fun at all.
>
> My 6 year old loves Spock, in the abstract anyway. She calls him Spockie, and she knows her Dad and her sisters like Spock so she is always happy to see him on TV, but sitting down for a whole episode isn't really happening.
>
> These 2 shorts grabbed her attention, she watched them repeatedly, and asked for them repeatedly. She was pointing out details to me, like Michael's stuffed tardigrade, and she said how the queen looked at the end of The Girl Who Made the Stars reminded her of Okoye from Black Panther (she can't pronounce the name yet but we figured out who she meant)
I knew from the first moment I saw those that kids would LOVE THEM, but by far the most well done Short Treks, especially for their target demographic. They brilliantly infused Disney Magic into Star Trek.
These will get watched way, way more then any of the other Short Treks and I really could see these leading to a more Disney like Star Trek series.