Back in the 1970s, Star Trek was proving more popular in syndicated reruns than it ever was as a new show on NBC in the 1960s. Gene Roddenberry was looking for ways to capitalize on that popularity, and while attempts to revive the show in live-action were made—a movie, then a TV show, then a movie again, which finally happened in 1979—he also succeeded in reviving the series via animation by doing a deal with Filmation for an animated show that lasted twenty-two episodes.
For the first time since that animated series ended in 1974, Star Trek has produced an animated episode. In fact, they’ve done two.
The Filmation series from 45 years ago was primitive, to say the least. By the time Roddenberry and D.C. Fontana joined forces with Hal Sutherland to do Star Trek in animated form, mainstream animation had fallen quite far from the heyday of Walt Disney and Warner Brothers, with beautiful animation and superlative voice work replaced by cheap animation and a lot of reuse of the same actors for multiple voices. That works if you’re Mel Blanc, less so if you’re, well, not Mel Blanc.
As a result, while the writing on the animated Trek was generally quite good—with a lot of the scripts coming from veterans of the live-action show—the quality of the animation was of the somewhat cheap quality that had become the hallmark of animated television that aired on Saturday mornings four decades ago.
Once Trek was revived in live-action, the notion of a new animated series never took off, even as animation itself went through a sea change in the 1990s, with Ren & Stimpy and Reboot and the works of folks like Bill Plympton and other bleeding-edge creators leading the charge into more complex animated series, and with Batman: The Animated Series leading the way in making mainstream animation more complex and mature as well.
Over the last couple of decades, the notion of a new animated series had been floated by fans, but never really taken seriously until Secret Hideout took over producing Trek TV for CBS All Access, and now we have two animated series in development: Lower Decks, which is for CBSAA, and another as-yet-untitled show that is actually going to be shown on Nickelodeon, in an attempt to broaden Trek’s audience to the next generation of fans.
To whet our appetites for both those shows, the latest Short Treks releases are animated shorts of less than ten minutes, both of which tie in to Star Trek: Discovery.
“The Girl Who Made the Stars”
“The Girl Who Made the Stars” hearkens back to the second-season premiere of Discovery, “Brother,” in which Michael Burnham in voiceover told the story of the girl who made the stars, a story from millennia ago told by the /Xam Abathwa people of southern Africa. In the animated short, we get a little Michael Burnham, before the Klingons killed her parents, being told a version of the story by her father.
One of the cool things about myths and storytelling is that stories change with the retellings. Times change, people change, assumptions change, and stories adjust to fit the time in which they are told and the people who are telling them. (It’s why I don’t stress about the differences in technology between the 1966 version of the 23rd century in the original Trek and the 2017 version of it in Discovery.)
The creation myths of the peoples of the Kalahari Desert were told to explain why the world was the way it was. They explained the stars in the night sky by telling of a girl who threw embers into the air in order to provide light during the night, so people could navigate. The girl was lonely and wanted to visit other people.
But the version that the elder Burnham tells his daughter, who is frightened of the dark and can’t sleep, is both the same and different.
For starters, Burnham has adjusted the story to a more 23rd century sensibility. And so the girl of the story is inspired to light up the night sky, not by loneliness, but by encountering an alien life form, who assures her that they’re not alone in their little valley. The girl’s people have not gone beyond their home because it would take more than a day to get there and the night is completely dark and would destroy them. But the girl illuminates the night with stars by which one can navigate, inspired by meeting the strange alien.
It’s a story designed to make a girl who lives in a big galaxy full of different types of sentient beings not to be afraid of the dark, and it works quite beautifully that way. The animation is excellent, and it’s frankly nice to see a non-Christian creation myth given this kind of play.
The episode was written by Discovery staffer Brandon Schultz, who also helps run an animation studio, Street Legends Ink, which has produced a bunch of nifty content, including an animated short that is on the Blade Trinity DVD, and is producing an animated film based on the comic book Blokhedz, on which Schultz served as a writer. It was directed by Discovery executive producer Olatunde Osunsanmi, who is one of the show’s best directors.
“Ephraim and Dot”
In “Ephraim and Dot,” we get something much sillier. Michael Giacchino—who did the music for all three Bad Robot–produced Trek films—sits in the director’s chair for this one (which he also did the music for, using a lot of cues from the original series and the movies), over a script by Discovery staff writers Chris Silvestri & Anthony Maranville.
It’s presented as an In Search Of…-style nature documentary about a tardigrade trying to lay its eggs, complete with very Leonard Nimoy-esque narration by Kirk Thatcher.
First of all, the tardigrade is just adorable. Ephraim is trying to lay eggs, and they need to be laid in a warm place. The original plan is to lay them on an asteroid, but said asteroid is then destroyed by the deflector dish of the U.S.S. Enterprise.
No matter what else happens in this short, I adore the fact that the Enterprise looks like it’s straight out of the Filmation series. Having lost the asteroid, Ephraim manages to get into the Enterprise itself, but is menaced by a DOT-7 maintenance robot (of a type we’ve seen a few times in both Disocvery and Short Treks). Ephraim manages to lay the eggs near the warp core before Dot catches up and tosses the tardigrade out into space.
From that point on, Ephraim keeps chasing the Enterprise, not actually catching up to it until right before its destruction in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. However, right before the ship goes boom, Dot realizes that there are eggs there, and saves them. Ephraim is thrilled and goes off not just with the little tardigrade babies, but with Dot, too, who’s now part of the family.
The Trek nerd in me wants to nitpick the crap out of this. Ephraim comes across Khan talking to Kirk and McCoy in sickbay shortly after he’s been revived in “Space Seed,” and then after that overhears Sulu thinking he’s a Musketeer when suffering from the Psi 2000 virus in “The Naked Time“—which happened before “Space Seed.” And between those two, Ephraim finds tribbles, which infested the Enterprise in “The Trouble with Tribbles” after both those episodes. And when Ephraim is chasing the ship, we get references to “Who Mourns for Adonais?” “The Doomsday Machine,” “The Tholian Web,” “The Savage Curtain,” and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, before the tardigrade finally catches up with the ship right when it encounters Kruge’s Bird of Prey in The Search for Spock. (And in that bit, the registry says “NCC-1701-A,” which is wrong, as that’s a different ship that didn’t debut until the end of the next movie.)
None of that makes sense. In particular, the Enterprise was actually stationary (as much as anything can be in space, anyhow) while it was being refit just prior to Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and received a massive overhaul. (1) How did Ephraim not catch up to it then? (2) How did all the engineers miss the pile of tardigrade eggs?
Now, the Mycelial network is a place of weirdness, and maybe tardigrades have a different relationship with time than we do.
Or maybe it’s a nature documentary that got its facts wrong. This is the interpretation I’m going with, because the Trek nerd in me is being overruled by the guy in me who thinks the tardigrade is adorable and who thinks Dot is just as adorable, and who was rooting for Ephraim to save the little tardigrade babies. And if the Trek nerd in me has a problem with that, he can be comforted by the awesome factor of seeing animated versions of Khan, Kirk, McCoy, and Sulu and hearing their voices, which is just fabulous.
No, seriously, I was sitting there on my couch, 50 years old, a grown-ass human, going “Oh no!” when the Enterprise self-destruct sequence started, because I was worried about the tardigrade eggs that I knew damn well were going to be rescued because this is television and this is Star Trek and that’s how these things work.
And that’s what good storytelling can do. Best of all, though, is that for all that it’s got cuteness and fan service and the image of Abraham Lincoln shaking his fist at the Enterprise to tell them to get off his lawn (no, really, that’s what it looks like!), it’s also got a very Star Trek message at its heart. Dot and Ephraim start out opposed, because Dot only sees an intruder on the ship. But once Dot realizes that Ephraim just wants to protect the eggs, the robot works to save them, and we get a happy ending that comes about because of compassion and cooperation. Which is what Trek is all about.
But yeah, it helps that both Ephraim and Dot are cute as hell. Oh, and as an added bonus, the Enterprise computer is voiced by none other than Jenette Goldstein, a.k.a. Vasquez in Aliens (and who also appeared as an Enterprise-B science officer in Star Trek Generations). The nerd in me seriously adores that…
These two shorts are fun and delightful and disposable, but the first two obviate the third. They also have two completely different styles, which is encouraging. It means they’re not just thinking of animated Star Trek as a monolithic thing, but taking different approaches. It’s encouraging as hell for what we’ll see from Lower Decks and the Nickelodeon show.
The last Short Trek of this batch will be a prequel to Star Trek: Picard, to be released on the 10th of January, entitled “Children of Mars.”
Keith R.A. DeCandido has been writing about pop culture for this site since 2011, including the current “4-Color to 35-Millimeter: The Great Superhero Movie Rewatch” every Friday, rewatches of several Star Trek shows (including the animated series), and reviews of every episode of Star Trek Discovery and Short Treks to date. In 2020, his reviews of Short Treks, Star Trek: Picard season one, and Star Trek: Discovery season three will run the day after each episode goes live.
I would assume that “Ephraim and Dot” is not meant to be (the dreaded word) “canon” but just a fun fairy tale against a Trek background, so the logic and continuity of it don’t matter (for instance, sickbay doesn’t have windows, and Discovery tardigrades don’t have big cartoony eyes).
Christopher: Or, like I said, a documentary in the Trek universe, the same way The Final Reflection and The Never-Ending Sacrifice are works of fiction in the Trek universe and The Klingon Art of War is a text in the Trek universe, and so on.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@2/krad: Except how can there be an in-universe documentary about space tardigrades when all research into the mycelial network was classified? Also, it couldn’t be a documentary of a factual event due to the inconsistencies you raise; at best it’d be a work of in-universe fiction, and in that case, why not just treat it as a work of actual fiction? Which, you know, it is? Not everything has to be wedged into cannnnnnnnnnnnon. Sometimes we’re allowed to admit this all just made up anyway.
I enjoyed these Short Treks. I watched them with my 6 year old, and she loved them too. “Ephraim and Dot” had a bit of the feel of WALL-E and EVE flying around in space, in my mind. Also, I love how young Michael sleeps with a little stuffed tardigrade.
“That works if you’re Mel Blanc, less so if you’re, well, not Mel Blanc.”
However., much as I loved Mel Blanc, I have to agree with Chuck Jones –
“June Foray is not the female Mel Blanc. Mel Blanc was the male June Foray.”
kkozoriz: Oh, absolutely. I went with Blanc because he’s a more recognizable name to the general public than Foray (which, I freely admit, is a crime), and I went with “not Mel Blanc” because I didn’t want to be overly mean to the voiceover actors of the 1970s who were, after all, just doing their jobs.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@1 – The tardigrade eyes could be artistic licence. And we don’t know that sickbay doesn’t have windows because there’s walls that we never saw due to the set being open sided.
As for the scenes being out of order, there’s production order, aired order, stardate order. What’s one more reordering in the grand scheme of things?
-7
The problem is, if memory serves, the camera was situated on the other side of Khan’s bed in sickbay. So there would be a wall and a corridor where that window is in the above photo.
@8/Kowalski: Yes, indeed. As Kirk enters sickbay, we see that to Khan’s right is another bed and then a solid wall. The open side of the set for the camera is on the other end.
Also, we’re told in “Elaan of Troyius” that sickbay is “the best-protected part of the ship,” which suggests it’s deep inside the saucer rather than out on the edge. This may have been influenced by The Making of Star Trek, which was written around that time and says that sickbay is in “the central section of the seventh deck level,” surrounding the computer core at the very center of the saucer. (Franz Joseph’s blueprints follow this description.)
-9
Fascinating. I was thinking the window could work if the scene was flipped around, but it does make sense to have sickbay deep within the saucer.
Anyhoo, putting aside my nickpicking, I hope CBS continues this animated trip down memory lane, along with the new stuff. Not long ago Star Wars did a series of very short animated videos recreating scenes from the older movies to get little kids interested in them, and I would love to see Star Trek do something similar.
It took a Looney Tunes/Tom and Jerry style cartoon for me to accept the nuttiness of the mycelial network.
Some of the shots in “The Girl Who Made the Stars”, where the girl is fleeing the Night Snake coming to devour her, evoked/duplicated similar shots in the episode (was it “If Memory Serves” or an earlier episode?) where a young Michael Burnham is running away from home and being chased by a monster.
One small design choice: the alien has ganglia in its crotch area. There was one shot where I wondered if this was similar to past cases of “bored-Disney-animators-insert-hidden-things”.
@10/Kowalski: This new era of Trek TV has relied far too much on nostalgia so far. I want to see fewer trips down memory lane and more exploration of the new.
-12
I agree, but they can do both (preferably more to the ratio that TNG did mostly new material and then the occasional bit of nostalgia). The Star Wars shorts I mentioned were created specifically for the purpose of introducing young people to the classics, and I think it would benefit Star Trek in the long run if they did likewise. But then that leans more towards marketing than storytelling.
@9 ” we’re told in “Elaan of Troyius” that sickbay is “the best-protected part of the ship,” which suggests it’s deep inside the saucer rather than out on the edge. This may have been influenced by The Making of Star Trek, which was written around that time and says that sickbay is in “the central section of the seventh deck level,” surrounding the computer core at the very center of the saucer. (Franz Joseph’s blueprints follow this description.)”
TMOST and the blueprints are non-canon and both have been contradicted numerous times, particularly of late. Also, the sickbay in the blueprints doesn’t match up to the sets at all.
The current version of the Enterprise, Pike’s Enterprise, would need a TMP degree of makeover to match up to TOS.
Or, and this is what works for me, it’s just another alternate universe version that’s really similar to what we saw on TOS but not quite the same. In this veriosn, Sickbay is on the rim (perhaps with addition defense fields as seen in TWOK) and it’s built in the reverse of what TOS was.
Energize defense fields
The reviews of these shorts make me look forward to viewing them in the near future – I’m holding off on subscribing to CBSAA until Star Trek: Picard premieres at which point I’ll catch up to all of the Short Treks.
The nerd in me also loves the participation of Jeanette Goldstein in one of the shorts. Aside from the aforementioned role she has in Star Trek Generations, her character in Aliens was Gene’s inspiration for the creation of the character Tasha Yar for TNG, the original incarnation of which was called Macha Hernandez and she was also a butch Hispanic lady.
@13/Kowalski: The thing about “introducing young people to the classics” is that it assumes they would enjoy the same things we did, which isn’t necessarily true. Times change and so do storytelling styles and attitudes. Adam-Troy Castro had a recent Facebook post talking about how trying to get the next generation interested in the same things we liked can backfire.
Better to start by giving young people things that they will like, rather than constantly pushing the stuff we liked on them and assuming they’ll find it relatable. Get them on the train first, and let them work their way back to the classics if they so choose. Too many genre creators today are driven more by indulging their own nostalgia and fannish impulses, which can be a barrier for newcomers rather than an entrance ramp.
I mean, look — Star Wars was a pure exercise in nostalgia, and it worked. But it worked because it was generalized nostalgia. Lucas couldn’t get the Flash Gordon rights he wanted, so instead of making something that was full of inside references and continuity porn that only the established fanbase of a single specific series would understand, he made something that captured the spirit of past works in a more general way that was accessible to newcomers. He evoked the spirit rather than the letter, and the spirit was the part that really mattered.
@16/Christopher: But “introducing young people to the classics” doesn’t have to mean “constantly pushing the stuff we liked on them”. It can simply mean showing them the stuff we liked and then letting them decide whether they want more of it or not.
It’s impossible to “start by giving [them] things that they will like” because you don’t know what they will like. I have introduced my daughters to lots of books and films and stories, both old and new. They liked some and disliked others. I discovered Hayao Miyazaki, and my whole family loved him. My older daughter liked Star Trek much better than Star Wars, but only the original series; she wasn’t interested in TNG. Then she went off and discovered New Doctor Who on her own. My younger daughter enjoyed watching Star Trek with me (both TOS and TNG), but found that she liked mangas and animes best.
So now my daughters have introduced me to Doctor Who and to mangas. It works both ways.
I prefer to see the world of literature as an expanding city rather than a train. Everyone starts in some place and then travels around to see more, with parents, friends, or on their own. My favourite part of the city hasn’t become my daughters’ favourite part, but we visit each other and show each other the places we love.
@17/Jana: Yes, sure, but the point is that maybe that’s not the best place to start their introduction to science fiction or Star Trek or whatever. You want the entry ramp to be as accessible to newcomers as possible, not laden with continuity porn or retro elements that might be too arcane or off-putting to the uninitiated.
Of course there’s no guarantee they’ll like any given thing, but that’s why you want to put up as few obstacles to their enjoyment as possible, as Adam said in the post I quoted. That’s just as true of your city metaphor as the train metaphor — the point is, there’s more than one place to start from, and you want to give newcomers the chance to start out at the place that they find most inviting as an entry point, rather than trying to drag them back to the same place where you started, which they might not find accessible or appealing. Once they’ve boarded the train/moved into town by their own choice, then they can wander around and maybe find their way to the part where you feel most at home.
@18/Christopher: I agree partially, especially about the continuity porn. On the other hand, your favourite place may be the most accessible and inviting to them, because they live with you, they see you do the things you do and, up to the age of ten or twelve, are curious about them and want to participate.
-16
The animated shorts I’m proposing don’t have to be precisely like the classics we know. The Star Wars shorts have been altered. The pace is faster, the action more intense. There’s no reason Star Trek short stories couldn’t be altered to meet the trends of the modern audience, as classics sometimes are. They could even be radically changed. They could be reinterpreted. The studio could open it up to different filmmakers to see their different takes. IDIC and all that. And of course kids could feel involved via art contests, coloring books, etc.
Look, I can only speak to my own experience, but it was my father who pointed me to Star Trek, and it came to me all at once. TNG was in the middle of its run, but we watched TOS and the movies, too. Wasn’t a busybody grabbing my arm. It was a helping hand. In fact, it was one of the few things we could enjoy watching together.
Aw, a warm fuzzy. Happy Holidays, everyone.
@20/Kowalski: I’m just saying I want new Star Trek to capture the spirit of what it did 50 years ago — breaking new ground, pushing new boundaries, taking SFTV places it hasn’t been before — rather than just rehashing the letter of what it did 50 years ago by retelling old episodes. Star Trek will lose something fundamental if it becomes nothing more than an indulgence in nostalgia. Star Wars has been defined by nostalgia from the start, so that’s fine for it, but Star Trek is defined by looking forward, not backward. The two franchises are extremely different, so just because SW did something doesn’t mean it’s right for ST.
-21
Star Trek doesn’t have to be only about nostalgia. Again, these things can coexist. Again, preferably the bulk of it new and a little from the old. I agree nostalgia and “continuity porn” are a problem in the Kelvinverse and Discovery. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The live-action part could be where new things are, er, discovered, and the Short Treks are where “the classics” can be played with, along with original shorts. CBS appears to be committed to growing Trek, so presumably there’s plenty room for all this.
One way to disseminate your favorite things to a younger generation is to share your stuff.
Last Christmas, I gave away hundreds of comics from my collection to kids in the extended family. Turned out none of the girls wanted any. One said, “If superheroes were real, they’d be fighting all the time. I don’t like that.” So it turned out to be about seven boys under ten who each got 50 to 60 comics. (My favorite grandson got double. Don’t tell anyone.) I tried to keep story runs together: so one got mostly X-men, another got mostly Flash, and so on. I told the kids to share or trade them if they wanted something different. One parent asked “what if he found something valuable” and I said just give me a percentage if you sell it (was joking). Another set of parents, who have twins, didn’t even say “thank you.” Guess they thought old comics are worthless.
It was hilarious in the months afterwards seeing the aftereffects. I lost track of how many times they told me about things “You just don’t know” about superheroes, even though they were reading my old comics. One of them asked me why Red Hulk wasn’t in Infinity War. I complimented one on his t-shirt. He paused and said, “You talk about superheroes too much” (which is probably something he heard his parents say). Me: “Well, I’m not the one wearing an Iron Man shirt.” To which he had no answer, sputtered, and ran off.
@23/Sunspear: “One way to disseminate your favorite things to a younger generation is to share your stuff.”
It can be, yes. But the point isn’t about whether you’re ever allowed to try that, just that it isn’t necessarily the best way to start someone out for the first time. You can’t assume the entry ramp that appealed to you a generation ago will automatically be equally meaningful or accessible to new readers/viewers (especially if it has outdated attitudes or stylistic elements that play poorly today), and you can drive them away if you try to push them toward the same starting point you had. Let them find their own entry ramp into the genre, give them the chance to fall in love with it on their own terms, and then you can try to share your stuff with them. Getting someone else interested in the genre shouldn’t be about yourself. It should be about them.
“If superheroes were real, they’d be fighting all the time. I don’t like that.”
Haha, out of the mouths of babes.
@CLB: “Let them find their own entry ramp into the genre, give them the chance to fall in love with it on their own terms, and then you can try to share your stuff with them.”
It was and is highly unlikely that the current generation will ever buy a physical comic. Not sure there are many or even any comic shops outside of big cities left. Even when I was buying comics, there were fewer than 5000 nationwide. There used to be a CBR.com feature that broke down sales. Most titles fell under 20k sold per month (avg. 4 copies per shop). The young ‘uns are exposed to the filmed media first and reading falls by the wayside. The parents nixed the idea of digital comics as the kids spend too much time on their iPads/tablets as it is.
As far as Trek, I guess the Nickelodeon animated show is designed to do what you’re talking about. Otherwise, when it comes to family and friends interaction, it’s a randomized, trial and error process, if it’s even a consciously driven one. No one “allows” anything. There isn’t any Ministry for Cultural Transference making any rules.
@26/Sunspear: Uhh, who was talking about comics? We were talking about Star Trek, and the Adam-Troy Castro comment I quoted was discussing prose science fiction.
Anyway, you’re just supporting my point, which is that the new generation won’t necessarily like the same things the old generation did, so nostalgia makes a poor entry ramp for new audiences.
-26
You’re right, it is randomized. When I think back on my own pop culture education, it came from a variety of sources: friends, family, and from my own curiosity. And then there was our sixth grade science teacher, who on lazy days made us watch old Vincent Price horror movies and the works of Ray Harryhausen. We were held captive by the clock with his interests playing all the while — and for that I’m grateful! Even then in the post-Jurassic Park mid-Nineties those old flicks played well with a group of boys. Especially Jason and the Argonauts.
Honestly, I can’t tell you how many movies I was introduced to from lazy teachers and substitute teachers with a hangover. God bless home video and alcohol.
“Continuity porn” is one of my big complaints about Discovery. “Burnham isn’t an interesting character enough on her own, we have to make her related to Spock.: seems to be the overriding idea behind the character. Then, as much as I really liked the Pike bits, it’s once again a symptom of the “small universe syndrome”. Everything HAS to tie back to Kirk & Spock and the Enterprise. How many people exist in this universe. a couple thousand?
If you’ve got a story you want to tell about Pike, tell a story about Pike. Don’t shoehorn it into another show. DS9 did it fairly well most of the time but they did also go too far at times (I’m looking at you, mirror universe). Strangely, Enterprise did the mirror universe best in my opinion. Tell a story about it without using any of the main universe characters, just their counterparts.
Sure, DS9 started out with Picard as a guest due to Sisko’s experience at Wolf 359, but they didn’t make Picard a guest star for a whole season or have him show up on a regular basis. He was used as a hook to show how Sisko was broken and then we followed Sisko’s journey from then on.
Getting back on topic, on second viewing of “Ephraim and Dot” I found another reason to put it in it’s own continuity. During the clip from The Tholian Web, there’s three Tholian ships, not two. Sure, it’s a little thing but it’s the little changes that make the universes distinct yet recognizable. Kirk’s father dies. Everyone is evil. Worf is married to Troi.
@CLB: The kids (boys anyway) actually liked the comics, engaged with the material, and asked for more. They had no inroad in their immediate environment where they would have been exposed otherwise. The comics weren’t that old (most since 2000), hence the Red Hulk reference. Nostalgia wasn’t the motivation, just warmhearted sharing. (Didn’t expect the Sourpuss Inquisition!)
It was offered as a small example of sharing your tastes, likes and dislikes, directly with those around you, nothing more. Comics, ST, more general science fiction… it’s all the same stew.
If you prefer to look at this kind of transference in a more Platonic ideal sense, meaning no actual kids involved, then it becomes a much drier discussion. Adam’s train is a reductive metaphor that doesn’t quite work. New cars (new cultural material) would be added at the back, without disengaging the first car from the engine. It has limited utility as a metaphor.
@30/Sunspear: Did you even read Adam’s full comments that I linked to? Because what you’re saying is what he actually said, that there’s always new stuff being added and that it’s a mistake to assume that what got you into the genre as a kid is the only thing that anyone today can or should use as a starting point. Of course, that doesn’t mean it can never be — of course it can. If they respond to that, great. There’s nothing wrong with that. The point is simply that the impetus should come from them, that you should let them find whatever entry ramp works best for them whether or not it is the same as your own. Neither Adam nor I is trying to reduce this to a binary — only you are, and because of that you’re entirely missing the point.
To go back to my original comment about making cartoons to introduce kids to Star Trek, that is of course only one way to go about it. I just want to be clear I wasn’t suggesting it had to be the only way. No one can be sure how kids find new things or old things, which are new to them. Ultimately, not every subject can be curated in our messy multimedia environment, and the attempt to introduce them to Star Trek via animation is just that — an attempt. But a worthy one in my opinion.
@CLB: we speak different languages apparently, or simply whiz past details in comments.
Adam’s metaphor has the newest cultural content in the front car. How long before that gets overstuffed? The metaphor is weak. That post created a sidetrack to this thread, which is about a couple Trek cartoons, which some people evidently didn’t even watch.
It became a discussion about pop culture transmission. Adding comics to that was apparently a jarring element. (Gosh!) You have one discussion going on, defined on your terms. I took a different approach. Neither is directly related to the OP.
What I’m talking about is introducing kids to elements of pop culture as parents or grandparents. There is no directed force to sway them one way or another. It’s an offering, that’s all. It’s a thing parents do. Where do you expect this random “entry ramp” to come from if not from the people closest to them? Is it some nebulous process that you let kids find somewhere “out there” away from parental influence? That’s patently absurd. All parents, if they are at all interested in their kids’ lives and welfare, have some level of engagement with forming their kids tastes and values.
So yeah, I’m talking about direct engagement. It’s natural and it happens all the time. What you’re talking about seems theoretical guessing and supposition, not concrete.
@32/Kowalski: I never said there was anything wrong with using cartoons to introduce kids to Trek. On the contrary, I think that’s exactly what Trek needs. What I said was that packing said cartoons with a ton of in-jokey allusions to TOS is more about indulging the nostalgia of older fans and could get in the way of making them accessible to kids.
I mean, I haven’t seen “Ephraim and Dot” yet, but does it really need to happen on and around the Enterprise during TOS and the movies? Couldn’t it just have been a fun chase cartoon about these two characters in a more general Trek milieu? If the goal is to make something appealing and welcoming to kids, does it gain anything from all the references to old episodes and movies they haven’t seen?
Christopher: Actually, those references don’t really get in the way of anything. It serves the same function that the various adult pop-culture references in old Warner Bros. cartoons served back in the day. The kids would just enjoy the silliness, while the adults would get the more sophisticated jokes. In a like vein, the kids just get to enjoy the adorable tardigrade in conflict with the equally adorable maintenance robot, while the adults nerd out over Khan and Sulu and the scenes from two movies.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
What Krad said.
I remember watching Looney Tunes as a kid and being a little confused by the dated references, but they never got in the way of enjoying the cartoons. Hey, sometimes the answers to them can sneak up on you. I remember one in which Yosemite Sam yelled, “Open the door! Open the door!,” then turned to camera and said, “Notice I didn’t say Richard?”
A few years ago I’m listening to an oldies station and they played a song from the Forties called “Open the Door, Richard.” Only took thirty years but I finally got that joke!
@24/Christopher: “Getting someone else interested in the genre shouldn’t be about yourself. It should be about them.”
I think we all agree about that, but the rest of your comment doesn’t follow from it.
“Let them find their own entry ramp into the genre, give them the chance to fall in love with it on their own terms, and then you can try to share your stuff with them.”
You keep saying that, but why do you think that would be better? They’re your children. They live with you. You influence them anyway. You buy them books and DVDs, you go to the cinema with them, you allow or forbid them to turn on the TV. If you try not to influence them, others will – teachers, other children, advertising companies. Showing your children the thing you love makes for great parent-child bonding. What’s wrong with that?
“You can’t assume the entry ramp that appealed to you a generation ago will automatically be equally meaningful or accessible to new readers/viewers (especially if it has outdated attitudes or stylistic elements that play poorly today)”
Every old story has outdated elements. I read Tom Sawyer as a child and puzzled over this Jim character. Who was he, a third brother? But why hadn’t he been properly introduced by the author? And what was “sunday school”? (Okay, that wasn’t outdated, just foreign.) I still enjoyed the book, and gave it to my daughter to read. I read a ton of old books to my children. If we only show our children new books and films, they will grow up impoverished.
As for stylistic elements, I deliberately showed them some old and some new films right from the start, because I wanted them to get used to many different styles. We watched the 1969 Pippi Longstocking TV series repeatedly. We watched Disney’s The Sword in the Stone. They liked it.
“you can drive them away if you try to push them toward the same starting point you had.“
You show them the thing you love, they take it or leave it. No pushing involved.
@Jana: One interesting thing about kids these days (at least the ones in my environment) is that they don’t seem to compartmentalize or categorize media the same way prior generations did. One granddaughter (almost 12) is currently listening to Neil Diamond. Next it’ll be Barry Manilow and I’ll never escape “Mandy”! She also has no issue with watching black & white movies, where a prior generation wanted to colorize them. She’ll even watch subtitled movies if they are by Miyazaki.
Btw Jana, I much prefer your city metaphor for discovering pop culture, exploring different neighborhood/parts of the city, with room for expansion as you grow your interests.
@23/Sunspear: That’s a sweet story. And wow, you have a very large extended family.
The different reaction of the boys and girls made me wonder about my own “superhero phase” as a teenager. I liked superheroes, but only very specific ones. I liked Wonder Woman (female and with a Greek mythology connection), Green Lantern (part of a large interstellar organisation), and the Atom (very small and a scientist). The latter had a lot of adventures that were exploration stories rather than fights. Finding an unknown civilisation in a telephone line, that sort of thing.
Sorry, getting off the subject.
@38/Sunspear: Thank you!
Both shorts were beautiful, and the Tom & Jerry quality of Ephraim and Dot was lovely. Wait… Kirk Thatcher? Cool! And also, both stories are as Trek as it gets.
@37/Jana: “You keep saying that, but why do you think that would be better?”
I’m not. Arguing against one extreme position does not entail embracing the opposite extreme; the whole point is to reject extremist thinking in any direction and recognize the need to adapt and be flexible. One thing you should strive to keep in mind about me: I believe the truth almost always lies in the middle ground. So if you think I’m taking an extreme position, you’re almost certainly missing my point.
The point Adam-Troy Castro was making is that if you assume the only possible way someone else can discover SF or fantasy is by being pushed toward the same entry ramp that you had decades ago, you risk driving them away with something inaccessible to them. You have to let them find their own entry ramp. As I already said, that does not mean their entry ramp cannot be the same as yours — just that it’s up to them to decide whether it is or not. It could be, sure, but only if that’s what works for them.
The point is not about whether X story or Y story will absolutely work or absolutely fail in every case. It’s not about the story. It’s about the person. It’s about whether you respect their right to find their own way in rather than trying to make it about your own nostalgia.
“You show them the thing you love, they take it or leave it. No pushing involved.”
Which is essentially my point, that it’s about how you do it. It’s about understanding that they won’t necessarily take it and that it’s okay if they prefer something else.
But we’re talking specifically about what kind of show would work for getting a whole new audience of young people interested in a genre property, not just a single individual. So it’s about the aggregate. While there will always be some people in a given audience who will find appeal in the retro stuff, that doesn’t mean the majority of them will. So if you go into creating such a show thinking “Oh, this is so cool, I’ll make it exactly like what I loved as a kid and that guarantees that today’s kids will flock to it,” that’s shortsighted and unlikely to succeed. It’s more about the creators indulging themselves than about attracting a new audience. Pile on too much continuity porn and inside-baseball references and that can become an obstacle for the uninitiated rather than an invitation. Be too literal in adapting something made for earlier, less inclusive times and you’ll end up being regressive and reactionary.
For instance, Netflix’s She-Ra does a fantastic job reinventing the old Filmation show for today’s young audience, doing it in a modern style and making it more inclusive and diverse and so forth. It takes a show where nearly every female lead looked like a Barbie doll with an identical figure and gives its characters a wide variety of ethnicities, body types, personalities, orientations, and gender identities. It reuses characters and ideas from the old show but completely reinvents them and tells a story that depends only on itself, with the occasional Easter eggs and continuity winks not getting in the way and even being reinterpreted to work in a totally different and effective way within the new story. But then Kevin Smith came along and announced that he was working on a Netflix revival of She-Ra‘s sibling show He-Man that would be a direct sequel to the original 1980s series but more adult and in an anime style. And even though I was a member of He-Man‘s original audience, I have to wonder, who is the target audience for something like that today? It feels like something Smith is making to indulge his own tastes and those of other aging fanboys, and I just don’t see that being a large enough audience to give it a good chance of succeeding.
@CLB: ” Arguing against one extreme position does not entail embracing the opposite extreme; the whole point is to reject extremist thinking in any direction..”
I was going to leave this alone, since you’re just interpolating a Facebook discussion into this one (and you mistake lack of interest in said discussion and your quote as missing the point), but this is just a flat out bizarre comment. Jana is tying together what I said about familial influence with her experience as a mom. We’re both talking about an organic process, a natural experience with kids. That’s an extreme position?
Tell us in more concrete terms how this process should work according to you. And I don’t mean on the creative side and the intent of such creators to connect with younger audiences. You may have kids or work with kids (I’m not assuming anything), but your position is still highly theoretical. It’s hypothesizing in a very generalized way that doesn’t seem to reflect lived experience. You keep talking about an entry ramp tied to a metaphor we’ve both rejected. It’s fine if you want to stick to it and spin your wheels, but it seems that discussion is elsewhere.
-42
Now you’re reaching for exaggerations to make a point. There are no guarantees in the creative field. I know of no creatives who think this way. There is doubt in most every endeavor. Maybe some wide-eyed business major would say something like that, but not creatives. And I can’t think of any successful retro thing that is made exactly like the thing it is emulating. Star Wars and Indiana Jones are brimming with nostalgia for the old serials, and yet they still brought original elements into the mix.
But there’s no real argument here anyway, since I nor anyone else here were suggesting Star Trek had to make it exactly like it “used to be.” Remixes are welcome. This was cleared up many comments ago. You’re just arguing to argue now. Peace out.
@44/Kowalski: I think I’m being misunderstood. I’m not saying “This is absolutely what people are doing” (except for that weird Kevin Smith He-Man thing). I’m just saying it’s a mindset I’d prefer for creators to avoid on general principles. Pointing out hypothetical areas of concern that should be avoided is a valid thing to do. There’s a whole genre of cautionary-tale fiction that’s all about that.
These animated Short Treks really do open the realm of possibilities if the producers decide to take it. Why not use animation to give us stories about what happened to our favorite characters post DS9, Voy, Ent? Why not make a (mini) DS9, Voy, or Ent episode? Or an episode through the perspective of a Cardassian during the occupation of Bajor? An average Federation citizen dealing with the Borg invasion?
The storytelling threads are endless.
@M: That would be amazing.
Tardigrade eggs must have a heck of a long gestation period. And I’m assuming Dot is a maintenance nanobot? Cute but weird.
@48/roxana: Not a nanobot, or it would be microscopic. It’s one of the DOT-7 repair drones established in DSC’s season 2 finale and the Short Treks episode “Ask Not.” (I would guess that “Ephraim and Dot” was already being planned when they made the season finale, which is why the drones had that oddly cute appearance.)
Happy Holidays everyone! I just re-upped my membership to CBS All Access today for a free month using a code that the streamer emailed to me. In the spirit of the season, the code is “CANDYCANE” in case anyone wants a free month on the steaming service too. I’m not sure if it only works for previous subscribers or not but for the newbies it’s worth a shot! And the free month will take you through at least the premiere of Star Trek: Picard, not to mention all of the more recent Short Treks! :o)
Just watched a very brief clip of “Children of Mars” and it seems to literally be about young children – namely a human girl and an alien girl with funny bumps all over her face. So there goes my theory of the short being about Romulan refugees!
“The Girl Who Made the Stars”: This was an interesting choice of subject matter; it’s good to see an African folk tale put out there, and I hope it’s something that appeals to kids. But it didn’t leave too strong an impression on me, I guess because I generally don’t find 3D computer animation as effective as the classic hand-drawn kind. Also, I’m a bit surprised that a smart kid like Michael Burnham didn’t ask the obvious question: If there were no stars, where did the alien come from?
Mainly I feel its value is in giving us a glimpse of Burnham’s father. In season 1, her parents were defined pretty much solely by their (apparent) deaths, and in season 2 we got to meet Gabrielle, so that left her father as an unknown quantity. So it’s nice that they did a piece that filled in that gap some, and also gave us a look at Michael before the tragedy, Sarek, and the rest.
“Ephraim and Dot”: This one did little for me, again because I just don’t find 3D animation (even cel-shaded) an effective medium at capturing the Looney Tunes/Tom & Jerry flavor this was trying for. At least, these particular animators weren’t able to make the characters move or express themselves in a way I found funny.
Also, seeing the short hasn’t changed the viewpoint I expressed in earlier comments — I don’t see any reason why the continuity porn and nods to TOS were necessary here. I just found them gratuitous bits of nostalgia in a story that wasn’t about them in any way. And it was an appeal to nostalgia that backfired, because the continuity inconsistencies just kept dragging me out of the story. They just got in the way.
I mean, if they were going to use TOS scenes as references, they should’ve picked ones that were relevant to the story of Ephraim and Dot. Like, have the “Day of the Dove” battle going on in the background while the tardigrade and drone are fighting too. Aside from the destruction of the Enterprise, none of the references were plot-relevant and just seemed random. So there wasn’t anything clever about them.
The music was pretty good, though. I’ll give it that.