Ephraim and Dot

DVD, Short Treks (Ephraim and Dot)

Tricky to know what to say about this. It's like a hyperactive three-year-old who's been pumped up with energy drinks letting loose with crayons and multiple colouring books, flapping them in front of your face as you're tied to a chair. Or something. This was one of the 'Short Treks' that I was most interested in seeing since it's the first example of animation in Trek since 'The Animated Series' in the 1970s, and also the first example of the form for the current generation of Trek creators, the vanguard of what appears to be a big part of their plans to explore Trek in every medium known to man (except perhaps colouring books, but I wouldn't put it past them). The only details I knew about it were that it featured a Tardigrade, the giant space bear amoeba thing that was so integral to the whole spore drive controversy in 'DSC' Season 1; that there was more controversy in that they'd mistakenly included an 'A' in the registry number of the Enterprise (or forgot to put one in - I can't remember which); and I'd seen a picture in Star Trek Magazine which showed a window looking in on Khan in Sickbay from the episode 'Space Seed.'

My main reaction was not about any of these things, but rather the jerky frame-rate of the main chase sequence as Ephraim the Tardigrade zips through Enterprise history, which was rather uncomfortable to watch. I really don't know why they needed to jerk the picture around so much, it was almost bad enough to induce motion sickness! That, added to the sickly bright colours and frenetic movement made it a dizzying and off-putting experience even before considering the implications of the 'story,' if it can be deemed worthy of such a monicker. 'Skit' might be a better description. At the risk of sounding old and staid in my views on Trek I can't say I really liked this one, in line with most of the 'Short Treks' I've seen, barring 'Ask Not,' the only standout example of good Trek. I have to keep reminding myself that this is experimental ground, they want to try out all kinds of different things in this minuscule playground, while also giving hardcore viewers a reason to subscribe to CBS All Access in the long period between proper seasons. I say hardcore viewers because I can't imagine this sort of thing appealing to the majority of casual viewers who are likely only interested in the 'mainstream' series' output, and it does seem especially geared towards those with a fanatical knowledge of Trek past.

This makes it even stranger when you consider how un-Trek-like so much of these have been in terms of tone or aesthetics ('The Trouble With Edward' being the most obviously antithetical to the utopian ideals laid out by Roddenberry). It still very much feels as if the vast majority of what modern Trek does is from the perspective of those that don't really understand Trek's appeal. They seem very concerned with playing with the iconic pieces of Trek (the Enterprise, Kirk, Spock, etc), and less so about crafting something only tangentially connected to Trek lore, which would ironically have given them more creative freedom and upset less people. That's not to say they exclusively rely on the 'crowd-pleasing' familiar icons of Trek, as episodes such as 'Calypso' demonstrate (no, only old films!). So far only 'Runaway' and 'The Brightest Star' have explored their own characters (and 'Calypso'), rather than concentrating on something previously established like Pike, Spock, the Enterprise, Number One, all of which had already been set up in 'DSC.'

I expect I'd be complaining that they never touch on Trek lore if they'd gone the opposite direction and never mentioned or showed a ship or character from existing Trek, but with 'Ephraim and Dot' in particular it's hard to know what the purpose is, other than to show off some scenes from old episodes, and that's where the problems lie… When I said it was a minuscule playground I wasn't kidding as this episode is the shortest so far at under nine minutes in its entirety. No doubt this is partly due to it being animation, something that can't rely on existing sets to save time and money, and which must all be drawn, whether that be by hand or computer. I quite liked the flat style of the animation that harked back to 'TAS,' I just wish it'd been exactly like 'TAS' in its visuals (as that would have been more pleasing - as usual everything has to be that little bit off, whether it's the mythical 25%, or not), and even more in its attempt at storytelling. Because it shares more DNA with Pixar films, 'Wall-E' the one that came instantly to mind thanks to the little robot drone thing which is known as 'Dot.'

It's almost churlish to criticise such a happy, jolly little knockabout cartoon that is very traditional in its slapstick action and the conventions of that genre, but the thing is, it's not just a cartoon, it's also part of Trek, and therefore requires a critical eye to be cast upon it. I hated the introduction of robot drones into the 23rd Century world that we saw in 'DSC' Season 2, performing mundane tasks such as picking up chairs after the fight between Culber and Tyler. I felt it diminished the humanity of these people that they would rely on technology to do even the simplest task like picking something off the floor. I know that technology was probably the main reason why we didn't see such things in previous Trek (except on rare occasions like the Exocomps or the drone bomb in 'The Darkness and The Light'), and they didn't have the effects or budget to pull off such things, but we certainly saw sophisticated humanoid robots plenty of times, even on 'TOS,' so it seems clear that if they'd wanted to posit that robots did the little jobs they could have implied that, even if they couldn't show it - it's very much a 'Star Wars' trait, droids of all shape and description common throughout that mythology, and one thing that separated the two great 'Star' franchises. I always felt that the ship cleaned itself, in other words the walls and floors had some kind of tech embedded in them rather than sending out little robots to do the work. Either that or humans felt it was important to remain hands on and not give up performing physical tasks, which seems likely.

So I was very unhappy about the drones and the messiness of what was once a clean, tidy universe that has become a lot more like (the more popular, and therefore more profitable, and therefore you can see the reasoning behind the decisions for…), 'Star Wars.' So I was prejudiced against Dot right from the start because I don't need or want to see that. The Tardigrade was a more interesting prospect since we found out little about it on the series, since 'DSC' doesn't care much for details (another missing aspect I always loved about Trek). Further interest comes because the name they gave Ephraim here comes from an early developmental idea for the Tardigrade to have been a part of the Discovery's crew and would have had the same name, until they realised it would be just too technically prohibitive and expensive to feature a fully CGI character. So there's some fun little history for you, even in this fledgeling third generation of Trek.

Seemingly hoping to distract us from the slightness of the plot and to make it appealing to those that care about 'TOS,' we're treated to a number of callbacks to that series. It's strange, because the modern makers of Trek seem to have schizophrenia about 'TOS': they went out of their way to repurpose and alter the 23rd Century look and feel that was so integral to the original and which assisted in creating something that lasted for decades, with spinoffs that remained true to the original's spirit. And then, at the same time they want to exploit the recognisable elements of 'TOS,' the bright uniform colours, the shape of the Enterprise, the bold, brassy and bizarre aliens and stories - that this episode was directed by Michael Giacchino, the composer of the Kelvin films' scores, and so part of that partial generation of Trek content creators that looked like it was going to be the 'third generation' (after the Roddenberry and Berman eras), before the fickle and transitory love of the general audience they tried to appeal to was lost, shouldn't be surprising, because what he does here is much like what those films did. He and Alex Kurtzman were both key to that semi-era in different ways and now here we have them doing the same kind of thing. There's no recasting of Khan this time (although Montalban Khan does show up briefly!), but it's still part of that confusingly halfway house between what 'TOS' actually looked like and the changes they insist on making.

My conclusion, and that of others I've seen comments from in general about 'DSC' and the current content that has been labelled Trek, must be that, despite their protestations of it all being set in the existing universe, the so-called Prime Universe, it simply cannot be. By the way, I remembered what was wrong with the 'A' in the registration: Ephraim's troubles revolving protecting her eggs inside what I assume is supposed to be the engine room aboard the Enterprise, all takes place throughout the events that occurred on that ship between Khan's appearance in 'Space Seed' right up to that vessel's destruction in 'Star Trek III' - trouble is, when they switch to the refit of 'The Motion Picture' onwards and we see the saucer it has the 'A' on it when the Enterprise-A was the successor ship which Kirk was given at the end of 'Star Trek IV.' Now I can understand the derision I'd heard because if you can't get a simple detail like that right (again, it's all in the details!), how can you expect your version of Trek to be taken seriously? The counter-argument, such as it is, is that even Roddenberry got a major detail like that wrong! Yes, it's true, practically this very issue occurred in early Season 1 of 'TNG,' in 'The Naked Now,' a sequel to 'The Naked Time' on 'TOS' in which they searched for a solution and came up with the ship's logs about the virus. Except the blueprint they showed on screen was clearly the film-era Enterprise, not the original.

The trouble with that argument (and it is a pertinent one), is that just because a mistake happened in past Trek doesn't mean that excuses current Trek from making the same one. In fact, quite the opposite: if they knew their Trek history they'd be aware of this gaffe and have made specially sure not to repeat it. I remember wondering if they'd leave this booboo in the physical media release or go back and fix it, and I have to say I'm pleased they didn't because part of Trek's charm is the little idiosyncrasies of such a vast and largely complementary universe in which the big mistakes are surprisingly few, and part of the fun of watching Trek is discovering the trivia, especially if you become deeply involved enough to spot them for yourself. So good on the makers for not altering the episode. Just don't do it again, okay!

Other things that aren't as easy to forgive are the changes to the Enterprise herself. If there was any reason to believe this is all in an alternate universe then the layout of the ship is strong evidence because it does not correspond to what we know. Sickbay did not have a window out into space. It especially didn't have a window where you know that a corridor was running around the outside! When I saw the photo in the magazine I was both pleased to see an animated recreation of 'Space Seed' and disappointed that they didn't understand how the Enterprise looked. I was hoping this window was actually some Tardigrade ability to see through walls, not an actual porthole in the hull! It's also possible to see a door at the back of this part of Sickbay which we know didn't exist, and it always saddens me when they show such love for, and joy in, Trek history (the first time in the current generation we get the proper Starfleet uniform of that period as we see Kirk and McCoy standing by Khan's biobed), and yet they can't stop themselves from tinkering! Aaargh! Just give us the genuine article if you're so interested in recreations, or don't do it at all!

Further evidence of a team that Does Not Understand Star Trek (™), is that we see the Enterprise run into Ephraim. No, that's literally run into, as in Ephraim is on an asteroid and the ship smashes right into it! We see the great deflector dish bearing down on it, and the whole point of it is to deflect! That's what a deflector dish does, so the ship doesn't bump into things. Sigh… Sometimes this team does make me want to sob, it's like the school bullies have got hold of the football you brought in and are kicking it around, whooping and hollering while you stand there unable to do anything about it. It also features the kind of comedy that gets me down, reminding me most of the water pipes from 'Star Trek XI,' that infamous scene of Scotty beaming into said pipes because of a silly mistake in calculations that set the tone for so much of Trek ever since, for not giving characters dignity and respect, the hallmarks of Trek. Again, this literally happens to Ephraim.

Amidst all the jabbing pain of the niggles, as if set up to upset the very fans who would most be drawn to this short, there are fun recreations of a number of 'TOS' scenarios: in the strange, black and white, fullscreen and scratchy 'biology film' that starts the episode, we're treated to an image of the Salt Vampire from 'The Man Trap.' Then, after Khan, Kirk and McCoy in Sickbay we see Tribbles from 'The Trouble With Tribbles,' Sulu threatening some crewmembers with his sword in a corridor (again, it doesn't make sense that there are windows there, but it's fun to hear actual audio from 'TOS' being used at various times, especially that moment when I think it was Majel Barrett as the computer voice), from 'The Naked Time' (which happened before 'Space Seed' so I guess Ephraim is going back and forth in time, not just forward…). There's the giant green hand which I think was from 'Who Mourns For Adonais?', the Doomsday machine, the Tholian web, Lincoln in space ('The Savage Curtain'), the Reliant's attack on the Enterprise from 'Star Trek II,' and the Klingon Bird-of-Prey's attack from 'Star Trek III' and subsequent fiery demise over the Genesis planet.

The final fun little detail was that Kirk Thatcher was credited at the end, so I assume he must have played the comedy voiceover for the biology film - he was Associate Producer on 'Star Trek IV' and famously played Punk on Bus. It's a fun piece of casting, but it can't disguise the fact that I'm still not enamoured with the majority of the experiments they've tried on 'Short Treks.' I heard it suggested on a podcast that perhaps 'The Trouble With Edward' was a tonal pilot for what 'Lower Decks' may be. If so, maybe this anarchic roller-coaster was the same thing for the children's animation series, 'Star Trek: Prodigy.' If so, I wonder where the essence of Trek is now. I haven't seen much evidence for it in 'DSC,' and none (other than the hopefulness of 'Ask Not,' so if that's the direction of Pike's series, 'Strange New Worlds,' there is still hope), in 'Short Treks.' If they'd done these little offshoots in the 90s, or even the 2000s, I can't help but think I'd have loved every one because it would have expanded the Trek universe ever more. With the current team they seem more interested in regurgitating the past while not being true to the spirit or the form and function of Trek so it always feels off to varying degrees. I don't know what to expect from Trek these days other than that it'll probably be against what I enjoy about it, and that's such a depressing thought. This little knockabout wasn't terrible, but neither does it increase hope in future productions.

Addendum: having re-watched it, it wasn't as jerky this time so it must have been my computer not playing it correctly, though it's still a collage of kinetic shape and colour. And now I'm not sure it was Majel Barrett's voice, but it would have been nice if it were.

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