Before the end of 2019, Star Trek will boldly do something it has never done in the 21st century before: Tell stand-alone stories in an animated format. It’s been known for a while that the final two Short Treks of 2019 would be animated, but we didn’t know what they’ d be about, or how they would even look…until now!
At the very end of the latest Short Treks — “Ask Not” — a brief teaser introduced images from the upcoming episodes “Ephraim and Dot” and “The Girl Who Made the Stars”; both set to air on CBS All-Access on December 12. Here’s what we now know about these two stories.
“Ephraim and Dot”
This episode looks to be focused on an intelligent space-dwelling tardigrade, like Ripper from Discovery season 1. In this case, its name is “Ephraim” and it appears to be making friends with a USS Enterprise maintenance bot called “Dot,” the little robots that were last seen in the season 2 Discovery finale, “Such Sweet Sorrow.” Notably, this marks the first time we’ve had an animated USS Enterprise since the 1976 Animated Series.
(Getting some real Lilo & Stitch vibes from Ephraim up there!)
We'll meet Enterprise repair drone DOT and mycelial tardigrade Ephraim in next month's first animated #StarTrek #ShortTrek, "Ephraim and DOT"
Coming December 12 pic.twitter.com/LKFrZWT9wa
— TrekCore.com
(@TrekCore) November 14, 2019
“The Girl Who Made the Stars”
This episode seems to be an animated adaptation of the real-life African folk story “The Girl Who Made the Stars.” In the opening monologue of the Discovery season 2 premiere, “Brother,” Michael Burnham retold this story and credited its origin to the /Xam Abathwa tribe. You can check out the historical origins of it here.
In next month's second animated #StarTrek #ShortTrek, we'll learn the story of "The Girl Who Made the Stars."
Coming December 12 pic.twitter.com/vACYImbnlh
— TrekCore.com
The narration over these previews says: “Two new Short Treks, from a whole new universe.” So it seems very possible that neither of these two stories will take place in the regular Star Trek canon, but instead, enrich the story of Star Trek in different ways.
In some ways, this seems like the Trek equivalent of an Elseworlds or What If?-type of storytelling. Either way, the animation on both shorts looks beautifully lush, and is probably not indicative of the style we will (eventually?) see for the debut of CBS’ animated Trek show Lower Decks.
After “Ephraim and Dot” and “The Girl Who Made the Stars,” comes one final Short Treks episode: “Children of Mars”, which is thought to be a live-action short which will tie directly into the events of Star Trek: Picard.
Here’s the breakdown
- “The Girl Who Made the Stars” – Thursday, Dec. 12
- “Ephraim and Dot” – Thursday, Dec. 12
- “Children of Mars” – Thursday, Jan. 9
- Star Trek: Picard debut – Thursday, Jan 23
Check out Tor.com’s review of the latest Short Trek: “Ask Not”:
https://reactormag.com/2019/11/15/kobayashi-sidhu-star-treks-ask-not/
