Spoilers Star Trek: Short Treks 2x04 - "The Girl Who Made the Stars"

[Commander Richard]

This is the first of two animated Short Treks and it's believed to be related to a story that Michael Burnham told in "Brother". Will we witness the origin of the Milky Way galaxy at the hands of a young African girl? What else might the story reveal? This ought to be an interesting Short Trek, and doubly so since it's the first animated Trek in almost half a century.

You can discuss 2x05: "Ephraim and Dot" here.

Release Date: Thursday, December 12, 2019​

 

[NCC-73515]

I'm very excited about these two, because they should have a teaser at the end for the Picard prequel episode...

 

[DaveyNY]

It was interesting, but only barely felt like a Trek episode.
Oh well, they all can't be my favorite. (5)

 

[tomalak301]

It didn't feel like a Star Trek episode to me at all. It was also kind of forgettable.

4

 

[Lord Garth]

I liked it, it was different. It plays like a father telling his little daughter a bedtime story, so it did what it set out to do. I think of it as, "This isn't targeted towards me, I'm 40, but how would my niece like this?" So it feels like something you could show (drum roll) the next generation.

 

[Campe]

I liked it. Not every Star Trek story needs to have starships and phasers. It was a nice texture to add to Burnham and the story she told at the beginning of season two.

 

[eschaton]

I didn't like this one much at all. I thought there were four main issues with the short.

1. The animation was kinda bad in parts. I mean, some of it was beautifully composed. But IMHO they went for the wrong balance between realistic and cartoony for the faces of the characters. Little Micheal was okay, but her dad and the village elder just were uncanny valley, with their lips not moving like real humans when they were speaking
2. The short was too short. If you cut out the Michael/dad framing device the actual creation myth was four minutes - possibly less. A real bedtime story that a dad tells their kid would at least be a little bit more elaborate than this was. Given how expensive rendering is I understand why they wanted to keep it short, but I think it robbed the story of potential emotional impact.
3. The use of an alien - complete with a spacecraft that warped away with the Discovery warp effect - within the fantasy-based creation myth was weird. I mean, I think I can understand why they did it. Everything we see onscreen is Michael's imagination - hence the little girl being her. Her dad may be talking about an angel coming down from heaven, but she doesn't know about that stuff - she knows about aliens and spacecraft, so she imagines it in a way relatable to her. But while I was watching I was wondering where the heck the alien spacecraft came from if the girl hadn't made the stars yet.
4. The most important flaw however is there was no particularly good reason to make this short. I don't remember a single person who said, when Brother premiered "hey, can we get an even more extended explanation of Michael's opening monologue?" The story doesn't really illuminate anything about Michael's character, her father, or much about their relationship which wouldn't exist between just about any functional father/daughter dynamic at that age. It could literally be any dad telling the story to any daughter. The creation myth is also a made up story which really has no connection to anything else in the Trek universe. We might as well have some random person narrate a Ruyard Kipling just-so story. I mean, I suppose there's a thematic connection here - that the moral of the story is to not be afraid of the unknown - which is a very Trekkian concept - but it's really too brief to hammer the point properly.

I'd say four out of ten. It's okay, but doesn't really do enough to warrant its existence. Although thematically a lot different this brought me back to watching the Love, Death, & Robots shorts earlier this year. Those stories were a lot less family-friendly than this to say the least, but they were almost all much more effective at telling a story over a short period of time - and were nearly universally better animated to boot.

 

[WarpFactorZ]

I liked it, it was different. It plays like a father telling his little daughter a bedtime story, so it did what it set out to do. I think of it as, "This isn't targeted towards me, I'm 40, but how would my niece like this?" So it feels like something you could show (drum roll) the next generation.

Well, those of us in our 40s with kids might get something out of it (haven't actually watched yet, since I'm at work, but we'll see).

 

[DaveyNY]

The episode's entire premise is based on the tale Michael Burnhams' father told her as a young girl and then her relating that tale to us the viewer in an episode of DISCOVERY.
That's the only thing that connects it to Star Trek.

 

[pst]

i kinda liked that this didn't feel like star trek, but as a short trek? i'm not sure it should be a short trek. if they found a way to tack this onto an episode that referenced the creation myth, i can see it being a really cool way to tell that story. but on its own, it's a little out of place.

like i said about ephraim and dot, i do appreciate the attempt to add a new texture to the star trek universe. but would i watch this again for the fun of watching a star trek short? no. and i'd probably watch ephraim and dot again, even if that was kind of stupid and frustrating.

 

[Joanna McCoy-Kirk]

I gave it a 2--pretty lame.

 

[Greg Cox]

I keep getting an "Error 3004" message, whatever that means.

Weird. I've never had trouble watching Trek on my computer before.

 

[WarpFactorZ]

I keep getting an "Error 3004" message, whatever that means.

Weird. I've never had trouble watching Trek on my computer before.

That sounds more entertaining than the actual Short Trek!...

OK, it wasn't really that bad. Just a weird alternate universe Disney-acquires-CBS-All-Access show.

 

[Midquest]

I'm surprised by the mixed reaction, especially as folks had been waiting for a follow-up to the first mention of this story in Brother. This story has Star Trek written all over it - the themes of exploration, first contact, and perseverance. But then, I'm always thrilled when Trek tackles mythology, and this did that with gorgeous imagery. I think it would play well for a young audience, but I can still respect and enjoy what it does as an adult.

 

[tomalak301]

I'm surprised by the mixed reaction, especially as folks had been waiting for a follow-up to the first mention of this story in Brother. This story has Star Trek written all over it - the themes of exploration, first contact, and perseverance. But then, I'm always thrilled when Trek tackles mythology, and this did that with gorgeous imagery. I think it would play well for a young audience, but I can still respect and enjoy what it does as an adult.

They were? I had forgotten all about that story, which is probably my my initial reaction was, this didn't feel star trek to me.

 

[XCV330]

the animation was pretty but I didn't really care for it. I don't really know why they made it. Seems like a lot of trouble to go through for 7 minutes of story.

Once upon a time it was really dark at night and the darkness was a big snake, and a girl defied authority figure defined in global variable and met an alien or something and it gave her a sphere full of stars. authority figure chides girl who then releases contents of sphere and its not quite as dark as it was, which means the inhabitants of the bottleneck agricultural zone can spread out or something because the snake.. hell with it. also there was a firefly.

 

[DaveyNY]

the animation was pretty but I didn't really care for it. I don't really know why they made it. Seems like a lot of trouble to go through for 7 minutes of story.

Once upon a time it was really dark at night and the darkness was a big snake, and a girl defied authority figure defined in global variable and met an alien or something and it gave her a sphere full of stars. authority figure chides girl who then releases contents of sphere and its not quite as dark as it was, which means the inhabitants of the bottleneck agricultural zone can spread out or something because the snake.. hell with it. also there was a firefly.

Ya know, you pretty much just described Burnham's entire first season arc.

Funny that.

 

[eschaton]

As I said, the "moral of the story" is very, very Trekkian. It's all about not being scared of the unknown and reaching out to understand those different from you. But the execution left so much to be desired. Too little time was spent on the story - and too much time was spent proportionately on the framing with Michael and her dad, which didn't really help the story thematically at all.

 

[The Wormhole]

Nitpick: Papa Burnham was wearing a black badge. In season 2, Michael knows the black badges mean Section 31, but is completely surprised to learn her parents were members. She didn't ever notice her dad wearing a black badge and put two and two together?

 

[Galaxy]

I loved this, also liked the animation style.