“We could be heroes… just for one day.”
I knew I forgot something! There’s a prequel to Star Trek: Picard, which also serves as the last episode of the two mini-seasons of Star Trek: Short Treks. I used to do the specials for the Next Gen feature films; kinda fun to do one for an 8-minute story fragment.
Short Treks on the whole was kind of amazing, an ancillary supplement to Star Trek: Discovery that produced more engaging episodes than its parent series, paved the way for Strange New Worlds, and even planted the far-off future of the U.S.S. Discovery herself in a way that seems more interesting to me than pretty much anything else Disco ever did. The Tribble episode is fantastic (and it’s hard to do those well!); as is the animated one, directed by Michael Giacchino. Hie thee to Short Treks, and enjoy.
Entirely wordless, “Children of Mars” sketches in some on-the-ground reaction to what will be Picard‘s inciting incident — the synth attack on Mars. It feels less like a complete idea than a collage of idea-like images. Two girls, both with single parents who work on Mars, get into a fight on a field trip, after a few semi-innocent slights break open some simmering resentments between them. Then the attack happens and they hold hands and are sad. All of this seems pretty trite, except the two lead actors (Ilamaria Ebrahim and Sadie Munroe) do an above-average job of selling their parts in it; they also look the part (particularly Ebrahim, with alien eyes and faint forehead ridges), which goes a long way in a piece without dialogue.
But then there’s the music: unforgiveably repurposing the same Peter Gabriel “Heroes” cover that belongs, body and soul, to Stranger Things, because we’re in the Beastie Boys era of Star Trek. Ever since 9-year-old Jim Kirk flipped that Corvette off the cliff in Star Trek ’09, NuTrek has been at pains to shove 20th century music and signifiers into every nook and cranny it can, as though every other period in human history came and went solely so that some kind of cultural apex could be reached between roughly 1920 and 1999. The dangerous thing, I guess, is always the degree to which NuTrek is embarassed by Original Trek, and is trying to convince audiences that it’s cooler than the older stuff was. And like Marge Simpson instinctively knew: you can’t try-hard your way into “cool.”
The Mars incident is painted in very 9/11 tones, and the attack immediately erases the enmity between Kima and Lil, who hold hands in the face of their new grief, suggesting (perhaps) that nothing brings people together like a scary bad guy from outer space, base-tapping Watchmen. The Zhat Vash got what they wanted, I guess, immediately unifying pretty little girls who once hated each other, against a devastating perceived enemy who could be quickly ghettoized by a morally shiftless Federation. But here’s something else that’s strange, now that I’m thinking about it: aside from making the Federation turn against artificial life, the synth attack also torpedoed the Romulan evacuation effort, right? Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. I’m all for committing genocide to prevent the prophesied end of the world (I’m not, but, go with me on this), but if your strategy to do so also literally brings about the end of your world, haven’t you, in the words of Dr. Katherine Pulaski, cured the disease by killing the patient?
Anyhooz, Canada is on stolen land. Donate to:
Blogging the Next Generation: Picard runs Thursdays on tederick.com as I work my way through every episode of Star Trek: Picard. The original BTNG did the same for Star Trek: The Next Generation.