Where “The Girl Who Made the Stars” started this week’s pair of animated Short Treks with a very light footprint of familiar Star Trek images and ideas, “Ephraim and Dot” is stuffed to the gills with them, in a totally delightful trip through classic Trek history.
“Ephraim and Dot” is directed by prolific Hollywood composer Michael Giacchino — including the three most recent Trek films — from a script written by Chris Silvestri and Anthony Maranville, the pair who scripted last season’s “The Red Angel.”
Presented at first as a parody of a nature documentary, and narrated by Kirk Thatcher, who played the bus punk from Star Trek IV, this short is a very whimsical tale of a mother tardigrade who is looking for a safe place in the depths of space to lay her eggs.
Stumbling across Captain Kirk’s USS Enterprise — during the events of “Space Seed,” no less — the tardigrade accidentally finds her way inside, only to get on the wrong side of one of the DOT-7 repair drones first seen in the Discovery season finale “Such Sweet Sorrow.” After laying her eggs in the warp core, Ephraim the tardigrade is ejected from the ship by Dot the drone, and proceeds to pursue the Enterprise through time and space.
Chasing the Enterprise through its five year mission, we get all kinds of iconic moments from he Original Series rendered in animation — the green space hand from “Who Mourns for Adonais?”, the Enterprise trapped in an energy field spun by the Tholians (“The Tholian Web”) and encountering a giant space Lincoln (“The Savage Curtain”) — until the tardigrade finally catches up with the refit USS Enterprise in its final moments above the Genesis Planet.
Damaged by a sneak attack from Kruge’s Klingon Bird of Prey, mama Ephraim is reunited with her eggs mere moments before the Enterprise self-destructs. As she watches the ship explode, the tardigrade believes her eggs lost… until it is revealed that her nemesis, Dot, found the eggs at the last moment and rescued them.
There is so much packed into eight minutes of story it’s tough to know where to start. “Ephraim and Dot” is an absolute love letter to the original Star Trek series, packed full of iconic moments and callbacks. The short even includes some audio snippets of dialogue, one from “Space Seed,” another from “The Naked Time,” and to hear William Shatner’s Kirk and George Takei’s Sulu in new Star Trek — even as archival audio — was very exciting.
The animation style in this episode is gorgeous. The exterior ship shots are amazing; the Enterprise is fabulously rendered, both as the Discovery-era redesign and as the movie-era refit. I am sure some will get themselves worked up over some visual details, like how the Enterprise has its Discovery appearance in the era of Captain Kirk, or the blanket covering Khan in sickbay isn’t the same color as it was in “Space Seed.”
And you know what? I couldn’t care less about any of that. This short is fabulous and delightful, made with love of the franchise and love for the Original Series in particular. Both Ephraim and Dot are cute in how they are rendered, and the relationship between them is playful and fun. Move aside, Baby Yoda, Ephraim is here to steal your heart.
But ultimately, this short is poignant not because of the relationship between the tardigrade and the repair drone, which is very Star Trek in how it plays out, but because of the third character in the story: the USS Enterprise.
From her heyday to her death, the short covers the life of the ship that at once was long but feels all too short. And as it self destructs and heads towards the surface of the Genesis Planet, I couldn’t help but feel the same melancholy as when I first watched The Search for Spock.
Finally, given “Ephraim and Dot” is directed by a famous composer, we’d be remiss not to talk about the music, which is also composed by Giacchino. Just as there are many visual call backs, references, and easter eggs from classic episodes, the same is true for the music. Giacchino includes many nods, both subtle and overt, to famous Star Trek themes from the episodes and the movies. I really hope the score for this episode makes it onto the next Discovery soundtrack.
Neither “Lower Decks” not the upcoming Nickelodeon show will be anything like either of these new Short Treks animated tales, and that’s perfectly okay. Both of these shorts were crafted to be no more than they are – fun, slight animated diversions that entertain you, make you feel something, and try something different.
As a result, they are a success; but of the two I think “Ephraim and Dot” will hold fans’ attention for a longer duration. It’s just too much fun, and totally reverent of the franchise.