Two young girls, Kima and Lil, are engaged in a rivalry at school. Each of them bullies and teases the other in a series of escalating confrontations. But they have in common that a parent works a world away, on Mars. And when Mars is brutally attacked by rogue synths, each must face the loss of their loved one.
Although we're now halfway through the first season of Star Trek: Picard, I watched "Children of Mars" before the season premiere. It would have been easy to scour the short for hints of the Picard story, but all would be revealed soon enough. I took the episode more as an island unto itself, and I found it a profound and emotional enough story that I had little desire to pick at it for clues.
A while back, I wrote about Deep Space Nine's fourth season two-parter: "Homefront" and "Paradise Lost." It was very much a product of its time; between the limitations of 90s television, the series' budget, and the lack of experience the writers had with terrorism, the story's depiction of the aftermath of a terror attack seemed rather quaint. "Children of Mars" has none of those issues working against it. Television (especially streaming television) is willing to risk more, the budget and visual effects capabilities of modern Star Trek have grown, and we now live in a world where violence and terror threats have hit very close to home. And because of all this, this Short Treks episode is very effective at conjuring the numb emptiness at the core of a profound loss suffered by many people at once.
It all unfolds largely without dialogue. After some brief opening scenes to establish the two young girls and their parents, the action unfolds in a series of quick vignettes that show their growing rivalry. Some of the moments are taken from school bully cliches, but they're often twisted just enough to freshen things up -- for example, passing a note in class becomes sending a message via computer. But it does feel quite real. When an all-out fight finally erupts between Kima and Lil, they go for it with an aggressively choreographed sequence in which it seems the characters truly mean to hurt each other.
The episode can pull off all this dialogue-free storytelling for two main reasons. The first is the great casting of the young actors playing Kima and Lil, Ilamaria Ebrahim and Sadie Munroe. Good child actors are hard to find, and child actors who can perform without dialogue rarer still. These two are great, with Ebrahim in particular having the extra degree of difficulty in performing through alien makeup (even if it is one that does not significantly impair her face).
The other smart choice here is to bridge the wordless montage with song rather than score. Using existing real world music is rare for Star Trek, with music not by a classical composer exceptionally so. I do have a small reservation about the choice of Peter Gabriel's cover of David Bowie's "Heroes": it's rather prominently associated with Stranger Things (which has used it twice, including in its most recent season finale). But perhaps the risk that it's "played out" is worth it? The story of two lovers from opposite sides coming together maps to "Children of Mars" reasonably well, and Peter Gabriel's atmospheric take on the song builds to a crescendo that effectively tugs at the heartstrings as the action unfolds.
Only "The Trouble With Edward" gives this episode any competition as my favorite Short Treks of this batch. It's a stirring and impactful slice of the off-starship part of the Star Trek universe, and the way it teased Star Trek: Picard was quite skillful. I give it an A-.
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