Ephraim and Dot

When Star Trek: Lower Decks launches later this year, it will be the first animated Star Trek series in over four decades. But it won't be the first animated Star Trek episode in that time frame. That's because two of the episodes in season two of Short Treks were animated -- the first being "Ephraim and Dot."

The tardigrade Ephraim is cruising the mycelial network when it encounters the starship Enterprise. After laying its eggs near the ship's warp core, it proceeds to have a series of harrowing encounters with one the Enterprise's worker robots. Their struggle sprawls across the years as famous missions carry on in the background.

Most people classify animation as a genre. I think it's a common mistake; animation is a medium, and this episode is excellent proof. The 1970s animated Star Trek show was entirely serious, like a fourth season of the original series told in half-hour segments rather than hour-long segments. "Ephraim and Dot" is more like a Looney Tunes installment, or a Tom and Jerry cartoon. It's deliberately light, even goofy in moments, and probably can't be taken literally as an actual thing that ever took place in the Star Trek universe.

I say this because I at least can't make it fit. It's bookended by odd narration in the style of a 1950s educational film. Someone is speaking in a strange mid-Atlantic accent (that's dated even today, much less in the future), and it certainly has no anchor in any incarnation of Star Trek we've seen before. It's even black-and-white in the introduction, before transitioning to color. So... is this a whimsical lesson for school children?

If it is a depiction of real events, then is it deliberately deepening the mystery of tardigrades, is it taking artistic license, or does it simply have some continuity errors? In less than 10 minutes, Ephraim the tardigrade and Dot the robot fight in front of scenes taken from all three seasons of the original Star Trek and two of the movies. This happens in rapid succession with no implied down time... so do tardigrades experience time at a different rate than we do? Do they even experience time in linear order? (Some of the original episodes referenced did not happen in the order they're shown here.)

Best perhaps to ignore all that and just treat is as a super-concentrated dose of nostalgia. In that, "Ephraim and Dot" is mainlining the good stuff. We hear audio actually lifted from classic episodes, see moments from some of the most beloved stories, get a few delightfully hokey 1960s visuals recreated in animation, and generally follow the Enterprise almost from the first moment we ever saw it to the last. It's falling face first into a big ol' bowl of Member Berries: it may be empty calories, but it's freaking delicious.

Curiously, this episode is directed by composer Michael Giacchino. But I'm more interested in the work he also did here in his more traditional role -- stepping beyond his great work in the J.J. Abrams Star Trek films, this is his first time composing for the television side of the franchise. It's a marvelous melange of a score, quoting bars of music from classic Star Trek music from the main title to the famous fist fight cue originally composed for "Amok Time." It's also heavily influenced by the playful music Carl Stalling composed for Looney Tunes -- and it runs non-stop for the entire episode, in the way of those classic cartoons.

I'm not sure "Ephraim and Dot" is good. It definitely doesn't make a lot of sense. But it certainly is fun. I'd say it's perhaps a B in the grand scheme of things. It's far from my favorite of the Short Treks, but I still appreciate the sense of experimentation.