Short Treks: "Children of Mars"

[kassygreene]

So maybe it's the proximity to the (maybe) aborted start of a war this week, or maybe I'm still remembering my duck-and-cover drills from 1962, but dammit I am sobbing

Yes, Children of Mars just dropped.

Edited January 9, 2020 by kassygreene

[starri]

It gave me a lot of 9/11 flashbacks.  I was amazed how powerful it was despite almost no dialog.

[starri]

 

[Llywela]

Video not available to view in my part of the world, dammit. I probably won't be able to see this until long after the series is over and done with! (Netflix didn't bother to add any of the Discovery Shorts until after S2 had already dropped).

Edited January 10, 2020 by Llywela

[Joimiaroxeu]

I don't recall ever hearing Peter Gabriel's version of Heroes before. I thought it was the perfect song for this Short Trek.

[starri]

For the first time, something was credited as being "Based Upon Star Trek: The Next Generation Created by Gene Roddenberry."  I assume that will be on the main show as well.

It's a rather sobering thought that we are further away from TNG than TNG was from TOS.

[dwmarch]

I think this is definitely the best of the Short Treks by far.

There's a nice juxtaposition that I think adds so much impact. When the girls are about to get lectured by the principal, there's an announcement about how some science class has been moved to a different location. Right after that, the school-wide announcement is about the attack. Going from a mundane announcement to an emergency announcement reminds me of how my dad woke me up and told me to turn on my TV almost twenty years ago because "there's something going on in New York".

I also thought there was some great subtlety imparted by the sparsity of the dialogue. For example, when Kima is trying to get to class ASAP she runs up the stairs but when she sees the stern Vulcan principal watching her she settles into a fast walk. No running in the hallways! Great touch there.

I take it there is a bit of time compression going on once the attack starts otherwise how did they get a comment from Admiral Picard about thirty seconds after it began?

[statsgirl]

Maybe it should have been longer to more thorough tell the story which was worth telling, maybe they tried too hard for style rather than substance, or I saw it too soon after the real experience of the Ukraine flight being shot down, but this short lost me.  I liked the how they depicted LLil's anger at her father but after that I kept getting lost in details like why did no one on the shuttle check that all the girls were aboard or how clueless the teachers seemed to be. The attack montage seemed like it was put together by someone who had never actually been in an attack.

[ottoDbusdriver]

I am curious who these 'Rogue Synths' are that attacked Mars.

I'm actually surprised that the death toll is only 3000 in the news reports.  It looked like they carpet-bombed Mars and took out the Utopia Planitia Shipyard and the orbital station that Lil's dad worked on.

[Llywela]

I haven't seen this short yet (not legally available outside the US at this time) but the death toll in most disasters tends to be given a conservative early estimate and then revised upward from there once more is known.

I'm concerned about Geordi - the Countdown comic issued as a prequel to the Picard series has him permanently based at Utopia Planitia working on the construction of a new fleet. I'm hazy on how all the timelines fit together though.

[starri]

8 hours ago, Llywela said:

I haven't seen this short yet (not legally available outside the US at this time) but the death toll in most disasters tends to be given a conservative early estimate and then revised upward from there once more is known.

That, and it also makes it the 9/11 parallel more direct.

[Llywela]

I've got to say, I like how civilised the conversation here is - just a few posts, all focused around the actual content of the short. I made the mistake of venturing to a more dedicated Trek forum to see what they thought, and found 58 pages of heated argument about the design of the spaceships seen in a single three-second shot. 😏

Think I'll stick to the community here when the show itself airs! (Except that I am going to be away the weekend of the first ep! Such bad timing...)