Big haired JR, Vulcan Sprocket and hoverboarding scientist Roo team up with  pet targ Bubbles, dog Zibs and space turtle Star to discover, grow and boldly go in Star Trek’s first ever pre-school series.

Four minute episodes released two at a time, Star Trek Scouts is big, confident and sweet. It’s sweetly designed too, with JR’s junior version of Pike’s Peak and Sprocket’s prosthetic arm both lovely beats of character design. There’s a subtle, and welcome, inclusivity to it too, with Sprocket and Star both having prosthetic limbs and those both proving vital to the resolution of one episode. If you’re rankling at that, or think, as some have, that this is the death of Star Trek, then I have excellent new for you: this show isn’t for you, but literally six decades of Star Trek is. Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations like the man said.

Underpinning all this is the sweet message of ‘discover, grow and boldly go’ which cleverly ties Starfleet principles to pre-school teaching. There are some lovely musical cues that echo the core shows too and the sense of fun and adventure is brilliantly realised.

Verdict: If you’ve got kids, then you’ve just been handed a perfect on ramp for them for Star Trek. If you haven’t, give it a try anyway. The episodes are four minutes long, there’s a great gag involving a fork in the second one and the targ really is adorable. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart

 

Star Trek Scouts is available for free here: