While I was searching this week for more information on tomorrow’s Short Treks episode “Children of Mars”, I stumbled across a Wikipedia page of the same name. It was an incredibly short entry, reading only: “‘Children of Mars’ is a 1943 American short documentary film directed by Frank Donovan. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.”

My first thought was: what if the next Short Treks episode is actually an adaptation of this short film from the 40s? In 1943, World War II was still raging, so a short documentary could actually make a really interesting choice for a science fiction adaptation.

So I went down the rabbit hole.

Turns out, there’s almost NO information about the plot of “Children of Mars”. Even IMDb had no more information than Wikipedia. I kept looking.

I found what claimed to be a stock photo film poster for “Children of Mars” from 1943. The timing seemed right, and it had RKO Radio Pictures as the distributor, which was consistent with other information I’d read. It was in black and white, with a picture of a sullen child in the foreground, with wartime factories in the background, and warships and bombers in the distance. The subtitle on the poster read, “This is America” and the image was captioned “The Vital Problem of Child Delinquency”.

I started to think this probably wasn’t related to science fiction. I kept looking.

Next, on the Colorado Historic Newspapers Website (go with me here), I found an article from August 6th, 1943 in the Palisade Tribune out of Palisade, Colorado. It was titled “Children of Mars”, by Quentin Reynolds. This article was about child soldiers in Russia during the war. The author referred to these children as “children of Mars”...and I realized, not Mars the planet, but Mars the Roman God...of War.

Closer, but I still couldn’t find what the plot of that 1943 short documentary was.

Finally, I came across a Russian film website, Kinopoisk. So listen. My Russian is extremely rusty, but near as I can tell, this website is a bit like IMDb or Fandango here in the States...you can use it to buy movie tickets, and they seem to have a streaming service as well. Anyway, they had, in Russian, a synopsis! 

Трое детей оказываются без присмотра, пока их матери проводят дни на работе из-за разворачивающей Второй мировой войны. Предоставленные сами себе они сворачивают не на ту дорожку и становятся преступниками.

Or, as Google Translate says: “Three children are left unattended while their mothers spend days at work due to the unfolding World War II. Left to their own devices, they turn off the wrong path and become criminals.”

Now that synopsis finally made sense in the context of the other information I’d found, so I’m pretty sure that’s what Frank Donovan’s 1943 short documentary was about.

Of course, none of that sounds much of anything like what we’ve seen from the trailer for the Short Treks episode “Children of Mars”...except it does make me think: perhaps the title has a double meaning? I guess we’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out.