In the 1970s, Filmation produced an animated Star Trek series that was very much intended not to be a dumbed-down version of the live-action series. The general approach was to treat this like the fourth season of the TV show, and while some concessions were made to the Saturday morning timeslot (not to mention the more limited time frame of a half-hour episode as opposed to an hour), the show generally kept to the spirit of the live-action show that came before it.
The second of Secret Hideout’s animated series, and their fifth overall, Star Trek: Prodigy is specifically designed for children. It’s also the best Trek show of the current slate of Trek productions, and that’s not meant to disrespect Discovery, Short Treks, Picard, or Lower Decks—it’s just that Prodigy is that good.
SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST TWO EPISODES AHEAD!
The intent of Prodigy is to help introduce a new generation of fans to Star Trek. Indeed, the original plan was to release Prodigy on Nickelodeon, only going to what was then called CBS All Access later on. The Apocalypse Of 2020 changed all that, as the rechristened Paramount+ was in need of content after not being able to produce new material throughout much of 2020, so now Prodigy is debuting on the streaming service. However, it will also air on Nickelodeon, a cable channel where it can most easily reach its target audience, soon enough. Rather than the crude animation provided by Filmation in the 1970s or the stylized animation we’re getting on Lower Decks, Kevin and Dan Hageman (Trollhunters) are providing some beautiful and complex computer-animated visuals for Prodigy.
I mentioned that the target audience is on Nickelodeon, but honestly this show’s audience is anyone who loves Star Trek, because this is very much a Trek show.
The setup is not going to blow anyone away with its originality, but I don’t really think that matters over much. Still, Prodigy shares DNA with plenty of other TV shows and movies, where a small group of people find themselves thrown together not-entirely-expectedly on a space ship to have adventures. It’s another variation on a theme we’ve seen in Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda, Guardians of the Galaxy, Farscape, Cowboy Bebop, Firefly, Blakes 7, Space Cases, and lots of others.
You’ll note, however, that that list doesn’t include any other Trek productions. While the action of Prodigy takes place on a Starfleet vessel, the U.S.S. Protostar—which has an “NX” designation, indicating that it’s an experimental vessel—that’s the only Starfleet presence in this show (which extends to the ship’s command training hologram, which is modeled after Captain Kathryn Janeway of the U.S.S. Voyager, the medium of animation allowing Kate Mulgrew to return to a version of her iconic role from two and a half decades ago). The main characters are a bunch of imprisoned slaves who manage to escape from a planet that seems to be in the Delta Quadrant, where they’ve been forced to mine chimerium.
The chimerium mining is a front, however. The person who runs the mine, an alien simply known as “the Diviner” (voiced magnificently by the great John Noble) is truly seeking the Protostar. Unfortunately for him, two of the miners find it first…
Our main character is Dal, voiced by Brett Gray, and he’s the devil-may-care, seat-of-the-pants wisecracking rogue character common in the genre—see also Star Lord, John Crichton, Mal Reynolds, Han Solo, etc.—and he’s also, it must be said, the least interesting character in the bunch. This is not to say he’s completely uninteresting—for starters, he himself doesn’t even know what his species is, and Gray does a particularly fine job of showing how much Dal’s freewheeling attitude is hiding a tremendous amount of pain.
The rest of the crew is much more interesting. I particularly love that one of the crew is a Medusan. This species, introduced in the original series’ “Is There In Truth No Beauty?” are great navigators, telepaths, and also have true forms that can’t be seen by most people lest they go mad. The Medusan goes by “Zero,” as the Diviner refers to them as “Fugitive Zero” when they escape. Angus Imrie voices Zero with a magnificently overblown curiosity and a certain befuddled charm.
We’ve also got a Tellarite named Jankom Pog, and we know that’s his name because he refers to himself in the third person. Jankom, voiced by Jason Mantzoukas is an engineer who right at the outset declares his love of percussive maintenance. I’m very much looking forward to seeing how his blunt, improvisational style of engineering mixes with a Starfleet ship. Especially since the Protostar has two warp cores (twice as many as any other ship we’ve seen) and something else that looks very suspiciously like a slipstream drive.
Gwyn, voiced by Ella Purnell, has the Aeryn Sun/Nebula role of person who’s on the bad guys’ side, who presumably will eventually see her way to helping the good guys. Gwyn is the daughter of the Diviner, and she’s convinced that Dad will come to rescue her (though that appears to be incidental to his wanting to get his hands on Protostar). There’s also Murf, the most obvious sop to this being a kids’ show. Murf is a big blob of goo who doesn’t appear to be sentient, and who likes to eat the furniture. Voiced by the great Dee Bradley Baker, Murf will either be the most popular or the most hated character on the show. Me, I don’t hate him, and I love the idea of an alien who’s, basically, a gelatinous cube.
My favorite character, though, by far is Rok-Tahk, voiced by Rylee Alazraqui. The unsubtly named Rok is a Brikar, and she pretty much looks like the Thing from the Fantastic Four. She’s also the basis of the funniest moment in the two-part premiere episode, “Lost and Found.” The Diviner has forbidden translators in his mine, so the prisoners can’t talk to each other. When he’s sent to find Fugitive Zero, Dal finds himself paired with this giant rock creature who mostly seems to talk in growls and snarls. It isn’t until they get on board the Protostar, with its universal translator, that we discover that the big scary monster has a high squeaky voice and is, in fact, just a little girl. Rok is, at once, very sweet, very naïve, and very easy to love. She also has a temper, as we discover in the second episode, “Starstruck,” when we find out just how much she resents Gwyn for doing nothing to help the prisoners. (Gwyn, for her part, thought they were all criminals. Rok assures her that is not the case. Tellingly, the Diviner and his hench-robot Drednok refer to the miners, not as prisoners, but as “the unwanted.”)
While “Lost and Found” is a bit slow in spots, “Starstruck” moves things along nicely. Our intrepid travelers have just escaped on the Protostar, but their ability to make it function is scattershot at best, and every one of their decisions have unintended consequences.
Aiding them in keeping those consequences from getting too awful is the Janeway hologram, which initially believes them to be cadets. The hologram helps where she can, though not as often as one might like—and sometimes more often than Dal would like.
The journey promises to be interesting, as our heroes are all people who have lived under the worst kind of oppression. The egalitarian Federation would be at once very appealing, but also very scary, as it’s contrary to pretty much all their life experiences. Dal, for example, doesn’t buy any of holo-Janeway’s waxing rhapsodic about the Federation, assuming that the people in charge step on the necks of the people who do the actual work, because that’s how the galaxy works.
There are also a lot of unanswered questions here. How did the Protostar get out to the Delta Quadrant, and what happened to her crew? If we’re in the Delta Quadrant, what’s a Tellarite doing here? What does the Diviner want with the ship?
The animation is superb. The design of the Protostar is a bit different from other Starfleet ships, a bit more open-concept than what we’re used to. (It actually reminds me of the fake Starfleet ship that Arturis put together in Voyager’s “Hope and Fear.”) The designs are all complex and beautiful and cinematic. The Hageman brothers have taken advantage of the animation form to give us some wonderful alien landscapes and variegated alien species—and still given us a holo-Janeway who looks like Kate Mulgrew. (I especially adore that the hologram occasionally will be sipping from a mug of coffee. Because of course she does.)
All the voice work is excellent, with some great vocal performances. The one opening-credits regular I didn’t mention is Jimmi Simpson, who does a wonderful job as the deadly Drednok.
Prodigy gives us at once something that is very much a Star Trek story while also giving us a unique perspective on this particular fictional universe: from that of children who’ve never experienced anything as pleasant as the Federation, who get to learn about it. And their journey gets to match that of the viewer who might be new to it. Most of all, the show combines all the elements that make a good Trek show: interesting characters, optimistic storytelling where compassion is the order of the day rather than being bigger and stronger, a sense of wonder, and some magnificent state-of-the-art visuals. (It’s easy to forget this now, but the original series had fantastic special effects by 1966 standards…)
It’s also a very good mix of existing Trek lore and some new stuff. The Diviner trades with a Kazon at one point, from the early seasons of Voyager. The slipstream drive comes from the aforementioned “Hope and Fear,” and while Voyager‘s test of it failed in “Timeless,” they did bring the drive home with them to the Alpha Quadrant, and it stands to reason that Starfleet would be able to eventually duplicate it. Indeed, the tie-in fiction that took place after Voyager’s arrival home as well as the future history seen in the game Star Trek Online assumed that Starfleet would eventually develop slipstream.
And we even have two things that come, not from screen Trek, but the tie-in fiction! Rok’s species, the Brikar, was first seen in Peter David’s YA novel Worf’s First Adventure in the character of Worf’s Starfleet Academy roommate Zak Kebron, who later became a regular in David’s New Frontier novel series. And the crystal element being mined by the unwanted is chimerium, which was first seen in Invincible, a Starfleet Corps of Engineers novella coauthored by David Mack (who is Prodigy‘s special advisor for Trek things) and your humble reviewer.
While Secret Hideout has been, typically, parsimonious with details, it does appear that we’ll be hearing two familiar voices in future episodes: Robert Beltran has said he’ll be voicing Chakotay on the show (though it’s not clear if it’ll be the real Chakotay or another hologram like Janeway), and Billy Campbell is reported to be reprising his role of Thadium Okona from the second-season TNG episode “The Outrageous Okona.”
This will be the place to comment, not just on the first episode, but the subsequent ones. We’ll be back at the end of season one to look back on it in nine weeks’ time.
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be an author guest at Fanboy Expo in Knoxville, Tennessee this weekend, alongside fellow Trek scribes Tony Isabella and John Jackson Miller and Trek actors William Shatner, George Takei, Walter Koenig, Peter Weller, Mark Sheppard, Lee Arenberg, and Carlos Ferro. Find Keith at the Bard’s Tower booth.
Prodigy is finally here and I’m very excited to see where goes. I love a good animated series. The visuals and voice work from the trailers look great. I just may have to wait until tomorrow to watch it.
I thought it was amazing. You were correct in that it didn’t feel like a Star Trek story, but that is far from a bad thing. One of the things that I like best about the new era of Star Trek is that they did not just fall back on the same Star Trek formula of past years. Indeed, one of the reasons I appreciate Deep Space Nine as much as I do is that it was least like the standard Star Trek formula of the time. And now we have Discovery, which is more single character focused view of Starfleet. Picard shows us Starfleet from the perspective a former officers for whom which the luster of Starfleet ideals has tarnished. Lower Decks is, well, the Lower Decks perspective of Starfleet. Now, we get to see Starfleet from yet another new perspective, and its the most imaginative take yet.
While Dal comes off as a little shallow in the premiere, the clip from the next episode that premiered on Ready Room with Wil Wheaton tells me that he is quickly going to grow into his role as leader of this bunch.
And I can see them doing some interesting things with Holo Janeway. I would actually like to see Holo Janeway become a distinct entity from the real Captain Janeway to the point where they have could conceivably have different priorities and worldviews. The scene that pops into my head would have the Protostar in contact with the real Admiral Janeway through subspace and Admiral Janeway giving the team instructions that Holo Janeway disagrees with and to have the two characters argue over it. That would be surreal on an existential level.
Keith, Zero isn’t a “him.” The episode made a point of saying Zero wasn’t a he or a she, and this character poster confirms they go by they/them.
In fact, it bugged me that Dal misgendered both Rok-Tahk and Zero within a couple of minutes, and defaulted to male for both of them. Hopefully that’s a habit he’ll unlearn as he discovers more of the diversity of the universe.
This was a good start to the series. It’s well-made and did a good job with the characters, having fun but treating the situation and the relationships seriously too. Clever use of suspense and payoff with the shields in the escape sequence.
I do wonder how you can have a Kazon in the same region of space as a Medusan, a Tellarite, and a Lurian (and a Caitian, if Memory Alpha is to be believed). I could buy those species being in the nearer part of Delta seen in seasons 6-7, but the Kazon were clear on the other end, half a galaxy further away. Also, it’s rather weird to see a Starfleet vessel with stairs rather than turbolifts, though it really makes more sense that way. (My understanding is that real naval vessels avoid elevators because they can get stuck in the shafts if combat damages the ship. Also because naval personnel are expected to stay in good enough shape to get anywhere they need to go on foot.) And why does Jankom Pog look more like a Talaxian than a Tellarite?
I find myself wondering about the time frame. It’s been claimed that it’s set in 2383, five years after Voyager got back, but the Diviner said he’d been searching for the Protostar for many years. And if it’s further in the future, it would explain how these widespread species could’ve ended up in the same place.
@Christopher — The character was identified as Caitian in the subtitles.
“Dal, for example, doesn’t buy any of holo-Janeway’s waxing rhapsodic about the Federation, assuming that the people in charge step on the necks of the people who do the actual work, because that’s how the galaxy works.”
Is he wrong, though? How many times have we seen Federation/Starfleet ranking officers run roughshod over people?
I seem to be missing something. While “Lost and Found” is labeled as part 1 & 2, it ends with them escaping the prison planet and being introduced to the Janeway hologram (45 minute episode). I did not see anything that was described in the second episode.
Sorry for the confusion: this review was of both this week’s “Lost and Found” and next week’s “Starstruck.” Since I won’t be reviewing individual episode, I wanted to talk a bit about what we’ll see next week. Again, I’ll get back to do a season-one overview once all ten episodes are released.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Wow. This was good. It’s Star Trek by way of Star Wars: Rebels and I couldn’t be happier.
I am tremendously disappointed if we won’t be getting individual episode posts on this show. Perhaps if KRAD is unavailable, Christopher could get the writing duties on this one? (We know he volunteered to write Voyager reviews and was turned down…)
Please, Tor? We love our StarTrek here!
KRAD – no worries. I try to avoid trailers as much as possible for anything so I didn’t realize that they had released that much for the next episode. (also that you weren’t doing individual episodes).
It was a very enjoyable episode and I am very much looking forward to watching the rest of series
KRAD – One of the consoles on the bridge was labelled Transwarp, not slipstream
I absolutely adore the premise of Prodigy! So often on Trek our intrepid Starfleet personnel have to keep their tech from falling into the hands of others, mostly with the implications (and often straight-up shown on screen) that nothing good will come of it. I love the idea of this tech falling into the hands of people who will do genuine good with it. It is a subversion of a trope I hadn’t even realized was a trope until now, and I am excited to see where it goes!
I was hoping to watch Prodigy with my kid (5yo) but the extreme amount of danger the characters find themselves in will probably be too intense for him. Until he’s ready for it, I’m having a great time watching it on my own. The reveal of Rok’s voice and demeanor is priceless. All the characters are so great, I don’t know that I’ll ever have a favorite… which is one of the true hallmarks of a Trek show for me.
@Christopher – thanks for the note about Zero’s gender. I noticed that, too.
Anyone know when, and where, this might be available in the UK? The one thing that really bugs me about Trek (and the DC TV shows) is the way they’re scattered about. Picard and Lower Decks on Prime, Discovery on Netflix. Sell them as a package!
I was on the fence about watching this show but I had questions about it.-such as what is a Tellarite, Caitlan, Brikar and Medusan doing in the Delta Quadrant? I admit, I expected to find out the answers to my questions–because I’m an impatient person who wants everything answered all at once.
Not surprisingly, that didn’t happen. (Though it seems like the Diviner had the Kazon kidnap children of different species but we don’t know how or why. As for the Protostar my theory is it was lost in the Delta Quadrant during testing. But then, where’s the crew? Unless there’s a connection between the missing crew and the children)
Originally, I was very skeptical of this show because 1) it’s animated and 2) being billed as for kids. However, it really impressed me–the animation is very sophisticated (I’m used to cartoon-type animation) and found the story and action to be very gripping.
So, despite my initial reluctance. I’m definitely going to keep watching this.
A very enjoyable episode with strong “Rebels” vibes. And a great review; thanks, Keith.
I think we’re all missing an important question here, though: They left the juvenile Caitian behind??? I get that Gwyn was the only one who knew they existed, but I’m surprised that the show passed on having an adorable little Caitian as part of the main cast.
I could see how all of those Alpha Quadrant species could be near Kazon Space if they were survivors (or descendants of survivors) from ships that were pulled there by the Caretaker, but it still seems a Galactically big coincidence that a Caitian, a Tellarite, a Lurian, and a Medusan all ending up in the same mine.
That said, Medusans, as I recall, can fairly easily navigate beyond the boundaries of the visible universe, so maybe they kind of turn up everywhere.
If there’s a good explanation why all these species were gathered, I’m fine. It doesn’t have to be explained in the first couple episodes.
But….add my voice asking for a regular post on episodes as they drop! Love a good spot to discuss them!
@Brian Yes! I knew the Caitian wouldn’t end up on the Protostar because of the promo images, but was baffled by the Caitian being there and left behind. I wonder if – maybe after Gwyn presumably joins the team rather than being a hostage – the Diviner might use the Caitian as a lure or bargaining chip for Gwyn.
There is a pretty standard trope that our ragtag group of Human hero’s will stumble across some super advanced alien tech or ship. Like in Star Gate, Farscape, or Lexx.
I love that in Prodigy it’s the rag tag group of Alien hero’s that stumble across the super advanced HUMAN ship.
Add me to those requesting episode threads (I had to skip half this article as Canada is only getting one ep a week).
@3 Yeah, I have suspicions that we’ve been mislead regarding the timeframe; I know were in an era where visual continuity means nothing, but in the first episode, characters repeatedly commented on not being aware the Protostar was buried here (and given that Gwyn has lived her whole life on this planet, this suggests that the ship arrived at least 15 years before “present day”). If the Janeway hologram has her knowledge of the Delta Quadrant, it could only have been programmed after 2378 (when Voyager returned home). It could be that the Protostar was created in 2383 and then lost for many years.
And I also suspect that Jankom Pog has some Talaxian heritage (which would push us further into the future); even disregarding that hair pattern, those spots around his face don’t look like any interpretation of the Tellarites that we’ve seen.
@20/Cybersnark: “even disregarding that hair pattern, those spots around his face don’t look like any interpretation of the Tellarites that we’ve seen.”
Though I agree it’s weird that he looks Talaxian, this doesn’t really prove anything, since the tusks of Discovery‘s Tellarites don’t look like any intepretation we’d seen before. And the Klingons have had even more drastic redesigns two or three times.
I think I’m going to have to hold off on entering this into my chronology until we know more. It would explain so much if the Protostar was sent out in the 2380s and was buried for generations, long enough for these species from different quadrants to spread around and interact. The ship is remarkably clean for a long-abandoned derelict, but so was Discovery in Short Treks: “Calypso.”
@@@@@ 21 – From Up Thee Long Ladder:
RIKER: That isn’t necessary. The ship will clean itself.
BRENNA: Well, good for the bloody ship
I’m assuming that Zero is a name that they wee assigned as Kollos had a name of their own. Unless Zero is also a Medusan name. And just how does a ball of light build a robotic suit?
I’m confused as to the length of Lost and Found. Was it a double length episode or did Canada get two episodes stitched together? The one on Crave was 45 minutes long and ended with the appearance of Janeway. Was a second episode released in the US and if so, how long was it?
@22/kkozoriz: Only “Lost and Found,” the 45-minute premiere, has aired so far. Presumably Keith and other reviewers got an advance look at the next episode, which won’t air until next week.
“Zero” seems to be short for “Fugitive Zero,” as the Diviner dubbed them. Like Prisoner Zero in Doctor Who: “The Eleventh Hour,” I guess. Kollos, being an ambassador, may have adopted a phonetic name and a gender pronoun to relate better to humanoids, while Zero apparently has not.
I just got done playing Star Trek: Elite Force and watching the Animated Series episode “The Time Trap” so the idea of a bunch of Federation races and a Kayzon in the Delta Quadrant doesn’t really make as much an issue for me as it does for some posters. Janeway was always stumbling across people from the Alpha Quadrant in her journeys and while some of that was due to the writers really hating the premise of the show (Far away from any species we know! No Starfleet command! No Ferengi!), its also just a fact of Star Trek that you can find plenty of weird places that don’t have a limit on where they go.
I just saw on Twitter that someone recognized that the Window of Dreams, the star cluster Dal called “the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” was referenced in “Body and Soul” as the Lokirrim name for a pulsar cluster known as “the most beautiful sight in the sector.” So that narrows down what part of the quadrant Dal is probably from, and it’s very, very far from Kazon space.
I have to say, with how good the last few episodes of Lower Decks were, and how great the premiere of Prodigy was, I’m more excited about Trek than I’ve been in a long time, and all because of two ANIMATED shows (not to discount Discovery or Picard, but the animated shows just feel that much fresher).
And just to touch on something I haven’t seen mentioned, but that opening credits sequence and theme is phenomenal. Is this the best Trek opening theme?
So far, and mind you I’m only halfway through the first episode, but so far it looks like the best new Star Wars series.
Simply wonderful! I feel like this is the best debut for a Star Trek series in some time. The animation and character designs were so vivid and beautiful; the story was well-paced and easy to follow (which was good considering how kids are the target audience) and yet it was never dull for me as an adult; and great set-up for all of the many various characters. Obviously we spent more time with a couple over the others but enough was hinted at to make me eager to see them again and learn more. Nice little “cliffhanger” at the end with the long-anticipated reveal of the Janeway training hologram. This whole enterprise felt very cinematic and I easily could see it working on the big screen and as an avenue to bring the franchise successfully back to that format. Coincidentally, I read an article on another site on how Alex Kurtzman had kind of regretted not saving this series for the movie theater but that it may still get there anyway at some point in the future. That would be cool and wouldn’t stand in the way of live-action film development at well. Anyway, Prodigy is off to a delightful start and I look forward to the following eight installments this season (if this debut represented two regular-size episodes). Oh, and I’m liking all of the protagonist characters so far. I guess the blob like character, Murf, doesn’t get any dialogue but it’s very cute!
Okay, one of the show’s producers posted the following tweet today: “For the record, no one has guessed what Murf is yet, and I’m delighted. It may be the most obscure Star Trek reference ever conceived.”
I don’t know what to make of this. The coalescent life form from “Aquiel?” A baby space amoeba? I don’t think Murf can be one of the Hundred infant changelings, since he’s purple, not amber.
Or… given that there’s a Brikar in the show, the obscure reference could be to a Trek novel or comic. Any thoughts?
I’ll take a wild guess, Murf is… uh… an offshoot of the “titans” who once shed their “skin of evil.”
Yeah, that’s it, gooey but good.
@20 – “I don’t think Murf can be one of the Hundred infant changelings, since he’s purple, not amber.”
Perhaps a bay Chameloid. Also a shapeshifter but we never saw a baby one.
Murf plush dolls and Murf slime coming in time for Black Friday to a toy store near you!
@32/garreth: Oh, not toy slime, please. When I was a kid, the smell of the stuff always nauseated me. Maybe by now the formula is less toxic, but that childhood revulsion is hard to shake off.
Ok, so I have to ask: is this show really for kids? The plan to release it on Nickelodeon made sense. But what kid is watching Paramount+? I am around a lot of kids who fit the right age range and I have never seen any of them watch Paramount+.
@34/Austin: Paramount+ has dozens of kids’ shows in its catalogue: https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/kids/ I would imagine they wouldn’t bother if those shows didn’t have an audience.
@34/Austin: Parents will have their kids watch with them. And Paramount+ is pretty new and this show is brand new. This could be the series that brings a lot more kid viewers to that streaming service.
@34 Austin Two words: Paw Patrol. As a parent there is tons of stuff there for the kiddos. I really want to watch Prodigy with my kid but she is just a little to young yet.
Regarding toys, there are new Star Trek toys due for release next year. The fact they didn’t have them in stores to coincide with Prodigy’s premiere is a little baffling to me.
As I understand it, Star Trek toys have been poor sellers for years and probably manufacturers would want to wait and see how response is to any particular series before mass producing toys. I remember the heyday of Star Trek toys in the mid-late ‘90s when those Playmates action figures were hot stuff. I was traveling miles all over my area to toy stores and malls to find particular rare action figures!
Yep, and Playmates is the one making them again.
Well, if the toys sell well that will be an excellent indicator if Trek is catching on with the kiddies again! If anything were to do it though, Prodigy would be it.
Jankom Pog doesn’t read to me as a Tellarite either but also not a Talaxian. But I can get how he looks like a combination of the two. He certainly doesn’t look like the Tellarites from TOS and I just watched “Journey to Babel” the other day. And I don’t really recall what the Tellarites from Enterprise look like although the makeup was improved and then I didn’t even realize the Tellarites on Discovery were Tellarites and they now had tusks. I’m going to watch the “Babel One” episodes of Enterprise right now to brush up on the Tellarites some more. If anything, Jankom reminds me of the warthog character from The Lion King, Pumbaa.
@38 & 39. I don’t know Playmates’ design/production/distribution pipeline, but if it’s anything like Hasbro’s, they’ve been hit hard by the pandemic, the lockdowns, and the global shipping industry turning into a pumpkin. Everything’s been slowed down.
The actress that voices RoK – is she really 11 ???
@44/Gary7: Rylee Alazraqui is ten. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Rylee_Alazraqui
I thought it was pretty decent. Kind of a paint-by-numbers version of “lovable gang of mismatched escapees against a brilliantly-cast John Noble” but charming enough to get a watch. It doesn’t entirely feel like Trek, not even as much as Lower Decks, but I respect the reach to a younger audience. I’ll watch it — but that hyperbolic claim that it’s the best Trek is… not going to age well.
I enjoyed the first episode a great deal. I do think the first half was a bit more Star Wars than Star Trek. But after the Protostar was found I think it pushed quickly into Trek territory.
@47/costumer: I keep seeing people compare it to Star Wars, and I don’t see the resemblance. IIRC, the developers said in an interview that they were more influenced by The Goonies, although I don’t think I ever saw that one in its entirety.
If anything, I think the reason people are prone to see Star Wars similarities in anything is because Star Wars is itself a blatant, self-admitted rehash of universal story tropes, and a mashup of the multiple different genre influences that George Lucas was exposed to in childhood. So “It reminds me of Star Wars” is the media equivalent of “It tastes like chicken.”
I can get The Goonies comparison. I don’t think I’ve seen that film in its entirety since the ‘80s but it would be fun to see on the big screen again some time. It’s definitely a fun, cute, adventurous family type movie with a bunch of kids as the protagonists. Very Spielberg. Another similar movie to that with kids going on an adventure but is much more adult is Stand By Me, the film that gave Wil Wheaton his first prominent recognition.
When I try to think of a precedent for a show about a mismatched band of prisoners finding a super-advanced starship and escaping on it, what comes to mind is Blake’s 7. But that was quite a bit different from this.
Oh, and Farscape too, of course, although I think it was their prison ship that they liberated, rather than one they found.
Not prisoners, but Nickelodeon’s Space Cases, created by Peter David & Bill Mumy, involved a group of space-academy cadets getting lost in space aboard a mysterious, advanced alien ship.
@42 / garreth “If anything, Jankom reminds me of the warthog character from The Lion King, Pumbaa.”
Jankom reminds me of Bebop from the teenage mutant ninja turtles.
Does not remind me of the Tellarites we’ve seen before.
I mean Space Cases, Farscape, and Blake’s Seven is pretty good pedigree for a concept by itself.
Christopher,
I think why some of us see Star Wars is two fold; one is the prevalence of the robots, especially Drednok. Star Trek hasn’t been known for robots much beyond Androids like Data, Ruk and similar characters. Add to that the rather gritty mining operation and the mind drifts to Star Wars. I’ve talked to a lot of people who see that.
Now, I don’t think that is a problem. Robots are a logical feature that we should be seeing. Discovery gave us robots and that was a great addition. And we have seen gritty before in Star Trek; but generally it is a lot shinier and new; even DS9 was not a gritty as some Star Wars images.
Like I said, I really liked this first episode and I certainly won’t object to see a grittier side to things.
Just my take.
@53/costumer: Lots of science fiction has robots, and there’s a ton of SF that’s a hell of a lot grittier than Star Wars. So I still don’t see it. The prison mining asteroid reminds me more of Rura Penthe from ST VI and ENT: “Judgment” than anything in SW (except maybe Kessel in Solo, but that was much more recent).
My daughter, who is 8 and LOVES Star Trek would seem to be the ideal viewer for this. She grew VERY bored through much of this episode. She didn’t seem to like Dal much and talked a lot about how the show didn’t feel enough like Star Trek, especially with the forced banter.
She also wasn’t a huge fan of the big mystery about the Diviner and what his role was, noting that it felt like he felt like a combination of Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine.
Even after the Protostar showed up, she was really not interested.
I thought it was OK – but shared a lot of her thoughts. I guess we’ll give t another try – but it definitely wasn’t the home run for us that a lot of people were saying it would be
@55/twels: The intended target audience for this is not kids who already love Trek, but kids who are new to Trek, with this as their introduction. It’s not really supposed to feel like Trek yet; it’s about outsiders discovering that world for the first time. The producers said in an interview that it’ll feel more like Trek as it goes on.
#48. For me, at least, a part of it is the environments. Star Trek has always been a game of budget-driven compromise, even in TAS (by animation technology of the 60s) and Lower Decks (by deliberate style choices), with studio-built sets or backlots making up the vast majority of footage (and even when Trek does film on location, everyone is still generally framed in medium shots to avoid catching any crew or real-world tech in the background).
Busy, expansive set-pieces on a fully-realized alien world like we see in the first episode look more like something out of The Clone Wars or Rebels. Aside from the phasers and universal translators, this could easily have been Kessel or Umbara.
(This is part of why I’m less-than-enthused at the glossy metal-and-plastic “new Trek” look of the Protostar, since the Bad Robot era already feels like it’s trying to visually mimic Star Wars. The softer, more “pastel and carpets” style of TNG/DS9/Voy would make for a more striking visual contrast, like a relic from an entirely different universe.)
Paramount has been looking enviously at Star Wars for years. The JJ reboot was their first big step towards that end. Rather than make Star Trek more appealing as Star Trek, they’ve been moving towards the SW ascetic. They’re also adopting more of the “pew-pew” line of thinking, so much so that we even had a “pew-pew” shout out in STP.
DC did the same sort of thing, wanting to emulate the Marvel comics reputation as the more mature, thoughtful comics universe instead of DC’s lighter, brighter universe. Fortunately, DC has realized their mistake and moved away from the Snyder view if things with movies like Shazam! and Wonder Woman.
The idea that some people cannot see the similarity between, say, Drednok and Darth Grievous befuddles me. The same with the mysterious figure in shadows who’s pulling the strings. That doesn’t even begin to address the visuals of the setting.
Is it deliberate in order to make it seem familiar to the new viewers? Maybe. But once it becomes more Trek like, as Christopher says, will they stick around?
@58/Cybersnark: “Busy, expansive set-pieces on a fully-realized alien world like we see in the first episode look more like something out of Clone Wars or Rebels.”
I’d say it probably only looks that way to someone whose exposure to modern animation is limited only to those shows. There are other 3D-animated shows out there that are just as expansive in their visuals, e.g. Guillermo Del Toro’s Tales from Arcadia franchise that the creators of Prodigy previously worked on. But I suppose a lot of adult viewers only seek out those shows connected to franchises they know, like SW. It’s not that SW is actually a good analogy, it’s just that it’s the only one you’re familiar with.
The one similarity I’ll grant is that both Prodigy and the SW 3D shows are produced with near-cinematic budgets and don’t have to cut corners as much as something like, say, Dreamworks Dragons (the TV spinoff of the How to Train Your Dragon films), which had some excellent storytelling but was often painfully constrained in the range of settings and character models it could use. But that’s a pretty superficial similarity.
Being pretty familiar with the Star Wars film franchise myself but having seen none of the animated spin-offs beyond still images, my recent viewings of “Lost and Found” evoked Star Wars imagery and concepts in my mind as well. It’s mainly all of the robots populating this show as well as the baddies seeming reminiscent of the Galactic Empire/Emperor. And then there’s the conflicted character of Gwyn being groomed by an evil father figure like Darth Vader and Kylo Ren were being groomed by the Emperor.
@61/garreth: The question is, what are you familiar with besides Star Wars? If that’s the only referent you have, of course you’re going to see everything as similar to it, even if it’s a very weak analogy. I mean, seriously, you think it’s like SW because it has robots? Sci-fi is full of robots!!! It always has been, since decades before Star Wars was a thing. If you see robots and all you think of is Star Wars, that just suggests you need a wider pool of cultural referents.
And how in the world is the Diviner any more like Emperor Palpatine than like any of a thousand other evil villains in sci-fi and fantasy? I don’t see any specific resemblance. The Diviner isn’t an emperor; as far as we know, he runs a single lousy mining asteroid. And Palpatine was never characterized as a father. If anything, there’s a stronger parallel to Flash Gordon‘s Ming the Merciless and Princess Aura, or Batman‘s Ra’s al Ghul and Talia.
Meh, Star Trek and Star Wars have been borrowing from each other for decades. Remember way back when Obi-Wan sensed the deaths of many people across space? Yep, Spock already did that. And I’m sure there are countless other examples to list, but I’m too lazy to do that right now.
Anyway, Lucas said Trek was an influence, and it was bound to happen that the stream would flow back the other way. Star Wars is a juggernaut with kids. Of course a Trek for kids is going to take some influence from it now. It’s money on the table.
@63/PacificTech: “Meh, Star Trek and Star Wars have been borrowing from each other for decades.”
Rather, they’ve both been borrowing from countless other works of fiction that preceded them. The main thing both franchises have in common is that they’re distillations and popularizations of a wide range of ideas that came before them, although Trek’s antecedents were mostly prose science fiction while SW’s were mostly the movies and adventure serials George Lucas liked as a kid.
I won’t deny that some Trek productions have been influenced by SW; that’s been going on ever since The Wrath of Khan jettisoned TMP’s aspirations for classy cinematic science fiction in the 2001 vein in favor of space battles and scenery-chewing melodrama. But as I’ve said, I just don’t see any strong resemblance here. “Gritty,” “robots,” and “evil villain” are way too generic to narrow it down to that specific franchise.
I’ll admit my genre literacy is pretty limited (for instance not being very familiar with Flash Gordon and not knowing the backstories of the Batman characters you just mentioned). However, if I’m typical of a more general genre audience member, then Star Wars is going to be front and center in our minds because of its dominance and influence in today’s pop culture. And I’m not even a big Star Wars fan.
Well, I really don’t care either way. The same way I don’t care if Burger King copies a popular sandwich at McDonald’s or from a dozen other corporate franchises. At this point, Star Trek, Star Wars, meh, it all tastes like chicken anyway.
@65/garreth: “However, if I’m typical of a more general genre audience member, then Star Wars is going to be front and center in our minds because of its dominance and influence in today’s pop culture.”
And that’s exactly what makes me so sad. People’s knowledge of their cultural history has become so shallow today, because of the way media have changed. It used to be that you were constantly exposed to media from decades past when it was rerun on TV. Things like ’30s Flash Gordon serials and ’40s Bugs Bunny cartoons and ’50s or ’60s sitcoms were decades before my time, but I was constantly exposed to them on TV and they were as familiar to me as present-day shows. These days, with streaming TV, you rarely see anything that you don’t actively seek out or have recommended by algorithms based on similarity to what you already watch, so it’s hard to expand your horizons beyond whatever’s currently popular.
@66/PacificTech: “At this point, Star Trek, Star Wars, meh, it all tastes like chicken anyway.”
That also makes me sad. In my day, Star Trek was unlike anything else in mass-media SF, smarter and more thoughtful and more substantial. That’s why it became such an enduring franchise, because it was head and shoulders above anything else. Now it’s just become part of an indistinguishable mass. To some extent that’s good, because it means the rest of SFTV and film has raised its game to a level that hardly anything except Trek ever reached prior to the 1990s. But nobody today seems to appreciate how special Star Trek was for a long time.
#67 Preach it brother, amen.
Specifically thinking of animated sci-fi (or sci-fantasy, as distinct from fantasy-fantasy or superheroes), and ruling out Japanese anime (which has it’s own universe of antecedents and referents), the only recent things that come to mind in the Star Wars/Trek wheelhouse are Gen:Lock, Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous, Pacific Rim: The Black, Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Voltron: Legendary Defender, and Cleopatra in Space, and aside from She-Ra, Voltron, and Cleo, all of those take place on (some variety of) Earth.
Admittedly, Cleopatra in Space often feels more like a Star Trek series than even Lower Decks (PYRAMID is basically Starfleet Academy).
@68/Cybersnark: There are also Netflix’s two entirely distinct He-Man series: Kevin Smith’s Masters of the Universe: Revelation, a 2D-animated sequel (more or less) to the original show, and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, a 3D-animated reboot that radically reinvents the concepts and characters in a fun way. They’re both set on Eternia, not Earth. Though neither is space-based.
@67 – For a long time, Paramount treated Trek as something special. It was a FRANCHISE, meant to be a big money maker and that meant not rocking the boat. What they didn’t understand was that Trek was MEANT to rock the boat. It was supposed to be topical, telling little 45 minute morality plays about war, racism, making hard decisions about who lived and who died. But by the time of Voyager, TPTB felt it was more important to play it safe for the most part. They wanted a larger audience watching mediocre stories as opposed to a slightly smaller one watching stories that made you think. In a way, Trek was a victim if it’s own success and in doing so, lost track of what mede it so beloved in the first place.
The 09 reboot tried to turn the franchise into the next Star Wars but it just didn’t have much new to say. And the follow up movies didn’t do much either until it got to the point that by the fourth one, the studio wanted the leads to take less money than they were promised due to the failure if the reboot to reach the A levels that were Star Wars, Jurassic Park, the Marvel movies and others. They did OK at the box office but OK doesn’t get you to the top tier.
The new shows seem to have learned the lesson that Trek works best in TV. Sure, there can be a movie every now and then but Trek will never match Star Wars and the rest at the box office.
Yep, in my own day, that being the TNG and DS9 era, Trek was still like nothing else out there. I guess I’m over that. I mean the expectation has gradually vanished. And now there’s just so much content everywhere, new Star Trek is simply… there.
Geez, I didn’t intend to get this glum. Sorry to bring anyone down.
@58/Cybersnark
@60/CLB
Ahem. Opining as someone who has exposed himself to a wide array of animation (US/euro/Japan, film/TV, cel/CG) and its evolution over the past 40 years, I concur about the Star Wars vibe. The visual design of Tars Lamora isn’t just expansive, it’s grandiose, which is very much a hallmark of Star Wars, notably since the prequels discovered the joy of digital set extensions to depict the architecture of Coruscant. The angular facility atop the planetoid (*)(**), the caverns within, the towering crystals of chimerium, the drainage corridors big enough for a starship — they’re not just big, but defy-all-sense-of-human-scale big.
Usually in Trek, “ridiculously big” is a dramatic signal that somebody is a serious threat to our Starfleet heroes with their supertech and supercompetence (V’ger, the Borg, the Dyson Sphere, the Voth cityship, etc.). But in this show, at this point in the narrative, that signal serves no purpose. Fine, the makers are no longer constrained by the “planet hell” soundstage and matte paintings, but IMHO they overcompensated. I’m a big believer in self-restraint as a creative heuristic, and FWIW I have the same aesthetic objection to “Starbase Yorktown” from Star Trek: Beyond (2016), and the “Ark of Destruction” from Space Battleship Yamato 2202 (2017).
(*) Is it a city, a ship, yet another robot, a giant collection of smaller morphing robots that can become a ship? Was it built by the Diviner specifically, by the Vau N’Akat generally, or someone else entirely?
(**) The planetoid is a big cluster of spikes, which recalls the not-at-all-spherical planets from Voltron: Legendary Defender (2016). Yet it seems to have perfectly ordinary gravity inside, which (this being Trek) could be synthetic (projected even into unoccupied regions); but the simpler hypothesis is that the makers prioritized “rule of cool” over “technical coherence and plausibility.”
@73 – Regarding Starbase Yorktown, I very much agree. It wasn’t based on any sort of “What looks functional?”. In. stead it was “It looks kewl because we can make it like this”. We saw the Earth orbiting space dock in the first reboot film and it had a functional appearance. In the second, we had the Enterprise falling from the vicinity of the moon to Earth in a matter of minutes despite being told it was without power. Why? To get the kewl effect of the ship pulling up at the last minute.
Bridges with a window instead of a view screen. That huge void in the middle of the Enterprise. A huge shuttle bay with these massive beams blocking access to half of it.
Form over function. Looks over usability. The idea that Trek was the thinking mans sci-fit franchise was dead.
@73/phillip: I agree about the planetoid’s shape reminding me of Voltron: Legendary Defender, and some other animated shows I’ve seen recently (I don’t recall which) that tend to favor unrealistically non-spherical shapes to space bodies — though you can find examples of that as far back as Silverhawks and ExoSquad (whose writers used real astronomical settings in the Solar system but whose animators totally failed to do their research about what they actually looked like). Still, I don’t think that’s something I’ve seen done in Star Wars, except maybe in one of the Legends shorts recently?
I don’t see how grandiose scenery design is exclusive to Star Wars either. I’d say it’s pretty common in animation. The underground setting here wasn’t dissimilar to those seen in Trollhunters.
The thing about finding similarities is that it’s easy to draw parallels between two things if you’re actively looking for them, or if you’re only considering those two things in your comparison. The question isn’t just whether thing A has stuff in common with thing B — the question is whether it has more in common with thing B than with any other thing. Is it only those two things that have a certain attribute? Or do they both have that attribute because plenty of things have it? You can’t assume a similarity is deliberate unless you look at the bigger context.
@67/CLB: Well, at least I’m a big fan and connoisseur of all things Trek! And I’m still relatively young so I could can get caught up on those other genre shows you mentioned. I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s so I had ready access to those shows airing on cable channels and syndication but my viewing patterns pretty much fell into Star Trek, cartoons, primetime soaps, and news shows. And as an adult I started getting into classic and renowned films including a bunch of sci-fi flicks. Seeing “Captain Proton” on Voyager has been pretty much my only taste of something like an old-time serial.
I just came here today and read about the mystery of Murf. I look at Murf and find myself thinking of when I saw Gene Roddenberry at Ball State University when I was a kid. TMP was exciting news he was telling us about back then. He also talked about TAS. According to him, they had to fight to get the series made right. He referred to “kiddy space cadets” they wanted to put in the show, for instance. Now, I’ve seen what Filmation did all the time even to their adventure series like Tarzan and Flash Gordon: they just had to add a cute little creature. Was Murf based on an unused character design for a cute sidekick creature to hang out with the cute space cadets?
@77/Lisa Conner: Filmation did not “add” Nkima to Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle; he’s a canonical character from the Burroughs novels, unlike the chimpanzee “Cheetah” created for the preceding Tarzan film series. Filmation’s Tarzan was one of the few screen adaptations that were faithful to the books (aside from toning down their violence).
The first season of Flash Gordon was also extremely faithful to the Alex Raymond comics, and was structured as a single serial in the manner of the Buster Crabbe movie serials. The network didn’t like the serialized format, though, and pushed for the second season to be retooled to be simpler, younger-skewing, and purely episodic, and that was when the dragon sidekick was added.
As for ST:TAS, the reason Roddenberry went with Filmation is because they were the only animation studio that didn’t insist on adding cute animal sidekicks, musical numbers, and the like. An early Filmation proposal would have paired the main cast with junior cadet counterparts, but I don’t believe it included an animal sidekick.
Roddenberry was fond of spinning stories that painted the studios as the enemy that he had to fight against in order to get things done right, but a lot of that was just self-aggrandizement.
This was great!
I don’t have the familiarity with Firefly, Gaurdians of the Galaxy, et al, so to me, this was a fresh perspective, and extremely welcome.
After taking a hard pass on Lower Decks, my patience has definitely paid off here. I fully agree this is the best new Trek of this era. I was gripped from start to finish.
I think of Dal as the anchor bringing together the more interesting characters around him. I can’t wait to get to know them all better.
And I have to admit, I got a tear in my eye when the holographic Janeway appeared.
I can’t wait to share Prodigy with my grandsons.
Just saw “Starstruck.” An excellent continuation, nicely introducing the idea of the Federation and what it stands for. I like it that Dal is skeptical at first, that he thinks it’s just another scam. Why should he trust them? He doesn’t know any of what we know about the Trek universe. It’s a refreshing change, after Lower Decks where every character acts like they’re just as fannish about Trek as we are, to see a show that lets us experience a perspective different from ours, the mindset of someone who’s never even heard of the Federation and has no reason to trust any of it.
The vehicle replicator was a nice touch — both in-story as a cool and clever setting for an action scene (though I wonder why all the damage to the shuttle didn’t disrupt the assembly process), and metatextually as a wink at the old “Where did Voyager get new shuttles?” question (even though that was always a silly question given the existence of replicators, and given that they explicitly answered it in “Extreme Risk” decades ago).
I still find myself suspecting that this show is much further in the future than has been claimed. Rewatching the premiere, Drednok said that the Diviner had been searching for the Protostar “all these years,” implying a much longer interval than would be possible with a setting just 5 years after Voyager ended. And Jankom Pog is a Tellarite who’s never seen a human or heard of the Federation, which makes far more sense if this is generations in the future. (Beltran’s appearance as Chakotay could be in a flashback, maybe something revealing the origin of the Protostar.)
It’s hard to know when the show is set. I agree that 5 years to integrate slipstream tech, build a new starship class, lose it somehow, and have a colony develop over trying to find it does not seem like enough time. It seems like it would be 25 years or maybe 50, but its probably not worth digging into—for all its work at creating a consistent universe, consistent dates in Star Trek has never seemed like a strength to me. As for the presence of a lone Tellarite far outside Federation space and no knowledge of it, that’s pretty standard for random groups of humans who have always shown up all over the galaxy without any real explanation. Making him a Tellarite and not human is a nice change however from Star Trek tradition.
@81/Birlan: Certainly we don’t know enough yet to conclude anything about the time frame for sure. That’s why we should keep our minds open to multiple possibilities rather than rushing to judgment. Of course it’s “worth digging into,” because this show has been set up as a mystery. We don’t know the purpose of the ship or how it got here any more than the characters do, and we’ll be exploring and uncovering the answers along with them. It’s always worth being curious — that’s what Star Trek stands for.
You are completely right that we should keep an open mind and be curious—but my default assumption as a viewer and fan(which is less deep and thorough than yours)is that there is a nonzero possibility that someone just arbitrarily picked 5 years and that the backstory is going to be hard to fit into that time period (presuming earth years), and its easier to just enjoy the story and the mystery and not expect all the pieces to fit perfectly. I was interested to see the quick glimpse of the poor abandoned Caitian towards the end of the last episode—I am not a cat person but hope she gets rescued at some point.
@83/Birlan: “my default assumption”
Why should you even have a default assumption? In the absence of hard data, you shouldn’t assume anything. The only default should be to mistrust and question the hell out of any assumption. Assumptions are biases, and bias is the enemy of learning. What we should do is formulate hypotheses, and be especially skeptical of the ones we’re preemptively inclined to favor, as a way of counteracting that source of bias.
“its easier to just enjoy the story and the mystery”
This is a contradictory statement to me. Who wants the experience of a mystery story to be easy? The whole point is to challenge ourselves to try to solve it. Fiction exercises the mind. The value of exercise is that it isn’t easy.
You know more about Star Trek than I do, and you have created stories within the Star Trek framework which means that you have worked long and hard at making the pieces fit(and successfully—I don’t think that is easy to do). I generally try to focus on what I think is the story being told, and don’t get too caught up in some things that don’t seem to make too much sense. But I am going to spend more time trying to figure out what part of the mystery of ST Prodigy explains why none of the species are repulsed by the smells and sounds of other species, or why a Universal translator works for a Medusan who doesn’t seem to be obviously related to the bipedal folks walking around her, or the exact time involved between scenes, or how the Medusan eats or excretes waste or why she has claimed a bunk when she is in a casing that seems to mean that she would not need to have her casing horizontal for her to rest—but those are all part of the mystery and I look forward to finding out how those all fit together in the story that we are watching.
@85/Birlan: One more time: Zero is not a he or a she. Their pronouns are they/them.
And to the moderator, the misgendering of Zero as “him” has still not been corrected in the original post.
@86: The post has been updated–as always, feel free to flag comments that require attention from the moderators, since comments tend to pile up rather quickly on Trek discussion threads.
While we’re on the subject, Zero has quickly emerged as my favorite character. I love their quirky, philosophical reactions to things, like (to paraphrase) “Oh, what a fascinating cosmic phenomenon to be obliterated by.”
Although I keep wanting to call them Echo, which is the name of the non-binary AI character I’ve been writing about for the past year in my new Tangent Knights audio novel trilogy.
I enjoyed the show and agree with most of your review. I still do not think it is the best of the bunch. :)
I also felt there were elements of Star Wars in the first episode. The variety of miners/slaves and the tech, especially a few of the busted ships, reminded me of something I would see in the Star Wars universe. Since kids tend to be familiar with that ‘verse, it makes sense the creators might have wanted to give it a nod while directing attention to Star Trek.
I look forward to more episodes.
My favorite element of “Starstruck” is the little reminder that you really do need to be trained to operate a starship. Dal is just blithely rerouting power all over the place without any regard to consequences, which turn out to be pretty dang harsh. And I love that the Janeway hologram was programmed to occasionally sip some coffee.
And I’m with Christopher, Zero’s blithe comment about how awesome it would be to get killed by this particular phenomenon was a delight.
Also: every villain should be voiced by John Noble.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I did find it a bit ironic that the action climax of this episode of Star Trek: Prodigy was basically a re-enactment of the opening shot of the main titles of Star Trek: Lower Decks.
I’m being totally amused at how easy it is to take over a Federation starship. We’ve seen it so many times that even a group that has never controlled one before (for the most part as far as we know) can bot only fly the ship but get it out of a hazardous situation with just a little prodding from hologram Janeway.
Also, is arrogance programmed into holograms? Haneway referring to herself as “one of Starfleet’s most decorated captains” made me LOL. Sure, she may be that but who introduces themselves like that? Could you imagine Picard or Sisko or Kirk doing that? I assume it’s in her programming.
Just how big was the crew of the Protostar and why bunk rooms? Even a cramped ship like the Defiant had double occupancy rooms. Was the crew stuffed in shoulder to shoulder?
Zero is a hoot and a half. Being an energy creature, would they even have to worry about being in a star? What does it take to kill an energy being anyway?
Dal has good reason to be suspicious if the Federation’s motives. After all, he’s only had the word of an artificial being (Is Janeway a sentient hologram? Doesn’t seem like it) to go on. Like when Rok was dealing with Gwyn, you base your reactions on your experiences. As Dal hasn’t dealt with anyone in power who is trustworthy, why should the Federation be any different?
Not much about Pog and Murf this go around. Hopefully that will change.
Maybe this time Christopher will get the version of Voyager he wanted and the crew will say “Why should we go to the Federation? There’s lots to see right where we are.”
And the Diviner’s ship was silly.
Fun third episode (I’m sure some people will think of it as the second but the premiere was a 2 episode combo). My favorite parts were the Janeway-holo being “fleshed” out, and getting more of a tour of the ship. I think we’ll see more parts of it discovered by the “cadets” as the series progresses and as they figure out how to operate the ship. The question of why there is a second warp core is broached here which will be another mystery to solve (this season?).
I’ve said it before but Pog really doesn’t come across to me as Tellarite. Perhaps he’s actually mixed-breed and just identifies as only Tellarite or that’s what he’s been told he is it he really isn’t.
I’m really enjoying Rak-Tahk. I think I’m just really liking the juxtaposition of this young sweet sounding girl but can also really throw down in a fight and not show any fear. There’s also that endearing innocence and naïveté about her which especially comes through in the scene when she orders from the replicator the same gruel she’s always eaten because that’s all she knows. Poor thing?
Murf continues to be the comic scene-stealer.
Where did the notion that this series takes place 5 years post-Voyager come from? I’m thinking this series takes place many years from Voyager came home. This would help to resolve such matters as why the Diviner has been searching for the Protostar for so long and why there seems to be an abundance of Alpha Quadrant species here in the Delta Quadrant.
Already only 7 more episodes left this season! I think the action is only going to continue to ramp up and answers to some of the mysteries are forthcoming.
@93/garreth: “Where did the notion that this series takes place 5 years post-Voyager come from?”
It was stated outright by co-creator Dan Hageman on a panel back in April, at about 3:00 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bpaq-jUqWwg
That seems pretty definitive, but pre-release statements have been known to be misleading. I remember a couple of Star Trek Into Darkness cast members insisting absolutely in pre-release interviews that Benedict Cumberbatch’s character was not Khan.
I think that is exactly right. Its her program. She’s not Janeway. She’s a hologram (AI) modeled after Janeway and designed to help. Not a perfect analogy, but think of an historical tableau with actors. Someone dressed to look like Ben Franklin could easily be tasked with saying “I an Benjamin Franklin. I invented the stove and discovered electricity and am famed for my founding of an abolition movement and work in the Continental Congress.” The real Franklin wouldn’t introduce himself like that. (Well, maybe. I think he was known to be direct about his accomplishments.) But in this case it isn’t the actor’s job to be Franklin, but to teach about Franklin.
@95/costumer: That’s right. Hologram Janeway doesn’t believe she’s Kathryn Janeway, but is aware that she’s a hologram modeled on Janeway. Just as Voyager‘s EMH was modeled on Louis Zimmerman and La Sirena‘s holograms are modeled on Cristobal Rios. They all know the difference between themselves and their templates.
I’ve seen it said that Holo-Janeway will have a somewhat different personality from her template, because she’s a teaching program, not a captain, so her priorities and approach will be different.
I;m not saying that hologram Haneway thinks she’s real Janeway, just the the introduction was odd. Rather than just saying “Hey, I’m based on someone awesome”, why not tell us in a sentence or two WHY she’s awesome? If Prodigy is intended to be an introduction to Star Trek, why not provide a bit of background? They had time for the “Why the Federation is awesome” info dump video, give the new viewers an indication as to why Janeway was chosen and the template for this ship.
“I’m based on Captain Kathryn Janeway who, after her ship, the USS Voyager, was stranded in the Delta Quadrant, successfully brought her ship and crew safely home and made many important first contacts and discoveries along the way. For this, she was highly decorated”.
Tells the new viewers who she is and might make them want to watch Voyager.
@97/kkozoriz: A story should only contain as much information as is necessary for telling that story. If something exists only to say “hey, watch this other show instead” and serves no purpose within the current story — and especially if it distracts from the current story with too much of an irrelevant info dump — then it absolutely does not belong there. Mentioning a ship called Voyager at this point would only confuse the new viewers that this show is aimed at. They don’t need to know about Voyager yet. All that’s needed at this point is to establish the Federation; anything else is a distraction.
Look at how the two different revival attempts of Doctor Who handled reintroducing the concepts of the show to new audiences. The 1996 TV movie opened with a long infodump so cluttered with continuity references that new viewers were totally lost and overwhelmed, and it failed to work as the series pilot it was meant to be. But the 2005 reboot took its time and eased viewers in gradually. It wasn’t revealed that the Doctor was a time traveler until the end of the first episode. The name of his planet wasn’t reintroduced until the end of the second season. The continuity from the old series was revealed gradually over years, to the extent that it was useful for the new stories being told, rather than just thrown in out of a sense of obligation. And that revival was an enduring hit that’s still going strong.
So there’s no rush. Continuity is not the sole purpose of fiction. It’s just one tool in the kit, to be used only when it’s needed and doesn’t get in the way. This show is meant as an entry ramp for newcomers, and you don’t want an entry ramp to be cluttered.
I love holo-Janeway’s coffee cup. Whoever programmed that holo clearly knew her well.
@98 – I’m not saying give us a twenty minute infodump. Of course they already came close with Janeway’s The Federation is awesome” speech. I’m just saying tell the audience why it’s Janeway ant not another one of Starfleets “most decorated” captains. It would take 5 -10 seconds that could easily be edited from the we’re falling into the star scenes.
there’s plenty of other officers in Starfleet. What makes Janeway the obvious choice to be an instructor? Certainly nothing from Voyager would indicate that and neither would her cameo in Nemesis.
@100: If it’s not needed, it doesn’t belong in the story. Stop demanding they pander to your expectations as an established fan. You’re not the target audience. They’re doing perfectly fine.
@101 – I’m not demanding anything. TPTB aren’t even aware that I’m talking about this. I’m simply commenting that I believe Janeway could have been introduced in a better fashion.
And who is the target audience? Isn’t the idea that it’s not specifically a children’s show and watchable by everyone? As opposed to, say, Discovery or Picard which are aimed at an older audience?
And every story has filler to various degrees. Are you claiming that Janeway’s coffee cup is necessary to the story? Ir is it just a little nod to the people who are already familiar with her. Who, by the way, would not be children and therefore not, in your words, the target audience.
The difference with the coffee cup is that its a neat little nod for those of who are familiar and adds a bit of character for the new viewers who don’t know anything about Voyager or Trek. Even a “couple of sentences” of why its Janeway and not Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Jellico, Archer, or some other Star Fleet officer will just be confusing to new viewers; giving them info they can’t relate to. Over time that information, if its needed for the story, can be given. At this point they only need to know that Janeway was a great captain to give the students confidence in the hologram’s abilities.
@100 kkozoriz
Would it be in character for Janeway to have helmed the project to develop the purpose of the as yet unidentified ‘engineering orb’ nestling between the two warp cores in Main? Engineering and therefore became the natural choice to be the hologram to support/train people to use it?
In the same way Zimmerman as-himself was the EMH diagnostic programme, and Reg Barclay sent a hologram of himself to Voyager?
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As for the five year period – I can see the logic of the ship being built 5 years after Voyager’s return – and hence why Janeway is still a Captain in Hologram form, and not the Admiral from Nemesis (although that wouldn’t truly work timeline wise!)
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Kazon/Kazon-space – why are we assuming the Kazon is in Kazon space? Could the Kazon Bounty Hunter not be far from Kazon Space himself because that’s where the jobs have taken him?
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Murf – Oprelian Amoeba writ large? People have rejected baby changing, but how about a Baby Nacene/Sporocystian lifeform? After all there were others besides the Caretaker & Suspiria! Surely the fact that there is a voice actor for Murf, rather than just random/animal sounds implies that there might be speech to come?
@104/Tom: “Could the Kazon Bounty Hunter not be far from Kazon Space himself because that’s where the jobs have taken him?”
If the prison is in the same region that Dal came from, then it’s in the same region as the Window of Dreams, which is near Lokirrim space, where Voyager was in season 7. That’s over 40,000 light years from Kazon territory, more than halfway to the Federation. Voyager needed a lot of unlikely boosts and shortcuts to get that far. For the Kazon, it would be generations away, unless they stumbled onto the Vaadwaur subspace corridors or something.
Voyager came across lots of Alpja and Beta quadrant species and objects. But, somehow, it’s unlikely that a Kazon found his way a little over half the distance that Voyager covered?
Natural wormholes, artificial wormholes (engine imbalance, etc), alien technology to name just a few possibilities.
Voyager encountered numerous methods on what was basically a straight line back to the Federation. Statistically speaking, the must be many, many more methods in the Delta Quadrant.
@104 – Janeway was a command officer with a science background, not an engineer. B’Elanna had much more experience with alternate propulsion methods than Janeway did.
Kirk & Spock both spent time posted to the Academy. They’d be more likely for a template for a training hologram.
I’m not suggesting that any of those characters SHOULD have been used in place of Janeway, only that they’d make more sense.
Who’s to say Janeway post Voyager-command didn’t having a posting at Starfleet Academy? The alternate future Janeway in “Endgame” even made an appearance there as a guest speaker and perhaps she had a regular gig when she was younger. She’s also one of the most noted and distinguished captains in Starfleet history so she rightfully deserves her place along side other notables like Kirk and Spock. Besides, I think it’s about time we see our first hologram on a Starfleet ship modeled after a female officer.
This is every captain whose name appears in the opening credits automatically assumed to be one of the best? There’s lots of things Janeway did that, at the very least, should be examined by a tribunal to look for wrongdoing.
But, considering all the stuff Kirk & Spock and the others got away with, it’s not surprising.
I don’t have a lot of geeky Star Trek lore to add here, but speaking as an immigrant to the US in 1969 at the age of four, who had already named his first pet cat “Captain James Tiberius Kirk of the Starship Enterprise” by age five, I’ve been immersed in this universe for pretty much my whole life. And I’m really loving the originality of Prodigy. I agree that it has all the necessary qualities for a great Star Trek entry, but it leaves behind some of the unnecessary qualities and looks like it’s going in an interesting direction. While still maintaining Gene’s optimistic vision of the future. Not generally a fan of animated shows, but I’m definitely gonna keep watching this one. Can’t wait to see what happens with Gwyn, who is currently my “favorite” character. Plus, she’s Bad…wait for it…Ass!
The way they’re treating gender and race issues/misconceptions fits well with our modern social discourse too. Again, like Gene’s original vision.
– Matt
@@@@@ 104. Having a voice actor for nonverbal/nonhuman characters is routine in animation (Frank Welker has basically made a second career out of it).
Sound effects (like animal noises) are licensed from a sound library, which can get surprisingly expensive. If you don’t want to pay for access and pick and choose just the right meows and squeaks, you need someone to sit in front of a microphone, and most animals aren’t very good voice actors.
(This is also part of why the astromech droids in the Star Wars cartoons are credited with “as himself” –the sound files that make up their voices are proprietary [and the mixed lines have to be “performed” for every script just like regular dialogue].)
@110/Cybersnark: “Having a voice actor for nonverbal/nonhuman characters is routine in animation (Frank Welker has basically made a second career out of it).”
Yes — these days, Dee Bradley Baker (the voice of Murf) has inherited Welker’s former role as the go-to guy for animal sounds in animation. Baker did the lead animals in the Avatar/Korra franchise — Appa and Momo in Avatar, Naga and Pabu in Korra. In Young Justice, he plays Superboy’s pet Wolf and the show’s non-speaking version of Monsieur Mallah. In Phineas and Ferb, he played Perry the Platypus, who was almost entirely silent except for an occasional beak-rattling sound. Certainly Baker does plenty of speaking characters, most famously the Clone Troopers in Star Wars animation, but if you need a voice actor to play a non-speaking animal character, he’s at the top of the list.
“This is also part of why the astromech droids in the Star Wars cartoons are credited with “as himself””
I thought I’d seen Ben Burtt credited as the voice of R2-D2 in the old Droids cartoon or something, but IMDb doesn’t agree.
Just watched the first two (three) episodes. Loved the visuals, pacing was good, storyline been there done that, and I found Dal incredibly annoying. Hopefully Dal will be less annoying in future episodes. And I found it a little hard to believe that holo-Janeway was unable to tell these kids weren’t cadets. I mean, come on – no way Starfleet allows a “crew” with no actual knowledge of the ship systems to go into space with a multi-million credit starship. Holo-Janeway has to be programed to recognize this. There were Star Trek moments in the show, but they were few and far between. Still and all there’s enough to entice me to return for the Episode 4.
So far, I’d say that it’s pretty much what I expected. The visuals are beautiful, I like Zero the Medusan, and I suspect that it’s either set farther in the future than they made out, or it involves time travel in some way. I agree with the people who say that it’s pretty Star Wars-y, but this doesn’t really bug me, since a lot of the regions outside of the Federation (and particularly in the Delta Quadrant) have been depicted via that gritty “used future” aesthetic for decades. The plot and characterization are a bit paint-by-numbers at this point, but it’s early days.
So far I love the show and can’t wait for the latest new episode. I think “Lost and Found” was the best Star Trek pilot yet produced, for one thing, and I came to love all the main characters right away (including the villains–it’s about time that Star Trek got another scenery-chewing bad guy again).
I agree with you, Keith, my favorite character has to be Rok-Tohk as well. But all members of the new Protostar crew are great. They’re already incredibly well-drawn with rich backstory potential that will hopefully be mined in future episodes. I also appreciate how they are writing Dal–for all his brashness and status as the maverick character trope, it’s apparent that there’s a lot he’s hiding beneath the surface. It’s telling how panicked and defensive he gets about Zero reading his mind–a running joke that will never get old.
Also, the opening sequence has to be my favorite one yet. Stunning visuals, gripping music–it stirred my soul. Look closely and you’ll see each of the main characters represented in the landscapes and space anomalies (my favorites are Rok among the “rocks,” and Dal’s purple eye as a planet. It’s a really cute touch.)
“Dreamcatcher” was yet another solid entry in this series. I guess it was like a horror-version of “Shore Leave” combined with the cheesy horror movie The Ruins (about killer vines). Good development of Gwyn and showing off her “powers” in her brig escape. Love how the Janeway hologram was proactive about stopping Gwyn until the latter got around that problem. Also loved how Janeway essentially forced Dal to stop to explore or else he’d basically be in trouble. I think this is going to be the justification going forward for this crew to actually doing some exploring beyond the main thread of alluding the Diviner. Obviously the gang isn’t going to be stranded on the planet but I’m looking forward to the resolution of this little cliffhanger. Nice to see Gwyn save Murf in the escape pod because of course we know the former character has a heart. It’ll be interesting to see when she’ll transition to full on good girl and stop trying to betray the others. Beautiful visuals as usual. I wonder if we’ll get a movie announcement for this series sooner than later (and yes, I know it just got renewed for a 20-episode second season)!
“Dreamcatcher” is a fun episode. I particularly like the revelation that Gwyn knows all the things (the linguistics skills she showed off in “Lost and Found,” e.g.) because the Diviner wanted her to be able to handle the Protostar once they found it. I also love that the Janeway hologram is trying to protect the ship but is still, ultimately, a computer program that can be overridden.
Also, whether or not this is actually true, both Kate Mulgrew vocally and the animators with facial expressions are making it sure seem like, contrary to appearances, the Janeway hologram knows damn well that these aren’t actually Starfleet cadets, but is playing along, probably in the hopes of getting the ship back home….
Agreed with garreth that this is very much a horror-movie version of “Shore Leave.” I will give my wife credit, the minute it was stated that the soil had no nutrients, she called it that it meant the plants would try to eat them.
Looking forward to next week’s cliffhanger resolution…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
We get some interesting worldbuilding in this week’s first-half-of-a-two-part episode: Jankom Pog is apparently from (or at least has fond memories of) a Tellarite generation ship, which might neatly explain a number of things.
(select to read)
@117
Indeed – in a nice throw-away comment to let those who have watched previous series get an answer to the question ‘How did he get here’; but in a way that won’t throw new or young viewers out of the story.
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This one was certainly paced as a two-parter, although I missed the ‘To be Continued’ appearing at the end in the Star Trek font!
@116/krad: I too had the thought occur to me that Holo-Janeway is more aware than she seems and just isn’t letting on that she knows or at least heavily suspects that these aren’t actually cadets. But I am unsure as to whether she has any ulterior motive or plan beyond feigning ignorance. Great voice acting from Mulgrew too where she goes into motherly Janeway mode when the crew leaves the ship to go explore and she has to stay behind. It read to me as if it were the actual Janeway there in the flesh.
@117/Cybersnark: Great catch! I heard that line but I never actually considered its implications. But the question of what Alpha Quadrant species are doing in the Delta Quadrant is a very minor mystery for me anyway.
I previously mentioned how this episode with its malevolent plants instantly reminded me of the 2008 horror movie The Ruins with its killer vines. It stars Jena Malone from The Hunger Games and Shawn Ashmore from the X-Men movie series. I don’t think too many people saw it so here’s a link to the trailer. And the flick actually wasn’t bad!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3JKmTK70Mc
My wife and I have both had the distinct impression that the Janeway hologram knows these aren’t cadets. What her motive and intentions are, we cannot guess at this point, but we don’t think she is fooled at all.
Oh, undoubtedly Janeway knows these aren’t real cadets. I mean, they keep sending up red flags that even an A.I. can pick up on, from their inexperience, lack of knowledge, lack of training, and so forth…
But hey, the show is still in “we have many unanswered questions” phase, most of them revolving around the origins of the Protostar, how it got there in the first place, what happened to any original crew…
I’m willing to bet that AI Janeway is trying to get the Protostar home and/or rescue its original crew, and/or is fulfilling her nature as a teacher by taking on these ragtag space orphans as her only available options.
@117 – He said it was a sleeper ship, not a generation shop. In a sleeper ship, the original crew would be alive at the end of the journey. With a generation ship, the original crew would likely be long dead.
Think of the difference between the Botany Bay and Yonada.
I was a bit confused as to why this episode was set in the “Hirogen System”; is this just a shout-out, or will the Hirogen be appearing in the second half? I seem to recall that the Hirogen didn’t have an extent homeworld, so maybe this planet is an ancestral home.
In any case, I can’t help but question Hologram Janeway’s judgement for thinking that the homeworld of a species infamous for hunting sentient races for sport and mounting their body parts on the wall is a good place for a field trip with a boatload of children.
@123 –
“We’re Starfleet Officers. ‘Weird’ Is Part Of The Job.” – Kathryn Janeway
She doesn’t see them as Children. She sees them as Starfleet cadets. As such, she’s going to treat them like Starfleet. If that means sending them into dangerous situations, even if it’s just for exploration’s sake, she’s going to do it.
If you’re going to be on a Starfleet vessel, you’re going to be Starfleet officers. They used to call it “taking the King’s Shilling”, just leave the red shirts hanging in the closet.
My internet has been out all week and the local phone company keeps missing appointments to fix it, so I didn’t get to see the episode until now. It took a few days to think of going to the library for its wi-fi, and then I had problems with my laptop’s DNS thingy that took me another day to sort out, so I only just now managed to watch the episode from a local library (which is fortunately open on Sunday).
Anyway, “Dreamcatcher” is an excellent episode, and surprisingly long — I think it was 37 minutes, just 3-5 minutes shorter than a modern “hourlong” live-action show on commercial TV. And it’s only part 1! Anyway, people have been likening it to “Shore Leave,” but I thought of it more as the analogy to “The Naked Time” or “The Naked Now” — an early episode that shows us what the individual characters desire so we can learn more about them.
Nice callback with the half-finished shuttlecraft, by the way.
@123/Iacomina: “In any case, I can’t help but question Hologram Janeway’s judgement for thinking that the homeworld of a species infamous for hunting sentient races for sport and mounting their body parts on the wall is a good place for a field trip with a boatload of children.”
The Hirogen have been nomadic for over a thousand years, so presumably they abandoned their home system at least that long ago. I think we may have just seen why.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned how it’s such a relief that even though this series was designed for kids, it’s certainly enjoyable for the whole family and people of all ages. There’s a level of maturity there and takes itself seriously enough that adults can get into it too. Sure, we finally got our first fart joke with this most recent episode but I guess you still gotta cater to your young audience and it wasn’t horrible at least. And it’s actually the same real life joke that the Voyager male cast members would play on each other between takes on the set. See, farts are for all of ages!
But I’m also just enjoying the joyousness and light-heartedness of the series. It feels reminiscent of the TNG era and what’s been largely missing from the more recent spin-offs.
Anyone else wondering who the EMH on Protostar will be? It couldn’t possibly be thee EMH (Picardo) could it? Regardless, it’ll be fun to see when we inevitably see the crew in need of medical assistance on the ship.
@127/garreth: “I don’t think I’ve mentioned how it’s such a relief that even though this series was designed for kids, it’s certainly enjoyable for the whole family and people of all ages.”
I’m often surprised how many people these days find that surprising. When I was young, IIRC, it was pretty much taken for granted that family programming was exactly that, suitable for the entire family. Of course, back then, most homes had only one TV, so anything the kids were watching, everyone would be watching, or at least hearing.
Plus, of course, kids’ shows are made by adults, who want to find their work satisfying. And really, the only things that make shows and movies “adult” by our culture’s standards are violence, sex, drugs, and profanity. Leaving those out doesn’t have to have any effect on a story’s intelligence or quality; indeed, they’re often just lazy substitutes for intelligence and quality.
On to “Terror Firma”: Apparently the mysterious drive system is “proto-warp” powered by a gravimetrically contained protostar — never mind that a protostar is hundreds of thousand of kilometers across and hasn’t even begun fusing hydrogen yet and is thus not much of a power source. And it’s probably one of those alternative drive systems that didn’t pan out in the long run, according to Burnham in DSC season 3.
And somehow a Klingon ship managed to reach Murder Planet Larry in the Hirogen system. How do they all keep getting out here? Or is this the final fate of the Klingon generation ship from VGR: “Prophecy”? It didn’t look like the same ship, though.
If Zero was right and Larry was a life form instead of a planet, I guess that rules out my assumption that it was the Hirogen’s original homeworld that was overrun by the superorganism, driving them off. Unless the superorganism ate the whole planet and replaced it.
I figured this would be the episode where Gwyn finally switched sides, and so it was. Still, they’re advancing the storyline very gradually. The Diviner said something about the ship offering “salvation,” and felt he had no choice but to pick it over his daughter. So what is it that he’s trying to save? And now that the ship has jumped far away from him, how long will it be before we get any answers?
This week is a semi-historic one for Star Trek. For the first time since the last week in May of 1999, we have two different episodes of two different Trek productions debuting the same week. Then it was DS9‘s “The Dogs of War” and Voyager‘s “Equinox, Part I.” Today, it’s Prodigy‘s “Terror Firma” and Discovery‘s “Kobayashi Maru.”
First time this millennium that has happened. Not bad for a franchise that many thought was dead and buried after Enterprise was cancelled in 2005…………
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@129/krad: Unfortunately, I won’t get to watch the DSC premiere for a bit. I’m partway through rewatching season 3, since last year Paramount+ somehow stopped working on my browsers and I could only watch the last 5-6 episodes on my phone. I wanted to finally watch them on my regular screen before starting season 4, but my internet was out last week, so I’m behind schedule.
Really enjoyed the latest Prodigy episode, “Terror Firma,” especially some of the later moments. Gwyn trying to save the lives of the others from Drednok was gratifying. The others rescuing Gwyn was gratifying. Gwyn turning on the Diviner and the Protostar escaping his clutches was gratifying. And holo-Janeway being proactive and thinking out loud and protecting the ship from the vines was gratifying. The episode ends on a fine note and it’s apparently taking a little bit of a winter break now so I’m looking forward to its return in January.
ST:P got me to break down and buy a subscription. I watched the first 4 episodes last week and then Terror Firma today.
I am very satisfied with that purchase _just_ based on Prodigy and it’ll be nice to finally watch all of DS9, Voyager & Enterprise as well as Picard season 2.
I have no real comments to make beyond things others have already noted. I dearly like the Janeway hologram and look forward to seeing how they continue to use it on the kids journey to becoming Star Fleet members.
I also liked the revelation about what the “secret” second warp core on the Protostar is. I guess it basically makes the ship go extra sooper fast so that’s not too big of a surprise but it helps to explain how the ship got out to the Delta Quadrant so fast in the immediate post-Voyager era.
And I remembered from this episode that Gwyn broke her leg and it was still untreated by episodes’s end. Perhaps in the next episode we’ll see the ship’s EMH utilized and see who that is.
Definitely not. The best NEW Trek out there is The Orville. It just doesn’t have the name.
Discovery is a load of steaming horse manure that exists purely to push Kurtzman’s values (no, I’m not even exaggerating. He has gone on record to say that’s his mission with Star Trek) and as of the opening episode of season 4, leads me to actually want to see Burnham spaced after she had a temper tantrum when the UFP president essentially told her she had no right to sit in the captain’s chair (which I agree with). Lower Decks is just … unnecessary and exists purely in response to The Orville. Picard, as I’ve seen others say, had a good IDEA but they ruined it with implementation (ie: Zhat Vash) and now we have Prodigy pushing it even further down.
The least it could have done was try to remain consistent. The technology is clearly not 24th century. If it was launched after Voyager returned home, Janeway’s uniform and attitude are wrong. If it was launched beforehand, its technology is even further out of place. I mean, cmon. Warp core, Transwarp core and Protowarp core? Why not just blow the whole pig and put a spore drive on the fucking thing as well?
Spent last week recovering from my promotion to fourth-degree black belt and also going to Philcon, where I was an author guest, so I didn’t catch up with “Terror Firma” until Sunday night. I enjoyed the hell out of this, from Rok being the first to reach out to Gwyn (and also regularly protecting Murf) to Gwyn’s devastation at her father picking the Protostar over her. I’m wondering how a Klingon ship got out here — at least the protostar drive explains how the Starfleet ship got here, though it’s interesting that knowledge of the drive is kept from holo-Janeway. The reversals on how Dal treats Gwyn are a little too fast and back-and-forth, but overall I think things are moving along nicely.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@135/krad: Congratulations on the promotion! You’re at the highest rank now or there’s still a level, or levels, higher?
A note to everyone that Prodigy takes a hiatus until Jan. 6. I’m very much enjoying this show (more so than any of the other Kurtzman Star Trek series) that I’m gonna miss it until it comes back next year.
@@@@@ 135 – Yeah, I got whiplash watching Dal and how th treats Gwyn. First he’s “She’s the reason everything bad is happening, to the quiet scene between them where I wouldn’t have be surprised if they ended up kissing and then back to “Leave her behind. She’s not our problem”. This part of the episode should have come with a neck brace.
It’s a shame there’s no individual recap for the latest episode of Prodigy, “Kobyashi,” for it was a shear delight and perhaps the best, or at least most fun, episode of Kurtzman-era Trek that’s been produced. Of course the Kobyashi Maru simulations on the holodeck are the obvious highlights. What I loved is that basically every iteration of pre-Kurtzman Trek was represented in these scenes: Spock, Scotty, and Uhura (with a shoutout to Kirk) for TOS; Beverly Crusher and the lovely Enterprise-D bridge itself (and exterior shot of the beautiful ship before it’s blown up) for TNG; Odo for DS9; and outside those simulation scenes we of course have regular Holo-Janeway, and at last the reveal of Chakotay (as a holo-recording) to represent Voyager. Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that the runt of Berman-era Trek, Enterprise, wasn’t represented at all. I thought Uhura could have been swapped out for Hoshi, cause the latter was also a very important character for what she represented for Starfleet. Nonetheless, what a fun little mash-up of various Trek characters across the franchise assisting Dal on his many, many repeat attempts at beating the no-win scenario. And he almost won on the last one! Haha. I’m assuming that new dialogue was recorded by Gates McFadden which is great, since most of the other actors are deceased or just not able to record for whatever reason (Nichelle Nichols).
I was a little disappointed that there was no appearance by the Doctor as the EMH, or any iteration of an EMH. We saw Gwyn in sickbay but I’m not sure how she was tended to unless it was by automation.
Gwyn proved herself very useful at cracking the classified Starfleet files in the Protostar computer. We get the tantalizing revelation that Captain Chakotay was a part of the prior (original?) crew of the ship. So that only deepens the mystery.
We got some more interesting details about the Diviner and Gwyn’s origin through a 17-year old flashback.
And cute to see that Murf is basically indestructible!
Oh yeah, the Protostar leaped 4,000 lightyears to the Gamma Quadrant! That was unexpected since I just assumed they’d be in the Delta Quadrant a good deal longer. Perhaps we’ll come across some familiar Gamma Quadrant species. The Dominion, anyone?
Just a very sweet episode of Trek with the nice dedication to the deceased actors at the end. I just wished the episode was a whole hour because I wanted more!
This was my least favorite episode so far. After an initial run that did a good job of building the new characters and their world, we now get a self-indulgent, pandering exercise in continuity porn that’s aimed more at nostalgic old-schoolers than the new viewers the show is meant to bring in. It felt like a bunch of fans pandering to fellow fans by going “Hey, recognize this character/this concept/this line of dialogue?” And that’s exactly the sort of fannish insularity that makes newcomers feel they aren’t welcome in the private club because they don’t know the secret handshake.
Besides, I don’t feel it worked well as a Prodigy episode, which should be more important in a Prodigy episode than advertising the rest of the franchise. A story about Dal learning to listen to his crew should be about Dal and his crew, not about Dal meeting a bunch of holographic strangers.
I had a lot of issues with the simulation. The use of archive audio was clumsy, with obvious changes in audio ambience and quality giving it away. I suppose I can buy that the holodeck would crib lines from past log recordings of ship missions (we know from “Court Martial” that such recordings exist). But some of the excerpted lines here were from private conversations that were unlikely to have been recorded, or took place far away from the ship and couldn’t possibly have been recorded. (TrekCore worked out where they all came from.)
I’m also tired of the way the modern shows assume that nobody in the entire history of the Federation ever did anything notable except for the characters we watched on TV. What was Odo even doing there? He wasn’t in Starfleet!
Incidentally, why was there a big scary monster in the koon-ut-kal-if-fee arena? That’s not how it works! And why would anyone choose a hellhole like Ceti Alpha V as a place to go skydiving?
Also, as a fan of Japanese TV/movies, I wince every time I hear how badly Trek actors tend to mispronounce “Kobayashi Maru.” The computer voice actress mispronounced it the same exceptionally bad way that Nimoy did, as “Kobiashi Muhroo.” At least most people say it more like “Kobuh-yashi,” which is less wrong.
As for the other plot, it’s pretty obvious now that the Protostar is a time ship, which explains the inconsistencies with the timing, at least where the Starfleet stuff is concerned. That disappoints me, because if it really is 2383, that makes it a lot harder to explain Kazon being in the same part of the quadrant as the Window of Dreams (at opposite ends of VGR’s 40,000-ly journey). But I suppose it explains why the Diviner is so desperate to find it — he probably wants to change history to undo his people’s extinction.
@138/Garreth: “Oh yeah, the Protostar leaped 4,000 lightyears to the Gamma Quadrant! That was unexpected since I just assumed they’d be in the Delta Quadrant a good deal longer. Perhaps we’ll come across some familiar Gamma Quadrant species. The Dominion, anyone?”
The graphic said “Gamma Quadrant,” but the dialogue didn’t agree. Janeway said they’d jumped only 4000 light years, which is way too little to reach the GQ from where this show apparently takes place. I think this was an example of the sadly common problem in Secret Hideout Trek of the graphics/FX department not being on the same page as the writers.
Then again, this show has an unfortunate tendency to treat the entire Delta Quadrant, a full 25% of our gigantic galaxy, as if it were all one place. So maybe they will say they’re in Gamma now, but I won’t buy it until I hear it confirmed in dialogue, as opposed to just graphics.
@139/CLB: Hmm, I think in this case you’re being far too nit-picky and critical of what you should take away from this episode: that it’s a valentine to the longtime Trek fans while still staying true to being a Prodigy episode and being about its characters, in particular, Dal and Gwyn this week. I didn’t think the intent of the dialogue snippets from the archive was to play a game of “do you remember what episode or movie this came from?” rather than to cleverly fit the situation that Dal was in and appropriately respond to whatever it is he said using existing audio. It’s the best the producers could do given that three of the actors are deceased and another might be too old or otherwise unavailable to contribute her voice. I thought the holodeck was a clever way to integrate these fan-favorite characters and the Enterprise-D. I don’t see this series over-indulging with this concept. It’s most obvious fan-service is the already known and planned use of the Janeway and Chakotay characters.
@140/garreth: It’s because I’m a fan that I found the holodeck stuff unconvincing and forced, because I could recognize most of the dialogue quotes and they just pulled me out of the story.
And the reason I became a fan is because they told stories that were good enough to make me into a fan. That’s what I want now. I don’t just want to page through old scrapbooks, I want to be given new things to be a fan of. Too much franchise fiction these days has become more about reminiscing about its past triumphs than creating new ones.
And what in the world does “should take away from this episode” mean? “Should?” That’s not how this works. We all have the right to experience fiction in our own ways. There’s no objective right answer, no mandatory way to feel about a story. The only way anyone “should” feel is in the way consistent with their own honest reactions, even if those differ emphatically from the majority view.
“It’s the best the producers could do given that three of the actors are deceased and another might be too old or otherwise unavailable to contribute her voice.”
The best they could do would’ve been to tell a story about Dal interacting with his own crew, with the characters on this show that he needs to learn to connect with better. It would’ve been more meaningful to me to see Dal learning a lesson from Pog or Zero or Gwyn or Rok-Tahk than to see him learning it from a bunch of Spock dialogue snippets that only clumsily fit the situation. I mean, what does Spock mean to Dal? Nothing. There’s no basis for a connection there, no relationship. It’s empty, only about engaging the fans’ emotions rather than Dal’s. I want to feel things that come organically out of the story and characters.
Continuity references should only be used to the extent that they serve the current story. This was drilled into me repeatedly in my early years as a Trek novelist — don’t get self-indulgent, only use as much continuity as you need to tell the tale. My editors would never have let me get away with sticking Spock, Uhura, Scotty, Crusher, and Odo into the same Kobayashi Maru simulation, because it’s sheer overkill. (Also, seriously, did nobody in the 80 years between the TOS and TNG eras do anything impressive enough to rate a holo-character? We couldn’t at least have Captain Demora Sulu, say? Jacqueline Kim’s still around.)
“It’s most obvious fan-service is the already known and planned use of the Janeway and Chakotay characters.”
That’s not just fanservice, though. It’s continuing the characters’ journeys in a new direction. It’s using them in a way that serves this show and its storylines. That’s the key. It’s not about whether or not you use continuity. It’s about whether the continuity serves the story, rather than vice-versa.
Yeah, this one felt like a B-plot on a mediocre Lower Decks episode.
Still, it’s nice that someone invited Gates McFadden back. Would have been great if they had at least mentioned Dr. Crusher on Picard.
@141/CLB: Okay then. What you could choose to take away from this episode is some fun-loving nostalgia that appropriately fits into the given holodeck scenario of the story.
The writers could have featured other characters on the holodeck that we’re not as familiar with or never heard of, but in my opinion, it’s not as noteworthy or fun as bringing in so many of the greats from the series we’re fans of.
I guess this episode will prove to be divisive in a way I hadn’t anticipated between people who love it such as my myself, and those that just find it to be pandering fan-service and not moving the storyline forward.
@142/Iacomina: I too wished that Beverly had been mention or shown on Picard in the first season and it looks like she won’t be included in the second. However, I believe she will be brought up or used at some point in a future season because of her importance to Picard and I feel like these particular writers will do some interesting things with her character in a way that wasn’t done on TNG.
Star Trek has always done what Christopher refers to continuity porn. Will Decker being the son of Matt. McCoy appearing in Encounter at Farpoint. Scotty showing up in Relics and walking onto the TOS bridge. Data saying “It is green”. All of Trails and Tribulations and Flashback. Dax knowing Kor, Kang and Koloth. Dax knowing McCoy. Cochrane showing up in the first episode of Enterprise. The Ferengi and the Borg showing up in Enterprise but never, somehow, making it into the historical record. Burnham being Spock’s foster sister. Burnham going to Talos IV. Delta Vega suddenly being in the Vulcan system in Star Trek. And so on and so on and so on. This is nothing new.
Also, let’s not forget who the big name star of Prodigy is. It’s not like we’ve ever seen Janeway in any sort of Academy program where she’s teaching cadets. The only reason Janeway is the hologram is that Kate Mulgrew agreed to do the show.
As far as nobody other than the TV news doing anything notable, unless another character is known to one if the show characters, if course they’re the ones that are going to be the most well known, the most famous. Even in Christopher’s birth of the federation novels, Kirk and Spock’s ancestors play important roles. Star Trek has always made the TV characters the most important people. How many times did Kirk save Earth? Or did Picard? Or Sisko? Or laneway, even thought she was halfway across the galaxy?
As far as the cartography issues, when has Trek ever made sense in that regard? One week the Enterprise is visiting Earth, the next, it’s way out in uncharted space and the week after that, back in familiar territory. It’s not like anyone associated with the show has a big map and tells the writers (Np, Planet X it way over here. It would take six months to get there). Don’t forget, Q’Onos is five days from Earth at warp 4.7.
I for one loved all the legacy cameo characters. This holodeck scenario where one could pick their own crew no matter the era was cool–reminded me of fantasy football. References to the main crews make perfect sense to me. Not everyone watching the show is a hardcore fan who’s watched episodes multiple times and read all the books and what not. These references should be for casual fans. Yes, I find world-building interesting, but it makes sense to stick with known references rather than talk about “Captain Bilby from the Starship Oxyni” and have the audience thrown out of the story because they don’t recognize the reference.
Dal’s insistence that he take the test over and over again did grate on my nerves. It was cute when Boilmler did it in Lower Decks. Here not so much. It would’ve been nice if Janeway had told him from the beginning that you can’t beat the test (I know no one is told. It’s just annoying that he did it 64 times.
I geeked out over Captain Chakotay of the Protostar! From the beginning, I’ve wanted to see him and there he was! (well, a holo recording of him) Of course, I need more info on happened to him.
I’d also like to learn more about the Protostar–namely why it was constructed. That’s an awful lot of power/speed for a ship. Was the purpose to build a fleet to explore the Delta and Gamma Quadrants? Is a protostar drive viable for long term use? I’d say no but what do I know? Besides, this is a protype.
As for the timeline if the show was set in 2383, seventeen years earlier is 2366. It’s looking more likely that there is some time travel involved here, either purposely or accidentally by Starfleet. I wish there wasn’t personally. I’m not a huge fan of time travel stories.
@143/garreth: “…some fun-loving nostalgia that appropriately fits into the given holodeck scenario of the story.”
As I’ve said, far too much franchise media these days is built on nostalgia. I liked Prodigy up to now because it wasn’t just continuity porn, because it was telling a new story with new characters. That’s what I want more of. Star Trek is supposed to be about seeking out the new and boldly going where we haven’t gone before. Nostalgia is the diametric opposite of that.
@145/Mary: “Yes, I find world-building interesting, but it makes sense to stick with known references rather than talk about “Captain Bilby from the Starship Oxyni” and have the audience thrown out of the story because they don’t recognize the reference.”
See, TOS knew that the key was do both at once — combine familiar names with unfamiliar ones in the same list. “The Nobel and Zee-Magnees Prizes.” “The same promises made by Napoleon, Hitler, Ferris, Maltuvis.” You use the familiar to contextualize the unfamiliar, and add the unfamiliar because it’s the future and the audience shouldn’t recognize everything.
I’m fine with the legacy characters. While I agree that other franchises get too cute with nostalgia, this episode was fine. I do feel that if these were generic characters, the episode is just as effective. The familiar faces are just a bonus.
I feel the execution was worthy of criticism. Crusher, as the only new source of lines, should have been used more to smooth things out. Some of the Spock and Odo dialogue felt off, especially when older Spock’s voice meshed with the younger.
Odo was an odd choice to use, but I gotta wonder if he was deliberately chosen by the writers to honor Rene Auberjonois.
I gotta believe the choices of holodeck characters were purposefully chosen to honor those actors that have already passed on in life. Therefore, while in-universe it doesn’t make sense that Odo is in the simulation, it does make sense from a real world perspective. Nog would have been a good choice too but the character and his actor got shoutouts in Discovery already.
And yes, the audio recordings of the various characters (and in Spock’s case, within the same character) don’t match in terms of quality and source but that’s a conceit the producers had to contend with based on real life practicalities. They did the best they could and it didn’t take me out of the story to a significant degree. I loved seeing all of these beloved characters rendered in CGI and having Gates McFadden guest on the show with a new voiceover (as opposed to old audio recordings being repurposed).
Oh yeah, this most recent episode would have been a perfect opportunity for Jonathan Frakes to add to his record of Star Trek spin-off appearances, currently at 5 different series. But still plenty of time to continue on that trend.
There certainly is an argument to be made that it was gimmicky fan service, but I took it as a loving tribute to those who have passed and as a way to connect those new viewers they are trying to acquire to some more of the classic characters. For my part, I loved every minute of it. Had me laughing and crying simultaneously, which is something I like my entertainment to be able to do. Interestingly enough, they had actually written a role for Rene Auberjonois but he passed away before he could perform his lines, so they did a tribute to him instead. If he were in originally intended to play the role that Crusher played, the character that could actually deliver new dialogue to Dal, I could only imagine what classic Odo snark Auberjonois with the liver in response to Dal’s performance.
https://comicbook.com/startrek/news/star-trek-prodigy-episode-6-kobayashi-writer-aaron-j-waltke-interview/?_gl=1*g7lw7h*_ga*a0pvRXJqNC1USDlHYjhJVnlkLUVXMm13Q3dROWxFSHQ3cWg5Z3I5UmVycEZzN1lYdUVjNHVmTlNkcGpwYzVESQ..
*grumbles* forgive the voice translation errors in the last sentence. I caught all of them except that one.
Finally saw “Kobayashi,” and while on the one hand I see Christopher’s point, given the choices in who they used — the deceased Leonard Nimoy, James Doohan, and Rene Auberjonois and the very-much-in-ill-health Nichelle Nichols — I can’t bring myself to be bothered by it, given that it’s a tribute to actors who were such iconic parts of Trek. I was also very happy to hear Gates McFadden, especially given how Picard has continued to ignore her for no compellingly good reason.
But the meat of this story was Gwyn’s part of the narrative, especially the origin of her creation. The plot has thickened a whole heckuva lot with the revelations we get here, and I’m eager to learn more.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Yeah, I think you may have to say the cameo part of the episode is a bit of a failure, as it distracted so much from the story it was telling for too many people. The bits were to put the series into the context of Trek, and have a little fun, but there seemed to be too many distractions (not for me, as I was able to take it all at face value…the main story was to give Dal a little humility).
And, yeah, Gwyn’s part was a meaty mystery, which is obviously tied tightly into the Diviner’s story (and probably into the death of his race).
Decent episode but definitely a come down from the highs and fun of “Kobayashi.” Here we get more of the necessary growth of Dal into becoming a more mature person, not to mention, as a leader.
I’m sure by the end of this series he’ll be applying for Starfleet Academy!
As soon as I saw the Ferengi character I knew where the story was going and so there were no real surprises or twists. I was hoping that we’d buck the stereotype and the Ferengi daimon would have some nuance and might actually be “good.” Nope! I’m surprised that she was depicted as basically manning the big Ferengi Marauder starship all by herself unless you count the floating cube companion as helping to run the ship. I think mainly the writers wanted to use the lovely familiar starship design rather than some smaller less notable craft.
So I wonder what Dreadnok did to Chakotay and his crew once the former invaded the Protostar?
I thought the Phage was already cured according to Jason Alexander’s character in “Think Tank.”
And I guess we’re following in the tradition of Voyager’s small universe syndrome: not only does Dal come across a familiar face after a 4,000 light year leap, but the particular character is a Ferengi, yet another Alpha Quadrant species somehow running around the Delta Quadrant like it’s basically no big deal at this point (like all of the other AQ species we’ve encountered since the very first episode).
A pretty good episode, with some lovely animation of the aliens and their sand constructs, a beautiful use of the medium to create an intriguing, if implausible, alien species. Garreth’s right about the small-universe syndrome, though — not only is there the puzzle of how a Ferengi got this far from their usual haunts (and how Gwyn can read Klingon), but the Vidiians were clear on the opposite end of the Delta Quadrant. I’m tired of the way this show treats an entire 1/4 of the galaxy as a single area.
The Klingon cloaking device was an exact match for the one from “The Emperor’s New Cloak.” However, the transporter effect looks like the Kelvin version, with swirling circles of light around the subject.
A technical observation: If Murf is indestructible, then it should not be possible to disintegrate Murf with a transporter beam.
An oddity: The publicity gives the episode title as “First Con-tact,” a pun on “con,” but the onscreen title said “First Contact,” which if taken literally would make it the second Trek episode in recent weeks to reuse an earlier episode title exactly (after Discovery‘s “Anomaly”).
@154/garreth: “I was hoping that we’d buck the stereotype and the Ferengi daimon would have some nuance and might actually be “good.” Nope!”
This show is supposed to be about introducing Trek to new viewers, though, not playing on the expectations of veteran viewers. And the real point wasn’t about Ferengi, it was about establishing that Dal had a con-artist mentor.
“I thought the Phage was already cured according to Jason Alexander’s character in “Think Tank.””
Yeah, but it was a scam the Ferengi was pulling, so it didn’t have to be factually accurate.
@155/CLB: I read in an article from the episode reviewer on TrekCore that the title will be eventually corrected by the studio to match what the publicity material stated.
I just double checked and it’s showing as Con-tact on Crave. The hyphen is small but it’s there
I loved how the kids started playing with the transporter, which is exactly how a bunch of kids would react to a transporter if given sudden unfettered access to it after being unfamiliar with the technology.
Of course Dal was raised by a Ferengi. So much makes sense now.
The visuals on the sand planet were stunning. This is what animated Trek can do so well, and I love that they’re taking advantage.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@158/krad: “Of course Dal was raised by a Ferengi. So much makes sense now.”
Except galactic distances and travel times…
Really, what’s the point of setting it in a different quadrant if you’re just going to reuse all the old familiar species?
Technically they’re in the Gamma Quadrant now, which makes a Ferengi…marginally more probable, since they could have gone through the Bajoran wormhole; but yeah. I don’t see how they could not know about the Federation, given that the entire galaxy seems to be rotten with species from the immediate vicinity of Sol. Still; love seeing the Ferengi again.
@159 – “Really, what’s the point of setting it in a different quadrant if you’re just going to reuse all the old familiar species?”
“This show is supposed to be about introducing Trek to new viewers” – @155/Christopher
Using the old, familiar characters and such is how they’re introducing new viewers to Trek, just in a different setting. “If the mountain will not come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain.”
@160/Iacomina: “Technically they’re in the Gamma Quadrant now”
That’s what an onscreen graphic implied, but it was never stated in dialogue, and it’s inconsistent with what was stated in dialogue, that they moved only 4,000 light years, less than ten percent the width of a quadrant. Given some of the VFX errors in Discovery in recent years, like showing a Class-M planet next to a space station said to be 100 AU from Earth (i.e. out in the Kuiper Belt beyond Pluto) or showing the inside of a turboshaft as some vast open volume bigger than the entire ship, I’m disinclined to trust anything shown in visuals that isn’t verified by dialogue — especially when it appears to contradict the dialogue, as this does.
“since they could have gone through the Bajoran wormhole”
Not at all. The Gamma Quadrant is not one place any more than the Delta Quadrant is. They’re entire fourths of a gigantic galaxy. You might as well say that Tierra del Fuego is in easy walking distance from Nome, Alaska because they’re both in the Western Hemisphere. The Bajoran wormhole is clear on the opposite side of the GQ from where the Protostar would have to be if it were actually in that quadrant, just as Kazon space is clear on the opposite side of the DQ from where the Window of Dreams is supposed to be. They should both be decades away from the Protostar at Voyager‘s best speed — either the Protostar‘s former location or its current one, which aren’t that far apart in galactic terms.
About seeing the Ferengi–that didn’t bother me. She could’ve gone through a wormhole. What strikes me as extremely odd is that Dal–who I assume is a Delta Quadrant species just happens to be raised by a Ferengi. To me that’s the most implausible part of the episode.
However, I did like the actual story. The aliens were beautiful, and I found the idea of their using crystals to reshape the environment interesting and plausible (I’m still trying to figure out how noncorporeal Zero could build himself a robot body–maybe he has similar power?)
@162/CLB: None of the various Star Trek series and films have been particularly good about realistically depicting the vastness of space and how it really should take much longer to get from point A to point B than as shown. A particular egregious example that stands out in my mind is when the Enterprise-E in First Contact goes all the way from the Neutral Zone when the Borg are already at Earth and in a battle with the fleet and the hero ship seems to get there in mere minutes to save the day. Basically it’s whatever’s best for the sake of expediency and making the story work, light years be damned.
@163/Mary: Maybe Zero had assistance from corporeal beings in constructing their robot body?
#164. Yeah, that bit in First Contact is a bother. To be fair, Data does estimate their time from wherever they began in the movie, presumably not far from the Neutral Zone.
“Admiral Hayes is mobilizing a fleet in the Typhon sector.”
“At maximum warp, it will take us three hours, 25 minutes–“
“We’re not going.”
But whatever the ETA to Earth is, it isn’t given.
The only way I can make sense of that distance is that Starfleet had a running fight with the Borg all the way through Federation territory to Earth, perhaps slowing them down, and what we see is their final pitched battle, with the Enterprise arriving late…? [shrug]
@153 – Q’Onos being 5 days from Earth in Broken Bow and the Klingon Neutral Zone being within visual sighting of said planet in ST: Into Darkness.
Star Trek has always move at the speed of plot. The new shows are just leaning into that rather than “correcting” it.
And yet there are examples in Star Trek of using distance to build tension. See the long (perhaps too long) journey to meet V’ger, the countdown of flying towards the Sun in Voyage Home, and the race/countdown towards Khitomer in Undiscovered Country to name a few. Not sure why they don’t go to that well more often. It’s usually effective, even if only a minute of screen time is used.
@167 – You’ll notice that those are all from the TOS era. Lately, everything has to be rush, rush, rush and it makes the galaxy seem like it’s just the local group/. Add to that the tendency to run into people and races that are known to the crew, especially when the ships are supposedly far out on the frontier, and it just adds to Star Trek’s small universe syndrome. Space isn’t all that big, it’s easy to travel extremely long distances in very shot spans of time and so on. Sometimes it feels like the population of the Star Trek universe has, at most, a few thousand people in it.
I absolutely loved “Time Amok,” particularly because it managed to do time travel for the nine millionth time on Trek and still do an interesting new take on it. I’m not sure the events as shown hold up to anything like scrutiny, but it worked for me as a story. I especially loved that Rok basically had to teach herself warp mechanics and computer science in order to a) build it and then b) restore Janeway, the latter necessary because nobody actually told her what to do with the gadget once she made it. Which was a hilariously simple but believable touch. I wish Zero had gotten more screen time, but otherwise, this was a good spotlight for the entire crew, and also helped mold them into more of a team nicely.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@169/krad: Agreed. My initial reaction was “Oh no, not another time anomaly story, those never make sense,” but it ended up being a really good character story. (And it didn’t really make much sense, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as most of Voyager‘s later time travel/anomaly episodes.) I’m glad they finally dropped the pretense of being Starfleet cadets, though it didn’t take long to resolve that.
This is the first time we’ve been given a stardate, but it’s one digit too long to make sense. If this is 2383, it should be 60xxx.x, but it was given as 607125.6.
Rok’s line about wishing she could hug Janeway confirms that she can’t become tangible, which doesn’t make sense in the context of other Trek holograms and seems to contradict the episode where Holo-Janeway was shown tapping commands into a console (though that could’ve just been a visual representation of a direct computer interface, as a teaching aid for cadets or something). I wonder… could it be that training holograms are made intangible so that the trainees can’t depend on them to do the work for them?
I quite liked this week’s episode, even if the time travel dynamics were a little nonsensical. Good character development for Rok-Tak
The dates are rather difficult to pin down, but given that time travel was likely involved in the Protostar‘s predicament, is it possible that the Federation banned hard-light holograms outside of the holodeck as part of its overall synth ban? Were any of Rios’s holograms tangible? I think that they must have been, but his operation didn’t exactly seem above-board.
Yet another episode of this series I now love. Fun time-travel gimmick, great character growth for Rok, and nearly every character gets some good moments. Cool revelation that Drednok could essentially infiltrate Protostar using the industrial replicator. Looks like at least part of him is left functional which will undoubtedly spell trouble in the next episode. Also, the tension is heightened because he has no qualms with hurting (killing?) Gwyn which is essentially disobeying what the Diviner wants. Excellent score too which reminded me of the series Lost, in particular the emotionally dramatic music which would always pull at my heartstrings.
@173/garreth: No surprise, since Michael Giacchino scored Lost as well as doing the theme to Prodigy, and the show’s composer Nami Melumad definitely gives her scores a Giacchinoesque sound.
@174/CLB: Right, I knew about the Lost connection already knowing that Giacchino did Prodigy‘s theme song but assumed maybe he scored this episode too. So I was a bit surprised that he didn’t. But it makes sense if Melumad is paying homage to the former composer’s sound.
I think I’m most curious now about where Captain Chakotay and his crew are now in the “present” of this show. Did they go back in time 17 years ago and remain stuck there in the Delta Quadrant all this time? Are they marooned or imprisoned somewhere? But obviously they will show up on this series and I’m looking forward to seeing the characters and Chakotay’s reunion with Protostar and Holo-Janeway.
How come no one is complaining about the FEEEEEEEEEMALE Ferengi wearing clothes?!?! (Plus I thought her lobes looked awfully big.)
Answer: it’s a show for 7-year olds. I get that. And maybe Ferengi society did turn around quicker than expected after Moogie’s influence so a female could be a Daimon without anyone questioning it and/or that’s why she’s in the Gamma Quadrant on her own making profit and/or we really don’t have a specific timeline totally set for the show. But still…
So, after three weeks of binging the last 5 years of Trek (minus Lower Decks which I gave up on pretty much immediately) and reading through the reviews/reactions here… I can finally say HI to some old screen names I’m happy to still see rocking the Trek universe! *waves to krad & clb*.
It’s been a crazy weird trip throwing myself back into my former fave universe in such a concentrated form, but happily, Disco, Short Treks and Picard brought my heart back to these strange and familiar, old and new worlds. And I’m enjoying Prodigy more than I expected. The animation is really impressive and appealing.
I’m sure the universe has changed a lot while I’ve been playing in others. But I just had to express my cranky DS9 roots with the Ferengi question anyway. :D
I may start kicking in commentary on Star Trek: Andromeda… I mean Disco (ironically also filmed in Canada lol), and Picard when those new episodes drop, too. Man, it would’ve been nice to have those production values on Andromeda though. Maybe the monsters wouldn’t have worn yak hair. Then again…
Happy to be back enjoying the Trek after such a long time away… js, author
Why would anyone complain about a clothed female Ferengi? Women being allowed to wear clothes and earn profit had already happened by the last season of DS9. This takes place many years after that…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I didn’t recall the whole Ferengi empire had culturally changed that quickly by the end of DS9 that a female Daimon with her own ship was the norm within such a short time after presumably hundreds of years of oppression, But maybe it did. :) Been about 20 years since I was around it and only been back watching Trek for 3 weeks so perhaps such details were lost to time for me. :) — js, author
Oh wait a minute – now I remember – there was a Quark in drag episode that completely shut my brain off anything further with the Ferengi storyline. Lol
And now I’d like to once again forget that ever happened… :D
Still impressive that a female Ferengi so quickly rose in the ranks to Daimon – if this is five years after VOY which ended two years after DS9 – and she had time to become a Daimon of a ship and be Fagin to Dal’s Dodger for a few years before selling him off to the mines, that was still a near immediate rise to power just off of a repressive male-dominant society. Damned impressive.
@180/jsTREK: Since Dal’s mentor was off on her own in the Delta Quadrant, thousands of parsecs from the Ferengi Alliance, I doubt she’s legitimately a military DaiMon; she probably just uses that title to make herself sound impressive, since who’s going to know? It seems likely that she fled Ferengi society decades ago, came into possession of her ship, and somehow ended up in this quadrant, totally disconnected from Ferengi civilization. If we had iconoclasts like Pel and Ishka defying traditional gender roles and finding ways to get out of the house and do business, it stands to reason there would have been others who did so before the rules were changed.
@181/clb: That makes more sense that she left earlier, “acquired” the ship and gave herself the title. The idea of that culture shifting that fast seemed highly unlikely!
Part one of the, I guess, midseason finale was today, and unusually, they credited the entire writers’ room for the script, something they could do because the WGA rules don’t cover animation writers (even though what they do is identical to what any other TV writers do).
Pretty nice story — the group decides to go back to Tars Lemora to rescue the other prisoners, they work up a Clever Plan, it seems to go wrong as soon as they arrive, but of course it’s all part of the Clever Plan, which we’ll see the payoff to next week. Some nice fakeouts with Murf and Zero. And they all don Starfleet uniforms for the first time, and it’s yet another new design. Holo-Janeway switches her uniform to match, which makes me wonder why she was in VGR-era uniform to begin with if these were the Protostar uniforms all along.
Loved this latest episode, “A Moral Star, Part 1” (an anagram of Tars Lemora as I read in another article). It was a sweet moment when Dal and gang donned the Starfleet uniforms for the first time and Holo-Janeway changed her appearance to match them. Fun stuff also seeing the debut of the “evil” Holo-Janeway. Really looking forward to seeing the mid-season wrap-up next week. Perhaps a cliffhanger with Captain Chaokotay?
@183/CLB: I’m guessing Captain Chakotay had some hand in designing or picking a template of Voyager-era Janeway for the Protostar cadet-training hologram and that’s why it appears as it does: for nostalgia and fondness. Holo-Janeway just took it upon herself to alter her visual appearance in solidarity with her new young crew. Regardless, it made for a nice uplifting moment.
Also noticed the interesting writing credits choice. A nice gift to the group for residuals.
I’ve been waiting for them to go back for the kitty kid!
Kept wondering “where’s Murf?” repeatedly but didn’t guess. Clever way to hide the little critter!
Liked the moment Janeway changed her uniform to match the kids. And evil holo-Janeway was fun, too.
They may not be Protostar specific uniforms but cadet uniforms.
@186/kkozoriz: I’m doubting they are cadet uniforms because then why would Holo-Janeway decide to change her appearance to wear one? And let’s not forget that Captain Chakotay wears one as well based on the previous holo-image of him.
@187 – Janeway is a training hologram. There may be an academy specific uniform.
I don’t recall Chakotay’s appearance well enough to comment. However, if he was wearing one, why wasn’t Janeway?
And why are they wearing Starfleet uniforms? They’re not in Starfleet. I could see them being cadets under the tutelage go Holo=Jameway but it makes no sense for them to be wearing full on Starfleet uniforms. They haven’t attended the Academy, they haven’t taken the required courses. They haven’t graduated. Even Kelvin-Kirk was more legitimate as a Starfleet officer that the kids.
Oh I know, it’s symbolic to show that they’re now acting as a crew but they should not be, in any way, wearing legitimate uniforms.
@188 Aside from the symbolic, they have in a practical sense “taken Star Fleets Credit” and signed up. By taking the role of Star Fleet in the face of adversity and enemy, they become Star Fleet. Call them cadets or perhaps “Midshipmen” if you like but even though it’s a kid’s show they’re being portrayed as risking everything they have to help others.
As someone who wore a real uniform for a while, I have no problem with seeing them in that uniform.
@189 – SO all you have to do to be Starfleet is do stuff Starfleet does? Cool. Who needs four years at the academy?
@190
I don’t think putting on the uniforms meant literally that they’re Starfleet. I think it’s more symbolic. They’re representing Starfleet. I mean, if this show was set in Federation, it’d be inappropriate. but, they’re in the Delta Quadrant. As far as we know, there are no other Starfleet ships around so it’s up to them.
It was also sending a message to the Diviner specifically. “We are no longer the scared slaves and runaway progeny you know. We stand together.”
@191 – So, to the inhabitants of the Delta Quadrant, they ARE Starfleet. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when they screw up in Starfleet’s name.
Sure, put them in a uniform of some sort. Just not the Ines that the crew if the Protostar were wearing. Imagine someone finding an abandoned US Navy ship, putting on US Navy uniforms and sailing around. (Also imagine that for whatever reason, the US Navy isn’t able to get to them for whatever reason).
It’s a kids show, so people are unlikely to die, but how realistic is that?
@190: Wesley Crusher was representing Starfleet on the bridge of the flagship both in and out of uniform for nearly three years before he shuffled off to the Academy. Are you up in arms about that too? If he established this precedent, there’s no reason the characters on this series can’t do it too.
Imagine someone finding an abandoned US Navy ship, putting on US Navy uniforms and sailing around.
I’d watch that show.
Skipper and the Zoo Crew! — every Saturday morning on CBS!
@194/garreth: Wesley isn’t a good example, because he was given a brevet rank by an authorized Starfleet captain, so it was legitimate and official. He didn’t just put on the uniform by his own volition. But the Protostar has no commissioned Starfleet officers aboard it, only a training hologram.
Although apparently they are only wearing cadet uniforms, so it’s possible that Holo-Janeway, as a teaching program, has the authority to grant them cadet status, at least on a provisional basis until the Academy can officially accept their applications.
@197 this is exactly what I was thinking. And even if there were some in-world issue with this, it’s a minor nit in the grand scheme of things. I mean, 8 episodes in and they bang out an episode that makes my top 3 Trek episodes OF ALL TIME. This has just been a fantastic series. I mean, if YOU didn’t want to hug Rok last week, you’re an absolute animal. And this week has left me on the edge of my seat to see how their plan unfolds the rest of the way. I haven’t felt that way about a Trek cliffhanger since probably Riker said “Mr. Worf, fire!” at the end of BOBW1
It may say “Nickelodeon” on the tin, but it’s pure Trek on the inside…
@197/CLB: My point is, it’s rather trivial to complain about the Prodigy “crew” wearing the cadet uniforms. In-universe, these kids are finally showing unity and cohesion as a team, as well as living up to the ideals of the Federation, and the donning of the uniforms crystallizes these notions. Holo-Janeway in modifying her uniform to match shows her explicit approval. And from a viewer perspective, this is a satisfying moment seeing our young heroes taking this big step in their journey (of personal growth).
@198/critter42: I think Prodigy is the best Trek series since DS9 and it’s only 9 episodes in (if you count the premiere as 2 episodes as the production code does). It’s charming as heck! I keep saying it, but this is the series and crew that should be next in line to be elevated to the Trek film series mantle and bring back mainstream interest to the franchise.
@197 – “Although apparently they are only wearing cadet uniforms”
They appear to be the same uniform that Chakotay was wearing.
@199/garreth: I agree about the uniforms from an in-story perspective. But sometimes stories ask us to ignore broader real-world considerations in order to accept their conceits. And there’s no reason we can’t look at a thing from two different perspectives and acknowledge them both as valid. I can’t help thinking about the idea of “stolen valor,” how upset military people get when they see people who didn’t serve pretending that they did. This isn’t quite the same, admittedly, since they’re not claiming to have won medals in combat or something, but they are asserting an identity they haven’t formally earned the right to claim. While I get the symbolic value of the uniforms within the narrative, it still feels premature to don them before they’ve officially been admitted as cadets.
@200/kkozoriz: “They appear to be the same uniform that Chakotay was wearing.”
Apparently Holo-Janeway’s revised gray-and-black uniform is the officer version, which is what Chakotay had on, while the kids are in the white-and-black cadet version.
https://twitter.com/NCC4705/status/1487311189831036928
@201 – I’ll have to take a closer look at what little we saw of Charity and hopefully we’ll see a non recorded version of him.
However, they’re not wearing white cadet uniforms.
The cadet panels are pure white. This is closer to the blue/gray listed as command. The inset picture shows Dal wearing a uniform but the panel is not white as in the drawing.
@202 that is simply due to the lighting in the frame you captured. They are 100% wearing white paneled suits. Take a look at Dal’s initial reveal, then for confirmation go to the end where they’re floating in no gravity – those uniforms are absolutely white. They just pick up shadows extremely (too?) well.
@204 – That does appear to be the case and is poorly done.
If you look at the Twitter link, Dal’s uniform looks light blue and it’s supposed to be the white. It might have been better if the kept the three primary colours and simply reversed the colour and black panels for the cadets.
Despite the lack of clarity in some of the images, yes, the kids are all wearing cadet uniforms with white panels, while Janeway (and Chakotay in the flashbacks) is wearing an officer’s uniform with a gray panel.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
The cadet uniform looks light blue in almost all the pictures I’ve seen. As it’s animation, it should be easy to make it clearer, regardless of shadows or whatever is causing that. In the twitter link Christopher posted, there’s an image of the white cadets uniform as well as the traditional gold, blue and red. I don’t know what grey is supposed to represent.
I liked this week’s episode, though I’m hoping that there’s some deeper reason for which the Diviner can’t just talk to the Federation and convince them to put off first contact with the Vau N’Akat.
Also, even more new uniforms in the USS Dauntless bit at the end. These ones are so similar to the ones from Lower Decks that I don’t know why they didn’t just use those ones.
Wow. This was a terrific midseason finale with a powerful climax. Zero unleashing themself on the Diviner like that was really intense, and the truth behind the Diviner’s mission and the danger the Protostar now poses were striking revelations.
I loved the bit where the two Unwanted discovered they could finally understand each other and wanted to confess their deep feelings for one another. It’s so nice when background characters have lives of their own that we get to glimpse, rather than just being plot puppets. Although I do have a problem with the show’s conceit that it’s impossible for different individuals to learn each other’s language without computer translation, even after spending years together. I mean, Gwyn learned plenty of languages without the help of a universal translator, so logically, the Unwanted could have too. Although I guess we saw in the first episode that the prisoners were discouraged from talking to each other, so that could explain it.
@207/Iacomina: No, I think the Diviner’s just blinded by pain and vengeance. He as much as said that the downfall of their civilization wasn’t the Federation’s fault, but was a civil war between different sects that arose in the decades after first contact. Given that plenty of other civilizations have made contact with the Federation without self-immolating afterward, the factors that destroyed the Vau N’akat must have already been latent within their civilization. So the way to save them is not to destroy Starfleet, but to identify those internal destructive factors and heal them. If anything, the Diviner’s haste to destroy is itself the mentality that would have triggered the conflict. It’s just easier to blame others than to take responsibility for oneself.
As for the uniforms, the Lower Decks designs are simplified and lacking detail, so could it be that they actually are the same uniforms?
It’s odd how these shows are staggered in the timeline. Lower Decks is currently in 2381, Prodigy is in 2383 (though the stardate in the finale would put it in early 2384), and the Mars attack in Picard was 2385, with the evacuation fleet for the impending supernova active for a few years before then. So they’re almost but not quite overlapping. It’s strange that they don’t put them more in sync and use a consistent uniform design.
For the record, there will be a new post about the mid-season finale shortly.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
#209!!!! Good! :)
#208: that is much of what I thought. I actually found the idea that the reflection off of the com badge could have that much impact to be very interesting. Then, at the end, when She is supposed to have lost all memory there was still a twinge when Dal ordered the ship to head to the Federation. The Diviner’s evil is not over yet…
My review of the test of the half season is now live.
https://www.tor.com/2022/02/03/star-trek-prodigy-arrives-at-mid-season-with-hope-and-fear/
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
That one is closed, so I’ll ask here instead for when will we get an article on the second half which has started with a (heh) bang?
@212: I’m assuming Krad will do a recap of the second half of the season once all the episodes have aired, based on how he did things with the first half.
There will be a review of the first three episodes of the half-season (“Asylum,” “Let Sleeping Borg Lie,” and “All the World’s a Stage”) this Thursday, then an overview of the whole season once it ends at the end of the year…
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Having finally jumped into this corner of the TREK Galaxy (I’m only up to Episode Nine, Season One) it’s been gob-smackingly gorgeous to date: Rok and Zero are currently wrestling for the title of My Favourite, but I’m not sure there’s even a weak link in the ensemble (Dal is my least favourite character, but he’s still worth following – if with an occasionally jaundiced eye) and Morphy is the BEST Emotional Support Goop.
Oh, and even Hologram Janeway being a caffeine fiend is an in-joke that just keeps on giving (Amusing mental image of the flesh & blood Admiral Janeway trying to make do with holo-coffee at one point in her illustrious career and failing very, very badly indeed).