1x10 A Moral Star (2)

[7.5/10] This is a tougher one for me to rate because there’s some parts I really like and some I really don’t. Let’s get the rough stuff out of the way first.

So much of this episode is one big game of take-backsies. Our heroes have successfully smuggled the protostar core off the ship and thwarted The Diviner! No wait -- he just beamed it out of Murf. The Diviner and Drednok have reprogrammed Hologram Janeway so that she’s evil now! No wait, Gwyn anticipated that and put failsafes in place before, so Holo-Janeway’s been fine all along! The Diviner just told Gwyn the meaningful secret behind his mission and the threat to the Federation the U.S.S. Protostar represents. Oh wait, she has amnesia now.

It’s a really unsatisfying approach to storytelling. I realize that Prodigy is a kids show, and so some allowances have to be made. But I think that’s an excuse for some extra simplicity and spelling things out for a younger audience, not for shaky approaches to plot. It’s hard to appreciate the big developments on the show when they get yanked back somehow minutes later.

I’m likewise conflicted about how our heroes overcome the obstacles the Diviner left for them on Tars Lamora. I love that Rok-Tahk is the one who repairs the installation’s shields and life support thanks to her new engineering skills, cementing a very Trekkian moral of not limiting someone to what you expect of them based on how they look.

I also like the symbolism and poetry of Dal using the miners’ manacles to patch through the universal translator. He and his team uniting the “unwanted” by undoing the Diviner’s babel-like method of separation, and allowing them to communicate with one another is a nice tack. All that said, there’s something a little disappointing about Drednok being this big bad evil robot who gets walloped by a crowd of motley miners and a Caitian’s claws all too easily. Again, it’s rousing to see a bunch of oppressed people rising up and taking down the enforcer who held them down, but the show doesn’t really earn the moment in terms of how it goes down.

It earns other ones though. Dal and Zero arriving to help Gwyn, even if they don’t have a plan, is a nice reflection of the growing friendship and devotion among this group of friends. It’s Dal using his natural improvisational skills, but using them for altruistic rather than self-serving purposes, and again, speaks to his growth as a character and a friend over the course of the show’s first ten episodes.

Likewise, I’m glad that we finally get to open the mystery box of the Diviner and the Vau N’Akat that the show’s been teasing this whole time. I’ll confess, I’m a little leery about him being a time traveler from the future who’s come to stop the Federation before they “destroy” his homeworld. It’s a little too Xindi for my tastes, though maybe I’m just leery given that bad execution of a similar idea.

What I do like, though, is his reasons for hating the Federation. It sounds like first contact was divisive, much as it was in the season 4 episode of TNG appropriately titled “First Contact” (but not to be confused with the movie called Star Trek: First Contact, phwew.) The reveal that it sparked a civil war, something that the Diviner blames the Federation for rather than his hardline preservers of “the old ways”, is intriguing, making him an appropriate villain as someone antithetical to the Federation’s communal values. His antagonism ties in to the themes of the show and to Star Trek more generally, which I appreciate.

I’m also intrigued by the poetry of his attempted revenge on Starfleet. The idea that the Protostar will somehow make the Federation ships turn on one another (I’d guess through messing with sensors to where friendlies appear as enemy ships?) is a good tease.

I also like Zero being the key to neutralizing the bad guy. Bringing back a Medusan is basically a promise to make some character go mad eventually, and the Diviner makes sense. Once more, it’s poetic to have Zero resist the Diviner because he made Zero use their status to hurt people, only for Zero to then turn around and use those same powers on the Diviner himself. I’m still not crazy about the visuals for the show, but Zero unstrapping themselves from their containment suit is realized in brilliant tones.

Heck, as much as I instantly cringe at any type of amnesia story in this day and age, there’s more meaningful symbolism in Dal telling Gwyn to look at him rather than be a spillover ivctim of her father’s misdeeds, a rendition of how found families can give us support and raise us up from difficult situations, only for Gwyn to be affected thanks to the reflection in his Starfleet badge. This is big, epic, movie Trek stuff, with an operatic approach that befits the season finale.

I don’t know. THere’s a lot to like here. Everything’s a little less cerebral and character driven than in the first part of “A Moral Star”, but there’s still some good beats and big reveals to chew on. This is definitely a step down from what came before, but the show’s heart’s in the right place, even if some of the plotting still leaves something to be desired.

Oh, and not for nothing, Kate Mulgrew still knows how to knock a good old fashioned Star Trek voiceover out of the park! Her speech about our heroes being “prodigies in the making” is cheesy as all hell, but damnit if when she says it, you can’t help believe it. The tease of the real Janeway recognizing the Protostar’s signal and venturing out to rescue Chakotay is a tantalizing hook for next season as well.

On the whole, I walked away from the first batch of Prodigy’s episodes more enamored with the show than when I started. This still feels a lot like “Star Wars Rebels in the Star Trek Universe” to me, but that’s not a bad thing. The series is clearly affectionate toward the wide history of the franchise, and uses the values of Trek in meaningful ways when translating what they would mean to a ragtag bunch of kids. Like those young heroes themselves, there’s still more growing to do, but Prodigy is off to a good start.

Nabbed this one a mere hour or so before the show was pulled from Paramount+ (the way US laws allow corporations to dodge taxes by providing worse products is so stupid), and at least I'm ending on the mid-season finale.

This episode has peak-Marvel-movie-level rapid-fire character payoffs, with all the satisfaction and craft that implies. I made delight noises out loud at the miners who could finally talk to one another, the miners' charge, Janeway's (obvious but still satisfying) reversal, and Drednok's defeat. Like those Marvel movies, the ep doesn't ask much of the viewer - I'm entertained and briefly moved, and don't expect anything will stick to the ribs. And like those movies, it's missing an individual artistic sensibility; it's clearly a product of a committee. But that's all fine and great! Really good light entertainment is worth something in this world!

The writers' room is greatly assisted by the fact we're not trying to cram Star Trek 101 into this episode - they (finally)) get to play purely with already established toys. And they make use of almost everything the show has introduced so far, the payoff makes up for some of the earlier instructional video vibe.

There's still some real tonal strangeness here (though it's the same tonal strangeness of the Star Wars cartoons that were obviously part of the pitch for Prodigy): some pretty terrible traumatic stuff goes down, but we're not supposed to be worried when the folks the heroes are trying to rescue are floating a hundred feet in the air and we suddenly turn gravity on. The action has some of the usual problems of Star Trek action - the physics of the world are often not consistent enough to build satisfying set pieces atop. The mechanics are optimized for ethical dilemmas and character illumination, not action. (Here again the very ambiguous rules of when you can use the transporter to steal stuff are highlighted. And I'm not sure what this show is going to do with the Discovery problem of a super-fast super-ship whose tech isn't at all evident in material set later (Picard)).

The setup for the season's second half is very strong and I'm bummed it'll be a bit before I'm able to check it out.