TV Review: Star Trek: Prodigy
The mining asteroid Tars Lamora is ruled with an iron fist by the ruthless being called The Diviner, his right hand robot Drednok and their army of robotic Watchers. Their “prisoners with jobs” are called “the Unwanted”, a motley assortment of criminals, slaves and abductees sold to the Diviner by the Kazon and other dubiously moral authorities. The Diviner forbids the miners to have translators so that they can’t conspire against him, and tries to crush all hope. He certainly funds his actions with the cloaking device-powering Chymerium the asteroid is rich in, but there is a more important goal hidden somewhere deep in Tars Lamora.
Dal R’el, a smooth talker and quick thinker, takes advantage of a hunt for the mysterious Fugitive Zero to attempt an escape. While this fails, the Progeny, daughter of the Diviner, offers to set Dal free if he tracks down Fugitive Zero for her father. Dal finds himself attached to a Brikar miner, and by his mysterious connection with the fugitive, they stumble across Tars Lamora’s hidden treasure–a mostly intact starship! It turns out to have a functional Universal Translator aboard, and Dal and the Brikar, a girl named Rok-Tahk are able to communicate with Zero, a non-corporeal being inhabiting a jury-rigged robot shell.
If they can get the ship moving, the prisoners might be able to escape. Two others are recruited, self-taught engineer Jankom Pog and the blobbish…animal? Rok-Tahk names “Murf.”
Their captors are hot on the trail, and our young heroes barely escape, taking the Progeny hostage. (Though the Diviner is actually more concerned with not damaging the ship.)
Once away from the asteroid, it’s discovered that the ship has one other inhabitant, the hologram Janeway!
This CG-animated series was designed to introduce new young audiences to the concepts and worlds of Star Trek. “Janeway” is a recreation of the famous Captain Janeway of Star Trek: Voyager, voiced by Kate Mulgrew. She acts as an advisor to the ragtag crew, who she accepts as Starfleet cadets who’ve gotten horribly lost. (Her memory is…not all it could be.) Along with the young audience, she instructs the crew in Starfleet protocols and ethics.
The visuals in this series are excellent, and the opportunity is taken to have more varied aliens than the live-action versions are able to afford. As always with Trek, the writing quality of individual episodes can vary widely. But it’s the characters that really sell Trek series.
Dal tends to act even faster than he thinks. This often lands him in hot water, and his self-appointed leadership needs a lot of work. He’s of a species unidentified even by himself, one of the mysteries of the series. We learn later he was partially raised by a Ferengi trader, which explains a lot.
Gwyndala, the Progeny, initially is loyal to her father despite disagreeing with his cruelty towards the Unwanted and his refusal to explain just what their actual goal is. When the Diviner has a choice between saving her life and seizing the Protostar ship, he chooses the ship, while Dal and the crew save her even at the risk of their own lives, so she switches sides. (Later the Diviner regrets this poor decision even while remaining committed to his overall villainous goal.) She’s a translator who’s studied dozens of languages and been trained in basic starship operation without ever having it explained to her why. According to her father, they’re the only two left of their species. This is not entirely true.
Rok-Tahk, despite her size, strength, and armor, is the Brikar equivalent of an eight year old girl, with the emotional vulnerability that implies. She hates fighting, because even before being sold as Unwanted she was a slave forced to engage in battles for the amusement of crowds. She’s very intelligent, and picks up way more science than you’d normally expect due to a lengthy time educating herself in a time anomaly.
Zero is a Medusan, formerly part of a hive mind. As a non-corporeal being they have no gender as most humanoids understand it. They were stolen from their people and used by the Diviner as a weapon, as the sight of a Medusan’s true form can drive corporeal minds mad. They usually inhabit a robotic suit they kit-bashed together. Zero is incurably curious, which is how they got captured in the first place. Their telepathy is less useful than you might think.
Jankom Pog is a teenaged Tellarite who hails from before the Federation was formed; he and other orphans were selected to travel on a sleeper ship to a possible colony. When the ship was damaged, Jankom Pog was woken to fix it, despite being only a trainee. The robot assigned to help him would only recognize him if he stated his full name, so Jankom Pog developed a habit of speaking in the third person. His extended wakefulness drained the resources of the sleeper ship, so he left to preserve the remaining sleepers…only to be immediately captured by slavers. Like most Tellarites, he’s irritable and argumentative.
Murf is the team pet, and yet somehow seems to know the exact time to do things. Is it intelligent? Or just lucky? Who knows?
As is usual with series starring youngsters, the few adults they meet aren’t much help, and are often dangerous. Even Vice-Admiral Janeway, when she shows up looking for the Protostar, is more of a problem than a solution until nearly the end.
Halfway through the first season, the Protostar crew returns to Tars Lamora to face their hunters and free the Unwanted. Free of that problem for a while, they decide to finally seek out the Federation. Bad news! There’s a reason the Diviner wanted the Protostar, and delivering it to the Federation could fulfill his purpose even without him. Time to go on the run again!
The first season ends with a major change to the status quo–and then the second season was cancelled for a tax write-off as it was almost finished. Apparently it was picked up by Netflix and will air sometime in 2024.
My favorite episodes were ones with heavy ties to The Original Series; “Kobayashi” in which Dal tries to beat the infamous training scenario on the holodeck with the aid of several classic characters (most represented by audio clips of their original actors). It was kind of choppy, but this works well as a “video game” with limited data to draw on. And it’s good to see and hear Classic Spock one more time.
And then “All the World’s a Stage” about a world’s culture contaminated by a disastrous first contact so that they act out a distorted version of the Enterprise’s crew and stories. “Live long and proper.” It makes a nice counterpoint to the protagonists who are also pretending to be Starfleet in hopes of becoming better than they were.
This is a worthy addition to the Trek saga, and I recommend it for younger fans who aren’t quite ready for the decades of backstory all at once.
