Don't miss out on this masterfully produced series
By far the best of the new Star Trek series, Prodigy has just released its second season after being rescued by Netflix from Paramount's incomprehensible decision to cancel it. Set between the end of Voyager and the start of Picard (and possibly later than Lower Decks), Prodigy follows a team of teenagers who stumble upon an abandoned Starfleet experimental ship and use it to flee from the world where they've been enslaved. In season 2, having finally reached Federation territory and applied to Starfleet Academy, they become involved in Vice Admiral Kathryn Janeway's secret mission to find the missing Captain Chakotay, who is stranded somewhere in the future.
As befits a sequel to Voyager, Prodigy is filled with the weirdest space anomalies and time travel complications. Furthermore, a season of 20 episodes of 20 minutes allows for a richer variety of settings, tones, subplots, secondary characters, side quests and individual arcs than has been the norm in the rest of new Trek. Although nominally targeted at children, Prodigy doesn't avoid the deep existential questions that were the staple of The Next Generation, and its space battles are breathtaking to watch.
The main cast undergoes phenomenal inner growth during this season. The Medusan Zero occupies the niche that previously belonged to Spock, Data, Odo and the Voyager Doctor: the outsider learning to adapt to life among humans/organics/solids/corporeals. Gwyndala has on her shoulders the responsibility of preventing an era of violence on her home planet. Jankom Pog has to learn to harmonize his unorthodox approach to engineering with Starfleet's clear preference for standardized procedures. Rok-Tahk continues her training as a scientist while dealing with the insecurities sparked by failed experiments. Murf starts to overcome the language barrier between himself and his friends. And Dal is served a big helping of humility to mitigate his Main Character Syndrome. Without spoiling the development in Chakotay's arc, I'll just say that ending up lost in the Delta quadrant again hasn't made him very happy.
It's curious to notice a couple of very specific elements that this season of Star Trek Prodigy seems to have borrowed from Doctor Who. Because the biggest danger to solve is a time paradox, but a time paradox is not a tangible villain to fight, a type of extradimensional monster is introduced that is drawn to time anomalies. Not only does it hunt people whose existence is causally tenuous; upon eating its targets, it removes them from the past and from memory. But this enemy is reserved for special occasions; our heroes also have to defeat political conspirators, slave catchers, a rogue AI, a deceptively alluring paradise, desert beasts that eat lightning, the turbulent depths of a cloud ocean, tribbles out of control, accidental universe-hopping, impossible technology pried from a genius imagination, a rival time traveler, the threat of interstellar war, and weaponized wormholes, all while sneaking around the limited trust that adults have in them and racing against the imminent unraveling of linear time.
I tell you, this show goes big.
A plot that hinges on restoring an earlier timeline brings up questions of acceptance versus regret. The show makes it clear that the preservation of one single original timeline is preferred by the universe, but for the story to have emotional impact, it also has to be preferred by the characters. Season 1 put our heroes through some horrible moments, and the writers of season 2 are evidently aware that creating a time travel crisis that can only be solved by reasserting past events the way they happened the first time means that our heroes must reach a point where they consciously choose to put themselves through the whole experience again. There's a feeling of amor fati in this authorial choice, a gesture of ceasing to wish that all the lived fear and hurt had proceeded otherwise. The way the universe is saved in this season is by means of a big yes to reality.
Another noteworthy detail in this season of Prodigy is the abundance of references to other Star Trek shows. As far as I could keep track, the script creates explicit ties to The Next Generation, Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, The Voyage Home and even the Kelvin timeline movies. However, quite unusually for this era of Trek, the references don't steal the spotlight from the main events, and only appear when they're relevant. It's refreshing to see so much fan service without it being gratuitous.
It's unfortunate that Prodigy hasn't received the degree of acclaim that has been showered on other Trek series like Strange New Worlds or Lower Decks. This found family of lost children is not only a wonderful window into the setting of the Federation from an outsider perspective, but also, and more importantly, a door that invites future Trek fans to join in the adventure.
Nerd Coefficient: 9/10.
POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.
