Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2
SPOILERS TOTAL. You've been warned.
201: Into the Breach, Part I 2024 July 1
(First watched 2024-07-01)
202: Into the Breach, Part II 2024 July 1
(First watched 2024-07-01) (Combined thoughts) So it's about a half year since the big battle at the end of season 1. The main characters are doing well in their own various ways. Being brought on Voyager-A, them finding their new spots seems almost like the start of a new Lower Decks, with them "ranking" even lower than the actual cadets on board.
Of course by shenanigans they learn of a possible secret mission, though they got the clues in such a clumsy fashion I wondered at first if it was intentional. Our Protostar crew members are also very clumsy about keeping a secret, though, and end up involving the cadets. Interestingly, they then get split up so both the group accidentally going through with the mission to the future and the group left behind consist of ex-Protostar and the cadets. Who in their early interactions were a bit adversarial, but I suppose now will be forced to work together.
The stuff on Solum was pretty interesting, too. Gwyn tries to make a less harmful first contact... but is too late because Asencia beat her there. Their people must live pretty long lives, because the future and present Asencias look more or less the same even though they're supposed to be 50+ years different in age. We also see the young "The Diviner", who as might be expected seems like a completely different character, not being put through the events that forced him into his mission last season. An astronomer, even, who dreams about other worlds.
So there's a Big Mysterious Thing that sends short messages to Voyager a couple times in the episode. Didn't exactly try playing with the voice to detect familiarity, but wouldn't be surprised if that's sent by one of our familiar characters later in the season.
203: Who Saves the Saviors 2024 July 1
(First watched 2024-07-03)
204: Temporal Mechanics 101 2024 July 1
(First watched 2024-07-03) (Combined thoughts) More strange messages and assistance from an unknown source which I'm still guessing is our characters. The Chakotay situation is a bit weird... were they or weren't they part of a loop there? Because if they were, it should've gone the same way as before. But if they weren't, it seems like it would've been even more different. Chakotay and birdman sure didn't seem to have a solid way out of their cell without help. But I guess loops can be pretty complicated. Loops within loops.
Who is Murf talking to? More of his kind? The presentation was kind of like Enterprise's Future Guy.
Was the Vulcan named Majel? *checks* Yup, Maj'el.
205: Observer's Paradox 2024 July 1
(First watched 2024-07-04)
206: Imposter Syndrome 2024 July 1
(First watched 2024-07-04) (Combined thoughts) Ahh, so mystery entity is Chakotay... maybe.
It does seem strange that they could go this far with not understanding Murf. I mean, putting someone in a Starfleet mentorship program when your only communication with them is loose gesturing?
The holodouble trouble with too-good copies not understanding they're the copies was well done, and the mixup with them at the end seems like fun shenanigans.
Good line from the Doctor about our characters: "I haven't seen a crew this dysfunctional since the Cerritos."
Not specifically about these episodes, but it feels like this season should've had a different opening sequences and it was just something that had to fall between the cracks when they were semi-cancelled. The intro is still all about the Protostar, which is not the hero ship of this season, and still includes Hologram Janeway from last season too.
207: The Fast and the Curious 2024 July 1
(First watched 2024-07-05) This is the first time I've watched two episodes and they didn't flow together so much I just wrote about them together.
I get that there was some worry about using the old Borg tech, but... did they really have a choice? They have a person whose existence relies on a timeline which is currently busted, traveling for months doesn't really seem like an option.
Though the trouble they ran into was not Borg, it felt pretty Borg-like in the end. An AI controlling humanoids to try and make them more perfect. Felt like something else that would go into the collection of megalomaniacal AIs seen on Lower Decks.
208: Is There in Beauty No Truth? 2024 July 1
(First watched 2024-07-05) Kind of a dick move on the part of the people on the planet to not explain the pros and cons to Zero before building a body for them. But I was surprised that it didn't end with a total reversion to the status quo. They say the body could only be maintained on that planet, so what does that mean? Is Zero going to start like falling apart as they go on? Will they eventually be forced to go back into their old containment unit or replacement? Will some workaround be found, as with the Doctor's mobile emitter or Gwynn's it'-OK-I-wasn't-created armband?
209: The Devourer of All Things, Part I 2024 July 1
(First watched 2024-07-06)
210: The Devourer of All Things, Part II 2024 July 1
(First watched 2024-07-06) (Combined thoughts) So not themselves, not Chakotay, but the secret messages have been from... Wesley Crusher. The only Traveler willing to take on a mission with such a low chance of success because it's his home turf. Slightly crazed Wesley really comes off as rogue Time Lord material here, except in his goofy salmon sweater.
The threat actually reminds me a bit of Wesley's major appearance in the Coda books ending the long-running Star Trek novel continuity. In that case the ~weird ~magic creatures would touch somebody and kill them by draining the rest of their life out of them. In this case ~weird ~magic creatures devour a person and don't just kill them, but erase them from history entirely.
Something I've been missing from this whole time alteration thing. All the focus has been on Gwynn not existing, but would that necessarily be so? Regardless of whether Chakotay was on the Protostar, would the Diviner and the others have not tried to follow and get the Protostar, and so the Diviner would still be in the position of wanting someone to continue his work? But regardless of whether she actually exists, all of season 1 would disappear. Why only Gwynn fluxing? The rest of the Protostar crew would also not be in their current positions, nor the rest of Starfleet in general.
211: Last Flight of the Protostar, Part I 2024 July 1
(First watched 2024-07-07)
212: Last Flight of the Protostar, Part II 2024 July 1
(First watched 2024-07-07) (Combined thoughts) So they meet up with Chakotay and the Protostar, stranded on this planet for 10 (!) years. They manage to eventually prove themselves to Chakotay, and work on a crazy plan to get the ship spaceworthy again. But I do wonder... now what? The Protostar seems pretty beat up after 10 years on that planet, not the near pristine shape it was in when they found it last season. So do they fix it up to make plugging it back in to that point in history work? Or will some other workaround be used to undo the wrongs they did before? More lastingly important than the condition of the Protostar, will the final version of rescued Chakotay that returns to Starfleet (I'm assuming he survives this season) be one that spent 10 years in exile?
213: A Tribble Called Quest 2024 July 1
(First watched 2024-07-08) So Rok's brief speech on modifying tribble biology at the beginning of the season actually paid off. And uhhh, also Rok accidentally created a Rok baby out of tribble DNA and snot? What is this, Space Babies?
214: Cracked Mirror 2024 July 1
215: Ascension, Part I 2024 July 1
(First watched 2024-07-10)
216: Ascension, Part II 2024 July 1
(First watched 2024-07-10) For purposes of movies and whatnot, it's usually kind of hard to take seriously threats against the entire Federation that aren't made by a similarly vast power. But Asencia using time manipulation technology to speed up war production is a pretty neat trick. But... how? We see they've captured Wesley and are using his knowledge, but... how that? Their people, even 52 years in the future, didn't seem to have the sort of technological know-how to wrangle a Traveler.
I previously made a comparison to Coda and its weird things that would age a person--here one of the special time weapons had a very similar effect, though given in a more dispersed manner. Zero sacrificing their body seemed like a logical and meaningful way to counter the threat, though I'll say the solution to Zero's problem seemed... simple? So Zero never had the sensations of a real body until getting one on the weird planet. But now even a junior engineer like Jankom Pog with very little time can modify Zero's previous containment suit design to have more sensory input? Why wasn't this standard before? When they first started talking about an artificial body I was assuming they'd go for something shaped more like the one Zero had recently been inhabiting.
Space battle with Voyager-A, Protostar, and shuttles against Asencia's big thing was Pretty Big. The sort of thing we're usually more likely to see at season finales. So I guess the remaining four episodes will get Really Big.
(First watched 2024-07-11)
218: Touch of Grey 2024 July 1
(First watched 2024-07-11) (Combined thoughts) So Wesley getting caught on purpose so Asencia could build crazy devices which they could then repurpose to send the Protostar back in time... solid enough time travel reasoning, just incorrectly unaccomplished by other people not in on the full details.
It's very weird to in 2024 see a legit Star Trek production where there's an away team consisting of Janeway, Chakotay, The Doctor, and Wesley Crusher.
We've only seen a bit of Young Asencia until now, fun to see that she is full-on with the opposition. A person going back in time with a warning for their people from the future, but overdoing things so much they can't even keep their younger self on board... good time travel premise.
219: Ouroboros, Part I 2024 July 1
(First watched 2024-07-12)
220: Ouroboros, Part II 2024 July 1
(First watched 2024-07-12) (Combined thoughts) Probably the best Star Trek series finale of the year. So far.
So a lot of the action was about properly getting the Protostar back to where it should've been in the past. I admit I'm not sure why they felt so much pressure to do this using this tricky wormhole method. As covered in Temporal Mechanics 101 there are a number of ways to time travel. They knew where the ship needed to be. So as long as they could get the ship to the proper place in a time when there was no Diviner there to see them work, would that not have been problem solved?
The epilogue / intended season 3 setup was getting pretty dark. Love a shared universe, but still pretty weird to see the attack on Mars that was part of Picard's backstory show up in the kids show. But a Starfleet stretched to its limits and even shorthanded at the Academy gave them enough excuse to give the newly-promoted ensigns a new Protostar-class ship to go... do good deeds or whatever.
Lots of good little character moments. A hologram Janeway _again_ thinking she's too big to copy. Wesley making contact with his mom, and new little brother. Dal realizing he's not (yet) the best choice for captain.
So many damn uniforms seen in this episode. It was already the case for this show, but now they added "Picard flashback mid-2380s" uniforms to the mix, plus the all-new style used by the new crew of the Prodigy.
Just how much room in Voyager does Cetacean Ops take up? That whale sure seemed to have a lot of room to navigate. Of course, they could always be using holodeck-like trickery to make it seem larger than it really is. Bigger on the inside.