“Asylum”
Star Trek: Prodigy Season 1, Episode 12 – Debuted Thursday, November 3, 2022
Written by Diandra Pendleton-Thompson
Directed by Olga Ulanova & Sung Shin
Things get spooky in an episode that introduces the kids to the Borg, leading to plenty of action, emotion, and even a bit of fun.
Again with the Borg!
WARNING: Spoilers below!
RECAP
“The Borg are sleeping”
After a helpful rerun from episode 10 in the holodeck, the prodigies are up to speed on Gwyn’s time-traveling dad and his dastardly plan to use the Protostar as a trojan horse to destroy the Federation. This sets off a desperate search for “the weapon,” with the evil red-glowing orb eventually found in a hidden subdeck below the bridge… yet another part of the ship Holo Janeway was unaware of. After some dubious attempts, it is determined this future tech isn’t easily destroyed and is too dangerous to just throw out an airlock, even if they could figure out how. Maybe Starfleet could help, but they now know they can’t go anywhere near Starfleet or risk a repeat of what happened to that communications relay station last week. And that’s when the ship detects another vessel… a real big boxy kind of thing.
Holo Janeway is definitely nervous, telling the kids they have stumbled upon the Borg, a race of ”enhanced humanoids, mindless drones that assimilate everyone they come across into their collective.” Instead of heeding her wise counsel to leave immediately, the kids are intrigued. Learning the Borg can adapt to any weapon, Dal sees an opportunity to get their help with Diviner’s weapon, and since it appears this cube is dormant, kid captain is foolhardy enough to think they can sneak in and get the info they need without becoming part of the collective themselves. Relenting, Janeway advises the kids to “act harmless”—the old standby for Borg away teams. Entering this “spooky” haunted house of dormant drones, they climb their way to the cube’s central nerve center to find the only way to tap into the vinculum (nice deep cut) and get the knowledge they is for someone to use one of those scary alcoves. Zero volunteers, as they have some experience with hive minds, and they are greeted by the collective, which soon becomes overwhelming… and starts waking up the drones who are quick to scan the fancy new tech ship that flew into their cube. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.
Gwyn gets a nice shot for the ‘gram.
“We need him awake”
Meanwhile, someone who knows more than just about anyone about the Borg is busy trying to assimilate some tea (doctor’s orders). Commanding the USS Dauntless, Vice Admiral Janeway continues her hunt for Chakotay and her big lead is The Diviner, now in sickbay incoherently rambling about a “daughter” and a “mission.” We meet the cantankerous Dr. Noum, who appears to have just arrived from the jerk store. The Tellarite tells the admiral she should be thanking him for just getting this unknown alien out of stasis, but he has no clue how actually to wake him up for a chat. The ever-helpful (cough – admiral’s pet – cough) Asencia suggests using the fluid from the suit The Diviner was wearing, which impresses Janeway, and annoys the Tellarite doctor. While they wait to see what that does, the admiral orders the ship to the last known proto-jump point, Communications Relay station 721. She is closing in.
Janeway without coffee is not going to end well.
“Why are they waking up?”
With transporters not working (of course), the kids have to escape their way back to the ship and make the heartbreaking decision to leave Zero behind for the moment. Inside the collective consciousness, the Medusan is still on mission, trying to get Borg help on the weapon, which they describe as a “living construct,” but their only suggestion is to just assimilate the Protostar and crew… so, not really helpful. The other kids try to make their way back to the ship but are thwarted by Borg in a chase across the cube. After some heroics from Dal (and even Pog), all but Gwyn are captured. She can save them if she listens to Janeway and stops fighting, so Gwyn gathers all her courage and puts down her sword to walk against the terrifying tide of drones back into the heart of the cube. There she finds Pog, Dal, and Rok strapped to boards… awaiting assimilation. Oh, and Zero shows up with a few new attachments and an eerie green glow. Resistance was futile.
The Medusan drone begins the process of assimilating his former crew, telling Gwyn there is no Zero anymore. But she knows Z is still in there somewhere, and appeals to their love for their friends, reminding the Medusan of their desire to no longer cause any harm, like the harm the Borg are now making them do. Zero breaks free of the hive mind with the revelation they are already part of a collective, albeit a smaller and more adorable one. Their green glow turns back to purple and the Medusan resets the drones to their dormant state (for now)—so it’s time to go. The prodigies escape the cube, and find the mission wasn’t a total bust: Zero reveals the Borg confirmed The Diviner’s weapon cannot be deactivated or removed from the Protostar. Janeway is impressed at how this kid collective is adapting as they remain determined to use the ship to help those in need, and right on cue, they pick up a distress signal. Time to do some good deeds.
As for real Janeway, she and the Dauntless arrive at the relay station to find it completely destroyed. Shaken, she now knows Chakotay is not in command of the Protostar, and she’s phaser-focused on finding and stopping the madman who would destroy a helpless frontier outpost. And speaking of madmen, The Diviner wakes up.
Dal realizes he should listen to Holo Janeway more.
ANALYSIS
A new mission
Following last week’s excellent return, Prodigy keeps up the momentum with another strong episode with a different tone. With a delightful mix of horror and humor, “Let Sleeping Borg Lie” does an impressive job of setting up the stakes and parameters for the rest of the season, with the Protostar kids learning they can’t pursue their goal of seeking out the Federation but can still live up to their new Starfleet ideals by using the power of their mysterious ship for good. The Borg were truly terrifying, balanced by some of the best comic relief of the series from the always-reliable Jason Mantzoukas as Jankom Pog, who went on his own little arc of admiring to rejecting the cube’s tech.
Which one of these buttons delivers more hot dogs?
Even with the series’ plot arcs and deep dive into franchise lore with the Borg, this is a character-focused episode at its heart, primarily for Zero, who has not had enough attention on the show. Even though exposing their true Medusan form did save the day in episode 10, the accidental harm to Gwyn (now resolved) has been haunting Zero. One could see how the Borg collective hive mind could offer Zero a welcome reprieve thanks to a nuanced performance by Angus Imrie with a nice assist from Ella Purnell’s Gwyn, who helps them come through this collective crucible to find new peace and a new mission to save, perhaps setting them up as the ship’s doctor as this episode embodied their own discovery of a sort of the Hippocratic Oath to never again do harm. Maybe finding the solution through the power of love was a bit simplistic, but there were still many layers to this character story for a kids’ show.
Even Medusans need hugs
This episode (along with the previous one) appears to set up a pattern of how the show will represent this dual track of Holo Janeway guiding Protostar crew through adventures and Admiral Janeway leading the Dauntless crew on the hunt for Chakotay and the Protostar. This week, we got our first good sense of Jason Alexander’s Dr. Noum; the show is really leaning into the argumentative side of Tellarites, as he is from the school of curmudgeonly Star Trek doctors but on a whole new level that could get annoying pretty fast if they don’t add some more layers to his character. We can now also see how it’s plausible for Admiral Janeway to have a totally different perspective on the kids, setting her up a conflict that will likely run through the season finale, and having the Diviner on board will only make that journey more interesting. Hopefully, it won’t be long until we see John Noble as the Diviner interacting with Mulgrew’s admiral, although possibly in a different form following his Medusan madness. While limiting the Dauntless scenes to just a few moments in each episode may be the right call, you are definitely left wanting more.
Janeway made sure she got the only center chair for her new ship.
Borg again
Using The Borg as a vehicle to move Zero’s character story forward along with setting the parameters for the “living construct” weapon was an inspired choice. It’s fun to see this classic Star Trek adversary through fresh eyes as these kids don’t know a Drone from a Denobulan, so we get to relearn the terror of the Borg all over again. And this episode also had an interesting connection to canon, picking up on the Voyager series finale with future Janeway’s neurolitic pathogen getting namedropped and explaining why these Borg resorted to Bond-villain style assimilation instead of using the more familiar nanoprobes. It’s fitting this episode arrived the same week as Halloween, as this was the scariest entry of the series so far, full of haunted house chills thanks to a sort of revitalized collective.
Scanning, scanning, scanning
There was a subtle Murf subplot in this episode that seemed to go nowhere, but this series has shown an ability to play the long game with hints dropped early on that pay off in later episodes. So the brief moment played for a gag with Murf getting sick in the holodeck is likely just the start of the “metamurfosis” coming later this season. Keep a close eye on that cute little blob. It might have been fun to see how the Borg reacted to Murf, but so be it.
Murf doesn’t like this holodeck program
Final thoughts
Star Trek: Prodigy is really showing its potential by revisiting a classic Star Trek race and giving both a canon update and a different perspective due to the nature of the show’s characters. With these first two episodes of this 10-episode arc behind us, we can now see the show settling in for some possible planet-of-the-week adventures while Admiral Janeway continues her pursuit, adding an additional layer of tension. The newly Emmy-nominated Prodigy continues to be much more than a kids’ show; it’s a show any Star Trek fan should be able to enjoy.
Who put a deck under the deck?
RANDOM THOUGHTS AND CANON CONNECTIONS
- Stardate is 61284.3
- As Jankom scans the ship, he finds some Star Trek metals including tritanium duranium alloys and transparent aluminum.
- On the cube, Pog is impressed with Borg tech that includes carbon tubing, thermo-couplers, and monotanium aperture valves.
- Gwyn’s “heirloom” showed a new ability, automatically transforming into a key to unlock the hidden door to the “weapon.”
- Pog’s multi-tool hand includes a cutting torch.
- While Zero shed some of their Borg attachments, it looks like they kept some enhancements to their hands, like a cutting drill.
- The Borg designation for Medusans is Species 802.
- Pog line of the week: “Great, the Borg never assimilated a turbolift?”
I’m here to chew space gum and phaser things and I’m all out of space gum.
More to come
Every Friday, the TrekMovie.com All Access Star Trek podcast covers the latest news in the Star Trek Universe. The podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Stitcher and is part of the TrekMovie Podcast Network.
New episodes of Prodigy debut exclusively on Thursdays for Paramount+ subscribers in the U.S., and on Fridays in Latin America, Australia, Italy and the U.K. The series will air later in the year in South Korea, Germany, France, Austria and Switzerland. Prodigy is also available on SkyShowtime in the Nordic countries, Portugal, and the Netherlands and will launch in Spain and central and eastern Europe in 2023.
Keep up with all the news and reviews from the new Star Trek Universe on TV at TrekMovie.com.
loved it. this show is wonderful.
This was probably my least favourite episode of Prodigy so far. Maybe it’s just Borg fatigue at this stage, but I wasn’t really drawn into the story and I found it all felt too rushed. I guess it just came down to feeling like there were no real “stakes”? Yes I know they were on a Borg cube and we were told by holo Janeway about how dangerous they are, but I think that by now any real threat that the Borg might have imposed originally has been so watered-down, and this definitely didn’t help matters. They escaped so easily, and the resolution of Zero finding her individuality again was too quick and rather confusing. I don’t understand how they rendered all of the other Borg drones unconscious/deactivated once they found themselves again with that random explosion, if you can call it that.
I enjoyed seeing real Janeway and the tea thing was fun, but I found the pacing of the doctors line’s ranther unusual. There was a lot of empty space around his dialogue which made his cranky demeanour veer into plain rudeness. I’m guessing they were going for a play on the now very Star Trek trope of “good doctor with bad bedside manner” like Bones or The Doctor, but those characters were also endearing.
I enjoyed the stuff with the device and by the end of this episode we’ve seen the story evolve beyond the kids just trying to reach the Federation, so it definitely had a clear impact overall. I just wasn’t as impressed as I have been. I think the character parts, the story revolving around Zero’s guilt needed a lot of work. I get that it’s a kids show so they have to come at things in more simple terms, but they’ve handled big emotional ideas well previously.
The little seed of Murf’s transformation being planted in the beginning of the episode was exciting, honestly it’s the thing I’m most looking forward to in Prodigy. I have no idea how they’ve made a blue blob of goo so damned charismatic and charming.
Although I didn’t enjoy this episode, I love Prodigy. Very happy it exists. And I have to say the music is fantastic. Nami Melumad Is doing an incredible job scoring these episodes.
“I’m guessing they were going for a play on the now very Star Trek trope of good doctor with bad bedside manner like Bones or The Doctor”
He’s a Tellarite. They tend to be argumentative and rude, Pog notwithstanding. It’s a species trait.
True, I didn’t consider that. Thank you!
Was he? Honestly I couldn’t tell. Some of the character rendering leaves something to be desired.
Murf is so cool, funny, and powerful.
Dangerously close to entering my top five all time favourite Star Trek characters 😅
What is really fascinating, is the fact that we have just watched 12 episodes, we are still halfway Season 1! At some point, I feel Murf will transform like Groot. :D
I don’t like to make Marvel comparisons, due to the fact that should be the other way…Feige and the Russo Brothers (Marvel) are being inspired heavily by Star Trek. :D
I don’t care what they say. It’s been nearly a year since episode 10. This is season 2.
You do realize they are clumping all these episodes under season 1 right now and will package it that way in the future? And really who cares??? I know we’re Star Trek fans and we can get a little, you know, sometimes, but yeah.
I know what they are saying. I’m just reacting to what is actually seen. Yes, it’s a small thing. But it’s not a crime to point out that it is weird.
*they regarding Zero
Thank you, I wrote “They” a few times but a “her” did slip in. Learning.
You’re all good dw :)
I really liked this episode but I definitely get your points as well. And I also admit, Zero quilt over what happened with Gwyn is getting a little tiring now. Zero is a great character and probably the moral center of the group but we get it already. I also think they escaped from the Borg too easily but Borg are having some issues these days.
And yes I did like Admiral Janeway and the tea moment too! Which BTW is a nice connection to Endgame since that’s what future Janeway was drinking. That was pointed out in another review I saw but I love how much these guys do their homework on both this show and Lower Decks. They are both so great at adhering to canon both big and small.
Episode could’ve been a bit stronger as you said but still really enjoyed it personally.
I’m glad you enjoyed the episode, and have to agree with you on the nice tea connection to Endgame. It’s just a fun little addition that shows their respect for what’s come before and their interest in Star Trek. As Danpaine pointed out I really appreciate how they can call back to past canon without altering it in a confusing way or just completely destroying it.
For me (or a lot of us) that’s what I appreciate so much about the animated shows. They both go out their way to get the canon completely right. Nothing on those shows feel out of place. They match the eras they are in well. And if there are any differences, you chalk it up to time differences but everything fits or explained in the canon itself.
It’s why a lot of fans have an easier time with these shows than they did with Discovery (if you don’t like it). Unfortunately that show went the opposite way its first seasons and why it was a good idea to move it from the 23rd century but it never should’ve been there in the first place IMO. It just looked and felt too advanced and just felt out of whack.
Being a Tellarite excuses his personality, but the doctor’s dialogue wasn’t very well-delivered, I’d have to agree there.
“some of the best comic relief of the series”
I really like this show, but I also very much disagree with that. Pog is just a little too silly for my tastes in this episode. The humor didn’t fit the dire nature of the episode. Even on a show aimed at little kids, there needs to be some logic to the story decisions.
Well… It still contains more laughs or even smiles than Lower Decks.
Prodigy is such a great show! There are no single boring episodes. Today we got the perfect introduction for the kids to the Borg.
We learned more about the secret weapon against Starfleet, and we also got the kids to know about the collective.
For an instant, I thought that the living construct was control. Then, I keep thinking that the real mistery has to be related to Chakotay. At this point, rescuing him in a cell or isolated planet is not enough for the quality of this show.
I cannot give enough praise about Prodigy. My kid has been watching me watching Star Trek for his entire life. This year, for the first time, I can see he is becoming a Trekkie!
It brings me so much joy that for the first time he is really into the franchise.
My wife too, she has watched hundreds of episodes and all the movies with me because of me. First time ever she has been asking for more. We are all enjoying watching Prodigy together.
What a cool thing to have the family react so positively and be able to enjoy it together.
Has been an unexpected surprise!
Really happy your family is enjoying this Jay! Hopefully your kid will be as big of a Trek fan as the rest of us in the future! :)
I really can’t say enough about this show. It just hits all the right points every week. And so happy Admiral Janeway is a part of it now. The whole mystery with Chakotay, Dal and the time travel aspect is so well done. They are slowly peeling the onion. You know how good it is when you check the time and get frustrated the episode is almost done. I always want more in this show and LDS!
Lucky you. Over a decade ago I tried to introduce Trek to my son. Sadly it didn’t take. The wife doesn’t watch it either. Oh well. They still have lots of great traits in spite of that tiny flaw. :)
Lucky, yes, indeed….ten years ago, very likely I would be in the same situation. So glad with Prodigy, also Lower Decks. These new animation (shows) are far superior than the majority of the live action shows.
So Janeway by this point in her career timeline hasn’t yet made full Admiral. Well that kind of makes sense. It follows that that the unfortunate Borg alliance she developed is what is holding her back from that highest level promotion. That was a huge violation of Starfleet principles, and only through the success and famous nature of her bringing her crew back safely did she avoid a court martial. Otherwise she certainly would have got the full promotion like Kirk and Picard got.
No Michael Burhnam treatment here — instead of a demotion and jail time, Janeway got promoted for her freelancing recklessness.
Not taking the speculative bait on why, but Janeway is a Vice-Admiral here. Same rank she obtained in Endgame, so that’s fairly consistent. She was a Rear Admiral in Nemesis, so they skipped a step promoting her to begin with. Picard reaches the rank of Admiral with four pips, Kirk never rose higher than Rear Admiral.
Another great episode!!
I loved all the Borg scenes. The cube inside and out looked great. But It was nice to finally see the real Borg again after seeing different versions of them on Picard and holodeck versions on Lower Decks. It was also interesting to see the virus future Janeway released in Endgame still had an effect on the collective years later. And we learned that the Borg can also assimilate basic consciousness since that’s all Medusans are.
The scenes with Admiral Janeway was fun too and we’re now starting to get to know her crew as well. That doctor is a hoot. But yeah, he is also a Tellariite, so there you go! And I didn’t realize Jason Alexander voiced him until I read the review. For some reason I thought he voiced the Denobulan who we saw last week at the relay station. But I’m really loving the story line on the Dauntless and how it ties into Chakotay’s mission.
Now I didn’t love everything. I thought how they got away from the Borg was a bit too simple, but yeah it’s a reminder it’s still a kid’s show. And it was odd how the cube just showed up out of nowhere and of course was right there to help them find what they were looking for literally the minute they needed answers on the weapon. But it’s all minor stuff.
But Prodigy is just so well done. With this show and Lower Decks, it’s just been a lot of fun as a fan and to be back in the 24th century with both old and new characters. Can’t wait for next week!
These two shows (STP and STLD) are an unexpected surprise. I really thought these animated shows were going to ruin my love for the franchise. It is the total opposite. :D
Yeah, it’s really crazy how that happened. I thought the animated shows could be fun but I never thought they would be this good lol. They are so different from each other but both does such a great job with canon and how they balance their stories. Maybe it’s because of my disappointment with both Picard and Discovery so far (which are the shows I was hoping to love; especially Picard) but LDS and PRO has renewed my interest in Star Trek in a big way. It feels like Star Trek I haven’t felt since the 90s. They both just feed off those shows and era so well IMO.
I was set for live action shows, completely took me by surprise, I was not expecting anything from this shows, seriously, I guess I was thinking of my childhood cheap DC or Marvel cartoons…writing this thinking of terrible 90s cartoons.
I think it’s safe to say animated shows have become much more sophisticated today versus kids watching them in the 90s or earlier. There have certainly been some amazing shows in the past, but it does feel more mature overall now.
Is not only in the visuals, but also in the quality of the script and the stories. The content, the ideas. Its only a streaming show, can you imagine with the budget for a film!? I can’t wait.
Haha that is totally true and an understatement Tiger2. I grew up watching the Flintstones, Johnny Quest and Scooby Doo and to me, that is what animation was all about. To this day, I have seen few episodes of TAS simply because as a preteen, I dismissed the series as being a ridiculous 70s cartoon. Btw, I have however seen Yesteryear and decades later, that made me realize TAS wasn’t as “cartoonish” as I assumed it would be.
I watched TAS for the very first time last year and I didn’t even know if I could finish it lol. But I really enjoyed it by the end. And yes Yesteryear was definitely the stand out.
But comparing TAS to shows like LDS and PRO, you really see how far animation has come. Or at least shows with a real budget lol.
Have to agree with those who thought this was a good episode, worthy of the series. Overall, I liked both the episodic story as well as the advancement of the season arc. For the most part, Prodigy feels like I’m watching a live action Trek series and this episode did not fail to do the same.
Only minor complaint was the quick wrap up of the escape from the cube. That is the downside of watching a 30 min show plus I have to keep reminding myself the target audience of Prodigy haha! It is so good, I keep forgeting.
So true. It was a quick introduction to the very complex Borg, they had to wrap it up right away, to move forward with the Living Construct reveal.
I really like the Borg Drone upgrade, cool, and less creepy. Also more aliens, less humans. They could say because they were in the Delta Quadrant. I could say the freedom of being an animated show!
I was liking this. Not a big fan of using the Borg but again the reason? I find myself caring about these characters. When I care about them then I care about what happens to them. This does not exist in any other Secret Hideout Trek show. Honestly every character in every other show could bite the dust and it would engender a, “oh well. Moving on.” response.
Anyway, I like all of the episode except for the end. Not really a fan of Zero just “willing” himself out of the collective as well as planting the sleep command. Felt pretty unearned and cheap. Hopefully this will not permeate the show too much. It’s the most positive thing Secret Hideout has done. Would be a shame for it to slide down the toilet, too.
I’m just shocked you made it to episode 12 and still like this show. That’s already a record for you! ;D
A record for Secret Hideout Trek. Certainly not a record for the 4 Berman Trek shows. Which were still all better than Prodigy. One is just one or two steps better (TNG) but it’s still better.
Yeah I know you are talking about the modern Trek shows and not the classic ones. You seem to like all of those even if you’re not a huge TNG fan.
And of course I still love the classic shows over the new ones as well, but I am enjoying most of the new ones so far at least.
I find this show really enjoyable, much more engaging than DSC and PIC. The plot points are consistent, it respects the past but doesn’t burn it down, and as you said, ML, we actually care about the characters. Good writing, well done. As someone said above, it’s easy to forget the target audience for this is children.
Great point about the show respecting the past but not burning it down. The Ten Forward bar debacle from PIC came to mind when you wrote that; just so needless and confusing. And it’s things like that that give me the ick when it comes to the live shows.
LDS and PRO do such a wonderful job of honouring the past canon, playing with it and maybe building upon some ideas but without altering it in any destructive way. Like the Kobayashi Maru episode from season 1A, or the DS9 episode of LDS.
I really liked this one and I’m really starting to wonder if the Cube may be the Artifact.
I don’t think so because with the Artifact, it sounded like it was a fully functional cube until they tried to assimilate the Romulan (can’t remember her name) who took part in the Admonition and that’s what destabilized that cube. And that was 15 years later.
The whole assimilation of Zero was stupid. It has long been established that assimilation is a physiological process through nanobots. You can’t assimilate an energy being who has no blood, bones, brain or central nervous system. Just like you couldn’t assimilate a Changeling.
That was something I was thinking about as well. They may have assimilated the mechanism surrounding Zero, but not Zero the entity himself. I actually thought he would be impervious to assimilation.
Did anyone else notice the “I, Borg” reference? Zero very innocently saying “Resistance is not futile?”
I was just happy to hear the Borg pronouncing “futile” like Brits again. It was one thing for Data and Seven to say it the American way since even she was allowed a scrap of individuality within the collective (“I speak for the Borg”), but for the Collective to pronounce its famous catchphrase inconsistently? Hmmph!
That always bugged me too. I’m from Canada, so our spelling and pronunciation is all over the place. However, I personally prefer the Brit pronunciation. Otherwise, it just sounds like ‘feudal’ 😂. I think in “Regeneration” they said futile the Brit way too…maybe I’m wrong.
This was a great episode! Loved seeing the Borg back.It definitely felt a little rushed in the end but it was fine. I’m just happy they explained how future Janeway’s pathogen affected them after all this time. Loved the new Borg designs and the cube looked like the Artifact from Picard. I also like how big the interior looked inside. It was gigantic and I loved it! ♥️♥️
This episode finally felt like a traditional Borg story again we haven’t gotten since Enterprise. So I decided to make it part of my Borg theme watch I try to do once a year (the Borg are my favorite species in Trek). This is my Borg watch list:
-Regeneration
-Q Who
-BOBW
-First Contact
-Scorpion
-Dark Frontier
-Let Sleeping Borg Lie
I hope really we see them again on this show!
I really liked some of the more varied Borg we saw. One of the big benefits of an animated show (either 2D ala Lower Decks or 3D ala Prodigy) is that you’re really only limited by your imagination, and that showed with how we saw a rhino(?)esque Borg that would’ve been difficult if not impossible to create in live action (at least back in the day).
I also didn’t put two and two together with the neurolitic pathogen preventing the Borg from using their nanoprobes for assimilation, as I was wondering why they were going about he assimilation in a more old-school manner. Not sure if that’s actually the reason why, or if it was simply needed for plot reasons, but I’ll take the neurolitic pathogen reasoning for sure ;)
I’m hoping we’ll get to spend a bit more time with real Janeway and the Dauntless. I know that isn’t the focus of the show, but the little bits and pieces we’ve been getting the past couple of weeks are just making me want to know more. Specifically, what the hell is up with the Dauntless? There’s got to be a reason why this ship is a near replica of the non-Starfleet Dauntless from “Hope and Fear.” We also don’t know what type of propulsion it’s using, but presumably it has to be some kind of slipstream tech for it to travel as and as fast as it’s been able to do. Maybe there’s something about the physical design of the Dauntless that makes it work with slipstream vs. a standard Federation starship. I also just want to get to know the Dauntless crew more. This was the first episode we heard Noum (the doctor, i.e. Jason Alexander) speak, and I think we’ve only heard Tysess (Andorian, i.e. Daveed Diggs) speak once. In general I feel like there’s a deeper story with this crew beyond it just being a standard Starfleet crew; there’s something that feels weary about them.
In any case, I’m looking forward to next week! And the week after, and the week after that… ;)
How on earth did they do all of that in only 24 minutes?! I’m amazed at the writing on this show, the way they manage to tell such a rich story in such a short amount of time.
I’m so word-oriented that visuals are often nearly wasted on me, but even I noticed that the visuals in this episode were stunning and were wonderfully effective at setting and maintaining the proper tone for the story. Just glorious!
Zero has been one of my favorite Prodigy characters from the start, and I’m thrilled to see them be used so well. Medusan super-powers for the win!
(I’m late to the party because I had other things I had to do on Thursday and Friday, and then yesterday I basically fell over from exhaustion. I’m glad I waited to watch this episode until I had more energy, because this is such a wonderful episode; I wouldn’t have wanted to watch it while too tired to appreciate it.)