Star Trek: Prodigy doesn’t disappoint whatsoever, and I say that as somebody who went into the first half of season 1 somewhat skeptical.
It’s that time again. I say again, but it’s my first time, because now we’re jumping into Star Trek: Prodigy. I wasn’t sure what we were going to get into. They were talking about how it wasn’t going to have any humans, it was going to be completely alien, it was going to be this whole thing. And I was very skeptical, because at the time we hadn’t been getting Star Trek like it was traditionally done. Now we have Strange New Worlds and some other things, so it’s been much easier to get good Star Trek content, and I was willing to give this one a shot. So I did.
Where We Are Coming Into Episode 11
For those of you who came in late, the basic gist is this. The Protostar, an experimental Starfleet starship, was lost. It was captained by Chakotay of Voyager. The series has a Janeway hologram voiced by Kate Mulgrew, which is very cool.
Where we find ourselves is with a ragtag group of captives, or prisoners, from what looks like a mining asteroid, who’ve stolen back the ship. I say back, but they weren’t part of Starfleet. They’ve stolen the ship, they convince Hologram Janeway that they’re recruits, and eventually they come clean. There are adventures through space, and you have to watch the first half of season 1. So here we are at Episode 11, “Asylum.”
Starfleet Welcomes Everybody
The episode starts with them arriving at a starbase, and when they’re greeted, they’re greeted as if they’re actually Starfleet. Then they come clean and tell the guy the truth, and he says, oh, well, hey, Starfleet welcomes everybody, come on in. First off, let’s get this registration process started. Let’s take DNA scans.
So they do, and they know for a fact that Jankom is a Tellarite, which is awesome, because Tellarites are a known quantity in Starfleet. Then they go to scan Gwyn and they can’t identify her whatsoever. Then they scan Dal, and Dal sets off all kinds of alarms that say notify Starfleet Command. So that’s exactly what they’re going to do, and that’s when a lot of these hijinks begin.
The Ship Was the Weapon
As the officer on board the starbase is checking them in and registering them, he goes to scan the ship. He’s like, what kind of ship are you? And as he connects to the ship, something begins to happen on the base. The computers start to turn on them. Doors open and close. Zero is helping scan Gwyn in the med bay at the time, and all of a sudden the thing has a shield on it, the water starts to rise, and it starts to drown her. The starbase has turned on them.
Amidst all of this, Gwyn begins to remember. She remembers her father, the Diviner, saying this would be the weapon. They would embrace it and welcome the ship with open arms, and it would make them destroy themselves from within.
So this virus, whatever it is that’s in the system, is quiet until it connects to something else of Starfleet’s. That’s what they’re facing.
Janeway on the ship is telling them, hey, you’re going to have to jump off this thing. The lieutenant thinks they’re saboteurs now. He’s like, this didn’t happen until you showed up. So he takes the last escape pod and he’s gone. Meanwhile they jump, in the hopes that she can catch them, and when they’re back on the ship it’s, hey, we don’t know what happened, we don’t understand, and they’re trying to figure out what’s going on.
Admiral Janeway, and Chakotay’s Promise
Meanwhile the real Janeway, the admiral if you will, has gone out in search of Chakotay. There’s a really cool little moment where she’s on a holodeck, reviewing the last time she saw him before he set off, when he was first promoted to captain. You find out his mission was to take the Protostar back to the Gamma Quadrant. The ship has a slipstream type of technology that would let it go faster and come back in a fraction of the time it took them.
That’s the last time she saw him. She made him promise: hey, if anything happens, whatever, call me. And she’s like, why didn’t you call me? There’s a moment there.
It’s also really great to hear Robert Beltran return as the voice of Chakotay. He’s one of my favorites from that show. There weren’t a lot of things I liked about Voyager, and I know that’s a very damning statement. I did like some things, and I liked the later seasons as well, but the early seasons were an acquired taste. I always liked him, though, especially because he was part of the Maquis at the time, and the Maquis were a very interesting concept.
The Diviner, Floating in Space
Way back at that mining colony looking asteroid, basically where they ended the last half of the season, Janeway and her away team arrive. They beam down, they see the remnants, and they find the Diviner floating in space. He’s in some sort of stasis. So they’re going to end up bringing him in, and now real trouble is going to start.
The Verdict
Star Trek: Prodigy Episode 11, “Asylum,” gets two numbers on the Know-It-All Index: a 7 out of context, and an 8 in context.
Out of context isn’t the name of the episode. I’m saying out of context, I’m going to give this episode a 7. In context, meaning you’ve seen the first 10 episodes, this episode to me gets an 8. It’s just a shift of one, but having context helps you appreciate a lot of the other elements that are happening.
You could literally jump right in here not knowing anything, and they recap you enough that you can tell some things have gone on and the crew’s been through some stuff. But I would really say, hey man, take the opportunity. If you have Paramount+, go watch the first 10 episodes and make your own judgment.
I definitely look forward to continuing on with the season. I may go back and retroactively do some more reviews. I know I’d done one before on a Trek Talk Tuesday of the overall season, or actually, I think I talked about doing it. So I may very well still do that. Be looking for a first half of season 1 review, and I’ll take a closer look at it there.
Overall, man, I’m excited for where the show is going to go. It feels like there’s a deeper, bigger story, and I’m down for it. If Strange New Worlds is giving me my hit of episodic Star Trek, then I’m all about these bigger storylines from all the rest of it, because I know for a fact Strange New Worlds is coming back with the Star Trek I know and love. I can appreciate and love this new iteration, and I know you will too.
Let me know what you thought of the episode. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above, and next week we review some more Star Trek: Prodigy.
