The following comprises minor spoilers for episode ten of 'Star Trek: Prodigy.'
One factor that’s turn out to be more and more frequent amongst style exhibits is the thought of the “mid-season finale,” the place a program goes on hiatus for a bit, however not earlier than shaking issues up for the remainder of the yr. Even kids’s exhibits like Star Trek: Prodigy can’t escape from this phenomenon, because the Paramount+ cartoon takes a break (once more) after an enormous two-parter with massive modifications for the characters and central battle.
The first season has to this point been an extended chase between the escaped prisoners aboard the USS Protostar and their former captor, the Diviner. Last week’s cliffhanger compelled the crew to give up their ship to the Diviner in change for the lives of their fellow prisoners from the jail colony Tars Lamora, leaving them stranded on the Diviner’s sabotaged ship, the REV-12. But it turned out that our erstwhile teenagers had a plan to take their ship again, and this week’s installment sees that plan come to fruition. It’s an pleasing, although largely unsurprising, journey.
Where the present upends issues is relating to our villain, whose mission is lastly revealed to his daughter Gwyn and thus, the viewers. And sure, it includes time journey. Most fascinating of all is that the Diviner’s storyline is backburnered if not fully scuttled now, with the Protostar crew as an alternative centered on attending to the Federation. And it was meant that manner all alongside — these episodes had been written over two years in the past, earlier than the pandemic began. In reality, showrunners Kevin and Dan Hageman revealed this week in an interview with Engadget that they only wrote episodes 39 and 40. That can be the top of season two, which was solely introduced again in November.
The lengthy lead time is as a result of prolonged animation course of, although it additionally has the knock-on impact of constructing the present unresponsive to fan considerations, which is precisely how the Hagemans choose it. The prolonged manufacturing time retains them beholden to the author’s room and never a vocal on-line minority, a phenomenon that has derailed different franchises (most notably Star Wars). For the Hagemans, their most vital viewers is youngsters, however not in a manner that talks all the way down to kids. The determination to set the collection so removed from explored Federation area is a part of conserving it accessible to newcomers, whereas additionally releasing it from any constraints imposed by any of the concurrently operating Trek applications on Paramount+ like Picard.
But even because it stays child pleasant, the Hagemans instructed Engadget that they need to create the type of moments that “[stick] to your bones,” like seeing “ET dead on the table.” They need the present to have an effect, and this week’s scene with Zero is hopefully a type of.
Another inspiration for this season of Prodigy comes from a much less sci-fi, extra action-oriented supply: the 1993 movie The Fugitive. Not a lot in the concept we’ll see lots of practice explosions, however extra within the sense that there’s no actual villain within the central battle. The plot arc will contain Starfleet making an attempt to get the Protostar again, and the children having to maintain it away on account of what occurred on this week’s episode. It’s simply two well-meaning teams with totally different objectives, one thing I’ve personally seen in lots of media currently and a premise that the Hagemans imagine it’s vital for youths to see.
It’s additionally vital to them to see the children develop and adapt to their state of affairs, particularly as they’re being tasked with conditions that even Starfleet-trained officers would battle with: “You see kids dealing with a lot of emotions; a lot of things are coming at them, and there’s times when you feel crippled, and that’s something you see in adolescence.” We’ve already seen some important character progress for Rok-Tahk, and the Hagemans promise that the characters will age for no matter variety of seasons the present will get. And even Murf will get a plot arc, one which “is not about what Murf is … more like where does Murf go; what does Murf become?”
Murf followers solely have to attend for the subsequent 10 episodes, at the very least. The remainder of the season will see the crew discovering out what the Diviner did to their ship, and the way it places the Federation out of attain. I’ve beforehand famous how the collection showcases its expertise by specializing in the have-nots, one thing on show this week because the prisoners of Tars Lamora lastly get entry to the common translator tech that so impressed the Protostar crew early on. And, whereas the ship has appeared a bit overpowered in comparison with the opposite twenty fourth century tech we’ve seen in different exhibits, the Hagemans promise it would nonetheless be restricted in some methods, and the ship gained’t be “zapping around at their will.” 2383 expertise might have proved life-changing for Prodigy’s crew, however going ahead this system can now showcase the way it will also be enjoyable.
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