TL;DR – It is time to escape a world and find who we are.  

Disclosure – I paid for the Netflix service that viewed this series.

Star Trek: Prodigy Review –

After a season-long hunt for one Chakotay (Robert Beltran), there was always going to be a question of whether the series would be able to stick that landing. That is a huge emotional weight with a payoff that is needed given they are a legacy character … and you know what, I think they did it.    

So, to set the scene, at the end of The Devourer of All Things, as the time vultures circled in, there was only one hope left for the future. That was our team of Dal (Brett Gray), Gwyn (Ella Purnell), Jankom (Jason Mantzoukas), Zero, Murf (Dee Bradley Baker), Rok-Tahk (Rylee Alazraqui), and now also Maj’el (Michaela Dietz) had to jump through a portal to places unknown. Good news: they found the USS Protostar and Captain Chakotay. Bad news: they are stuck on a sand bar on a K-class planet and have no way to get off it. Now, from here, we will be looking at the episode as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.

Today, we get to explore a couple of episodes that follow a very classic Star Trek formula. The crew is stuck on a planet, and they have to MacGyver their way out of it. The big difference, and with a nod back to their forbearers, Star Trek Voyager, is that there is no help coming from the outside. They only have what they can scavenge because after being stuck for ten years, even the power is starting to be a problem. That is, of course, if they can convince Chakotay to leave.

There are times when a story puts an obstacle in the way of the narrative that you can feel just exists to waste time before we can get to the end. Here, I didn’t get that vibe. Chakotay’s reluctance to leave felt perfectly justified, given his experiences and the information he was working with. That pain felt real, and you can imagine how someone would feel being trapped alone for ten years only to have a bunch of very exuberant teenagers appear suddenly.

I did like that we got a bit more of Hologram Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) in this episode. She was one of the core strengths of the first season, and I think you needed that presence here. Chakotay was always going to be a bit of a problematic character to approach, given what we now know about their behind-the-scenes construction. However, I think they did some clever re-tooling of the character to help smooth out some of those issues without removing who they were. And by re-tooling, I don’t mean giving him a Zaddy makeover, but I am sure that helped for some people.

The crux of this episode was the escape from the beach and then floating across the high-density vapour surface of the planet Ysida until they can get enough deuterium from the Bussard collectors. The whole escape is a fun sequence. Indeed, there were many hints of Star Trek Beyond here. But what intrigued me the most was the character beats. This is the episode where I think Dal discovers some of that command potential that we all knew he had. Last Flight of the Protostar was not an easy episode for Dal, as he had to hand over some of that leadership positioning that he had the last time they were on the Protostar. But when things got precarious, Dal stepped up.

In the end, do we recommend Star Trek: Prodigy – Last Flight of the Protostar, Part 1 & Part 2? Absolutely. This continues to be a fantastic season of Star Trek. I can’t wait to see where the back half of the season will take us from here.   

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

Have you seen Star Trek: Prodigy yet ?, let us know what you thought in the comments below, feel free to share this review on any of the social medias and you can follow us Here. Check out all our past reviews and articles Here, and have a happy day.    

Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Star Trek: Prodigy
Directed by – Ruolin Li, Andrew L. Schmidt & Sean Bishop 
Written by – Diandra Pendleton-Thompson, Alex Hanson & Aaron J. Waltke
Created by – Kevin & Dan Hageman
Based On – Star Trek by Gene Roddenberry & Star Trek: Voyager by Rick Berman, Michael Piller & Jeri Taylor
Production/Distribution Companies – CBS Studios, Nickelodeon & Netflix
Starring – Brett Gray, Ella Purnell, Jason Mantzoukas, Angus Imrie, Rylee Alazraqui, Dee Bradley Baker, Robert Beltran & Kate Mulgrew with Michaela Dietz,Jason Alexander, Daveed Diggs, Gates McFadden & Bonnie Gordon