Star Trek: Prodigy 1x9 "A Moral Star, Part 1" Review

rating: ***

the story: The Diviner finally gets his hands on the ship.

review: I haven't been overly patient with the Diviner arc mostly because it symbolizes how fast and loose the series has played with distances, which greatly simplifies the storytelling but has never been adequately explained.  To be a constant threat the Diviner needed a good enough reason to remain one once the crew had split off far beyond his reach.  This episode, he gets one, by getting the crew to return to him.

This is possible because his robotic henchman Drednok is able to visit the ship, which actually first occurred the previous episode (he apparently has multiple bodies).  The crew is faced with an ultimatum of relinquishing the ship or being responsible for the Diviner slaughtering the rest of the workforce in the mining camp they escaped from.

Anyway, what all this really amounts to is advancing the plot.  In a serialized story you kind of need to do that.  By the end of the episode, as indicated above, the Diviner "wins," and in the bargain has reunited with his wayward daughter Gwyn, which leaves us with a cliffhanger, and another review in which I consider whether the Diviner is worth more than he seems...

criteria analysis:

• franchise - I don't think anything "great" happens in the episode.  Fans not committed to the series would not necessarily be missing anything.
  
• series - Although fans of Prodigy obviously would!
• character - The Diviner takes a step closer to becoming truly meaningful.
• essential - It seems increasingly likely that we approach the real end of the Diviner arc.