Star Trek: Prodigy 1x1/1x2 "Lost and Found" Review

 rating: ***

the story: Inhabitants of a penal colony in the Delta Quadrant find an unexpected opportunity for escape when they find a Starfleet ship.

review: There's a lot of chatter online about Prodigy being the first time parents have been able to show their kids Star Trek they end up actually interested in.  Of course that's the whole point.  As a Star Trek show it's certainly unique.  It's the first time ever there's a crew made up entirely of characters who aren't in Starfleet (the Janeway hologram doesn't count).

The results have to be interpreted through that lens.  Fans have long clamored for something like this, but they usually envisioned the results to be a familiar alien species like, say, the Klingons.  There are no familiar aliens in Prodigy's main cast (except the Tellarite, who doesn't really look like a Tellarite, and the Medusan), even though they're all Delta Quadrant natives and of course that's where Voyager spent its run.

That means that the vibe is very, very different.  The main conflict is similar to a subplot of Discovery's third season (intentionally or not), and as it plays out feels more like Star Wars than Star Trek (an assessment many fans still hold over the Abrams films), which is not necessarily a bad thing, but very unfamiliar franchise territory.

The cast of characters, unlike Lower Decks (for a whole host of reasons), feels like traditional animated characters, especially as you would find in an animated film.  (The animation itself would be subpar for an animated film.)  Every character is meant to stand out as a unique type, and they're fun to watch, but not even the ostensible lead, Dal, is close to traditional Starfleet material, more like the vision fans always had of what the Maquis ought to have been like.  

(In fact, you might view Prodigy as what fans thought Voyager should have been like as a whole.)

So far the standout characters are Zero, who sounds like Helen Mirren, and Rok-Tahk, the proverbial gentle giant, whose arc is particularly well-crafted in this debut episode.  The others are works in progress, although the goop creature Murf is fun.

Since this is very much serialized material, the overall strength of the storytelling is going to rely on how well individual beats are handled, and the cumulative effect.  Once more Star Trek sails into the unknown...

criteria analysis:

• franchise - A bold new vision of Star Trek.
• series - It's a solid setup that introduces all the characters and the central premise.
• character - Even if I'm not sold on all of them, the cast is well-represented.
• essential - It's such a radical departure, and the familiar elements saved for so late in the episode, that it's difficult to judge how well this succeeds as a Star Trek series on the pilot alone.

Star Trek: Lower Decks 2x10 "First First Contact" Review

 rating: ***

the story: Freeman is offered another command.

review: The season finale ends with Lower Decks' first cliffhanger(s), and most of it makes up for the bit that falls very, very flat for me.

Let's get that out of the way first.  This is a series of franchise references, in some ways, sometimes so many and so often it can feel like that's the whole point, but most of the time they're handled perfectly and hilariously.  "First First Contact" is a rare blunder, and infuriatingly, one that the episode feels the need to harmer repeatedly.  This is the insistence on emphasizing guest-character Sonya Gomez, a minor character from a few episodes of The Next Generation, previously best known for spilling hot chocolate on Picard, now a starship captain.  It's obnoxious and on the nose and not even in character with how the concept of the series has used its cast of minor Starfleet officers.

So anyway, putting that aside the episode pivots on Captain Freeman, finally circling back to her after having such a notable role in the first season as the subplot of her being Mariner's mom played out and having nowhere the writers felt like going this season.  Apart from hitting overly familiar notes with Mariner (and Tendi; it's baffling how often they hit the same notes with Tendi), Freeman's arc circles the series back to the idea that the Cerritos itself is a "lower decks" starship in the fleet, an assignment Freeman would be happy to give up in order to upgrade her career.  

By the time she decides she actually wants to stay, after an amazing bit of heroism from the crew, we're thrown the curve of Starfleet actually coming to arrest her!

Then we get advancement for one of the main characters: Rutherford finding out there's a hidden truth behind his implant.  Here's hoping the next season has a much better idea of what it wants to accomplish.  One gets the sense that when conceiving this season, all they prepared was the setup of Boimler's transfer to the Titan.  This time there's drama better integrated to the Cerritos, and the characters themselves.  

criteria analysis:

• franchise - I'm knocking this point off for the Gomez blunder.
• series - A confident stride toward another season begins here!
• character - Freeman at last breaks free from the constraints of being a senior officer in a junior officer series.  And what about Rutherford???
• essential - Anytime there's a season finale cliffhanger, it deserves attention.  And this one does.

Star Trek: Lower Decks 2x9 "wej Duj" Review

 rating: ***

the story: The lower decks crews of Vulcans, Klingons, Pakleds, and Starfleet unexpectedly converge.

review: I would probably have considered rating this one a classic if the online reaction hadn't been so overboard in emphasizing the role of the Vulcan in the episode.  Proclaimed an instant "best of" Vulcans!  Should be a regular character of the series!

Not that special.  What's actually special about "wej Duj" (Klingon for "three ships") is that it takes the premise of Lower Decks to further conclusions, as outlined in the story summary above.  The Vulcan and Klingon characters act as independent agents (they're essentially the Mariners of their crews), and while we've seen far more of how Klingon crews operate, this is still, for me, the more interesting of those arcs.  The Pakleds are Pakleds.  There's even a funny bit at the end featuring a Borg crew.

Meanwhile Boimler is once again trying to find a replacement crew, this time buddying up with Ransom (as is traditional in my reviews, even though Ransom is in every episode, and therefore so is Jerry O'Connell voicing him, when he has a particular spotlight, I include him as a "notable guest-star") in lying about being Hawaiian.  This is notable in that it's a rare instance of Boimler being anything but his impresion of Starfleet professional.  The arc ends with a mushy note of Boimler once again discovering his work is noticed.  Not even the only time this one has been done this season, so I'm not really counting it as a positive, and it's all the weirder because the episode otherwise is about the Mariner archetype, and she doesn't even have anything notable happening, which is another obvious oversight in a string of episodes that didn't think everything through.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - The Klingon arc follows a grand tradition, and it's a rare instance of getting to hang out with Vulcans, too.
• series - It's the series doing an episode of just lower decks action!
• character - The Boimler arc falls a little flat for being overly familiar.
• essential - It's an episode the series had to do.  And mostly nailed.

notable guest-stars:

Jerry O'Connell (Ransom)

Star Trek: Lower Decks 2x8 "I, Excretus" Review

 rating: ***

the story: The crew is evaluated through a series of simulations.

review: Online, "I, Excretus" quickly became infamous for doing things that could only have happened in Lower Decks, and that might be the most concise summary possible.

Where I found real merit was Boimler getting to be Boimler again.  In the first season Boimler was best understood as the nutcase who believed in Starfleet protocol so passionately it blinded him to everything else.  Throughout the second season this took a distinct backseat to trying to reconcile him with Mariner, with whom the producers couldn't decide where they wanted to go.  It had seemed obvious that a romance was inevitable, but the season finale put a big kibosh on that (for now?), so "I, Excretus" was the chance to reboot him, so once again his ridiculous efficiency is highlighted, and as it flits in and out it probably hits what to this point in the series is its peak.

Simply put, he knows exactly how to handle the Borg.  In every other incarnation of the franchise this is beyond impossible, but for Boimler, at least as far as his simulations go, all he's capable of doing it doing it better.  And better.

The rest of the episode doesn't have anything worth comparing to that, another curiosity that developed during the season.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - A lot of familiar strands here.  Let's settle on the appearance of the Borg Queen.
• series - Only in Lower Decks could things play out this way.
• character - And specifically for Boimler, who finally feels like Boimler again.
• essential - Again the series sabotages itself in failing to support its best material.

notable guest-stars:

Alice Krige (Borg Queen)

Star Trek: Lower Decks 2x7 "Where Pleasant Fountains Lie" Review

 rating: **

the story: Evil computer voiced by Jeffrey Combs.

review: By now, Jeffrey Combs is so familiar to fans of the franchise, casting him is tantamount to stunt-casting.  He played two regular recurring roles in Deep Space Nine, made an appearance in Voyager, and had another regular recurring role in Enterprise, and so he joined the ranks of the Star Trek family with an assured legacy.  In "Where Pleasant Fountains Lie," he's representing two legacies, his own and the classic idea of the evil computer that has taken over an alien world.  

The result is underwhelming.  By the time we catch up with the evil computer, it has already been deposed, and so the whole episode is him trying to trick his way back into control (any control!), and the episode doesn't really nail the comedic potential of it.  The vocal performance by Combs is what you would expect from Combs, but it's not really the right fit for him.  In his three recurring roles (and other appearances besides), he never wasn't unsavory of some kind, so trying to buy him as capable of ever being trusted is inherently difficult.  This is not exactly HAL.

Anyway, the episode rebounds by unexpectedly lobbing a gimme in the direction of background character Billups, who seemed previously to be as boring a Starfleet officer as can be.  But he's apparently royalty on his world, and his mom will stop at nothing to trick him into being royalty again.  So that's the arc that lands solidly in this episode.  

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Evil computer trope, check!
• series - It's tough to decide where the success of the Billups arc lies.  It seems like Lower Decks is the only incarnation of the franchise where this could've happened.  But in the end...
• character - ...we'll say that the success is in the ability of Lower Decks to nail another character, since it sometimes doesn't really know what to do with some of the others.
• essential - No, not really.  If you really like Billups, maybe!

notable guest-stars:

Jeffrey Combs

Star Trek: Lower Decks 2x6 "The Spy Humungous" Review

 rating: ***

the story: The Pakleds think they can field a spy???

review: The problem the season began to develop was the inability to juggle the a- and b-stories.  Originally the a-story was whatever the main characters were up to and the b-story was what was happening in the background, what would in a traditional Star Trek series have been the a-story.  In "Spy Humungous," the b-story is more interesting than the a-story antics.  The main characters are busy doing ridiculous things, while the b-story continues the Pakled arc.

In The Next Generation, the Pakleds were one of the early experiments to come up with aliens who weren't from the original series.  Everyone knows the Ferengi, from these experiments, because so much time was spent developing them, and they ended up appearing in each subsequent incarnation of the TV franchise, through Enterprise. The Pakleds weren't so fortunate.  Their simple-minded idiocy, though surprisingly effective, was difficult to take seriously, and there didn't seem anywhere to go with them past an introduction ("Samaritan Snare").  Then Lower Decks comes along and they're a perfect addition to a cartoon take on the franchise that, unlike The Animated Series, is comedic in tone.

Generally with additional exposure, aliens tend to get their culture explored.  Somehow "Spy Humungous" accomplishes exactly that.  And that's a tough act to follow.  Far more than the previous episode, "An Embarrassment of Dooplers," it's a rousing success, and doesn't need leaning into, because the joke sells itself, the hierarchy of a such a society (kind of a parody of Klingons, which in hindsight seems absolutely right), and plays out on two fronts, aboard the ship and on the Pakled homeworld.

The main character shenanigans feel far too expected in comparison.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - The unexpected moment in which we dive into Pakled society!
• series - With such a heavy emphasis on the Pakleds, Lower Decks needed this moment.
• character - The problem with hitting the same notes relentlessly with the same characters is that either it's a sitcom in which that's exactly what it's supposed to, or you risk beating a dead horse.
• essential - Pakleds!  They are strong!

Star Trek: Lower Decks 2x5 "An Embarrassment of Dooplers" Review

 rating: **

the story: The Cerritos hosts an inconveniently nervous ambassador.

the review: It seems obvious that "Dooplers" was meant to be the Lower Decks equivalent of tribbles, and whether you think this is a good or bad thing, it's the highlight of the episode, other than the continuing attempts to explore lingering character arcs.

At this point, it's clear that the season was quite determined to linger on those arcs throughout its course.  Rutherford still can't settle into the fact that his implant essentially rebooted his whole character, Mariner can't decide how she feels about Boimler's time aboard the Titan, and so these things are rehashed while other subplots have Mariner and Boimler attempting to crash an exclusive Starfleet party (which eventually concludes with failure, but their discovery that Kirk & Spock failed to find their way in, too, in a previous generation) (which seems kind of ridiculous, if you think about it too much).  

Surprisingly, it's Captain Freeman, in her efforts to resolve the duplicating Doopler crisis (I wish they'd come up with a more creative name for the species), doing so by being gruff, the first time she gets to be successful just by being herself (it comes up again in the season finale), who shines in the episode.  Since there's so much happening around this, and the brunt of the effect of the whole thing hinging on the ambassador's hilarious embarrassment, "Dooplers" ends up losing a valuable opportunity to take a victory lap (which, again, is probably something the producers themselves figured out, given the season finale).

criteria analysis:

• franchise - The echo of "The Trouble with Tribbles" is worth savoring, plus the restraint in not actually featuring tribbles.
• series - There's the sense that, given the overall emphasis on the Pakleds in other episodes, that another set of gimmick aliens just here to be ridiculous might be Lower Decks overextending its hand.
• character - Even if everyone else kind of feels like they're treading water, Freeman gets a small nudge in a positive direction.  She's no longer just Mariner's mom!
• essential - If the episode had leaned more on the Dooplers, or Freeman, it might have been.