Review Text
Following the clues to a hidden planet that they think holds the location of Chakotay and the Protostar, the kids realize it will take 61 days to reach it unless they use an abandoned Borg transwarp conduit as a shortcut. They do so, but are intercepted by a Kazon device that pulls them to a different world where a madman named Ekthi takes them prisoner. He agrees to release them if they participate in and win a race that he administers, with the idea being to help better train his pilots. But things, as they say, are not what they seem.
It's about here that I'm beginning to feel like this season of Prodigy has been a bait and switch. When the first season ended, we were given the new concept of these students joining Starfleet and learning from real Starfleet officers — including Admiral Janeway herself! — how the Federation works. It seemed like the perfect premise for these youngsters to learn from a variety of (maybe even episodic) adventures, in addition to the whole "find Chakotay" mission. Instead, what we've gotten is a protracted serialized plot that has forced the characters to operate outside of Starfleet at nearly every turn and essentially turn the show back into what it was in the first season. Sigh. At the very least, everyone agrees Dal shouldn't be captain this time. Progress.
"The Fast and the Curious" is a sometimes-ambitious and unfocused rambling mess of a story that has more ideas than it needs and no discipline to refine any of them into something that matters. I can see why it doesn't make sense of them, because the parts don't naturally fit. The episode can't decide what it's about. The whole racing story feels like an excuse to provide the show some Star Wars-style action, but it makes very little surface-level logical sense because it's hiding something else entirely.
The last act reveals a rogue AI that has taken control of this planet and controls Ekthi, who appears to be the only one left here. It believes in "perfection" (of course it does) and uses these races to push the people who come here to that goal. But the computer's idea of perfection operates more like mind control and slavery. Zero saves everybody with a kamikaze run at the computer that creates an explosion that looks like it should've killed everyone but somehow doesn't. It leaves Zero's suit irreparably damaged (though Zero is okay). There are themes about friendship and teamwork and stuff, but the whole AI thing is weirdly half-formed and last-minute.
Back aboard Voyager, Maj'el comments that the characters are acting more strangely than usual, but otherwise the holograms go undetected. But then, in the very last scene, time comes to a stop and ghostly tentacles try and fail to grab the holographic Gwyn. Huh? It's a nice "what's going on here?" hook for the next episode, but that's the standard modus operandi at this point.
Previous episode: Imposter Syndrome
Next episode: Is There in Beauty No Truth?
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5 comments on this post
Karl Zimmerman
This episode, even more than the last, marks a transition from the highly serialized start of the season into something more approaching the semi-episodic adventures of most of the first season. The kids have a destination in mind; they get sidetracked, and mishaps ensue. It feels even more like a first-season throwback because the antagonist is (it seems at first) a Kazon.
Fortunately, there is a twist, but that twist comes quite late into the episode. Altogether, too much of the runtime here was spent on the race section in the middle. In an hour-long episode, a protracted action sequence like this would be forgivable, but it feels like precious minutes wasted on empty drama here.
Overall, this was a lightweight, empty episode—easily the most mediocre (I'm not going to say bad) of the bunch. It didn't do it for me because it revealed nothing about the characters themselves other than the broad strokes established early last season. I like that Zero's suit got ruined at the end, which means that even if it's a throwaway episodic plot, there was at least some consequence here.
Oh, and it stretches credulity way past what I'm comfortable with that the holo-imposters weren't discovered immediately, given the fuckup in their voices/personalities. That said, I'll chalk this up to being a kids' show.
Brandon
"The sonic toilet is...out of order."
I laughed louder and longer than I have at Star Trek in quite a while. Good timing.
Jeffrey's Tube
Filler episode? Yeah. Still entertaining as hell? Yeah!
I want to know more about the weird-ass Borg AI chair thingy that's hanging out in the transwarp conduit, but I also know it works better if we don't know. We know what we need to.
. . .
If I had to wait a week after the previous episode only to get this episode, and then have to wait another week for the next episode, I would probably be a bit annoyed by this episode. But I don't. The binge model makes an episode like this a much more enjoyable experience.
Sorry to keep comparing Prodigy to Discovery, but the awful S5 of Discovery is still fresh in my mind. Would a binge release model have saved, say, the ISS Enterprise space sphincter episode and made it into a more enjoyable watch? You know, I don't think so. No, it wouldn't. So . . . what's my conclusion here? Binge model is good at smoothing out bumps in a serialized show but you've still got to make a good show? Great, very helpful insight, Jeffrey's Tube. Ha!
Chris W
@Jeffrey's Tube: I agree, I don't think a binge model would have helped DSC's s05. It probably would have made it worse if someone felt compelled to binge it for the sake of binge-ing.
Daya
This was a very good episode, a throw back to Star Trek TOS, with a twist. Kids do get hyper-competitive, losing sight of the bigger picture. Adults too. This was shown wonderfully through the medium of Dal, who realizes he got carried away, and the change in him is palpable at the end.
The TOS-patented berserk computer is a stand in for hypercompetitive society gone mad, with no one at the controls. A novel use of an old trope.
Well, what do you know? A kid's show that shows kids how to be better kids. And hopefully grow into better adults. Four blue stars.
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