“Last Flight of the Protostar, Part I”

Review Text

"Last Flight of the Protostar" opens with a straightforward yet masterfully evocative wordless sequence where Chakotay — stranded on the distant uninhabited world of Ysidia — repeats his daily routine, which includes carving wooden chess pieces in the likenesses of his lost crew members. The last of the pieces we see carved is Adreek, who had escaped Solum with Chakotay but somehow, between then and now, was lost. We learn that 10 years have passed since that escape. And now the Infinity seven show up (having traveled through space and time), with the plan of rescuing Chakotay and taking the crashed Protostar back to Tars Lamora where it must await its discovery.

Chakotay is world-weary after his long isolation (hologram Janeway is his only company) and not particularly wanting to be rescued, and he does not go along easily with the youngsters' notions of unlikely escape. (He marooned himself here deliberately so the Diviner's virus-weapon would not be unleashed on the Federation.) Besides, the Protostar is in no shape to be launched back into space; the protocore and warp core both no longer function. And there are dangerous ion storms on this planet that can spin up at any moment. The cinematic atmosphere created by these storms is absolutely first-rate, and the episode benefits greatly from its change in setting and direction.

At first, Chakotay doesn't even let them onto the ship. He relents after some convincing from holo-Janeway, but that doesn't make him particularly agreeable to the kids and their designs to take the ship off the planet. (Dal, always overconfident, challenges Chakotay at one point, which proves unwise.) There's great danger in making an escape attempt. Chakotay tells the sad tale of Adreek, who had an idea of harnessing the storm's energy to repower the warp core, and ventured out into a storm and never returned.

But the kids band together to help fix up the ship. While working on the outskirts of the camp, Dal finds some metallic plants that shock him, just before the shadow of a massive entity appears over him, and the ground falls out from beneath his feet. (It's three mysterious happenings for the price of one.) He vanishes in a scream. The story's action gears up as the crew attempts to find and rescue Dal. They use Chakotay's hover-ATV to follow his combadge signal into a cave — while being pursued by a large sand-burrowing creature. Prodigy often features an action sequence that seems to be a part of its episodic formula, but here it especially works as a piece of the whole.

Dal had found refuge from the subterranean creatures in a cavern, where Adreek's skeletal remains also reside. When Chakotay makes this discovery, it generates a surprisingly emotional moment. Here's the last friend Chakotay ever had, who sacrificed himself to try to find a way to escape, and was actually successful in testing his theory, but perished before he could bring that news back to his captain. Now Chakotay sees with his own eyes the full scope of that painful realization, as well as the discovery that Adreek's plan could work, and that these kids could help him achieve it. Adreek even gets a nice memorial, as they put his body in a boat and send it out to sea.

This episode has all the things that make Prodigy what it is while at the same time transcending itself by fully committing to the emotional and psychological underpinnings of the story. It does so in an accessible way while never compromising the story's integrity. It's strange to admit this, but this animated adventure manages to bring about a more emotionally engaging and personal story for Chakotay than perhaps any episode of Voyager ever did. Here's a character study of a broken man who is redeemed by these kids, who unexpectedly enter his life after 10 years of isolation and prove to be his unlikely salvation.

Previous episode: The Devourer of All Things, Part II
Next episode: Last Flight of the Protostar, Part II

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