Season 2 Episode 6 “Imposter Syndrome”
Once Gwyn (Ella Purnell) psychically spots the planet Chakotay within a certain spiral nebula, the young crew determines their next destination to locate the absent captain – a Class-O planet that vanished from astronomical records some time back. That’s not mysterious at all, yeah? That’s all the information we get about this world in this episode. But the kids are still bound to the Voyager-A. How do they escape the ship to launch a second attempt at finding Chakotay and righting the timeline?
The answer lies in the planned destruction of their one-time chariot to the future: the Infinity. Starfleet wants to scrub all records of Voyager’s mission to the now-collapsed wormhole, and destroying the machine they built to fly through that wormhole is next on the list. It’s particularly important to destroy all evidence of the Infinity, as the ship’s cloaking device is technically illegal.
“You want to steal a ship again? I’m sensing a pattern here.”
– Rok to Dal about his plan to assume control of Infinity.
Dal (Brett Gray) and the former crew of the Protostar realize the Infinity’s planned destruction is their ticket to this hidden Class-O planet. If the kids hijack the courier before its planned descent into a nearby star, they can chart their own path around the galaxy, much in the same way they had navigational freedom on the Protostar. But how to ensure the crew of the Voyager-A don’t wise up to their absence?
Luckily, Zero (Angus Imrie) and Jankom Pog (Jason Mantzoukas) have a plan, one inspired by the Doctor (Robert Picardo) and his latest holo-novel; holographic doubles of themselves could cover for the real crews’ escape. Rok-Tahk (Rylee Alazraqui) goes a step further and creates holograms that are literally indistinguishable from the real thing; she even engineered the holograms to pass life-form scans, and thinks they are the real deal. After all, if the holograms knew they were holograms, they would blow the cover of their real-life doppelgangers.
It’s remarkable engineering that seems nigh impossible for a Starfleet Academy hopeful, but alas, it’ll make for an entertaining story. To the show’s credit, we were often left wondering which version of our characters were on screen at a given time, which lent a tense aspect to this otherwise light-hearted episode.
The doubles are too accurate, however, and think they need to get aboard the Infinity to escape Voyager, so a competition ensues between the real protagonists and the fake ones. After running around the ship trying to outsmart or outmaneuver their imposters, Dal, and company come to a literal standoff against themselves. Luckily, the two people who chose to work together to solve this cluster-oopsie are the Roks, who adorably join forces in Cetacean Ops to devise an easy but effective solution.
Simply overloading Voyager’s holo-matrix will restart the holo-doubles, without any memory of their endeavor to reach the Infinity. Such a restart causes a minor disruption to ship operations, but otherwise, nobody is worse for wear. The real crew do make it on the Infinity, and venture off into the unknown at the end of the episode, just as they originally planned. What’s not as they planned is their holo-doubles rematerializing on Voyager with mixed personalities, which likely means much confusion is in store for Admiral Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) and her crew as they try to figure out why the kids are acting so strangely.
“Imposter Syndrome” is the first time this season we thought an episode’s writing was lacking, in that the situation Dal and company find themselves in with their holo-doubles could be rectified in a fairly easy way. The main issue once the holograms take off on Voyager is how to identify them from the real ones. Why couldn’t the real characters devise a code word or change their clothes to ensure they knew who was not a hologram?
Furthermore, the fact that nobody else on Voyager noticed the dilemma our heroes were in lends credence to our proposal that this episode’s narrative was fairly weak. When a crew member does see this strangeness, nothing comes of it, like when the Doctor sees two Murfs within a couple of seconds of each other; he should absolutely know to report such a strange sight, no matter how involved he was in his reading. But at least the kids’ hijinks allow them to regain their freedom from the confines of Admiral Janeway’s ship.
Stray Thoughts:
- Dal’s off-the-cuff suggestion to Commander Tysess (Daveed Diggs) that they should just keep the Infinity cloaked, and therefore no one would know it exists, is played for laughs, but actually isn’t too bad an idea.
- Why was there a ship-wide countdown when the Infinity was going to be launched into the sun? The courier and its mission were supposedly secret, even from most of the Voyager-A crew.
- Nitpickers unite: There are approximately 40 seconds between when Dal asserts the Infinity will be launched in two hours, and when Gwyn asserts they have one hour before the ship is destroyed. That means there’s an hour between the Infinity launching and when it finally dives into the sun, which doesn’t seem right.
- Maj’el (Michaela Dietz) goes out of her way to help Zero and their friends, even though the Vulcan doesn’t know the youngsters’ true mission. Maj’el even compliments Zero as “fascinating” and a “real friend,” so that’s quite the expression of affection, isn’t it? Zero seems well on their path toward becoming more intimate with someone, a wish they voiced back in the season premiere.
- Voyager has an incredibly short scanning range if the larger ship can still be easily within the eyesight of Infinity when Dal asserts they are indeed outside Voyager’s sensors.
Season 2 Episode 7 The Fast and the Curious
After their successful and, for now, secret escape from Voyager-A, it doesn’t take long for Dal, Zero, Gwyn, Rok, Jankom, and Murf to all become too close for comfort within the cramped Infinity. It’s enticing, then, when the crew spots a seemingly abandoned Borg transwarp conduit that could cut down their 61-day cruise to the spiral nebula that houses the planet Chakotay is on. Why not take a shortcut?
Here’s why: the conduit isn’t actually abandoned. Soon after they take the on-ramp on this interstellar autobahn, their ship is disabled and guided automatically to a nearby world, one that has many ship carcasses around a central base. Dal, Jankom, and Gwyn are captured by Kazon, an enemy mainly seen in Voyager but also in Prodigy’s last season. They aren’t fun to be around, especially since it was Kazon who sold the kids into servitude on Tars Lamora. Murf and Zero evade capture, leaving them to scout the area and hope to devise a rescue plan for their captured comrades.
The prisoners come face-to-face with the owner of this planet: it’s a Kazon, Ekthi (James Mathis III), who, besides having a flair for the dramatic, is acting strangely. We hear an audible buzz come every so often from the headset he is wearing, which is accompanied by a Gollum-esque brief change in personality. Something is definitely up with Ekthi.
Ekthi demands the kids pay a fine to travel “his” transwarp conduit, but considering our protagonists don’t have any money, he thinks of another way the kids can earn their passage: testing one of his best pilots in a race around the planet’s sub-surface. Cocky Dal thinks this is an easy win, and his crew pairs up as fellow participants in the race.
“Going fast is kind of my thing.”
– Dal to Ekthi as the youngster agrees to a race. Remember, “Go fast” is Dal’s chosen phrase for ordering his ship to action.
“The Fast and the Curious” treats us to a race segment – not totally dissimilar to Star Wars’ pod race sequence from The Phantom Menace in its intensity and captivating cinematography. Prodigy typically has beautiful environmental animation and design, but this episode really allows the show’s animators to flex their muscles. The race sequence is incredibly well-realized, with bespoke racer designs, some flashy environmental obstacles, and a great sense of speed.
While the sequence is pretty, let’s not forget how the stakes for our heroes’ success grow during this race. Gwyn starts having temporal issues with her armband, and the racecourse itself proves fatal to some of Ekthi’s racers. But the real surprise comes near the end, as Dal and another one of Ekthi’s pilots crash, and we learn the Kazon pilot is actually a robot; this coincides with Zero and Murf coming to the same realization about Kazon near Ekthi.
Zero and Murf tussle with Ekthi and his guards, and the leader’s head device pops off, revealing a control unit attached to his forehead. Zero removes the device, leaving a confused Ekthi wondering where he is and who his assailants are. The Medusan and Mellanoid slime worm get some answers when they find who is controlling the Kazon on the planet: a computer (Debra Wilson) housed within a training facility deep inside Ekthi’s facility. This computer was tasked with training Kazon pilots, but it malfunctioned and went psycho, leaving only Ekthi as the surviving flesh-and-blood Kazon in the facility. The computer’s goal now is to create the perfect pilot, whether the trainees want to or not.
To save their friends, Zero makes a noble sacrifice and uses their body to destroy the computer controlling the Kazon and threatening the Infinity crew. The explosion destroys Zero’s shell but doesn’t incapacitate the Medusan within it, leaving our protagonists to care for their disabled friend as they continue their quest to the mysterious Class-O planet.
Finally, on Voyager Maj’el notices something is amiss with holo-Gwyn, but before she can ask, time stops on Voyager, and an otherworldly entity reaches out with tendrils of some kind to holo-Gwyn and tries to grab her; Gwyn then disappears, and time resumes. What was this entity, and why was it trying to capture Gwyn? This scene offers quite an intriguing mystery to end this episode.
Stray Thoughts:
- In this episode, Gwyn mentions the crew’s previous visit to a Borg cube, as seen in “Let Sleeping Borg Lie.”
- Gwyn asks Zero, “What in Sto’Vo’Kor is on our ship?” which is the kid-friendly way of saying, “What the hell is on our ship?” since Sto’Vo’Kor is the Klingon word for “afterlife.”
- One of the wrecks on Ekthi’s planet is of the USS Cairo, an Excelsior-class ship seen in TNG’s “Chain of Command.”
- Dal doesn’t deserve to be captain of his crew, not if he blows off Gwyn’s suggestion to strategize amongst themselves before the race starts. Only one racer needed to win, and the Infinity crew had two entrants in the race. Why not try to maximize your team’s chance of success?
- When Dal goes to rescue the Kazon pilot after they crash, Jankom asks his crewmate, “You got Ceti eels for brains?” These painful, mind-altering eels were seen in The Wrath of Khan.
- Debra Wilson’s voice is in quite a few places in Star Trek lore, including Lisa Cusak in Deep Space Nine’s memorable episode “The Sound of Her Voice,” and Dr. Eraam Duvall and the Hotari Queen in the video game Star Trek: Resurgence.
- The A.I. computer’s explosion should have hurt the Infinity crew, no?
- We haven’t memorized all of Star Trek’s captain’s and personal logs, but perhaps this episode contains the first shared log entry, as Dal asks Gwyn to continue recording the log after he begins it.
Taken together, “Imposter Syndrome” and “The Fast and the Curious” find our heroes trying to find the freedom to pursue their noble mission of rescuing Chakotay, restoring the timeline, and saving their friend, Gwyn. The latter episode was stronger, thanks to its high-flying animation and stronger narrative; our critiques above about the shallow narrative in the former episode bring down our opinion of that entry. We did appreciate Zero’s bravery in “The Fast and the Curious,” as the Medusan wastes no time in sacrificing themselves to save their friends, even though it means they are now effectively disabled. How Zero’s incapacity affects the crew’s mission will be interesting to witness.
The Star Trek: Prodigy voice cast includes Kate Mulgrew (Hologram Kathryn Janeway), Brett Gray (Dal), Ella Purnell (Gwyn), Rylee Alazraqui (Rok-Tahk), Angus Imrie (Zero), Jason Mantzoukas (Jankom Pog), Dee Bradley Baker (Murf), John Noble (The Diviner) and Jimmi Simpson (Drednok) in addition to recurring voice cast members: Robert Beltran (Captain Chakotay), Robert Picardo (The Doctor), Jason Alexander (Doctor Noum), Daveed Diggs (Commander Tysess), Jameela Jamil (Ensign Asencia), Ronny Cox (Admiral Jellico) and Michaela Dietz (Maj’el).
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