Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2 Episodes 11 & 12 “The Last Flight of the Protostar, Parts I and II” Review: Finally reunited… and it feels so good

“The Last Flight of the Protostar, Part I“

After many episodes of searching, the former crew of the Protostar are reunited with their precious ship, but souring the reunion is a beaten-down, bitter Chakotay (Robert Beltran), who has been marooned alone with the crashed ship for ten years.

Chakotay’s angst stems not only from years of loneliness, save for the Protostar’s still-operational hologram Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), but from the deaths of his entire crew, including his first officer, Adreek-Hu. In short, Chakotay has made a huge sacrifice to ensure the Vau N’Akat weapon hidden at the heart of the Protostar never reaches Federation space – and now Dal (Brett Gray), Jankom Pog (Jason Mantzoukas), Murf (Dee Bradley Baker), Gwyn (Ella Purnell), Rok-Tahk (Rylee Alazraqui), and Maj’el (Michaela Dietz), show up on this planet, Ysida, to reclaim Chakotay’s ship and inform him the Protostar’s weapon never actually completed its intended purpose. Finally, Chakotay realizes these kids weren’t the galactic raiders they claimed they were the last time they met.

“The needs of the many outweigh the comfort of the few.”

– Chakotay, on being marooned on Ysida in exchange for protecting the Federation against the Protostar’s weapon.

The youngsters exposit quite a bit of information to Chakotay about their situation, even including the time hunters and Wesley Crusher, but the aged captain is too much in a funk to help the newcomers. It even takes a bit of convincing from Hologram Janeway for Chakotay to let the kids use his ship to shelter against the planet’s ion storms. Chakotay explains how he and his crew drained the Protostar of all its warp fuel so the ship could never launch into space and threaten the Federation again.

While taking refuge, Hologram Janeway helps fill in Chakotay’s backstory to the crew since being marooned on Ysida. Years ago, the late Adreek-Hu, who saw how being marooned was breaking his captain, was certain there was a way to harness the power of the planet’s severe ion storms to help power the Protostar’s escape and find another solution to protecting the Federation. Still, one day Adreek never returned from this exploratory mission.

Everyone wants to get off the planet, and Gwyn is the one who rallies her crew and asserts they can try and discover what Adreek thought was a way off the planet. So, the newly arrived crew starts repairing the Protostar and its associated land vehicle, the Runaway, in preparation for a possible escape – and also in an attempt to brighten Chakotay’s fatalism.

While repairs are underway, Dal is relegated to plasma fruit (yes, that’s a thing, apparently) collection duty, and during his short trek away from the Protostar, he is attacked by local dangerous fauna – huge eel-like creatures that burrow underground. The rest of his crew notices his tardiness and sets out looking for him in the Runaway, only to find a complex set of underground tunnels guarded by the eels. The ensuing chase ends with Gwyn, Chakotay, and Murf finding Dal in this subterranean labyrinth, along with a rather ghastly sight: the skeleton of the ill-fated Adreek; the poor first officer must have run afoul of the eels while on his quest to harness the ion storms’ power.

Adreek does have a final gift for the living besides a skeleton to bury: a canister of antimatter, charged by the power of the planet’s intense and common ion storms. While Chakotay is super bummed about finding his first officer’s body, the antimatter canister proves the Protostar can possibly make its escape, assuming the crew can make the marooned vessel seaworthy – yes, seaworthy, because our protagonists must traverse the sea surrounding the Protostar’s crash site to reach a powerful maelstrom that could replenish the ship’s engine fuel. With a renewed vigor thanks to the kids, Chakotay is ready to make that possible.

Stray Thoughts:

• As seen on the Protostar‘s dedication plaque, the ship’s motto is, “It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”
  
  
• It’s to this show’s enormous credit that it made Adreek such a memorable character with little screen time. It is a bit heartbreaking when Chakotay and the others find his skeleton.
  

“The Last Flight of the Protostar, Part II“

How do you make a starship sail? That’s the challenge facing Chakotay and his new arrivals, at least if they ever want to leave the planet. Using their combined ingenuity and manpower, the crew of the Protostar makes the vessel ready to leave its perch. Impromptu sails and other repairs to the vessel mean it is soon enough ready to embark on a treacherous journey across the surrounding vapor ocean into the eye of the Deuterium storm off yonder, where the ship can use its bussard collectors to resupply needed elements to activate the engines.

Everybody seems to know their place within the hierarchy of this unlikely crew, except for Dal, who is increasingly feeling like his rightful position is not in command of his friends. It doesn’t help that Chakotay is bent on claiming the Protostar as his, since he was captain first, and Dal doesn’t seem to offer much of a skillset in the crew’s shared dilemma; he’s bummed when Chakotay relegates him to coiling ropes instead of offering actual help to the crew.

During their voyage, Chakotay notices Dal’s obvious lack of command presence and offers a few kind words to the young leader. Chakotay is no stranger to hardship and proving oneself, especially when it comes to his service on Voyager. As he relates to Dal, having a shared cause with his crewmates helped them accomplish the near-impossible, despite him not being the captain. As Chakotay asserts, part of being a leader is knowing how to find where you’re needed most – even if that’s not in the center chair.

Dal’s chance at redeeming his captaincy comes during the Protostar’s dangerous crossing, as a repair job on the ship’s broken rudder means Chakotay is tossed overboard into the maelstrom. The hard-headed Dal is the first to jump overboard, and even disconnects his own lifeline, to save Chakotay. This act seems like a noble but futile sacrifice, if not for the timely arrival of a pod of eels, the same kind of creature seen in the previous episode. Dal latches onto one of these eels, which brings him and Chakotay to the surface just in time to board the Protostar, complete with newly refilled engine fuel, and launch into space.

Staring out into the welcoming void after being stuck on the planet, Dal is riding pretty high after his heroic deed – and he even earns Chakotay’s praise as the older man kindly asserts the Protostar is under Dal’s purview. It’s out of the frying pan and into the fire, though, as the Protostar has now risen like a phoenix, but the crew faces an ominous truth: they are now 3,000 light years away from Voyager-A; without a mini-star-powered proto-drive, the trip is going to be long. As Dal cryptically asserts, now it’s time to build a star to power their chariot.

Speaking of Voyager-A, Janeway is struggling in the aftermath of the Loom attack, which also saw Wesley vanishing himself and the Starfleet hopefuls. There’s not much for Janeway to pursue in her chase of the Protostar, but she does get some words of wisdom from a familiar voice: Doctor Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden, who is reprising her role from The Next Generation and Star Trek: Picard). We say familiar voice and not face because honestly, the character model for Crusher here doesn’t look so much like the doctor we know and love – it’s a rare knock we’ll give to this show’s animation style.

“You’re more like a mother than you realize. All we can do is be there for them when they find their way home.”

– Dr. Beverly Crusher to Admiral Janeway.

Janeway’s staff thought it prudent to check in with Wesley’s mother, and as expected Beverly is eager to hear about her son’s sighting. Moreover, she appreciates Janeway’s motherly embrace of Dal and his young crew as the admiral pursues them across space. As far as cameos go, this one is okay – it’s an appreciated recognition of Beverly’s long, quiet struggle with her son becoming an agent of time. Now we’re left to see if Crusher’s cameo here serves a wider purpose as Janeway grasps at straws to find her missing people.

The Adventure Continues…

We are enormous fans of “The Last Flight of the Protostar” duology. The episodes, especially the second one, are downright gorgeous; the ship’s action-packed sea-based crossing, ending with the maelstrom in the eye of the storm, is consistently stunning. Using a starship as a sailing vessel across a sea that looks more like clouds than liquid is such an imaginative use of the Star Trek universe, realized colorfully and boldly in Prodigy’s consistently impressive animation style. We always appreciate when an animated show feeds our eyes with imagery that probably couldn’t be realized in live-action television.

We also love these episodes because Chakotay is now finally playing a larger role in this show. How long have we been teased with his presence, always just outside any one episode’s narrative (with the notable exception of “Who Saves the Saviors”)? The fact that he is now part of the crew of the reborn Protostar is exciting, especially since Hologram Janeway is also back on the scene. How will those two characters serve as mentors to our young crew, and how will Chakotay serve as a command mentor for Dal? We think “The Last Flight of the Protostar, Part II” shows the beginning of a valuable mentorship between the two captains, and we can’t wait to see where it leads.

Having Hologram Janeway interact with the youngsters again resurfaces a valuable part of this show’s first season. Having a Starfleet captain – and Janeway, no less – serve as a mentor and motherly figure to the kids as they embarked on their adventures on the Protostar was partly why Prodigy impressed us so much in its first season. That connection is rekindled in “The Last Flight of the Protostar,” even though this Hologram Janeway never met the crew before they arrived on Ysida.

Our heroes face quite the situation as they head into the second half of the season. Their objective is quite far away – which must be an eerily familiar situation for Chakotay thanks to his years marooned in the Delta Quadrant on Voyager. In the center chair, for now, sits Dal, but even though he has moments of courageousness, does the chair belong to him? Not if what he saw in Wesley’s time machine is true. Finally, the chariot of this found family, the Protostar, is back under the feet of the crew who found it on Tars Lamora. They still need to return the Protostar to that prison colony so the damaged timeline is restored, the effects of which will undoubtedly cast a shadow over their time back on their ship.

Stray Thoughts:

• When Janeway mentions the Shinzon Incident to Beverley Crusher, she’s referring to the events of Star Trek: Nemesis, where Kate Mulgrew had a cameo as Admiral Janeway.
  
  
• When Beverly mentions the Romulan Evacuation, she’s referring to when the Federation expended no small amount of time, resources, and money to relocate countless refugees from the upcoming supernova in the Romulan home system. In fact, Una McCormack’s novel Star Trek: Picard: The Last Best Hope takes place largely in the same time as Prodigy, and describes Picard’s efforts during the evacuation.
  
  
• This episode showed us how it’s Gwyn who is increasingly possessing a greater command presence, which is aligned with Dal’s glimpse into the future two episodes ago. Gwyn, with Chakotay’s help, saves the ship from running aground when Dal fails in that duty, and Gwyn is the one who realizes manually fixing the rudder would right the ship.
  
  
• Why did Zero stop sensing Dal and Chakotay when they went overboard? Without an explanation, this line just seems like a weak way to generate tension.
  
  
• If the eels feared the maelstrom, as we learn as the Protostar makes its way to the storm’s eye, why do they show up within the maelstrom to conveniently save Dal and Chakotay?

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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