In the fourth episode of Star Trek: Prodigy, the gang find themselves on an outwardly gorgeous planet that holds dangerous secrets.
Some Spoilers Ahead
1. Stunning Artistry
Right from the beginning of the series we have gotten some truly beautiful scenes, mainly incredible shots of the Protostar almost getting destoryed in the gravity well of an actual protostar. The ship making its way through gorgeous galaxies and nebulas. It’s some of the best work created for the series so far. It feels akin to both the current live-action series and even some of the style of the Kelvin Universe trilogy. It goes a long way to make the scope feel bigger and better than the typical child adventure fare. Making it really feel like part of the Star Trek family.
2. Gas Samples
As beautiful as this episode mostly is, it is the first of the season to bend backwards to shove in weak childish humor. Far too many fart sounds and truly stupid jokes that simply don’t belong in Star Trek are thrown around. It takes the low hanging fruit and looks to make kids laugh at the easy stuff instead of incorporating decent humor that they, and wider audiences can appreciate. It is by far the weakest thing in the season so far. What makes it stand out even more is that the majority of the episode is really good.
3. The Secret of Gwyn
While it has been pretty evident from the start that Gwyn fears, and probably respects her villainous father, Solum the Diviner, but “Dreamcatcher” is the first time that we really get the idea that she loves her father. It opens us up to the idea that she wishes her life had been different, and hopes to set her life on a different path now. She wants the love, pride, and approval of her father and that they could have both lived a happy life together. As much as she is fighting to get back home, she knows that if she were to return without the Protostar her father would not care about her return. It would be feasible to believe that he would have her killed. So she is doing all of this under emotional duress. Her actions in this episode help lead it to our first real cliffhanger of the series too. The more we learn about Gwyn and get to see her inner most self, the more she becomes, far and away, the most interesting character on the show.
4. Tech Face-lift
In an interesting move, especially with where in the timeline this series falls, phasers, tri-corders, spacesuits, and other tech get a stylistic upgrade. They feel like Trek tech, but the designs don’t really line up with anything else we’ve gotten in recent years. They are still making the sounds fans know, the designs are new and flashy, most notably the tricorders. It is a fun new introduction for the technology, and nice to see these new characters interact and get interested in using them – aside from the lame joke of Jankom Pog shooting himself in the chest with his phaser, thankfully set to stun. The scene as a whole really works, seeing these characters take on some of the role of Starfleet officers, going through the familiar beats of early away team scenes.
5. Horrors Behind the Beauty
The main story of the episode is that the planet the crew is exploring is a seemingly gorgeous and safe M class that under Federation protocol, the Protostar must investigate. The characters decide to split up and make their way across various areas and terrain. As they find different creatures and things to interact with and exolore it soon becomes clear that something is off. The planet is using the characters’s inner ideas, fears, and hopes to create visions and imagery to keep them grounded so it can absorb them. Having Rahk-Tok playing with cute little Furby-like creatures or Dal speaking with a sterner version of Holo-Janeway, we get some great insight into our heroes in ways that would typically be doled out with long-winded expository explanations. We get these inward looks in ways that are both horrifying and emotionally satisfying. The way the planet comes to sentient life to take down our heroes is pretty creepy and the whole idea of it is great. It gets a little bit into MCU territory with the planet being a super-organism that can create whatever it wants, but without the cosmic God backstory.
