Spoilers Star Trek: Prodigy 1x14 - "Crossroads"

I think Dal makes perfect sense because Dal is used to believing authority figures will screw them. Its a long road to deprogramming that.

 

No issues with that, but Dal was coming around from that. Problem is that now, the Diviner has made a real mess of things by introducing a deadly weapon onboard the protostar, and with the incident with the relay station, he is somewhat right to think that Frexs recount of the events would put an extra kink into the situation that would make him look unfavorable.

Plus he's still a kid who grew up under less than ideal circumstances but is trying to do the right thing.

At the very least, Dal now knows that UFP and SF aren't the bad guys, but the set of circumstances under which he and the kids are right now are making a bad situation worse.

 

I hope that she has not lost her negotiating skills either, or there is now a potential conflict with the Romulan’s if Janeway can not use her diplomatic skills to defuse the situation. But I guess that they did not make her a Vice Admiral for nothing so she *should* be able to cool things down. Dal and crew have now inadvertently almost started a war with galactic repercussions with their violation of the Neutral Zone.

I know that there are several planet’s and colonies within the Neutral Zone so I am sure that the USS Prodigy can find somewhere to hide… for a while. I would hate for the Romulan’s to get hold of the Diviner's weapon.

 

I assume Admiral Janeway will go back in time and give herself the secret of blowing up the Romulans sun to deal with the problem.

 

Janeway has already decimated the Borg, surely she can not do the same thing to the Romulan’s and be part of the catalyst which causes the Hobus star to go supernova and destroy Romulus and Remus? This would make her one of the most fearsome and feared warriors in the entire history of the galaxy. She would become known as ‘the destroyer of worlds’ and take on an almost god like legendary status. Whole civilization’s would quake at the sound of her name.

All jokes aside, could these events as being depicted in Prodigy all be leading up to those cataclysmic events of JJ trek? Surely a kids toon would not go so far as to depict such apocalyptical destruction? I’m not sure if the dates match though…. Perhaps the Diviner was involved in the destruction of the Hobus star?

 

Prodigy writers already alluded to the premise that the Borg cube kids woke up is the Artifact we saw in season 1 of ST: Picard.

It wouldn't be a stretch to think because the Protostar crossed the Neutral Zone and is in Romulan space, that the kids actions could somehow be conncted to the Hobus star going nova in 2387 (4 years from current timeframe in Prodigy - because its set in 2383).

Perhaps someone inside the Zone gets a whim of the Proto Core and the Diviner weapon and may have tried their own experiments which could result in a star inside Romulan space going nova (but not necessarily the star Romulus and Remus orbit) - perhaps Okona?
He's always been stuck traveling at Warp 4... and given his involvement with the kids (length of his stay on the Protostar is unknown), he might try something... or employ someone to make faster means of propulsion for himself.

 

Perhaps events in Prodigy will lead to a sudden ‘slow’ destruction of the Romulan sun, which eventually manifest as a supernova? It might take 4 years for this reaction to result in a supernova if it was happening *really* slow. This would give Starfleet and the Federation time to try and evacuate the citizens of the Romulan Empire, building a fleet of ships to help relocate them. Spock could also use this time to try to develop his ‘squid ship’ in order to try and prevent the supernova. It was never specified how the Romulan sun went supernova, but we do know that even though it was unexpected there was at least *some* warning time of several years. We also do not know how it went nova, it obviously was not a natural occurrence or people would have known about it for a very long time beforehand (decades if not hundreds of years). Did all nuclear fusion slowly begin to stop as a result of a quantum implosion causing it to eventually explode for example, or was a more natural supernova somehow ‘triggered’ by another artificial means? Maybe the sun’s nuclear fission suddenly got a massive influx of extra ‘fuel’ and it caused some kind of gradual explosive chain reaction? Perhaps we will never know.

 

Did he? I cou

ldv sworn he had an eyepatch when he was DJing that party

 

You are correct. He had an eye patch on in lower decks.

 

Okona also gets thrown back in time by the destruction of Hobus, yet lands on his feet and has a productive modelling career in the mid-twentieth century...



Star Trek: Hathaway coming soon from Paramount Plus!

 

Noticed that the tellerite wasn't a bald one, like they've been doing in the new era shows?

 

Easier to split hairs that way.

 

He might know it but probably didn't feel it, and still reacted. It makes perfect sense if one considers the context of the behavior.

 

Indeed, this was a bit convoluted/disappointing. Already Jankom "forgetting" to make his point while confronted with dr. Noum was a missed opportunity, but OK, Jankom is often the comic relief. Rok failing to recognise a Starfleet Officer is excusable because she's so young, but both Gwyn and Dal failing to mention the weapon or the circumstances under which they found the Protostar is disappointing for the standards of this show. And the writers know it, as they have Rok point it out.

Frex lying/greatly exagerrating is also disappointing, but not entirely unexpected. I suppose Janeway will get the truth out of him yet, though.

While Zero is not entirely wrong, Janeway is right there. They can talk to her and make their point, even show her the weapon on the Protostar. Frex would quickly be exposed as someone who embellishes his tale and who leaves out crucial details.
Of course, this would mean the arc of Janeway chasing them would be over before it really even started. But I think this could have been done differently: maybe leave Jankom's and Gwyn's encounters in, but have Dal listen in on Frex "debriefing" (really lying to) Janeway before she has seen him. This could make it more believable to think that he could panic based on his distrust of authority figures. This works even better if he then tells Gwyn and Gwyn meets Ascencia after that, when already suspicous of her intentions.

Yes, but what it usually comes down to in those confrontations is who has the most firepower. With 3 warbirds (that we can see, there may be more cloaked), the Romulans probably outgun the Dauntless and that gives them "the right" to be arrogant.

Yes, at first sight Murf's original form was nicer. I'm not surprised though, as it was already (barely) visible in the trailer (though someone had to freeze the right frame for that particular screenshot).

There may be potential in the new form though:

Spoiler: very slight spoiler concerting Murf

Ella Purnell and Brett Gray have teased that the crew will try to make sense of what Murf "says" in his new form, and apparently Dal will try to give a creative interpretation so that Murf would be agreeing with whatever point he is trying to make..

I suspect the next meeting with Janeway may only come in the double episode that will end the season.

A 7 seems right for me as well. As a positive note, hiding the Protostar that way was clever and spectacular. On the negative side again, being hit with one torpedo shouldn't have been enough to knock out the third nacelle. I wonder if that damage will get repaired quickly, or they will be stuck in "normal" (though still exremely fast) warp for some time.

I'm also not sure how they managed to not get detected by the Romulans (as far as we know), even with a smuggler like Okona giving pointers. They lack a cloaking device.

Those are good points. Jankom I can accept as a more comedic accent - though played entirely straight, he has the least reason not to attack dr. Noum with a stream of information as Jankom normally is quick to point out his opinion.

Gwyn's encounter with Ascencia was interesting (and I don't think it's a coincidence that Ascencia finds Gwyn, rather than one of the others). Because Dal and co refused to tell her what happened to her father, it must have been a big shock to find out in one go that Starfleet had found them and that they were apparently under the influence of her father. Still, the rational thing would be to go with Ascencia and try to tell her side of the story. While Gwyn is certainly not immune to stress, she panicked to a far greater extent than she did before in situations that were at least as stressful (like getting kidnapped, crashing with the ship, being threatened by vines, passing Borg drones,...). She never seemed afraid of her father to this extent before.

Regarding Ascencia:

Spoiler: potential spoiler

Though the entire Dauntless gang got a lot of screentime in this episode, Ascencia seems suspicous to me.

When she encourages the Diviner to remember things, she triggers him with "there's no obstacle that can stop you", which is a weird thing to say for a Starfleet Officer, considering she doesn't know the Diviner and his mental state does not suggests that there is nothing that can stop him. I think she is aware of his catchphrase "no barrier we cannot overcome" and she was pointing him in that direction.

On the planet, she finds Gwyn - which may be easy for her to do if she is Vau N'akat and has full use of the weird and ill defined powers that species seems to have - and she right away protects her, as per the Diviner's wishes.
Ascencia now clearly understands that Gwyn is in rebellion against the Diviner.

Dal's failure to communicate anything useful to Janeway was infuriating, even given his general distrust of authority figures. If he really wants to go to Starfleet, he is blowing his chances.

Something else was noticeable about Dal, and will probably come again into play later: Dal's reaction to Okona offering them a ride. Looks like he didn't appreciate the way he approached Gwyn (in classic Okona style), and she likely picked up on Dal's insecure/jealousy reaction.

Good question, it certainly seemed unhealthy .On the other hand, 3 craft started the chase and at the end (with the Protostar breaking through the ice) there still were 3 craft. Let's hope the collision and explosion looked worse than it really was!

While Murf remains a candidate to shutdown the weapon, being the wildcard that he is, I think it may be a Vau N'akat who finally shuts it down. We have at least 2 candidates for that.
With his memory loss, the Diviner at times seemed almost friendly this episode. A serious contrast to his fully aware self of the first half of the season.

Janeway will probably be thoroughly confused after this episode. She now knows that the Protostar has been commandeered by children (and that Frex did not tell the full truth, at least), that they made contact with her crew in a way, and very likely she will now realise that the daughter of her "guest" is a willing participant. On the other hand, the children keep running away and they even fire at the Dauntless. And they do have the Protostar and they were involved in the destruction of CR-721. Making sense of that won't be easy.

 

Yes, the Federation learned in 2381 that the star in the Romulus system was going to go nova. Picard was then promoted to spearhead the evacuation efforts.

The Romulan government felt having their own ships partake in the evacuation efforts would be viewed as a confirmation of an event they were trying to publicly deny.

 

Well, if that's the case, then the kids couldn't have anything to do with the star going nova.

Isn't this position non-sensical though?
I mean, it seems rather pointless to do this, considering their seat of power was going to go 'kaboom' and were actively putting themselves in harms way - or at least, the majority of their population on Romulus and Remus would have suffered the brunt while the military (and likely the government officials) would have just fled to safety.

Also, if the UFP is already in active negotiations with the Romulan government about helping with the evacuation, that could be the same negotiations as mentioned by Janeway's first officer in this latest episode of Prodigy.

 

While I have issues with the totally failed communication, it can hardly be called filler. Janeway has laid eyes on the fugitives and Ascencia has met Gwyn. The "protogies" now have more reason than ever before to evade the Dauntless, and by extension other Starfleet vessels. There is also Okona coming on board. I expect the fallout of this episode to be influencing further developments until the end of the season.