#save prodigy

[images © CBS/Paramount… I guess? For now? Yikes.]

Zero reintroduces us to the Medusans

“Is There in Truth No Beauty?” is one of my favorite The Original Series episodes. It’s very understated, but it’s one of those gems from season three that actually holds up and does something interesting. Not only is its guest character Miranda Jones one of the most unique characters of that show, but it also introduces us to the Medusans, a race of pure energy, the sight of which will drive a corporeal being mad. They’re also naturally brilliant navigators, telepathic, profound, agender, and just plain cool! I was so jazzed that Prodigy not only reintroduced this species, but also built on them in creating Zero’s character. Zero’s Medusan experiences form a lot of their character, from their intrinsic communicating abilities, to their guilt whenever their appearance is used as a weapon, to their natural curiosity which comes out all the freakin’ time, as you’ll see below. Plus they built themself a cool containment suit that hovers! What’s not to love?

Zero loves a good puzzle

This Medusan might be the most curious character in all of Star Trek (you’d think it’d be a Caitian, wouldn’t you?). It’s no wonder that Murder Planet lures them into a trap by tempting them with a hedge maze that conceals even more confounding secrets. Zero is also this close to solving the boat puzzle in “Time Amok” before getting outfoxed by the fox, and of course they’re a regular denizen of the “Cellar Door Society” holoprogram: purveyors of puzzling puzzles, amateur sleuthing, and milquetoast mysteries. This sense of wonder with everything in the world around them is positively contagious! Zero is basically a nebulous nerd, and that’s just adorable! It’s a boon for Trekkies everywhere to be able to see geekiness played so positively and we can see ourselves in Zero all over the place. Hoot hoot!

Zero is the perpetual optimist

“A dying star. What a rare and exciting way to meet our doom,” says Zero in “Starstruck.” It almost becomes a running gag that Zero finds every single experience to be a perplexing thing of wonderment and intrigue, even when it nearly kills everyone. Especially when it nearly kills everyone. When they think they’d died in “Time Amok” (and specifically have memories of doing so!), they treat it like it’s just a new phenomenon to analyze and cherish, which would be a little unnerving if Zero weren’t the quirky character they’ve been consistently portrayed as. It’s all part of that Medusan nature of theirs: one that is renowned for having the most beautiful and complex thoughts in the universe. It’s unclear how young Zero is in their species, but I assume they’re considered juvenile, and their natural wonderment at everything is something childlike and pure, making the perfect entryway into science fiction because they make every concept sound fascinating!

Zero fights assimilation

By “Let Sleeping Borg Lie” (great title, by the way!), Zero is at their lowest moment in the series. While saving everyone from The Diviner’s control in “A Moral Star,” they accidentally harm Gwyn, causing some memory loss (Hey, we did a whole blog on that topic! Cross promoting, ftw!), and are feeling like an absolute butt about the whole incident. And they see an opportunity to make it up to the crew by volunteering for what could easily be a suicide mission: getting assimilated by the Borg to figure out how to shut down the Living Construct on the ship. Zero is tempted by the appeal of belonging to a hivemind again like they’d been with other Medusans, but it is their devotion to the rest of the crew that snaps them out of it (and probably a little bit of Medusan superpowers for good measure). Belonging to the Protostar is already enough of a family for them, as has been the pattern with the other characters as well.

[images © CBS/Paramount… I guess? For now? Yikes.]

Jankom makes you change your mind

Jankom is the character I had the most trouble coming up with good headlines for in this blogpost, and here’s why that’s actually a good thing! He’s supposed to be the obnoxious, goofy, jokey comic relief character for kids to giggle at. He has a weird tick in that he speaks about himself in the third person, which starts off funny and then gets tiresome. He’s voiced by notorious character actor Jason Mantzoukas, who plays pretty much every role he touches maximum-Derek, over-the-top zany. But once you learn about all the trauma in Jankom’s backstory, you understand him a little more, and what seemed like a really annoying character for frankly most of the season materializes into a character who makes a lot of sense. It would be like finding out Jar Jar Binks were abused as a child and that’s why he’s such a screw up. Especially for a kid’s show, it’s actually a really nice way of portraying a character who has more going on under the surface than he lets on, and you shouldn’t just judge a book by its cover, as you’ll see below…

Jankom has PTSD

In an era in which more and more is known about autism or ADD or anxiety or PTSD or other mental health conditions, it’s actually quite great to see a character whom the audience will immediately dismiss out-of-hand and then have him get fleshed out as a person whom the rest of the crew accepts in spite of his eccentricities. And you may kick yourself a little bit! I remember a lot of people thinking “Ugh, Jankom is simply the worst,” myself included, and then feel like an asshole when his backstory gives you some of the traumatizing reasons why he’s like that from the episode “Preludes.” Prodigy reminds us over and over again to be more accepting of people’s differences by showing us these great characters who love each other unconditionally, and why can’t we do that ourselves?

Jankom served on a sleeper ship

“Preludes” also informs us that Tellarite orphans (Jankom’s an orphan – that’s something else to hopefully get to explore!) are put on sleeper ships. We learn that Jankom was in cryostasis for two centuries before his ship malfunctioned and he woke up. As we’ve discussed whenever cryostasis comes up, putting someone in the freezer for a period of time has some interesting implications on the world of the show. This makes Jankom literally a relic from the past! We don’t know [yet] what his life was like before going into cryo, but that does put his birthdate right before the time the Federation was getting founded in Enterprise, so that’s kinda neat. And when we see his backstory as de facto engineer of this constantly breaking sleeper ship, we also understand more about Pog’s preoccupation with wanting to fix things. Jankom Pog can fix it!

Jankom gives us a main Tellarite character

We’ve never had one of these! The Tellarites have come a long way from the horrible pig masks from “Journey to Babel,” and I am dying to know more! Sure, they’re Federation royalty, being one of the founding members of the Federation, and Enterprise gives us a little bit more of them, but most everything we know about them is that they’re argumentative gluttons who particularly don’t care for Andorians very much. Prodigy does well to keep this consistent, especially when we see Dr. Noum acting incredibly judgmentally toward just about everyone, especially Jankom Pog for being short in “Crossroads.” We don’t get to learn much new about them except the aforementioned penchant for using cryosleep to span long distances in space. They’re so nice to see and I want more.

[images © CBS/Paramount… I guess? For now? Yikes.]

Gwyn has parent baggage

As we mentioned back in our parents of Trek blogpost, a lot of characters get the backstory of having terrible or absent parents that forms the foundation of their personality. And The Diviner does just that for his progeny Gwydala. His shitty parenting forms so much of her character’s journey. She’s started off with so much pressure on her shoulders to complete his life’s work even though she doesn’t even know what that is yet. Like those put on Wesley by The Traveler in “Where No One Has Gone Before,” the expectations are really hard to live up to, especially when Gwyn learns they are at odds with being the kind of person she naturally wants to be. Writers out there take note: Now that’s some good inner conflict!

Gwyn is Vau N’Akat

I’m a sucker for some good time travel stories, and the whole backstory of Gwyn’s race the Vau N’Akat is sure to win someone like me over. I’ll be honest, this plotline is a little complicated for a kid’s show, but once you wrap your mind around it, it’s absolutely fascinating. The Federation somehow botched first contact on the planet Solum in the near future, and the Vau N’Akat nearly destroyed themselves in a civil war. It’s really a refreshing twist to see the Federation blow something this badly, and for a society to not prance willingly into joining up. Time passes, and Chakotay stumbles through a wormhole in the Protostar fifty years into a future in which this species has nearly destroyed itself, so they all go back in time to try to destroy the Federation. The season one finale of Prodigy sets it up for season two to put even more responsibility on Gwyn to try to save her people… Fingers crossed that we get to see it.

Gwyn starts off on the wrong side

For the first few episodes of the season, Gwyn is at odds with the rest of the Protostar crew. The conflict within her is between doing what she perceives to be right and what would make her father proud of her, and those two things are rarely the same. It takes until “Terror Firma” for Gwyn to see that her father has never had her interests in mind, and then she’s able to cross to the good side. Starting a character off with an entirely different goal than the other characters (they all want to leave Tars Lamora and she wants to return to The Diviner) is Storytelling 101. It gives the characters natural tension and an opportunity to either come together or split apart. Happily for us, Gwyn proves to be at her best when she is with her crewmates.

Gwyn makes up for her years of silence

There’s an excellent scene in “Starstruck” in which Rok tells off Gwyn for standing by for so long while the prisoners on Tars Lamora were treated horribly. And Gwyn really struggles with this! She’d been stuck under her father’s boot for so long, unable to act according to her own wishes. Even when she tries to stand up for the young pink cat thing in “Lost and Found,” you know it’s not going to go anywhere. I complained in my Children in Star Trek post that kid characters too often are props for the episode to make a point, and Gwyn fights against that plot device to become her own character. She finds her voice (a really appropriate character journey for a natural linguist like Gwyn) when she finally speaks up for the unwanted of the prison planet and ultimately helps to free them. Now that’s a person I want to be in catboots with!