Star Trek: Prodigy: Into the Breach, Part I

July 3, 2024 10:03 PM - Season 2, Episode 1

The plucky young crew, formerly of the Protostar, undertakes their most daring and challenging mission yet, maybe the most bizarre and dangerous mission in the history of Starfleet: boldly going from Paramount+ to Netflix!

Memory Alpha loves a cockamamie plan:

- As noted above, this is on Netflix as the result of Paramount+ deciding to cancel the series and shop the complete second season around, finally making a deal with Netflix. All of the episodes for S2 have dropped at once.

- Through time travel or just some weird Euro-thing, it dropped first on France.tv and AppleTV+ France back in March.

- Speaking of time travel... "timey-wimey"

- The EMH is back, baby! And he's a doctor, not a butler.

- Also, cetacean ops. (Lower Decks says "you're welcome.")

Poster's Log:

I missed these wacky kids and their cockamamie plans.

Poster's Log, supplemental:

Ditto for the doc.

posted by Halloween Jack (22 comments total)

I started watching this yesterday and I'm five episodes in. I'm really enjoying it. It jumps into the main story straight away.

If anyone is still wondering if it's worth sticking with S1 through its slow start, occasional kid-oriented humour, and initial unclear connection to the Trek canon to get to this: yes, it is.

I can't believe this has been so poorly promoted and is [probably/maybe] cancelled. Studio execs just love setting money on fire.
posted by confluency at 12:53 AM on July 4 [3 favorites]

I've always been curious about this one, and I started watching Season 1 with my family last year, but the first few episodes didn't pull us in. Does it take a while to get going? Is it worth giving another go?
posted by Alex404 at 4:01 AM on July 4

Where Season One took quite a while to get going, this one wasted no time. I've only watched the first two so far, but it seemd much more plot-driven than the first season, so we'll see how that goes. I like Star Trek better as individual stories than a season arc. Nevertheless, I thought it got off to a good start and am looking forward to the rest of the season.

Couple good call-backs to tie the show more firmly into the canonical timeline - most of Starfleet is busy with Picard's evacuation of Romulus, which puts this series before the events of Picard S1. The cetacean ops was a fun shout -out to Lower Decks. We know we're going to see Admiral Jellico again. And there's another one that I know is coming because spoilers are so hard to avoid on the Internet but that I won't mention here.
posted by briank at 6:48 AM on July 4 [1 favorite]

Spoilers are also hard to avoid if you read the episode descriptions on Netflix.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 9:14 AM on July 4

@Alex404 I would stick with it until about midway through S1 at least. It takes a while to get going, and it doesn't feel very Trek-like at the start, but it gets there!

S1 is also a lot more episodic, whereas S2 has so far been much more serialized (but in a good way -- without getting into spoilers, and from the vantage point of a quarter of the way through, the stakes are at a normal Star Trek level and not improbably world-ending).

For calibration: I (an adult) have watched and enjoyed many animated series aimed at kids and teens. I don't care enough about extended Star Wars canon to have watched the animated Star Wars series, but I love Star Trek enough to have stuck with S1 of prodigy, and I'm glad that I did. I file it under "made for kids but also fun and interesting for adults". I also love Lower Decks.
posted by confluency at 10:19 AM on July 4 [3 favorites]

Runing out of fingers to count the times Dal saves the day by fixing whatever it was that Dal messed up.
posted by Marticus at 5:01 PM on July 4 [3 favorites]

Jankom Pog say he fix, you watch!
posted by billsaysthis at 11:13 PM on July 4 [2 favorites]

S1 may have taken a little too long to introduce its characters, but it does eventually rev up and become pretty engaging. I'd definitely recommend sticking with it if you can.

I liked the start of Season 2, too! I just finished episode five last night, even. Only Acolyte has taken priority in my viewing schedule.

Seeing the EMH again is a delight. This show is very much a loving pseudo-sequel to Voyager (How 'bout that Lamar - Class Voyager?!). Kate Mulgrew really is a fantastic Trek captain admiral. Tying things down as they relate to the greater timeline was also a nice touch with the Romulan evacuation.

Hopefully this season will hit hard and Netflix will consider a Season 3.
posted by Atreides at 6:18 AM on July 5 [2 favorites]

I hope that I’m proven wrong, but Paramount’s in the middle of a complicated merger/buy-out deal, and there are rumors of a pending house-cleaning at Star Trek. A season of animation is a long-term project that I don’t think Paramount is willing to commit to right now.

(There are also rumors that Alex Kurtzman will be kicked out and/or bought out of his contract. Which sounds like a good thing, but one should be careful about what they wish for.)
posted by 1970s Antihero at 11:40 AM on July 5 [1 favorite]

Yes Alex404, Season 1 takes a while to reveal its qualities but is definitely worth it. I almost bounced off it too. It starts off looking like a story about a dystopia, then turns around to become the most Star Trek it possibly could be. Explaining why in depth may constitute a spoiler but I guess you're here in the Season 2 thread anyway...

I'm loving this Season so much! Regretfully too busy to marathon all ten hours at once as demanded by the Netflix bean-counters or whatever. It's just so well written!
posted by Coaticass at 3:02 PM on July 5 [3 favorites]

Also it seems there might be some Doctor Who fans in the writers' room, more power to them.

Maybe I should watch another episode during breakfast.
posted by Coaticass at 3:05 PM on July 5

I just finished S2, and while it does reach a satisfactory conclusion, it also ends on what is essentially a setup for the series proper, and it will be disappointing if we never get to see that series made.
posted by confluency at 5:11 AM on July 6

Two seasons to get to the actual series is a heck of a runway. I quit after episode four or so of S1- I’m heartened by reports that it graduates from mostly average kids show at some point, but I’ve been burned by too many oh, you just have to make it through the first 8 episodes/2 seasons/first showrunner, and then it gets good to soldier on.
posted by zamboni at 7:22 AM on July 6

OK, let me rephrase that. A lot of interesting things happen in S1 and S2, but neither season has the classic Trek format of "a team of (mostly) Starfleet people formally assigned to a ship (or station) have adventures together in pursuit of Starfleet's mission of exploration (insert mission flavour alternative for DS9 here)". The end of the second season sets up this classic format.

This doesn't mean that the first two seasons aren't good, or that they don't contain elements of this format, or that they don't feel like Star Trek. The second season in particular is heavily embedded in past Star Trek canon and lore, and connects up with multiple major Trek loose ends (not being specific because spoilers). I may also be overstating the level of S2's departure from The Format; it probably is much closer to it than many seasons of Discovery (whatever you think about Discovery).

I was also previously overstating the level of serialization in S2 -- there are some sequences of episodes which are strongly coupled, and each episode makes some progress in the seasonal arc, but most of the episodes do have a well-defined episode arc, and overall the arc structure is probably about the same as it was in S1.
posted by confluency at 1:48 AM on July 7 [1 favorite]

Without spoiling it too much, I swear they decided to have at least one deep cut Trek Lore thing for mom and dad every episode, and the rest of it has been honestly some of the most solid back to the fundamental trek-ish sci-fi exploration I've seen in a while. But honestly I laughed my ass off at the double lore bits in episode 8. I would be more than happy to let Prodigy fill in the gap left by Lower Decks, y'know?
posted by Kyol at 7:23 PM on July 7 [1 favorite]

Dammit. Not available in Canada. We have to wait for the SciFi channel to broadcast it.
posted by fimbulvetr at 6:36 AM on July 8

Also, cetacean ops. (Lower Decks says "you're welcome.")

The cetacean ops was a fun shout -out to Lower Decks.

While LD has definitely had its moments with Cetacean Ops, it originated in TNG - first referenced in background chatter in "Yesterday's Enterprise" and then appearing in both the official Enterprise-D blueprints and the TNG Technical Manual.

The "Infinity" kinda reminded me of the Solaco dropship from "Aliens".
posted by hanov3r at 8:30 AM on July 8 [3 favorites]

I'm continuing to make my way through this second season and gosh, the character who appears to help the main characters was both a welcome unspoiled surprise and a delight. Season Two, more so than one, is definitely establishing itself as a sequel to the TNG-era Trek, along side Lower Decks.
posted by Atreides at 2:10 PM on July 8 [2 favorites]

Thanks for the background on cetacean ops, I didn't know it!
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 2:21 PM on July 8 [1 favorite]

Is anybody planning to make a post for the following episodes? I don't know the etiquette, are folks planning to discuss this on a weekly-ish basis or would we be better served by a single "the rest of S2" post? I know I've watched it all, and a lot of folks in this thread are coyly talking about stuff that is not in S2E01.
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 6:14 PM on July 11

Honestly, after I finished the rest of the season I toyed around with posting an all S2 episodes post, just for the OH MY GOD GUYS bonkers stuff, but I've been busy. Please do, opening threads is both fun and easy and profitable. Well, at least two of those. I'm not sure there's really enough meat per episode to talk about them individually and people tend to just hand out in the last episode post of bing dumped seasons anyway in my experience.
posted by Kyol at 8:19 PM on July 11 [1 favorite]

I just finished the season, so I'm also ready to discuss things. There's 20ish episodes and I agree with Kyol that there may not be enough substance to really sustain a post for every episode. Maybe we can break up the season into two posts - Episodes 1 - 10 then Episodes 11 - 20(ish?). A post could include a break down of what happened in their respective episodes to help focus conversation. Alternatively, just a whole season episode. It's unfortunate that this was a binge situation, it always undercuts deeper discussions.
posted by Atreides at 8:24 AM on July 12