Star Trek: Prodigy: Let Sleeping Borg Lie
November 3, 2022 5:21 AM - Season 1, Episode 12 - Subscribe
As part of growing into a cohesive crew, Dal and his friends undergo a traditional Delta Quadrant rite of passage: the Borg confrontation.
We will add your Memory Alpha trivia to our own:
• The neurolytic pathogen afflicting this Borg cube is presumably the same one used by future-Janeway to disable the Borg Queen in VOY: "Endgame" [FF previously --ed.].
• Doctor Noum (Jason Alexander) is, like Pog, a Tellarite.
• The Borg drone that resembles a rhinoceros is named "Rhino Borg" in the cast list.
"Oh great. The Borg never assimilated a turbolift?"
- Jankom Pog, on the Borg cube's ladder
"I've had enough Borg for two lifetimes."
- Hologram Janeway
Poster's Log:
Between this and PIC, it's pretty clear Captain Janeway and Evil-Future-Admiral Janeway failed resoundingly at wiping out [Kevin Uxbridge voice] all Borgzh everywhere at the end of VOY. I mean, not that the series finale came out and said they did that, but IIRC that was the implication. Seems to be a bit of a retroactive anti-climax a la what Terminator 3 did to Terminator 2. If the pathogen was just a short-term affliction that Borgs can just ride out, I wonder if that's gonna come up at the start of PIC season 3.
I suppose flying the ship into a sun is probably still too risky as a way to try to dispose of a mystery weapon from the future. And sending into a black hole might, like, rip the universe apart or something. The more I think about it, this Living Construct reveal is a huge deal—like, DISCO-season-arc huge. (BTW, unlike other constructs, constructs with the Living subtype are subject to critical hits, nonlethal damage, stunning, ability damage, ability drain, and death effects or necromancy effects.)
And speaking of hidden weapons on the Protostar: Zero seems pretty convinced that seeing a holographic Medusan is just as bad as the real thing. I guess that makes sense. (I wonder, though, if Living Constructs are subject to Medusan damage!…)
This episode seems to set up a bit of a delay until Meat Janeway and Dal's crew become one big happy fleet. That's probably for the best.
This cube must be the Wolf 359 model, judging by the embedded mini-sphere visible behind Holo-Janeway when she advises them to flee.
Borg drones are a little scarier in PROD form! Slicker, more inhuman. (Although that one "Hammerhead Drone" looks more like he comes from one of the lesser Hellraiser movies.) But the scariest of all is trying to imagine Janeway's decision-making while deprived of coffee.
Poster's Log, Supplemental:
Now that we've seen its bridge and its exterior, there can be no doubt: Meat-Janeway's ship is absolutely based on the Dauntless from VOY: Hope and Fear. Curious.
Posting these on the morning that the episode drops results, amusingly, in being able to watch the Memory Alpha page get populated in realtime when I leave and go back to it.
We will add your Memory Alpha trivia to our own:
• The neurolytic pathogen afflicting this Borg cube is presumably the same one used by future-Janeway to disable the Borg Queen in VOY: "Endgame" [FF previously --ed.].
• Doctor Noum (Jason Alexander) is, like Pog, a Tellarite.
• The Borg drone that resembles a rhinoceros is named "Rhino Borg" in the cast list.
"Oh great. The Borg never assimilated a turbolift?"
- Jankom Pog, on the Borg cube's ladder
"I've had enough Borg for two lifetimes."
- Hologram Janeway
Poster's Log:
Between this and PIC, it's pretty clear Captain Janeway and Evil-Future-Admiral Janeway failed resoundingly at wiping out [Kevin Uxbridge voice] all Borgzh everywhere at the end of VOY. I mean, not that the series finale came out and said they did that, but IIRC that was the implication. Seems to be a bit of a retroactive anti-climax a la what Terminator 3 did to Terminator 2. If the pathogen was just a short-term affliction that Borgs can just ride out, I wonder if that's gonna come up at the start of PIC season 3.
I suppose flying the ship into a sun is probably still too risky as a way to try to dispose of a mystery weapon from the future. And sending into a black hole might, like, rip the universe apart or something. The more I think about it, this Living Construct reveal is a huge deal—like, DISCO-season-arc huge. (BTW, unlike other constructs, constructs with the Living subtype are subject to critical hits, nonlethal damage, stunning, ability damage, ability drain, and death effects or necromancy effects.)
And speaking of hidden weapons on the Protostar: Zero seems pretty convinced that seeing a holographic Medusan is just as bad as the real thing. I guess that makes sense. (I wonder, though, if Living Constructs are subject to Medusan damage!…)
This episode seems to set up a bit of a delay until Meat Janeway and Dal's crew become one big happy fleet. That's probably for the best.
This cube must be the Wolf 359 model, judging by the embedded mini-sphere visible behind Holo-Janeway when she advises them to flee.
Borg drones are a little scarier in PROD form! Slicker, more inhuman. (Although that one "Hammerhead Drone" looks more like he comes from one of the lesser Hellraiser movies.) But the scariest of all is trying to imagine Janeway's decision-making while deprived of coffee.
Poster's Log, Supplemental:
Now that we've seen its bridge and its exterior, there can be no doubt: Meat-Janeway's ship is absolutely based on the Dauntless from VOY: Hope and Fear. Curious.
Posting these on the morning that the episode drops results, amusingly, in being able to watch the Memory Alpha page get populated in realtime when I leave and go back to it.
Oh, of course, it was a retweet from Kate Mulgrew herself.
posted by hanov3r at 7:58 AM on November 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by hanov3r at 7:58 AM on November 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
I had to admit that I LOLed a bit when Holo-J acted aghast at the idea of the kids doing a raid on the cube, as if, you know, Meat-J hadn't done that a bunch of times on Voyager. (Or maybe the holo AI is canny enough to realize that her saying "But you can't do that, you're just kids!" is the sure-fire way to guarantee that they'd go off half-cocked because she's not their real mom &c.) Good thing that these Borg didn't just shoot the kids full of nanoprobes immediately; gotta admit, though, that I kind of wanted to see what Rok would look like all assimilated. ("And now for Tsunkatse's ultimate cage match: Rok-Borg vs. Rhino-Borg to see who assimilates who!") And Zero was kind of sad and sentimental about not being part of a (I'm guessing) non-coercive collective any more.
Really wondering about the implication of that future tech. Just the appearance and the way it's animated reminds me a bit of some of what we've seen in other nu-Trek shows: Control and the 32nd-century programmable matter in DIS, the briefly-seen quasi-Lovecraftian hostile machine intelligence in S1 PIC. The suggestion that it might be more dangerous if it's removed from the ship makes me wonder where the Diviner got it, if he understands everything about it aside from its use as a weapon against the Federation, and if we might not be looking at another potential ending-all-life-in-the-galaxy menace.
Also, seeing yet another grumpy ship's doctor reminded me of the Caitian kitty that was part of the mining crew (by way of T'Ana), and I'm hoping that we eventually see them again.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:15 AM on November 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
Really wondering about the implication of that future tech. Just the appearance and the way it's animated reminds me a bit of some of what we've seen in other nu-Trek shows: Control and the 32nd-century programmable matter in DIS, the briefly-seen quasi-Lovecraftian hostile machine intelligence in S1 PIC. The suggestion that it might be more dangerous if it's removed from the ship makes me wonder where the Diviner got it, if he understands everything about it aside from its use as a weapon against the Federation, and if we might not be looking at another potential ending-all-life-in-the-galaxy menace.
Also, seeing yet another grumpy ship's doctor reminded me of the Caitian kitty that was part of the mining crew (by way of T'Ana), and I'm hoping that we eventually see them again.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:15 AM on November 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
Even for a kids show, it did seem quite jarring that, what, they almost ran into a borg cube just hanging in empty space.
posted by Marticus at 2:39 PM on November 3, 2022
posted by Marticus at 2:39 PM on November 3, 2022
That was the creepiest Borg cube in quite a while. I really liked it!
posted by Banknote of the year at 4:16 PM on November 3, 2022
posted by Banknote of the year at 4:16 PM on November 3, 2022
Prodigy is nominally a kids' show, but I'm not sure a "saved by the power of love" ending is Borg-appropriate.
As a Trekkie, I'll allow it because we know so little about Medusans' capabilities. As a viewer in These Times, I'll allow it because it's a good message. (Not to mention we've had so little development of Zero up to now.) Corny, yes, but then, so is so much Trek.
Now what WOULD be Borg-appropriate would be for this cube to infect the rest of the collective with a new assimilation sales pitch: "Why won't you accept our love, new friends?"
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 4:01 AM on November 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
As a Trekkie, I'll allow it because we know so little about Medusans' capabilities. As a viewer in These Times, I'll allow it because it's a good message. (Not to mention we've had so little development of Zero up to now.) Corny, yes, but then, so is so much Trek.
Now what WOULD be Borg-appropriate would be for this cube to infect the rest of the collective with a new assimilation sales pitch: "Why won't you accept our love, new friends?"
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 4:01 AM on November 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
Borg: All You Need Is Love
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:49 AM on November 4, 2022
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:49 AM on November 4, 2022
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Saw something yesterday on the bird app (that I'm not able to find today) from an official Trek-related account mentioning that B'Elanna was the chief design engineer for that project.
Prodigy is nominally a kids' show, but I'm not sure a "saved by the power of love" ending is Borg-appropriate.
posted by hanov3r at 7:53 AM on November 3, 2022