Prodigy: Dreamcatcher

In two previous episodes of Star Trek: Prodigy, I felt that the show delivered one (two-part) episode very much "not just for kids" and one episode very much "for the kids." The latest episode, "Dreamcatcher," charted a course between the two.

Janeway urges the crew of the Protostar to explore as a Starfleet crew would, to land on an alien planet and conduct a survey. But when the group splits up, they become easy prey for the hallucinogenic plant life on the surface.

Almost every Star Trek series serves up an early episode where the sci-fi premise is contrived to let the audience see "what each character wants." This episode serves in that long tradition, being a bit more subtle than most, in fact. As each character falls victim to a vision tailored specifically to them, we learn about their fears, desires, level of innocence, and more. It's certainly more deep in some cases (Dal, Gwyn) than others (Jankom Pog, Rok-Tahk, Zero), but it's overall nice character building for a half-hour series.

But also, most of the reason the character work comes off "subtle" is because the episode is hanging a blinking neon sign around its more prominent theme: teamwork. Fine; most of the best Star Trek episodes have a moral component, and in a show aimed for a younger audience, you can expect that the "lesson" is going to be more direct. But I'm also already looking forward to the day we get to see Dal get out of jeopardy he didn't put himself into.

Where it comes to Dal, we're clearly playing a long character arc -- perhaps over the entire season. That could be a bit tough to handle in a season that's reportedly going to be 20 episodes, and split into three different runs with several months off in between. (The next episode of Prodigy, for instance, is going to be the last one until January. It seems Prodigy is going to fill in "gaps" between other Star Trek shows.) Dal's stubbornness is already wearing thin. But I suppose this is another lesson this show is trying to teach, so his flaws need to be made really clear, so that his eventual growth can drive the lesson home.

Still, there was some spooky atmosphere. We also got nice dramatic stuff around Gwyn's need to please her father -- and the quite sad fact that she realized the plant organism wasn't her father because she was able to please it. Plus, it ended on a rather compelling cliffhanger to make us look forward to the next episode. I'd give "Dreamcatcher" a B-.

But... I'm also glad that Star Trek: Discovery is returning with its new season this week.