To counter the risk of contacting Starfleet from the Protostar, the crew hides the ship and sets out to find other transportation. But Starfleet is also looking for them. They run into each other (literally) on an icy planet, but misunderstandings kick off a dangerous chase that culminates at the border of the Neutral Zone.
On the one hand, episodes of Star Trek: Prodigy are barely 20 minutes long (not counting the credits), so we haven't really spent a lot of screen time watching the real Admiral Janeway's search for Chakotay and the Protostar. On the other hand, it has been multiple episodes, and we would probably begin to question Janeway's competence if she didn't catch up to the kids of Prodigy soon. So it's good that the series didn't make us wait any longer to bring the disparate plot threads together in this action-oriented episode.
On the other hand, bringing the Prodigy gang face to face with the real Janeway sort of does make us question the latter's competence a little anyway. This is essentially the same issue that the Borg episode a few weeks ago had. In order for a group of kids to get the upper hand on someone, you have to "dumb down" that someone -- which, in the case of a character as long-established as Janeway, is a bit of a bummer.
But the writers did take some steps here to mitigate this. The specifically "hung a lantern" on the fact that none of the kids were able to just come out and tell Starfleet the truth. (Kids can be awfully circuitous in their storytelling, so I buy it.) They made contact with another adult who could help them out. (More on Okona in a moment.) The real Janeway, knowing there were kids involved (and knowing that one specifically is the daughter of her alien guest) was, of course, not shooting to kill.
So this journey to an interesting cliffhanger ending with the Romulans actually worked well enough, serving up some nice character moments along the way. The comic relief of Jankom Pog felt particularly good this week, with another Tellarite puncturing his bluster. I would imagine the meta-Murf-osis of the series' most plush-worthy character was a delight for the target audience. And while the series didn't have to make characters out of Admiral Janeway's crew, it's nice that it has; the moment in which her first officer Tysess calls out her emotional attachment was effective, and the empathy of Ensign Asencia toward Gwyn worked well too.
Meanwhile, there were abundant Trek franchise references to delight another segment of the audience. Enterprise fans got an appearance by the Reptilian Xindi. I imagine even the casual Trek watchers caught the "make it so" reference. Then the big connection: the freighter captain Okona. Dal and company could have met up with any random independent freighter captain, of course -- an original character created for this story. Instead, the writers went deep in the archives and gave us the return of the "outrageous" Billy Campbell, for what looks like multiple episodes. Maybe this time around, he'll get to be truly charming and roguish in a way the original Next Generation episode didn't really capture.
Overall, I'd give "Crossroads" a B. It's certainly a milestone episode for the ongoing story the series is telling, and leaves me quite interested to see where things go from here.
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