As the Protostar crew commiserates with Dal over his newly discovered origins, they share their own tales about their pasts. Meanwhile, aboard the Dauntless, Asencia reveals her own history, and the plight of her people.
The episode is really a big swing for the writers of Prodigy -- pausing the overall story line just as it's accelerating toward a climax, going back to pick up the "origin stories" of the characters so late in the season, weaving in a more complete revelation of what happened to Chakotay... and trusting that the children in their audience will go along with it all. I don't know firsthand how it landed with that audience, but from my view, it all seems pretty successful.
There are interesting back stories to be shared here, after all. Zero's wasn't exactly my favorite (but then, neither is Zero my favorite character), but I thought there was interesting color in the rest. Rok-Tahk's history adds context for why she's so keen on scientific pursuits and so against using her physical assets. Her size and strength brought her little pride in her past, only shame and embarrassment. There's an especially dark aspect to her backstory, that the "hero" she worked with might just be one of the most diabolical villains ever on Star Trek. He was getting upstaged by his child co-star, so he sold her into slavery!
Jankom Pog's backstory was a fun merger of comedy and drama, and I found it especially clever in that it "answered" a "question" that I never really thought to have: why does Jankom Pog talk about Jankom Pog in the third person? Besides that tidbit, his tight little flashback showed us the origins of his skills in fixing things, gave context for why he seems to know so little about other Tellarites (he's from a sleeper ship, from another time), and why he's a bit socially awkward (he went a long time without interacting with anyone else). And it was nice for voice actor Jason Mantzoukas to be able to bring some pathos when he's normally (reliably) just relied on for laughs.
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