When the Protostar cadets use an abandoned Borg conduit as a shortcut to finding Chakotay, they're diverted by the Kazon leader who has claimed the conduit as his property. Soon, they're forced into a dangerous race for their own freedom... even as it slowly becomes clear that the Kazon is not the one pulling the strings.
The centerpiece of this episode is the "street race" proxy that pits small fighters on a wild (but visually compelling) course that makes Mario Kart's Rainbow Road look tame. It doesn't exactly feel like Star Trek, but of course, the franchise does need to break the mold now and then to stay fresh. Prodigy is as good a place as any to do that.
Besides, the other main element of the episode is as "classic Star Trek" as it gets. "Evil supercomputer controlling civilization" is such a vintage trope that Lower Decks lovingly poked fun at just how often it's come up. Since Prodigy is crafted to be a young audience's first exposure to Star Trek tropes like this, I have to respect the inclusion... even if I don't really feel that the episode hangs together as a whole. (The evil supercomputer's master plan is to force people to drag race for it?)
Most of the time, Prodigy does an excellent job using its shorter run time -- either sweating down a model Star Trek episode into half an hour, or choosing a story that only needs half the time to begin with. Here, though, I can't help but feel like the dissonance I felt was largely a factor of the breezy length. These kids all have a particular history with the Kazon that makes the aliens uniquely threatening in a way they can't be to anyone else in all of Star Trek. The episode is barely taking a moment to explore that when the race story is thrust upon them. Then, Dal's weird competitiveness takes over.
Sure, Dal's a blowhard, and has always been portrayed as such. But you'd think even he would realize they're all in a dangerous situation, and it only makes sense to work together to get out of it. Instead, he's gotta beat Gwyn -- just to inject a little extra tension in the plot, I guess? Or to distract both audience and characters from thinking too much about why this Kazon is behaving so strangely (to preserve the final reveal)?
If the episode does feel like a bit of a jumble, it does at least end on a strong note. Zero steps up with a noble sacrifice that I thought played well -- nothing so consequential as death, but still something that feels non-trivial for the character.
Still, this episode felt mostly like a rest stop on the longer journey. Pretty as it was at times, I'd give it only a C+ overall.
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