lizbee | Star Trek: Prodigy is a gift for me personally (Reply)

First, how do I not have a Gwyn icon? That is such an oversight on my part.

ANYWAY, I'm not a big fan of the "drop all 20 episodes at once on Netflix and make people binge it in the hopes that it may or may not get renewed" model, but we'll be covering each episode individually (okay, maybe combining two-parters) week by week on Antimatter Pod, so I'll be able to appreciate the individual moments as they come.

I just want. To see the meeting at Starfleet Command. Where Jellicoe goes, "So yeah, I told Admiral Janeway that we're all really sad that a Voyager officer has been lost in the delta quadrant/also trapped in a time travel doodad, but for the good of the Federation, she needs to abandon him. And she took it well. No, I don't think she's sending a group of children off to break the laws of time and space on her behalf, why do you ask?"

Because how did they think that was going to go?

(Okay, Janeway doesn't send the kids, they go of their own initiative because they are the main characters and have their own motivations and needs. But just like Harry Kim in "Timeless", they're her protégés for a reason.)

MEANWHILE, EPISODE 11.

At some point on Antimatter Pod, I said that the only way Prodigy could make Chakotay work was by making him a completely different character. And also recasting him. Or better yet, just doing a George Lucas and quietly editing him out of season 1 and replacing him with Tuvok.

I did not. Expect them. To make Chakotay a completely different character, let alone one that I love? Nor did I expect Robert Beltran to rise to the acting challenge, given his previous work on the series. (I realise now that his flatness in season 1/the early eps of season 2 was because he was trying to sound like he did 25 years ago, and only Kate Mulgrew has that superpower. But also, Captain Chakotay is a grumpy bastard, and that's not really a stretch for Beltran.)

They basically made Captain Chakotay into Prime Lorca, and it feels like a personal attack. Turns out that "the exile" is a character type I am super into, alongside "the captain who couldn't go down with his ship and has had to outlive his crew". Yes, I should have realised this by now.

Anyway, it took 30 years of Star Trek, and also months of imprisonment followed by a decade marooned on a hostile planet with only Hologram Janeway for company, but Chakotay is finally a character worthy of being shipped with Kathryn Janeway.

(I watched ep 11 on the train to work this morning, which was a huge mistake because I started crying. In public. While wearing a mask and eye make-up.)

I'm even seeing comments from Native American fans, approving of the depiction of Chakotay as a Native American character. Are we in opposite land? Are pigs flying?

I am also passionately obsessed with the following:

Dal's inability to fit into the standard (US-style) education system
Rok-Tahk's everything
CETACEAN OPS
GILLIAN THE WHALE
Gwyn, Solum, everything
the Vau N'akat were already my favourite new Trek aliens, and I think they're edging out the Romulans as my favourite Trek aliens of all time
Zero and Ma'jel
HER NAME IS MA'JEL
we are so overdue for a female Vulcan who isn't bad at emotional control (T'Rina is a special case; her cultural context is totally different), which is no shade against T'Lyn, just correcting a pattern that was forming; ALSO the team did need a foil who is a peer, and I love her
WESLEY CRUSHER
I haven't been this infatuated with Wesley since I was 11 years old
Janeway. Tank top. Phaser rifle.
(But ALSO, unlike, say, Seven of Nine in Star Trek: Picard, Prodigy remembers that she's a scientist and an intellectual)
If anything happens to Commander Tyssess, I will riot