Star Trek: Prodigy

[GORDON]

Cartoon, made for Nikelodeon, but don't judge it by that. It's not bad. I'd heard it was pretty good, and yeah, I think it is.

I'm halfway through season 1. 25 minute episodes. It's about a bunch of kidnapped orphans (for some reason) who were put to work as slave laborers in some remote place mining some strange ore. There's an ornery orphan who keeps making escae attempts but keeps failing. But then one day they find a Federation starship buried in the ore, and that's exactly what the bad guy had children mining for, but the orphan and a few friends escape in it because the ship's computer is pretty helpful.

So the chase is on.

For a nikelodeon show, this show is a bit darker, with a bit more edge, than what I would expect. There's some pretty damned good character development, for a crew of 6 literal children of different species who couldn't even speak to each other prior to the ship heist.

I understand some of you hate Strange New Worlds, which is some awesome Trek. So I don't know whether I can say you'll like Prodigy, even though it is absolutely holding up Federation ideals, and I'm enjoying it. But some of you are dead inside so it may be lost on you.

The end 5 stars go fuck yourselves.

My favorite bit so far was when one of the kids discovers the Kobyashi Maru program on the holodeck, and he gets obsessed with beating it because no one told hi it wa unbeatable. I laughed out loud when the computer said the only Starfleet cadet who had beaten it was the young Ferengi Nog, who was a character on DS9. He won by telling the Klingons to name their price, for allowing them to rescue the ship. The KM program was revised, after that.

[GORDON]

The show's decent. Enjoyed S1 more than S2, so far.

There was an episode when they started using one of the characters pronoun as "they." And that was fine, it was a non-corporeal being, didn't have sex or gender. But it illustrated a point: it broke the basic intent of language. The first time i was wondering, "where is this "they" group of multipe beings they are referring to?" before I figured out.... which means the word usage failed them. The intent of language and entertainment like ST is to communicate information, not confuse the viewer.

And being corrected mid-sentence "no they go by they" is much more obnoxious.

I hope that little peccadillo falls by the wayside before the next generation comes up.