With Prodigy having so many secrets;
Where is Chakotay ?
Why are there so many Federation Species in Delta Quadrant ?
What is the deal with the Vau N’akat ?
We were expecting the answers soon but, not in an episode wholly dedicated to
our questions. This is what we get with the latest episode of Star Trek: Prodigy.
Welcome to Trek Central! I’m your host, Captain Jack!
Woah Woah Woah, hang on, It's December 1st ! it’s Christmas !
that means we need to get into theme,
right?
Q!
Yep... Yep, This is what we're doing for the rest of December now...
It's going to be a loooong December...
Good luck Everybody...
Before we warp into this video, If you want to keep up to date on all the latest Star Trek news,
lore and more, then make sure to hit that subscribe button to never miss a video from
the team here at Trek Central! You can also follow us on social media for daily updates
on the Star Trek Universe! Okay, engage!
This episode was a massive backstory and lore dump from all of our major characters,
The Diviner and his new Vau N’akat Ally in Ensign Ascensia, to our Protostar crew. The
episode starts with Admiral Janeway, and we don’t get much of her in this episode.
Unfortunately...
Her Commander gives her a broadcast which has all the names of the Protostar kids,
from the wanted message the Diviner sent out near the beginning of the series.
So Janeway now knows the Kids, and that they are wanted by something called “The Diviner”
Or something called "The Diviner"
But, not knowing that the person she has on board is one and the same.
We do get Holo Janeway telling the kids about Janeway's past,
however, only briefly before the end of the episode, mentioning Mollie,
the Irish Setter dog that Janeway had, which was being looked after by her ex-fiance
Mark while she was in the Delta Quadrant. Wonder what eventually happened to Mollie.
Hmmmm... That's a video....
So let's start with the Vau N’akat, which gives us a lot of information about the series as a whole.
So Ensign Ascencia, who I guess we now have to call “The Vindicator,” tells The Diviner their
story in the hopes that it regains his memory which it does. From this, we get the whole
Vau N’akat tale told to us, which we have only gotten small pieces of time in previous episodes.
We know that their world, Solum, was contacted by the Federation and that their people were
split between isolationism and wanting to explore the stars and open their borders.
This caused a civil war on their planet and basically destroyed their planet and their
people. We learn even the Diviner was one of those idealists wanting to join
the galactic community, but after the war, was left disillusioned.
It isn’t that they blamed Starfleet and the Federation just for making first contact
but also for their prime directive. Starfleet had started first contact,
it had caused a civil war, and they just left the planet alone and didn’t help. Obviously,
we know Starfleet has a directive of not helping civilisations unless requested,
but this must have seemed selfish and arrogant to the Vau N’akat as their planet was burning.
50 years after First Contact and Solum was destroyed,
the Protostar appeared over their planet after falling through a temporal wormhole.
So it seems like the Vau N’akat didn’t intentionally capture the Protostar,
but used this opportunity to do so. They would then capture the Protostar and its crew,
though we only see one other crew member besides Chakotay and that is this Bird Species.
He doesn’t look, like Aurelian, Skorn or even the Areore...
from the recent Lower Decks episode which featured a bird species...
due to the lack of wings, they could be tucked behind his back or in his uniform or something.
But, I dont know, he does look like an anime character, i can tell you that.
The Vau N’akat placed their last living construct onto the ship, with most of them being lost during
the Civil War, but Chakotay and this Bird officer were able to escape their captivity
and send the Protostar back into the past, however not being on board, so the fact the ship manages
to successfully fall into the past through this wormhole and end up on Tars Lemora surrounded
by sensor deflecting minerals is astonishing, so there could still be more to this story.
and maybe we will learn that later...
The surviving Vau N’akat, including the Diviner and The Vindicator, would create
“The Order” and send 100 of their people back in time through the temporal wormhole anomaly, each
with a Drednok unit they had used during their civil war, and each with a Rev-12 Type starship,
which is probably the reason why The Diviner’s ship is called the Rev-12,
as it could be the 12th ship of this 100 ship fleet. They would cast off their names and be
given titles instead, showing that they were truly giving up their future, and simply being
tools for their planet's vengeance and salvation by destroying the Federation once and for all.
The Vau N’akat were so obsessed with their past that they gave up their future,
fleeing their wartorn planet in the hopes of vengeance instead of rebuilding with the number
of supplies and ships they had available. The Diviner went some 70 years in the past,
assuming that first contact happens soon with Solum. In contrast, the Vindicator fell only 53
years into the past, hiding her ship and making her Drednok look like a table...
Now, this is a lot to take in as a backstory, but I extremely love it. It has people clinging
to their planet's past so much and the “good old days” that they actually send
their people back in time to make sure those “good old days” last. It isn’t as
complicated as I expected it to be, but still pretty complex to wrap our brains around.
We will do a "Prodigy Timeline" video soon, so stick around for that.
We know that the Order forbade cloning, possibly to make sure that these Vau
N’akat they sent into the past would only be concerned with completing their missions,
and not creating legacies to complicate things.
They wanted these 100 operatives to be tools, not people, which is how I interpret this.
We do, however, have some questions to ponder with this answer now. We know Chakotay is stuck
on Solum 50 years in the future. This is in a timeline where Solum does get destroyed,
which I would think would be the bad timeline, and with this knowledge,
Janeway and the Protostar kids would try and prevent this civil war from happening,
perhaps making first contact go better between The Federation and the Vau N’akat.
If they do this, then it causes a separate timeline to that Chakotay appeared in, and as
Janeway said, thinking about Temporal Mechanics always gave me a headache,
I know the feeling Janeway, I'm confused with this...
but will we ever be able actually to save Chakotay? Or will this be a “needs of the many,
needs of the few” having to sacrifice Chakotay to save an entire world from itself?
We also have the issue of the Vau N’akat operatives. Did they all survive the
Wormhole travel? And if so, where are they, and when are they? But that is
the Vau N’akat backstory. Let's take a look at some of our protostar kid backstories.
Before we do, Editor Troy is going to zoom in on this screenshot of the three Vau N’akat people.
You've got The Diviner, The Vindicator and then
a mysterious individual to the left of The Vindicator.
Now this person i have a crazy theory they might appear sometime soon...
Its a very unique character design and we've only seen a character with this design once.
So i reckon we might see them sometime soon.
Just a theory, A Star Trek Theory.
We learned ages ago that Jankom was on a Tellarite Sleeper ship, a ship sent out by the Tellerites
before the Federation was formed, that was filled with orphans in order to explore the galaxy.
Or set up colonies or something. Jankom was a trainee engineer who was woken up mid-journey
to fix aspects of the ship. This would go on for a while, and eventually, the ship wouldn’t have
enough oxygen for the rest of the crew to make it to their destination. Janko got in an escape
pod and sacrificed himself, then was picked up by Kazon Slavers and brought to Tars Lemora.
This Backstory actually makes me like Jankom even more. He does have some Starfleet Material in
him. On the protostar, he seems very interested in his self-preservation, “let's not do this,
lets not do that” but he was actually willing to sacrifice himself for the good of the many,
which is really cool. It is nice to also see a Tellerite-style ship again,
looking very similar to the ships we see in Enterprise and a nice little section
of levity with the humour that came from him having to fix everything to a programmed robot
pretty poorly. Or maybe it was intentionally annoying, considering it was a tellurite Droid.
Rokh Tahk has probably the most interesting backstory, being basically a circus animal,
exploited as a monster and pretending to be hunted for entertainment. Even though this
was in essence, still slavery for Rohk Tahk, she enjoyed it,
(Because of course she would)
and the person she fought could even be considered her friend. But eventually, with shows not
selling, Rohk Tahk would be sold by the Owner to the Kazon Slavers and shipped to Tars Lemora.
Considering Prodigy's reuse of assets, especially with the Kazon Slavers seemingly being the only
slavers contracted to Tars Lemora, I wonder if we will see this Warrior again and if they
will reunite, considering his more unique model. This would be pretty cool and make this backstory
much more relevant than simply answering the question, “How did a Brikar get to Tars Lemora ''.
Now, Zeroes' backstory is not too interesting. It is with a ship of
Medusans that gets separated and captured by Kazons and then shipped to Tars Lemora.
However, there is something really interesting in this backstory, and that is the ship design.
The ship these Medusans travel in has a spherical front and warp nacelles on
the back and very much looks like some fan designs for Early Starfleet era starships.
If this is so, I wonder if this Medusan ship is an old Starfleet ship, which could be interesting.
I immediately thought of J-Class, but I don't think its that.
It is also noticeable that the Kazon are wearing the exact same eyewear that Spock
wears in the TOS Medusan episode, which is a neat touchand maybe an easter egg for the show.
Overall, this episode gets the unenviable task of being the lore dump episode for the season,
giving us all we need to get rid of some of our nagging questions,
so we can hopefully continue with the story for the rest of the season.
And even though this is the case, it is an episode I enjoyed, mostly for getting rid of
the fog around the Vau N’akat and actually telling us where Chakotay was, a mystery
which we have been taunted with by the show for a while. Obviously, a lot of these answers bring up
more questions, but hopefully, they will be answered in more natural ways by the future
episodes' plots themselves and not require another lore dump backstory filing episode.
Not that its a problem, its just not interesting...
Having our crew wait for the Protodrive to be repaired and reset was a great
way for them to just tell stories around the warp core and just bond as a group,
something which this larger episode order can do very well.
We have a lot to look forward to in future episodes.
With this episode out the way, will The Diviner and The Vindicator work well
together, or will the Diviner's feelings for Gwyn get in the way of their mission?
Will Janeway manage to save Chakotay?
And where will our kids and the Protostar head now that their proto drive is fixed?
Definitely looking forward to future episodes of Star Trek: Prodigy.
But what did you think of this episode, did this answer any pressing questions
you still had about the show? Let us know in the comments section down below.
No ! Seriously !
What did you think of the latest episode of Star Trek: Prodigy?
I really want to know, come join our discord server, It would be an honour to have you there.
If you want to keep up to date on all the latest Star Trek news,
lore and more, then make sure to hit that subscribe button
In the comment section below ? No it's not in the comment section.
Just make sure to hit it there because where else is it ?
Don't forget you can also follow us on social media for daily posts
about the Startrek universe and join our Community Discord Server as i mentioned.
But for now, I’ve been Captain Jack. Welcome to the month of December,
and we’ll see you very soon...
Live Long and prosper, my friends!
Goodbye,