Star Trek: Prodigy 1×09 Review: “A Moral Star, Part 1”

Star Trek: Prodigy closes out its first season with a two-parter that will surely have you on the edge of your seat. “A Moral Star, Part 1” ends with a cliffhanger that will leave you wishing you could warp into next week for the conclusion.

“A Moral Star, Part 1” picks up where last week’s episode left off. Rok-Tahk is regaling the others with the story of how she ended up saving them all in “Time Amok” when the duplicate Drednok begins broadcasting a message. Essentially, the Diviner barters the lives of all of the prisoners still left on Tars Lamora in exchange for the Protostar.

After many episodes with the crew not really coming to terms with what their escape meant for their fellow prisoners, it was nice that “A Moral Star, Part 1” showed us that they are fully aware that they were lucky at the expense of others. But while all of them are completely willing to take the risk to try and rescue the others, they also must grapple with the possibility that their plan won’t work. If that happens, they’ll be handing over the most powerful ship in the universe to a monster.

This episode shows how much these characters have truly grown. The fact that there is even a debate about saving the others, even from Dal, already proves that they are not the same as they were when they fled Tars Lamora. They come together as a team not just to implement a plan, but to conceive it as well. So it makes sense that this episode was written by the entire writing team.

I was extremely impressed by the plan they came up with, and not just because they completely surprised me. It wasn’t just that they cleverly managed to slip one past the Diviner, it’s also that they so easily seemed to predict what he was going to do. Obviously, they knew he intended to double-cross them, and the Diviner taking out their power did set them back a bit. But the fact that they had the forethought to make a replica Zero, have Murf swallow the protocore, and then stuff them both inside was just genius.

The Diviner seemed very at home on the Protostar. He and Drednok even overwrote Janeway’s programming and turned her into, like, evil!Janeway or something. He also keeps hinting to Gwyn that there are things she doesn’t know (well, not so much hinting as flat out telling her), but he also is not very forthcoming with the information. I’m super curious as to what he’s not telling her.

He had such a visceral reaction to seeing the crew in their Starfleet uniforms. (Side note: where did the uniforms come from?) There has to be something there. Perhaps it has something to do with why he and Gwyn are the last of their kind? Is this something like in the 2009 Star Trek where Nero blames Starfleet (and Spock) for not being able to save Romulus?

The episode ends fairly abruptly, with Rok-Tahk and Jankom rushing off to fix the power while Zero and Dal head out to gather the other prisoners. I was kind of surprised at where they ended “A Moral Star, Part 1”. I suppose, in the grand scheme of things, it makes sense. But it still felt sudden, like stopping in the middle of a sentence. It will be exciting to see what happens next week.

Author: Jamie Sugah

Jamie has a BA in English with a focus in creative writing from The Ohio State University. She self-published her first novel, The Perils of Long Hair on a Windy Day, which is available through Amazon. She is currently an archivist and lives in New York City with her demon ninja vampire cat. She covers television, books, movies, anime, and conventions in the NYC area.

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