HERE THERE BE SPOILERS
“Supernova, Part 1” is every bit a penultimate episode, in that it addresses certain trailing plotlines without resolving others. Dal really shines in this episode, both for his resolute determination to do his best for his friends and crew but also for Starfleet, the group that will, eventually, reject him. We also get a lovely return to the season’s opening theme of the importance of communication and how it works to bring people together even where it requires effort. Suffice to say, “Supernova, Part 1” as the nineteenth episode of Prodigy’s first season has a lot going on throughout the episode and only briefly dips its toes into cliché territory.
Plot Ahoy!
Dal and the rest of the crew scramble to keep the Federation ships from contacting the Protostar and activating the Living Construct. Admiral Janeway pleads with the officer on duty to release her from the brig so that she can help avoid the potential disaster, and though she’s successful, she’s too late. Asencia, Dreadnok 2.0, and the Diviner have boarded the Protostar and neutralized Murf, Dal, Jankom Pog, Rok-Tahk, and Zero. Asencia goes directly to activate the Construct, and she almost kills Gwyn. However, the Diviner acts to protect his daughter, but Asencia kills him. Gwyn has a few moments to say goodbye, but Asencia succeeds in activating the Construct. She and Dreadnok 2.0 launch themselves into space.
Dal and the rest of the cohort free themselves via the power of cooperation and race to the Bridge in time to bear witness to the Diviner’s last moments. They turn to address the chaos that the Construct has been causing in the background only to discover that the Construct has interrupted the functioning of the UT. Fortunately, Gwyn speaks enough languages to plead with the non-Federation ships in the vicinity to rescue the Starfleet personnel aboard the doomed ships that the Construct forces to fire on each other. The Klingons intervene, but the situation becomes even more dire when more Starfleet ships drop out of warp in response to the armada ships’ distress beacons.
The crew of the Protostar and Admiral Janeway can only watch the carnage unfold.
Analysis
“Supernova, Part 1” gives screen time to a plethora of interesting emotional moments. Admiral Janeway meets a Brenari refugee that she rescued back in her Voyager days. Asencia reveals herself to be as depraved as we thought she’d be. Dal kisses Gwyn, and they have a strange moment of awkwardness that gets interrupted by general catastrophe. Gwyn tells Dal that Starfleet won’t accept him due to his heritage, and he resolves to help his friends anyway. However, against this backdrop, there are two moments that I really care to discuss here: the Diviner and Gwyn’s plea to the non-Starfleet ships in the area.
The Diviner
As a parent, I spend a lot of time wondering if I’m doing the right thing with my boys and frequently remonstrating with myself for not being a better parent. Should I have been more patient? Sure. Did I have the resources for that at the time? Probably not. I think of this interior monologue as a slightly toned down version of the thought processes going on within the Diviner both aboard the Dauntless and as he boards the Protostar. The Diviner finds himself wrestling with questions regarding whether he values Gwyn’s life or his mission more, and until recently, he’d probably have answered the mission.
We’ve seen that the Diviner’s purpose in producing a progeny was to raise a weapon to continue the mission in the event that he died before he could complete it. Viewed with that lens, his early treatment of Gwyn makes a certain kind of sense. He only partially sees her as a daughter. He mostly sees her as a tool, which informs how he trains her and explains why she knows so little about her history and her purpose. After all, one doesn’t explain to a hammer its role in the overall construction of a chair. However, after Gwyn flees with Dal, we see cracks in the Diviner’s resolve. He attempts to reason with her, to explain this massive revenge plot and the reasons behind it to her, but it’s fundamentally too late. Gwyn has discovered and is now living by an entirely different set of mores that are fundamentally incompatible with his mission, so she leaves.
Aboard the Dauntless, we start to see the Diviner expressing affection for his daughter, and notably, he rescues “Janeway” with the request that she look after Gwyn should his mission fail. Sure, that might be due to residual issues from his brain-scrambling by Zero, but I don’t think so. Assuming some sort of traumatic brain injury here cheapens the Diviner’s journey. However, the question is whether the root cause matters in this instance, and I don’t think it does. The Diviner begins showing signs of real affection for his daughter, and that affection drives him to intervene against Asencia when she attempts to murder Gwyn. That intervention, in turn, leads to his own death, but there’s very little like a sacrifice of such magnitude to demonstrate love.
Does that sacrifice negate the years upon years of emotional distance or the nearly dictatorial authoritarian way he parented Gwyn? It does not, and I don’t think the Prodigy writers want us or younger audiences to believe that it does. What they do offer viewers is the opportunity to see the Diviner not just as a monolithic villain but rather as a complex individual who sometimes makes poor choices. Prodigy once again places its faith in its viewers to grasp not only that the Diviner is a deeply flawed character but also that he’s capable of redemption. He makes one, final better choice and leaves Gwyn secure in the knowledge that at the end, at least, her father loved her.
Gwyn the Translator
That Gwyn uses the tools and training her father instilled in her to try and save Starfleet is hardly accidental. The Diviner’s death symbolically frees her from the last ties to the species that has wrought so much harm, and she makes better choices than her father did. That’s been a huge running theme throughout the season, and “Supernova, Part 1” carries it through here. Even more importantly, though, is that the Diviner’s training gives her the gift of communication, which is something the Diviner and the Vau N’Kat denied others. An inability to communicate results in isolation and fear, but learning to communicate brings people together. That happened with Rok and her hero, and the Universal Translator enabled Dal and the crew to save the Unwanted. The Vau N’Kat seemingly revel in their isolation and superiority, but had they been better at communicating with others and understanding themselves, Solum possibly would not have torn itself apart in a civil war. This is a lesson that is so very, very Star Trek but also deeply interwoven into the fabric of Prodigy’s storytelling.
Prodigy has continued to impress with its complex, layered writing, and “Supernova, Part 1” is certainly no exception to that. I look forward to seeing how Prodigy ends its first season, and I cannot wait to see where the show takes us in the future.
Rating:
Four crates of chimerium
Stray Thoughts From the Couch:
- Yep, the Brenari were totally a thing.
- I love that the Klingons jump in to save the Federation. In a way, it recalls “Yesterday’s Enterprise.”
- I love how Dal squares his shoulders and decides to help his friends, even if he himself won’t be accepted by Starfleet. Y’all, Dal is doing a beautiful job of being better at Starfleet than Starfleet is.