While “First Con-tact” may not be the strongest episode in Prodigy‘s freshman season, there’s still a lot to like. The story is clean, simple, and teaches some valuable lessons, but I find myself wondering if this episode should have pushed the envelope just a bit in order to go from good to great.

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS

Janeway reports receipt of a distress signal, and when the signal appears onscreen, Dal recognizes the person, despite holographically generated flames, and addresses her as Nandi. As it happens, the person is the Ferengi female who raised Dal. The Protostar’s crew beams over to meet her, and they discover that she has a cloaking device. They conclude that they could probably use a cloaking device to aid in avoiding the Diviner. Nandi offers to strike a deal. She’ll offer the cloaking device if Dal will take the Protostar to a nearby planet in order to negotiate for a crystal that Nandi apparently needs. Dal asks if she needed it because she’d lost a lot of money at the Dabo tables, and she tells him that she owes a lot of money. Turning over the crystal, apparently, will clear her debt. The wrinkle here is that the species occupying the planet in question has yet to meet alien life, making this a true First Contact situation.

Back on the Protostar, Janeway counsels caution, explaining that Starfleet takes First Contacts very, very seriously. Dal blows her off, and they all warp to the planet in question. Dal, Nandi, and the rest of the crew beam down to the planet’s surface, which seems deserted, despite their readings indicating that they’re surrounded by lifeforms. A sandstorm kicks up, and Jankom Pog and Nandi both read the storm as a hostile move by the beings on the planet. However, Gwyn determines that the species uses harmonics to communicate and manages to send a signal by tuning her tricorder to a particular frequency.

Meanwhile, on the Protostar, Janeway replays the snippet of video featuring Chakotay over and over. Eventually, she hones in on a single frame just after she announces that something is boarding the ship. Looking through the bridge doors, she sees a mechanical creature with red eyes looking through the opening it creates by forcing open the doors.

On the planet, a large structure grows out of the ground, which they all interpret as an invitation, and the young crew enters the structure only to fall down a hole. They roll out into a room full of crystals suspended from the ceiling. Gwyn and Zero conclude that the life forms resonate the crystals in order to shape matter. Therefore, each crystal is necessary for the species. A beautiful, glowing alien appears on an upper level, and Nandi attempts to offer the lifeform her Ferengi spit pan. The alien appears to accept, and Nandi asks for a gift in return. More lifeforms appear, and they play a truly beautiful song. Gwyn, Rok-Tahk, and Jankom Pog are awed, as is Dal. Nandi, however, dashes away and grabs several crystals, resulting in disaster as the lifeforms lose their ability to shape matter.

Gwyn, Zero, Rok-Tahk, and Dal rush to replace the crystals that Nandi dropped, but she escapes with a single crystal. Dal sets off in pursuit and catches her on the surface. There, she reveals that she just wanted the crystal and that she sold Dal to the Diviner to work in the mines. She used the proceeds to purchase the floating cube that serves as her assistant. Nandi’s ship decloaks overhead, revealing that not only did she lie to Dal, but she stole their chimerium as well in order to fuel the cloaking device for her own use.

Devastated, Dal collapses, nursing his arm where she bit him to force him to free her. As a storm closes in on Dal, he vanishes, having been beamed back aboard the Protostar. Dal dashes to the controls and proceeds to hone in on his comm badge’s signal. He had placed his badge on the crystal in order to beam it away from Nandi. He successfully retrieves the crystal from her ship and beams back down to the planet to replace the final crystal.

Janeway dresses down each member of the team, particularly Dal. However, her displeasure barely registers as he reels from Nandi’s betrayal. Gwyn offers him what comfort she can, reminding him that he now knows who his true friends are.

Back aboard the Damsel, Nandi gnashes her pointed teeth in anger at having lost the crystal. Her cube assistant chimes to tell her that it has detected something of interest. Nandi sits down and reads that a reward has been offered for information regarding the Protostar’s whereabouts. She sets about contacting the Diviner.

Analysis

Of all of the Prodigy episodes thus far, “First Con-tact” feels the weakest. The story is, at its heart, a parable, and the lesson is one about the necessity of honesty to trust. Dal clearly suspects something about Nandi’s deal is off, but he convinces his crew to go along with it by couching the visit to the unknown world as a diplomatic exchange. Dal knows that isn’t true, but rather than voice his misgivings, he places his trust in his surrogate mother. Nandi, however, fully intends on playing on that trust and abusing it.

“First Con-tact” is a great reminder to adults that Prodigy is meant to be a kid’s show, and it’s really the first episode in the season to give that feeling. We, as adults, spot Nandi’s duplicity a mile away, but Dal, who acts as a stand-in for the show’s target audience, does not. The success of “First Con-tact” as an episode hinges on that twist, and for the first time, I really think Prodigy underestimates its audience. While younger children may not necessarily conclude that Nandi will betray Dal to the extent that she does, they can and do recognize Nandi as a villain. My own children wanted to know why Dal was willing to follow the bad alien, and these are kids who have watched more Deep Space Nine than is possibly good for them at this stage. They know and love Quark, but despite Nandi being of the same species, they recognized something very different about her. In short, “First Con-tact” seems to forget that children are a very discerning audience, which is why the episode, while solid, seems almost too simplistic. As adults, we forgive Dal’s need to trust what is, for all intents and purposes, his mother, but at least my children were not willing to suspend their disbelief so far.

We do get some excellent character notes, however. Dal growing up under a Ferengi’s guidance explains a great deal about his character, and honestly, listening to him throw Rules of Acquisition at Nandi was a real joy. Jankom Pog allows that the alien song isn’t terrible, which is such a Tellarite compliment I had to chuckle. Dal’s abject hurt in the wake of Nandi’s betrayal feels incredibly real, no matter that on some level, he suspected that she wasn’t entirely trustworthy. However, discovering that Nandi willingly sold him into servitude in the Diviner’s mines rips the proverbial rug out from under him. Gwyn recognizes his hurt and steps in to offer him what comfort she can. Trek always has “found family” as a theme, and Prodigy drives this home. Gwyn can’t offer him Nandi’s love any more than she can grant herself her father’s. She can offer him a new family, so she does. That said, I defy anyone not to be affected by her admission that she does not yet know if the hurt caused by that betrayal ever goes away.

I do like that Janeway’s discovery that Drednok boarded the Protostar seems to be propelling the season’s story farther. Watching Dal struggle to become a captain has been great, but it’s high time that something in the greater scheme of the season’s arc take place. Nandi will no doubt reach out to the Diviner, so the main villain is about to make an appearance. Hopefully, when he does, we can get some answers as to what happened to Chakotay.

Rating:

Two and a half crates of chimerium

Stray Thoughts From the Couch:

1. We’re in the Gamma Quadrant now, so seeing some familiar species makes sense. However, I don’t entirely understand Nandi’s timeline. I’m guessing that she’s a product of Nagus Rom’s cultural reforms seeing as she wears clothes and conducts business, but how does she make it to the Delta Quadrant?
2. As a follow on question, is Dal even from the Delta Quadrant originally? Could he be from an unknown Gamma Quadrant species?
3. I hope Janeway actually asks her crew if they recognize the murderbot. Having all of the characters dance around an issue without sharing information is a particularly hackneyed trope, and I’d really prefer it if Prodigy eschewed it entirely, especially after having a Very Special Episode about honesty.
4. I see what they did there with the title. Very clever.
5. Dal references the Phage, which is a plague very familiar to Voyager fans.
6. In case you wondered, “cymatics” is actually a real thing.
7. I feel a little squicked out at the appearance of the Horga’hn. Y’all, not every show needs to have a Risian sex idol appear in it. Just saying.
8. Apparently none of the Protostar kids have ever seen a transporter, and as hilarious as the floor pie sequence was, I’m really confused as to how that’s possible. Transporters seem like such a ubiquitous technology in the Star Trek universe, and Dal grew up on a Ferengi Marauder. We know they have transporters. Did Nandi just never bother? How does this make sense?
9. Did the sand aliens look like the rejoined form of the Dark Crystal aliens to anyone else?