S01.E08: Time Amok

[AnimeMania]

When the U.S.S. Protostar is fractured in time by an anomaly, Hologram Janeway must synchronize the disjointed crew and save their ship before it destructs.

Original Airdate: Thursday, January 20, 2022 on Paramount+

[dwmarch]

I know I said this a week or two ago but this show is starting to look like Star Trek! A temporal anomaly, lots of technobabble and a crew overcoming their differences to solve a problem is pretty much as Trek as it gets.

I guess it's possible this is because of the Diviner's shenanigans but the Protostar does not seem to have any kind of security. The kids straight up tell Janeway they stole the ship and she reacts with mild disapproval. The vehicle replicator can be programmed to make Diviner mooks which are then free to roam about tossing the crew around and deleting essential programs. I know the mook used a command code for that but apparently Starfleet has never heard of two-factor authentication and/or authorization codes that expire after a certain amount of time. My cell phone has better security.

I got a laugh out of Jankom saying they wouldn't get to see the Federation. Oh you'll see it alright, just not the part of it you were hoping for. Don't worry though, Federation prisons are a lot nicer than the last one you broke out of!

[ottoDbusdriver]

Hmmmmm ....... let's see ............. a starship fractured into different times, where have we seen that before.  That's right -- it happened on Voyager.

Didn't Dal solve the unsolvable puzzle that is the Kobayashi Maru test a couple of episodes ago, but now somehow can't cope with a fox and a chicken on the holodeck.  Really ?

Security really isn't the Protostar's strong suit, is it ?  And doesn't the computer use voice recognition -- combined with -- a security code ?  Drednok just blurting out Chakotay's command codes shouldn't have worked at all.

 

[AnimeMania]

I almost think that the Diviner designed/installed the Protostar's experimental engine and therefore has knowledge/access to every facet of the ship, which makes it that much easier to betray the crew and try to take the Protostar for yourself, when something unforeseen happened, and the ship was lost.

[crazymadness]

There's an article on screenrant about this episode that's so stupid, I don't even know what to say.

https://screenrant.com/star-trek-sulu-descendant-protostar-crew-prodigy/

It boils down to the security code and the author thinking they said Sulu instead of Zulu(basic military phonetic alphabet) and that somehow that means a Sulu descendant was on the Protostar.

[MissLucas]

I liked the conversation between Janeway and Gwyn at the end about how much time Rok had spent all on her own - it added a bit of gravitas and emotional heft. Though I have to give some slight side-eye to the writing here - it's the female characters who worry about her emotional state while the male and the genderless characters remain oblivious. No idea where Murph fits in here. I wonder if Rok's new found tech skills will be wiped out by next episode. That stuff was driving me crazy during TNG and Voyager, but by now Star Trek seems to embrace serialized writing a bit more. Nice Terminator shout-outs.

 

[starri]

On 1/21/2022 at 2:33 PM, MissLucas said:

I liked the conversation between Janeway and Gwyn at the end about how much time Rok had spent all on her own - it added a bit of gravitas and emotional heft.

Rok and Gwyn have been the emotional center of the show for me from the start, particularly the former.  

I can understand taking pause that it's the female (and female-coded, in the case of Janeway) who are the ones plugged in emotionally, but Jankom and Dal are both such clods.  And Zero, despite all their wonderful qualities, doesn't seem to understand emotion any better than your average Vulcan.  They're just funnier about it.

[Starchild]

On 1/21/2022 at 7:40 AM, ottoDbusdriver said:

And doesn't the computer use voice recognition -- combined with -- a security code ?  Drednok just blurting out Chakotay's command codes shouldn't have worked at all.

Maybe he was able to impersonate Chakotay's voice. While I was watching I recall thinking "Oh that's weird, he sounds like Chakotay. Wait, is he supposed to BE Chakotay, who was commanding this ship some time in the past? Has he (or some part of him) somehow become this robot guy?"

I mean, we don't really know the timeframe of this right? Maybe Chakotay was given command of the experimental Protostar, which was fitted with a Janeway hologram, and the ship got lost somehow. Maybe hundreds or thousands of years have gone by. Maybe we're in the Discovery timeframe now. Maybe something happened to Chakotay where he evolved into this cybernetic life form, or his essence was somehow installed in it.

[akg]

On 1/21/2022 at 2:33 PM, MissLucas said:

 I wonder if Rok's new found tech skills will be wiped out by next episode

I hope not. I got the impression from Gwyn's "maybe she found a new calling" that Rok may be moving into Engineering/Sciences going forward. On Rok's specialty: kids can be cruel. Put the youngest, scared-est crewmember in charge of Security, against her objections, because she's made of rocks?

On 1/21/2022 at 2:33 PM, MissLucas said:

That stuff was driving me crazy during TNG and Voyager, but by now Star Trek seems to embrace serialized writing a bit more

If you want serialized in earlier Trek, definitely watch Deep Space 9. So good and awesome story arcs.

 

[SnarkShark]

On 1/22/2022 at 6:49 PM, starri said:

Rok and Gwyn have been the emotional center of the show for me from the start, particularly the former.  

I can understand taking pause that it's the female (and female-coded, in the case of Janeway) who are the ones plugged in emotionally, but Jankom and Dal are both such clods.  And Zero, despite all their wonderful qualities, doesn't seem to understand emotion any better than your average Vulcan.  They're just funnier about it.

Jankom is fine.  He's inherently meant to be comic relief, and his more stubborn argumentative qualities actually work with being a Tellarite. 

Dal is undeniably the weak point of this show.  

Why has Trek become so bad at Protagonists?