Following immediately on the heels of the Protostar crew being reunited at the end of their temporal anomaly encounter in last week’s “Time Amok”, this week’s “A Moral Star, Part 1” picks right back up on the glowing eyes of the Dreadnok replica,  which contains a message — and an offer — from The Diviner.

He offers the Protostar crew a choice: return the Protostar to Tars Lamora in exchange for freeing the ‘unwanted’ miners at the asteroid, or let the ‘unwanted’ suffer the consequences. “A Moral Star, Part 1” is an episode with huge moral stakes, which successfully pays off all the character development, team building, and world building of all the previous episodes to date.

Faced with this dilemma earlier in the season, Dal probably would have chosen to run. But when he is asked to make the choice on behalf of the crew whether to go to Tars Lamora or seek assistance from the Federation who might not be able to respond in time, Dal’s hesitation is differently motivated than it would have been earlier on. Earlier this season, Dal was a traumatized teenager who was out for himself. Now, he has grown a lot into the captain’s role, and his hesitation is around putting his crew in danger rather than whether he is jeopardizing his own wellbeing.

You don’t get to “A Moral Star, Part 1” without episodes like “Time Amok” and “Kobayashi” that have helped the characters gel into a team and pushed them on their journey towards becoming a real crew for the USS Protostar. And the episode’s story structure explicitly – but not in a bonk bonk way – guides younger viewers through the ways in which the episodes they’ve previously watched contribute to how this one develops.

With the agreement to work together to try and free the unwanted and to stop the Diviner, the crew works on hatching a plan. We’re given just enough here to have the strong sense that the crew knows what they’re doing, but not so much that when Gwyn later decides to go with the Diviner aboard the Protostar — and the Diviner double crosses the Prodigy crew — it’s not impossible that their plan has entirely failed.

After all, there’s still a whole second episode of this story still to go!

But before we get to Tars Lamora, let’s dwell for a minute on… those uniforms! We got a glimpse of the Protostar uniform at the end of “Kobayashi” with the reveal of Captain Chakotay, but this is the first time we’ve seen them fully with the colors. They are a cool design, reminding me very much of the test pilot uniforms worn in the Voyager episode “Drive.”

Perhaps the uniforms draw a connection to the Protostar being an experimental ship. I certainly wouldn’t mind it if someone made and sold a reproduction – I am sure we’ll see them crop up at Star Trek conventions later this year!

When the Protostar arrives at Tars Lamora, the Diviner alters the bargain: he will release the unwanted, but in return he must receive the Protostar — and Gwyn. Gwyn agrees reluctantly, but only if the Diviner agrees to give up his own ship, the Rev-12, to allow the unwanted to escape. After seeming tearful goodbyes, Gwyn boards the Protostar with the Diviner and they begin to leave.

But also because the Diviner is an evil dude, he destroys the power generators aboard the Rev-12 and seemingly condemns everyone on the asteroid to death. With control of the Protostar – including coopting hologram Janeway into an evil version of herself sure to fire the imagination of cosplayers and makeup enthusiasts everywhere – he leaves.

We also get the biggest indications yet about the Diviner’s motivations. Though they are not fully spelled out, I expect we’ll get that in the next episode, the Diviner’s connection to the Protostar is a profound one. He describes it as being “more than a ship. It is our salvation.” Does something about the Protostar – perhaps its demonstrated ability to time travel? – have an impact on the future of the Diviner’s species, the Vau N’Akat? Again, we don’t find out in this episode, but I expect we’ll find out next week.

Of course, we also learn that the Protostar crew were not as helpless as they appeared: they stole the experimental protodrive from the Protostar, having been eaten and contained within the indestructible form of Murf — paying off the photon grenade joke from earlier in the season in a really great way.

Now with the protodrive, our heroes rush to save the unwanted and get the Rev-12 functioning before the Protostar and the Diviner return for the ship’s advanced propulsion technology.

The twist is well played, particularly for the primary audience of the show. There are just enough hints along the way that do not entirely tip the episode’s hand and wink at the audience obviously that this is all a ruse on the part of our heroes, but all the same there are clues that will be fun to revisit with kids once they’ve had a chance to see the episode and experience the twist first hand.

For example, shortly before the ruse is revealed Jankom says the Diviner “double, double crossed us!” — and Murf is suspiciously absent from that entire sequence until his true whereabouts are revealed.

OBSERVATION LOUNGE

• The show definitely seems to be laying the foundation for more of a romantic connection between Dal and Gwyn. I approve!
   
• “This is a no-win scenario, Gwyn. This is our Kobayashi Maru!” I love an explicit callback.
   
• In other references to previous episodes, we see the Caitian child from “Lost and Found,” and Gwyn also references her “catboots” line from the premiere.
   
• I really liked seeing Rok, Gwyn, and hologram Janeway share a cup of coffee in the preparation montage.
   
• Is “Go Fast!” Captain Dal’s catch phrase? If so, he settled on one sooner than Captain Saru, and it’s pretty great!
   
• “A Moral Star” is an anagram for “Tars Lamora.”
   
• This was another standout episode for the composer Nami Melumad, particularly the musical sequence leading up to the protowarp to Tars Lamora and the thoughtful inclusion in places of the original Alexander Courage Star Trek theme.

“A Moral Star, Part 1” is a great set up for next week’s mid-season one finale of Star Trek: Prodigy. If there is one criticism of the episode, it is that like all part ones it feels a little lacking by itself, because by necessity it is only telling half the story and needs to do a lot of set up for the inevitable second part next week.

But I am very excited to see how Prodigy’s first ten episodes draw to a close, and this has to have been one of the strongest first half seasons of any previous Star Trek show to date. Is a cliffhanger in the offing as we wait for the remaining 10 episodes of season one of Prodigy to premiere later this year?