Star Trek: Prodigy continues to assert its place in history with an episode that adds to the legacy of one of Trek’s most famous foes. “Let Sleeping Borg Lie” doesn’t just use the Borg as window dressing, but rather uses their unique narrative specifically as a rich demonstration of the power of love and forgiveness — and it also adds the the mythos of the Borg by showing us a side of the collective we’ve never seen before.

The episode starts with a holodeck reconstruction of the events in “A Moral Star, Part 2,” which serves, it appears, as a reminder to the audience specifically of the time travel aspect of the story — that the Federation will make first contact with Solum, the Vau N’Akat homeworld, sometime in the future.

Starting an episode in the holodeck is a great classic Trek fake out and I was happy to see that it confused my kids at first. They soon caught on it was a simulation as it ran while the crew talked — until it was almost time for Zero’s defense against the Diviner and Zero halted the program, their guilt about the situation still obviously in the front of their mind.

Zero’s arc here is a heavy topic for a “kids’” show. Their story is an example of how Prodigy trusts their audience, not just with scientific sci-fi jargon, but with mature, emotional topics as well. Zero’s guilt and trauma from their abuse on Tars Lamora being something that they have to work through is true to the character.

Nothing is being swept under the rug in this show. I appreciate that as an adult fan, but also I remember what if felt like to be a kid and have a TV show not talk down to you the way so much kids’ programming does — those were the ones that stuck with you.

But the crew has a more immediate problem: they know they have a powerful weapon aboard their ship, but they have no idea where it is. The audience knows where it is from the shot last week, panning down under the floor boards of the bridge. Our crew find it in a really fun way: Jankom locates some Vau N’Akat script, which activates Gwyn’s heirloom into the shape of a key. It’s a moment worthy of a good scavenger hunt movie, and that same vibe continues as a hidden door opens and Jankom bravely offers to go last — which of course got a big laugh from my crew.

I love the design of this weapon, which evokes a feel of a mirror universe protostar. Entombed in the bottom of the ship, it almost feels alive as it hums and pulsates and casts a red glow on our crew in this otherwise empty and silent chamber. They discard the idea of transporting it out into space, realizing someone could still end up using it. Jankom tries some of his patented percussive maintenance in the form of a phaser blast.

The animation and sound design on the weapon are exquisite here, as the weapon protects itself from the blast. This thing is legit scary — and as confirmed by the Hageman brothers on Twitter this week, it’s the circular design the Diviner was drawing on the cave floor at the end of “A Moral Star, Part 2.”

And just when you thought things couldn’t get more creepy, the Protostar detects a vessel… and the viewscreen fills with none other than a Borg Cube. My children had absolutely no idea what this was — but with the gorgeously detailed animation and the classic dramatic music cues, they could tell right away it was sinister.

They also instinctively knew to listen to Hologram Janeway, who delivers a high level primer on the Borg that was really easy for kids to understand. When she recommended they run away, my kids said “Listen to her!” My kids’ initial reaction to the Borg showed right away what a really effective horror piece this was for them. It made me remember the way I felt about the Borg when I was their age, when we were all introduced to the Borg in “Q Who” — back when the Borg were unknown and that was part of what made them so terrifying.

I told them that Janeway was a Borg expert and I would listen to her, too. But, alas, the Protostar crew is bravely — and naively — determined to find out whether the Borg might have a way to disable the weapon. Even with the Borg all asleep, this is an extremely dangerous mission. But taking on such a dangerous mission for altruistic purposes is such a Trek-ian thing to do that you can’t help but respect the “Go boldly”-ness of it.

The atmosphere inside the Borg cube is exquisitely creepy; the initial walkthrough has a real “kids walking through a haunted house” feel to it. Everything bathed in the green glow of the cube was the icing on the cake, leading my ten year old to exclaim, “This should be a Halloween episode!”. The whole episode truly does manage to maintain the same aura of other Trek horror classics.

They find the central control and discover that in order to access the knowledge of the Borg Collective, someone is going to have to plug themselves into it. Zero has experienced a hive mind before — with other Medusans — which makes  them a logical choice, and they bravely stepped up to the plate.

When Zero plugs into the Collective, we see it from a unique perspective: instead of an external depiction of the assimilation, we get to see what is happening internally. Zero speaks to the Collective, asking about the weapon. There’s give and take about assimilating the crew and Zero handles themselves with determination and purpose.

The visuals are very dynamic, depicting the Borg as a web of interconnected tentacles and conduits, the green tinge on everything punctuated only by the visualization of Zero and their blue and purple haze. It’s captivating and creepy.

These scenes mesmerized my kids and really facilitated their understanding of the significance of what was happening. This is a great example of Prodigy excelling at taking Trek concepts and presenting them in a way that someone who is having their first encounter with the Borg can understand — while still building on that Trek foundation in a way that is still interesting and fresh to the legacy fans.

This is the first time we’ve ever seen the assimilation process presented this way, internally as a person’s mind/soul/essence is subsumed into the Collective; it’s a fresh angle on an old enemy. Just an amazing tightrope walk that Prodigy continues to perform.

The mood and the stakes are established so well, that when the Borg awoke, my kids were completely invested. The action-packed fight was as good as any Borg fight we’ve seen before and everyone got a moment to shine. When Gwyn escapes — and Janeway tells her to put away her weapon — my kids were on hyper-alert from all the action. My youngest shouted: “I hope she’s right!”

I can’t tell you how much fun it was for me to watch them learn about the Borg in real time like this. We all collectively held our breath as Gwyn walked past the group of drones… what a moment!

Gwyn finds the rest of the crew on the assimilation tables as Zero walks in, the haze in their “eye” now green. Gwyn and Zero continue to be a great pairing as she talks them down and helps them both resist the Borg Collective and come to terms with their guilt over harming Gwyn.

Protecting her was an act of love, she tells them, and this love was manifested visually in a gorgeous way — we see Zero internally struggle against the Borg tentacles, and as Zero sends a signal and puts the drones back into their dormant state, their blues and purples overtake the green.

Putting Zero into this situation with the Borg was an effective way for them to come to terms with their past; to forgive themselves and choose to help people going forward. Zero’s time at Tars Lamora and the harm they caused not of their own volition makes their experience extremely similar to that of an ex-Borg — and there are more than one of those that I hope we get to see interact with our crew someday.

It wasn’t just a useful mission for Zero personally, because they did learn some useful information about the weapon, or the Living Construct(as the Borg Collective so eloquently referred to it) — it can not be removed or destroyed. So for now, our crew has decided to avoid the Federation and help out where they can.

While I do love “Go Fast!”, Dal sitting in the captain’s chair and saying “Let’s do some good!” has a really a nice ring to it.

OBSERVATION LOUNGE

• There are a ton of great classic Trek engineering materials referenced in this episode!  Jankom’s bridge scan reveals tritanium and duranium alloys, along with transparent aluminum. He is impressed by the Borg cube’s monotanium aperture valves. We also get to see one of the Protostar’s Jeffries tubes as they search the ship. “It’s an engineer’s dream!”, just like the Borg cube.
• The processing center at the heart of the Borg cube is called the vinculum, a piece of Borg tech recovered by Voyager “Infinite Regress,” responsible for giving Seven some personality indigestion in that episode.

• The Borg drones lie dormant due to a neurolytic pathogen — and we have the silver-haired future version of Admiral Janeway to thank for this, after offering herself up for assimilation directly to the Borg Queen to infect the Collective in “Endgame.” This was probably part of the off-screen briefing Holo Janeway gave to the crew when she offered to tell them “everything she knows” about the Borg.
• Rear Admiral Janeway on the Dauntless is drinking tea instead of her trademark coffee, which also fits in with her future self from “Endgame,” where she says she made the switch due to doctor’s orders.

• Gwyn’s heirloom turns into a gorgeous bat’leth during the fight with the drones, and she has a great action line — “Let’s see how they adapt to this!” — very reminiscent of Worf’s classic “Assimilate this!” line from Star Trek: First Contact.
• We get to hear the classic phrase “Resistance is futile” four times in this episode. As they fight off assimilation, we hear Zero say “Resistance is NOT futile!’ — and I have to admit that my Grinch heart grew three sizes that day.
• Though it was absent last week, the Star Trek franchise opening title card returns today with the Protostar swooping in to form the delta symbol — like Pike’s Enterprise for Strange New Worlds and the Cerritos for Lower Decks. The series-specific variation also includes the Tars Lamora asteroid in the nebulous background.

“Let Sleeping Borg Lie” is a fun and effective horror episode that connects organically to solid character growth for Zero. It’s a great introduction to one of Trek’s most iconic antagonists but also a really strong installment in the Borg’s 33-year history — and another episode that both new and seasoned fans can equally enjoy.

Star Trek: Prodigy will return with “All the World’s a Stage” on Thursday, November 10 on Paramount+ in the United States, and on October 28 in Latin America, Australia, Italy and the U.K. The series will arrive in France, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria in December.