Star Trek: Prodigy concludes one of the most successful first seasons in Trek history with the satisfying “Supernova, Part 2,” a finale which gives us the thrilling conclusion of last week’s battle as it settles all the bets Prodigy’s made this season — and racks up for the next round in a very constructive and intriguing way.
 
With seemingly every other possibility exhausted, Dal and the crew come to the conclusion that they need to destroy the Protostar, which would stop the long-range subspace signal being sent out by the Living Construct, and hopefully return the affected Starfleet ships to normal.
 
There is definitely a little bit of fuzzy math here, as the weapon had been previously treated more like a computer virus carrier — rather than a signal generator — which is where the provision that they needed to connect to a ship to infect it makes more sense. It’s also why it seemed they were “too late” to fix anything as soon as the Dauntless was infected. But we can roll with this.
 

The science gets better as soon as you accept the premise, as Rok-Tahk comes to a fascinating solution to the problem: destroying the ship’s protodrive would cause a blast that would be equal to a supernova, and easily destroy everything in a 50 million mile radius. However, if they detonate at the moment of a proto-jump, the blast will be distributed equally in space along the trajectory of their jump — a much safer outcome for the Alpha Quadrant.

It’s a really great physics thought experiment made “real.” In this scene, Prodigy really solidified itself as a spiritual successor to Star Trek: Voyager as that is something Voyager itself really excelled at.

Prodigy earned Rok-Tahk’s science officer credentials very cleverly in “Time Amok,” and it’s paying off dividends here with her technobabble skills. Yet again, Prodigy makes a challenging concept easier for the young viewers to grasp by restating the concepts in simpler terms, and with a really useful graphic that explains the plan visually.

With all the challenging concepts this season — none of which the show has shied away from — it’s a real testament to writers that my kids haven’t very often been confused, or have needed more information to understand what’s happening. It’s truly a show made with all their viewers in mind.

With the self destruct offline, someone will have to stay behind to detonate the Protostar — and following Janeway’s second tenet of starship captaincy, Dal volunteers to go down with the ship. It’s a proud moment, as he truly has grown as a person and as an officer this season.

Holo Janeway, however, offers to stay behind, as they can make a copy of her program to take with them… but she soon realizes that isn’t possible. Her programming has gained so much new information after spending time with her young crew, and she secretly allows them to leave empty-handed.

Everything about the destruct sequence has emotional impact, as the crew holds hands as they eject out of the ship in a makeshift escape shuttle — another fantastic use of the vehicle replicator. It’s genuinely sad, and Nami Melumad’s beautiful score plays as a sort of funeral dirge for both the ship, and for Hologram Janeway. Holo Janeway’s last words to the crew was a poignant goodbye, but her final sentence — “Go fast!” — brought a tear to my eye.

She dies saving her crew and all of Starfleet, with a tremendous explosion marking her sacrifice, leaving behind a sublime trail of cosmic dust in the void of space. A hero’s death — worthy of any version of Kathryn Janeway.

At this point I was holding my breath, because I knew my kids hadn’t picked up on Janeway’s failed attempt to duplicate her program. They found out along with the Protostar crew of her sacrifice. “Janeway’s really dead?!” asked my daughter incredulously.

The surprise had impact for them, just as Janeway’s message to the crew had impact for me. It was a love letter from a parent to her children, explaining that her sacrifice was for them, so that they can fulfill their potential. By the time she told them to ‘go boldly,’ I was openly weeping.

We find out Holo Janeway left a legacy for herself beyond her crew when we pick up the story a month later, at a debrief at Starfleet headquarters. Holo Janeway’s last act was to recreate the conditions of the original wormhole that sent Chakotay and the Protostar into the future — the anomaly that sent them into the hands of the Diviner and Asencia.

Through this new wormhole, they were able to pick up Chakotay’s last distress signal. Starfleet will send an exploratory ship through the wormhole and Admiral Janeway says she wants to be on it — so thank you, Holo-Janeway, for an incredibly interesting mission for Season 2.

Starfleet holds a tribunal listing the various charges against our Protostar crew, and in a classic Star Trek courtroom moment, the real Admiral Janeway defends them in an impassioned plea to the board of officials running the show. They drop all charges, but do not allow them fast-tracked entry to Starfleet Academy.

This seems realistic. and the solution to allow them to become “warrant officers in training” — enlisted personnel, not officers — under the command of Admiral Janeway is a pretty artful way to get them all on a ship with her next season.

Gwyn, however, doesn’t stick around for Starfleet duty, choosing instead to go to present-day Solum to see if she can help prevent the coming civil war that will occur when Starfleet eventually makes their first contact with her people. Hopefully, that’s a great start to her Season 2 story, and not a goodbye to the character.

Solum is a planet who has yet to experience first contact at this point in the timeline, which means there are a lot of interesting questions to answer about how to delicately handle going there. Gwyn is the perfect person for this job, and her new nickname — “The Unifier” — is such an elegant counterpoint to “The Diviner” and “The Vindicator.” Her story is just as intriguing as the rest of the crew going off with Janeway to save Chatokay, and I hope we get to see it.

Gwyn and Dal have a touching goodbye scene, reflecting on how far they both have come since “Lost and Found” — and share a moment and a very sweet kiss that almost makes up for last week’s misstep. We get to see Rok-Tahk and Jankom working on their respective disciplines with real Starfleet scientists and engineers. Zero gets a new body, and its not my favorite design — it has all the warmth and individuality of an Apple product — but they seem so happy so I’m happy for them.

We even get to see a shiny new starship in the formally-created Protostar-class design, and Janeway cryptically remarks that she has something bigger for them in mind for the coming mission to rescue Chakotay — another big tease for next year’s story.

OBSERVATION LOUNGE

• In what is sure to be a massively-anticipated starship reveal next season, the rescue shuttle which lifted Dal and the gang out of their crashed escape shuttle reads NCC-74656-A, which is the registry of what can only be a successor to the Intrepid-class USS Voyager.
   
  We already know that the Voyager name will be used for centuries to come thanks to Star Trek: Discovery, so Janeway’s “bigger plans” for Season 2 is almost certainly going to be set aboard the Voyager-A.
• In what may be an homage to the HMS Bounty’s crash-landing in Star Trek VI: The Voyage Home, the Protostar escape shuttle splashes down in the San Francisco Bay.
• I was relieved to see the Protostar crew make it to Starfleet Command back on Earth, something unfortunately missing from Voyager’s return home in “Endgame.”
• While we’ve seen Star Trek’s version of future-Earth many times, this was the first my kids have seen of our home from the 24th century perspective, and they were riveted by the presentation.
• The anomaly which sent Chakotay and the Protostar 52 years into an alternate future is called an interspatial flexture — the same kind of wormhole Brenari refugees used to escape Devore space in “Counterpoint.”
• The Living Construct battle destroyed (or nearly destroyed) several Starfleet vessels, but there’s no sign of the USS Defiant in the debris field seen in the beginning of the episode — hopefully that tough little ship made it out of the area in one piece.

• Jankom Pog calls himself a “miracle worker” due to his engineering prowess, in a sweet nod to the original miracle worker himself.
• Assuming Dal and company make it to the future where Chakotay currently resides, depending on when they get there, they may find the original Protostar — and original Hologram Janeway — still on Solum, not yet sent back in time with the Living Construct aboard.
• Holo Janeway’s final act, blazing a trail to find Chakotay, reminded me of Kes’ transformation in “The Gift,” sending Voyager nearly 10 years closer to home as she ascended into a being of pure energy.
• Like its appearance in Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard in recent years, the Golden Gate Bridge is covered in solar panels here in its Prodigy depection.
• The admiralty tribunal panel wear yet another new variation on the Starfleet uniform, as do Dal, Rok-Tahk, and Jankom Pog after they’ve been accepted into the service.
• Despite the destruction of the USS Protostar, the successful flight of that prototype has led Starfleet to officially classify the Protostar-class design for active duty — meaning we may see more ships with protowarp engines in upcoming seasons of Prodigy, or other shows in the Star Trek universe set after the mid-2380s.
• As Rok-Tahk enters the Starfleet science lab, an Enterprizian (from “All the World’s a Stage”) can be seen at a computer console.
• The Starfleet scientist who invites Rok to become a Xenobiologist is modeled after Star Trek science consultant Dr. Erin Macdonald — who also voices the character in a fun cameo.

Our Protostar crew isn’t all grown up yet, but they have all come so far. It feels like this season was their backstory, and just a prologue to their coming Starfleet journeys. No longer alone, they found a place where they belong: that’s what Star Trek is all about.

Living aboard a more traditional starship run through their eyes next season — and watching them grow even more in their new-found home — should be as satisfying as the end to this first chapter.

Star Trek: Prodigy has delivered a season of television that has transcended its moniker of “kid’s cartoon,” while also maintaining everything great about that genre. I’m very much looking forward to seeing how that translates next season, as Dal and the gang “go boldly” into their next great adventure.

Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2 is expected to air sometime in late 2023.