Recap: Star Trek: Prodigy - A Moral Star, Part 2

The second half of Star Trek: Prodigy’s suspenseful midseason finale begins right where “A Moral Star, Part 1” left off — Hologram Janeway confirms that the protocore isn’t aboard the ship and the Diviner infers it must be back on Tars Lamora. He incapacitates Gwyn, orders Hologram Janeway to ensure his progeny doesn’t interfere with his mission, and sets a course back for the colony.

Back on Tars Lamora, Dal and the others split up to gather all the miners and instruct them to board the Rev-12. The prisoners are absolutely overjoyed to have access to Starfleet’s translators, allowing them to speak with and understand one another for the first time in years (and have a little romance along the way!).

Jankom and Rok manage to get into the engine room of the Rev-12, which the Diviner damaged in the last episode. It’s up to them to fix the ship so the entire group can flee Tars Lamora. At first, Rok holds the door against robot security guards while Jankom Pog tries to fix the engine, but it’s Rok who manages to actually figure out how to get the ship up and running again.

But Dal and Zero are running out of time. They need to get word to all the prisoners to get on board the ship before the atmospheric shield comes down — no easy task, considering they only have short range communicators. But Dal realizes they can use the miners’ ankle manacles to accomplish their goal by integrating them with his Starfleet combadge and turning them into universal translators.

And then their time is up — the U.S.S. Protostar is back, and Drednok beams down to get the core from Rok, who’s been using it to jumpstart the Rev-12’s power. At the last second, the prisoners burst into engineering and overtake Drednok, fighting back against their oppressors and saving the day.

Unfortunately, it seems that before his demise, Drednok managed to send the coordinates of the core back to the Diviner, who stole it from the Rev-12. With the core, there’s nothing to stop the Protostar from jumping away, far out of the reach of Dal and his team. They have to catch the ship before it’s too late.

Back on the U.S.S. Protostar, the Diviner walks in to find Gwyn trying to disable the shields. All of a sudden he realizes that Hologram Janeway is not, in fact, on his side. She’s loyal to her previous crew, and Gwyn reveals that she installed safeguards around Janeway’s programming to ensure the Diviner couldn’t override her again. Hologram Janeway puts the Diviner out of commission, and it seems like the battle is over.

That is, until the Diviner reveals the truth behind his mission to Gwyn and makes her hesitate in lowering the ship’s shields. We’ve known for a long time that the reason he was seeking the U.S.S. Protostar was to save his people. It turns out that they’re not actually all gone — at least not yet. Fifty years in the future, first contact with Starfleet will result in a civil war on the Diviner’s home planet, between those who want to follow the Federation and those who don’t. It will end up destroying the planet.

We also get the answer to how the Diviner knew that the U.S.S. Protostar was on Tars Lamora — he’s from the future. He was sent back in time to find the ship and stop Starfleet from ever making first contact with his people. He intends to do that by using a weapon aboard the Protostar to destroy all of Starfleet.

Meanwhile, aboard the Rev-12, the crew has to decide what to do because the Protostar’s shields still aren’t down. Zero suggests targeting the shield emitters only and firing, which will allow one person to beam aboard at a time. Dal hurries to beam aboard, just as the Diviner is explaining to Gwyn that this weapon will be able to turn Starfleet ships against one another. All of them will be destroyed, wiping out Starfleet.

Even though Gwyn was willing to hear her father’s plan out, it doesn’t mean she agrees with it. She doesn’t accept that the answer to preventing one tragedy is creating another. She advocates for communication and negotiation with Starfleet — it’s not explicitly stated, but perhaps if they know the outcome of their first contact, they may be inclined to avoid it altogether.

Just then, Dal arrives and he and Gwyn team up to try and stop the Diviner. But it’s Zero who ends up managing to defeat him — they show the Diviner their true form, which is enough to drive a person mad. Unfortunately, Gwyn manages to catch the reflection of Zero’s true form in Dal’s combadge and is incapacitated.

The good news is that Gwyn is going to be okay. While she’s recovering, the Protostar’s crew help teach the prisoners how to fly and operate the Rev-12, freeing them to go their own way into the stars. The Diviner is returned to Tars Lamora to live out his days as a prisoner on the asteroid where he enslaved so many.

The bad news is that Gwyn lost all of her memories of the incident with Zero — which means she can’t warn the crew that they’re harboring a weapon that could destroy Starfleet. With no reason not to press forward and find the Federation, Dal orders the ship to set a course for Starfleet. It’s time for the Protostar to go home.

And who’s waiting on the other side but Admiral Janeway herself (not a hologram!). She’s on a ship that’s been tracking the protowarp signatures and is searching for Captain Chakotay and its missing crew. It’s clear that the back half of season one of Star Trek: Prodigy, airing later this year, is going to be just as exciting as these first 10 episodes!