A really good episode. Too bad we have to wait until summer to see what happens next.
The kids continue to get the Unwanted onto the Rev-12 while getting it up and running. Rok continues to show her science/engineering skills by being the one to get power restored. Jankom shows his skills at keeping the reactivated security bots at bay.
Turns out that Janeway hasn't been reprogrammed after all. After Drednok's earlier attempt to delete Janeway, Gwyn was able to put in safety measures to ensure her program isn't tampered with again.
Drednok gets decapitated. Even if he is actually dead now, we may yet see him again due to...
Time travel wonkiness is confirmed as the Diviner finally explains some of what's going on to Gwyn. The Diviner is from the future... a future where contact with the Federation led his people to civil war and ultimately annihilation. He plans to use the Protostar to destroy the Federation before first contact occurs by infecting it with a virus. The virus will spread amongst Starfleet ships, causing them to turn on each other.
The Rev-12 catches up to the Protostar. Because Gwyn is getting the exposition dump, she hasn't lowered shields, so the Rev-12 fires on the Protostar's shield array to disable it.
Gwyn begs her father to find another way to save their people, but to no avail. Dal beams over to help, but the Diviner overpowers them both.
Then Zero beams over. Geez. We've gotten bits and pieces this season of Zero being angry at being used by the Diviner, but he gets his revenge by shedding his containment suit and letting the Diviner get a good long look. Gwyn catches some of it in the reflection of Dal's commbadge.
The Unwanted are given the Rev-12 to go wherever they want. The now-insane (well, more insane) Diviner is banished to Tars Lamora all alone. Gwyn is suffering short-term memory loss from her indirect glance at Zero. The kids prepare to jump to the Federation, since Gwyn doesn't remember the ship is a Trojan horse.
And we end the episode with a Federation ship picking up yet another use of the Protostar's drive. The ship in question is in command of none other than the flesh-and-blood Admiral Janeway... and the ship itself is the USS Dauntless? Also, I'll need to go back and check, but I think the Starfleet folks are wearing Lower Decks uniforms or some variant thereof.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Overall pretty satisfying. I said before that the longer they put off the big reveal, the more annoyed I got. But the idea that first contact with the Federation sparks a civil war among the Vau Nakat is a pretty good motivation for the whole thing, and even if it’s ridiculous overkill, it’s an understandable one. I’m still not sure why the Diviner had to hide that from Gwyn all this time, but that’s somewhat-forgivable TV logic for ya.
Did anyone else get a “Raiders of the Lost Ark” vibe when Zero took off their suit?
It makes some sense to let the other rescued kids (including the ridiculously-cute Caitian kid) take the Rev-12, but since last week I was expecting that they’d bring some of them onto the Protostar as crew, with the core cast as the leaders and now mentors for the rest. T’would have been an interesting story, but I suppose it would dilute the focus away from the main characters.
Any wagers on how long before we see the Diviner again? I think it’s a certainty. With time travel shenanigans involved, we could easily see another version of him, and/or the madness-afflicted one could make a partial recovery to come after the Protostar again.
That tag scene at the end was a nice surprise, seeing the real Admiral Janeway (wearing an “All Good Things”-style commbadge) aboard the USS Dauntless, NCC-80816. And it looked an awful lot like the fake Dauntless NX-01-A, with notably similar arrangement (not identical though), just bigger. Its aft section also remind me a bit of the Voyager study model.
Edit: Oh, and kudos to the writers (and Gwyn) for actually adding safeguards to Holo-Janeway’s program! Janeway was just playing along with the Diviner until the opportune moment.
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)