123. The Very Slow Tiger Of Anxiety (Prodigy 1.11)

Anika and Liz are rolling up to a starbase in a stolen starship, putting on our un-earned cadet uniforms and discussing the new episode of Star Trek: Prodigy and children in Star Trek in general! The chase is on! Lieutenant jg Barniss Frex is THE WORST Starfleet needs to start recruiting career bureaucrats who LIKE being assigned to sit in an office in space and do paperwork. Like … us! We don't actually think Dal is a Janeway/Paris salamander baby, but we have a lot of thoughts about how it would be great if he was It would be terrible if the Diviner has done something to Gwyn to also make her a weapon. Absolutely awful. We wouldn't enjoy that one little bit. Honest. Rok-Tahk is safe to learn and make mistakes If kids go from "Hey, Murf is a Mellanoid slime worm, let's watch the only episode of Star Trek where those are mentioned," they'll watch "Coming of Age", the episode where Wesley fails to get into the Academy (and that's okay). Coincidence? Maybe! Liz wants to be happy about finally getting the J/C hug she's been waiting for since she was 14, but Robert Beltran's making it hard Anika has compiled some stats about children in Star Trek generally, and they are fascinating Like, TOS had FOUR episodes about kids taking over the ship! Out of nine across the franchise, and that's not counting Prodigy! In fact, you can kind of track social attitudes towards children via their presence in Star Trek, which makes it alarming that SNW keeps killing them