As a fan of mysteries, my mind tends to clasp onto details that writers felt important enough to mention, but had no bearing on the plot up to this point.

The fact that the ship Tendi recovered was a “medical frigate” triggered such an alarm in my head. Yes the ship was able to gas the Blue Orions, but that’s hardly a feature unique to medical ships.

We Know:

• Tendi wants to come back to help raise her niece.
• Tendi wants to be a captain
• The finale is going to have some tear jerking moments
• This is the last season.

I think we’re being prepped for the main cast to go their separate ways, not unlike the DS9 finale.

We’ve had some foreshadowing with Freeman and Starbase 80. I wonder if the finale might end with her being posted there, as an admiral. Fix it up, that sort of thing, rather than an exile.

I really want the S5 set, and the S1 poster.

Not really sold on a full set at the moment.

If we go by the gap between Strange New Worlds beginning filming, and S1’s release, we could see Academy around November of next year.

It still burns that Prodigy was barely included in the tribute to Trek animation.

I got the book too! Did you have any luck de-dacting the Rubber Ducky Room pages?

Damn! It’s Aaron Waltke himself! Will do my part good sir! 🫡

The narrative problem with the kids arriving in Federation territory in a stolen ship was that the Protostar would be impounded and the kids would be sent packing.

They needed a narrative reason to give the kids a chance to command the Protostar and have their own adventures, which means dragging out returning it to Starfleet. But rather than resorting to stalling tactics, they opted to have the kids fight to keep it out of their hands, and for good reason.

With Picard and Discovery, I felt more like that trope was used because the writers had no better ideas on how to keep the stakes high.

With Prodigy, I felt that the stakes were made essential to its premise.

In Prodigy’s defense, they waited the equivalent of two seasons to play that card, and the execution was IMO, better than what we saw in Picard and Discovery.