Comedy
English Teacher
Filled with profanity and LGBT content, FX’s English Teacher won’t be found on most families’ back-to-school shopping lists.
Dal is an alien prisoner trapped in a subspace mine deep in the Delta Quadrant of the galaxy. He and the other captives are forced to labor for the “Diviner,” a mysterious figure searching the mine for … something.
Here, the United Federation of Planets has no power (they’re nearly 70,000 light-years away in the Alpha Quadrant). Universal translators are banned in order to prevent prisoners from talking and possibly organizing an uprising.
And if you should step a toe out of line, the Diviner has an army of robots led by his second-in-command, Drednok, to inflict punishment on the offenders.
So, when it’s suspected that Dal knows something about an escaped prisoner, “Fugitive Zero,” he’s given a choice: help capture Zero or die a painful death.
Dal agrees to find Zero. But things don’t go according to plan. Instead of discovering Zero, Dal runs across an abandoned Starship, the USS Protostar.
New plan: Rally a few prisoners to help fix the Protostar up and escape the mines!
But as it turns out, escaping is the easy part.
Because the Protostar is exactly what the Diviner was looking for, and he’s got some nefarious plans of his own for it. What’s more is that Zero, the Diviner’s most wanted fugitive, shows up wanting to join the newly-founded crew.
Talk about plans going awry.
But with a little help from the ship’s hologram—one Kathryn Janeway of the USS Voyager—Dal learns to be a leader and his crew learns Starfleet protocol.
When the Diviner reveals his true diabolical revenge plan, the fates of the Federation and Starfleet hang in the balance. That is until one character’s sacrifice leads to peace and new adventures.
Those new adventures truly take off in Season Two, when the Protostar crew and Admiral Janeway navigate time travel, power struggles, alternate realities and a threat of ultimate destruction in an attempt to reclaim a member of the USS Protostar’s original, decade-old crew from a wormhole.
Meanwhile, the Diviner’s daughter, Gwyn, who became a Protostar ally in Season One, is trying to fulfill her father’s final wish and prevent a civil war on their home planet that… hasn’t happened yet. Time travel is weird that way, isn’t it?
Star Trek: Prodigy carries on the legacy of its predecessors, boldly going where no one has gone before. This computer-animated series features new characters (as well as several old ones), new adventures and new alien species, all targeted toward kids.
The makers seem to be mindful of the show’s intended audience, because there’s no language, no graphic violence (though there are several battle scenes) and no sexual content of any kind. In fact, the only thing that might cause concern are the aliens themselves. Some look and act a bit rougher than others. And Zero is a Medusan—a noncorporeal, genderless, energy-based lifeform.
But otherwise, fans of the Star Trek franchise may discover that this is a good show to help introduce their kids to strange new worlds, new life and new civilizations, with plenty of nods to the original shows.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at [email protected], or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
When Dal and the gang are called to intern on the newest Voyager ship, they start to believe Captain Janeway and her officers are on a secret mission unbeknownst to any crew members. It’s true, but while they do agree to keep the time-travel rescue mission a secret, they accidentally launch the mission ship too early.
Meanwhile, Gwyn tries to stop a future civil war on the planet Solum. Unfortunately, her own people don’t recognize her.
Dal and Gwyn seem to be in a long-distance relationship. Zero wishes he could be corporeal in part to feel what it is like to hold hands with someone.
Many characters lie and keep secrets, much to Rok’s chagrin. There is a classist power dynamic among crewmates on the new Voyager ship. And, I think Dal says it best: “This timey-wimey stuff hurts my head.” There are a lot of time travel-related issues, including a morally ambiguous time paradox that could cause an alternative present.
After discovering a Federation ship, Dal recruits some fellow prisoners to help fix the vessel up and escape the mines where they’ve been forced to work.
Robots fire weapons at prisoners. We learn Zero was forced to torture prisoners for the Diviner. Drednok threatens to kill Dal several times. Several characters take tumbles while fighting and while trying to avoid falling rocks.
Characters lie and steal. We learn that the prisoners are all either criminals or orphans, kidnapped from the fringes of society. A man says Dal is a pain in the “tailbutt.”
Caleb Gottry is the Plugged In intern for Summer 2024. Caleb studies journalism with a minor in music at Texas Christian University, where he will be a junior in the fall. He loves playing with words, listening to and making music, and spending any spare time with friends or family.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
Filled with profanity and LGBT content, FX’s English Teacher won’t be found on most families’ back-to-school shopping lists.
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