[6.3/10] “Prodigal Daughter” contains the germ of a good idea. Family dynamics are complicated to begin with. What it would mean for a joined Trill to come home, reengage with those familial tangles as a different person (or eight different people) could be rich territory to explore. Throw in some kind of creditable murder mystery to complicate things, because we need some kind of external stakes and not just a kitchen sink drama for network television, and you could come up with a solid episode.
We get glimpses of that good idea in “Prodigal Daughter”. The Trill have long been latched onto by the LGBT community because of how Dax can represent their experience. The moments when Ezri’s family struggles with her new name, or the new facets of her life, or she frets that she never fit in perfectly in the first place, works as an analog for someone returning to their family after transitioning. Ezri coming back different, with her mom still wanting to treat her like the person she was before she became joined to the Dax symbiont, works well not only as a trans metaphor, but for anyone who faces a fraught or awkward reentry with their parents.
But these are only glimpses. For the most part, the episode veers between stock family dynamics, unearned melodrama, and a generic mystery plot that isn’t worth its salt.
The latter part feels the most extraneous. “Prodigal Daughter” is kind of a sequel to season 6’s “Honor Among Thieves”, where Chief O’Brien pulls a proto-Departed with a gangster affiliated with the Orion Syndicate. That episode was pretty tepid to begin with, so following up on it leaves “Prodigal Daughter” at something of a deficit from the start.
I didn’t really care about what happened to Bilby the mobster’s family after the events of the earlier episode. I can appreciate the show wanting to keep up some continuity and follow-up on loose ends, but Miles searching after his dead pal’s wife in the background doesn’t get me emotionally invested in the proceedings. If anything, it makes me remember how paint-by-numbers a lot of the prior material was.
Which continues in this episode, for the most part. On the one hand, “Prodigal Daughter” already struggles to build the amount of narrative scaffolding necessary to tell its story. So I get wanting to use the mafia stand-in Deep Space Nine already established. But everything about the Orion Syndicate henchman sabotaging the operations of Ezri’s family’s business, and the older brother trading favors with them to sustain it, and Miles getting roughed up by their operative amounts to dimestore, off-the-shelf mob story plot points, with little-to-no juice in them.
It’s also not super necessary. The mob plot serves a narrative purpose, with the expediency of the situation forcing Ezri to go home, even though she has an uncomfortable relationship with her family. (It presages Tendi’s situation in Lower Decks. Frankly, a lot of Ezri’s deal presages Tendi’s!) And of course, it’s central to the climax of the story. But everything involving the mobsters feels cheesy and unconvincing. Frankly, the episode would be better if it ditched the “We need stakes!” dramatics and instead focused on a complicated familial relationship a la TNG’s “Family”.
I say that, but the family stuff in “Prodigal Daughter” is no great shakes either. I sympathize with the writers on this one. It is incredibly difficult to conjure up a lived-in family dynamic in only forty-five minutes. (It’s part of why I wish they’d jettisoned the mystery plot -- more time!) So the script has to rely almost exclusively on generic archetypes. There is the critical and domineering matriarch of the family, the devoted older sibling who’s taken on the pressure and the responsibility, and the softer, artsier younger sibling who doesn’t quite live up to expectations.
There’s nothing wrong with utilizing some familiar tropes for a story like this one. Those kinds of family dynamics are common in fiction because they’re relatable for a number of people. But nothing in how the Tigan family is presented feels anything but generic. The relationships don’t feel familiar enough, casual enough, to represent the intricate interpersonal connections and fraught history the writers and performers are going for.
If you squint, you can see what they’re trying to do here, and with a little more depth to the characters and layers to the relationships, you could see it working. But given the shallow characterization we get, and the ho-hum dialogue used to bring it to life, most of the Tigan reunion falls flat.
The one exception for me is the interplay between Ezri and her younger brother, Norvo. Maybe it’s just the minor thrill of seeing guest star Kevin Rahm (the future Ted Chaugh of Mad Men fame in Star Trek.) But for me, at least, it’s the only part of the episode where the family dynamic feels real and not just exaggerated for maximum melodrama. The sort of misfit camaraderie, a familiarity and solace in two siblings who’ve been through the same stuff and supported each other through it, adds an emotional depth that's missing elsewhere.
It’s supposed to add oomph to the reveal that it was, in fact, gentle Norvo who killed Mrs. Bilby, rather than random Orion Syndicate goons or Ezri’s more determined older brother, Janel. But it largely comes off like a cheesy and unnecessary twist. The shock value doesn’t land because we don’t know these characters well enough and because, well, the mystery isn’t that interesting in the first place.
All you can say for the climax of this one is that you can see what the writers are going for. There is an interesting observation here, of a parent trying to hold her family together and mold her children into their best selves instead rending everything asunder and tearing them apart. Janel internalized the importance of commitment to the family business to such a degree that he’d cast lots with the mob rather than let it fail. Norvo strives so much to live up to his potential and overcome his mother’s criticisms that he commits a murder to prove his mettle. And Ezri, well, Ezri would rather leave than be a party to any of it.
If you can cut through the thicket of nonsense here, there’s real tragedy in that. It’s not quite so overdramatic, but there’s an analog to real families whether the weight of expectation and font of criticism drives kids to extremes or estrangement. In line with Ezri’s coded transition story, the notion of a well-intentioned but ultimately damaging parental approach leading to the chickens coming home to roost could be a great story to explore within the confines of Star Trek and the Trill.
Instead, we get this, a dull melodrama and cheap mystery. Not every good idea blossoms into a great episode. I’m glad for the chance to know more about where Ezri comes from and to see the idea, if not the execution, of what it’s like to reacclimate to your family after becoming joined. But “Prodigal Daughter” bogs itself down with unnecessary and unsatisfying narrative bric-a-brac, when it could have been cultivating the better elements at the heart of its story.
I totally forget there's this episode. I wasn't a fan of Honor of thieves. Of all the episodes to be continued, they chose this one? Hm....
This episode also shows what's wrong with Ezri. It's not her. It's not the actor. It's not this family story per se. But they have to give her a background and a character description quickly. Other characters in the show were able to build this over the course of six seasons (or they were established in TNG). This takes a lot of time and isn't very exciting. Now, they have to dedicate a lot of time to do the basics. But this will never pay off. Eventually, it turns out, that she never had a chance to replace Jadzia. One season is just not enough time. Plus, I don't understand why they tell this story. It would have been a lot more fun, when Ezri's previous hosts would have changed her that much that she was confidently taking a stand against her mother. But no, we basically only see the "Ezri minus Dax". Well, they briefly talk about this, but it's really a missed chance to show the difficulties Ezri has to adopt to her new life.
I also don't like that this family is like every other rich family Star Trek. Capitalist do always have a dark secret, illicit business, criminal intent and thinly disguised misanthropic tendencies - even when it comes to their own family or friends. Rarely they are friendly intellectuals, joyful playboys, generous philanthropists, altruistic benevolent people. Capitalism destroys families and societies. This is certainly line with the original Star Trek trope, but it's just not very exciting. And since we know Ezri and her family that little, we don't really care... It's 45 minutes boring television.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2024-06-20T05:45:54Z
[6.3/10] “Prodigal Daughter” contains the germ of a good idea. Family dynamics are complicated to begin with. What it would mean for a joined Trill to come home, reengage with those familial tangles as a different person (or eight different people) could be rich territory to explore. Throw in some kind of creditable murder mystery to complicate things, because we need some kind of external stakes and not just a kitchen sink drama for network television, and you could come up with a solid episode.
We get glimpses of that good idea in “Prodigal Daughter”. The Trill have long been latched onto by the LGBT community because of how Dax can represent their experience. The moments when Ezri’s family struggles with her new name, or the new facets of her life, or she frets that she never fit in perfectly in the first place, works as an analog for someone returning to their family after transitioning. Ezri coming back different, with her mom still wanting to treat her like the person she was before she became joined to the Dax symbiont, works well not only as a trans metaphor, but for anyone who faces a fraught or awkward reentry with their parents.
But these are only glimpses. For the most part, the episode veers between stock family dynamics, unearned melodrama, and a generic mystery plot that isn’t worth its salt.
The latter part feels the most extraneous. “Prodigal Daughter” is kind of a sequel to season 6’s “Honor Among Thieves”, where Chief O’Brien pulls a proto-Departed with a gangster affiliated with the Orion Syndicate. That episode was pretty tepid to begin with, so following up on it leaves “Prodigal Daughter” at something of a deficit from the start.
I didn’t really care about what happened to Bilby the mobster’s family after the events of the earlier episode. I can appreciate the show wanting to keep up some continuity and follow-up on loose ends, but Miles searching after his dead pal’s wife in the background doesn’t get me emotionally invested in the proceedings. If anything, it makes me remember how paint-by-numbers a lot of the prior material was.
Which continues in this episode, for the most part. On the one hand, “Prodigal Daughter” already struggles to build the amount of narrative scaffolding necessary to tell its story. So I get wanting to use the mafia stand-in Deep Space Nine already established. But everything about the Orion Syndicate henchman sabotaging the operations of Ezri’s family’s business, and the older brother trading favors with them to sustain it, and Miles getting roughed up by their operative amounts to dimestore, off-the-shelf mob story plot points, with little-to-no juice in them.
It’s also not super necessary. The mob plot serves a narrative purpose, with the expediency of the situation forcing Ezri to go home, even though she has an uncomfortable relationship with her family. (It presages Tendi’s situation in Lower Decks. Frankly, a lot of Ezri’s deal presages Tendi’s!) And of course, it’s central to the climax of the story. But everything involving the mobsters feels cheesy and unconvincing. Frankly, the episode would be better if it ditched the “We need stakes!” dramatics and instead focused on a complicated familial relationship a la TNG’s “Family”.
I say that, but the family stuff in “Prodigal Daughter” is no great shakes either. I sympathize with the writers on this one. It is incredibly difficult to conjure up a lived-in family dynamic in only forty-five minutes. (It’s part of why I wish they’d jettisoned the mystery plot -- more time!) So the script has to rely almost exclusively on generic archetypes. There is the critical and domineering matriarch of the family, the devoted older sibling who’s taken on the pressure and the responsibility, and the softer, artsier younger sibling who doesn’t quite live up to expectations.
There’s nothing wrong with utilizing some familiar tropes for a story like this one. Those kinds of family dynamics are common in fiction because they’re relatable for a number of people. But nothing in how the Tigan family is presented feels anything but generic. The relationships don’t feel familiar enough, casual enough, to represent the intricate interpersonal connections and fraught history the writers and performers are going for.
If you squint, you can see what they’re trying to do here, and with a little more depth to the characters and layers to the relationships, you could see it working. But given the shallow characterization we get, and the ho-hum dialogue used to bring it to life, most of the Tigan reunion falls flat.
The one exception for me is the interplay between Ezri and her younger brother, Norvo. Maybe it’s just the minor thrill of seeing guest star Kevin Rahm (the future Ted Chaugh of Mad Men fame in Star Trek.) But for me, at least, it’s the only part of the episode where the family dynamic feels real and not just exaggerated for maximum melodrama. The sort of misfit camaraderie, a familiarity and solace in two siblings who’ve been through the same stuff and supported each other through it, adds an emotional depth that's missing elsewhere.
It’s supposed to add oomph to the reveal that it was, in fact, gentle Norvo who killed Mrs. Bilby, rather than random Orion Syndicate goons or Ezri’s more determined older brother, Janel. But it largely comes off like a cheesy and unnecessary twist. The shock value doesn’t land because we don’t know these characters well enough and because, well, the mystery isn’t that interesting in the first place.
All you can say for the climax of this one is that you can see what the writers are going for. There is an interesting observation here, of a parent trying to hold her family together and mold her children into their best selves instead rending everything asunder and tearing them apart. Janel internalized the importance of commitment to the family business to such a degree that he’d cast lots with the mob rather than let it fail. Norvo strives so much to live up to his potential and overcome his mother’s criticisms that he commits a murder to prove his mettle. And Ezri, well, Ezri would rather leave than be a party to any of it.
If you can cut through the thicket of nonsense here, there’s real tragedy in that. It’s not quite so overdramatic, but there’s an analog to real families whether the weight of expectation and font of criticism drives kids to extremes or estrangement. In line with Ezri’s coded transition story, the notion of a well-intentioned but ultimately damaging parental approach leading to the chickens coming home to roost could be a great story to explore within the confines of Star Trek and the Trill.
Instead, we get this, a dull melodrama and cheap mystery. Not every good idea blossoms into a great episode. I’m glad for the chance to know more about where Ezri comes from and to see the idea, if not the execution, of what it’s like to reacclimate to your family after becoming joined. But “Prodigal Daughter” bogs itself down with unnecessary and unsatisfying narrative bric-a-brac, when it could have been cultivating the better elements at the heart of its story.