Star Trek Guide

Star Trek: Prodigy, the newest animated series for the ST universe & Janeway’s return

Star Trek Guide gives a rundown on everything we know about the 10th (or 11th) Star Trek series, Prodigy, starring Kate Mulgrew as Captain/Admiral/Emergency Comman Hologram Janeway leading youngsters into adventure in the Delta Quadrant…

With the coming of First Contact Day 2021 emerged a few details on Star Trek: Prodigy, but what we did learn has ST fandom quite excited. For those keeping score at home, Prodigy will be the 10th or 11th series released, depending on when Strange New Worlds launches; is the third animated series and though touted as the first kids’ Star Trek, come on, The Animated Series; and, most intriguingly, will be the second ST to feature Captain Janeway. Well, sort of…

This page will be filled in as further details on Star Trek: Prodigy are released. As of the last update (May 15, 2021), the following is known.

•  The main cast is all non-human, non-Vulcan, non-Klingon, etc. The entire half-dozen may be heretofore unknown in Star Trek lore, though some fans claim a character to be Talaxian, species responsible for the utterly insufferable Neelix.

Star Trek: Prodigy cast

•  Kate Mulgrew reprises her role as Voyager’s Captain Janeway … but in hologram form assisting the crew with, presumably, shp functions and command decisions. (Perhaps this represents a Federation modification on the EMH’s Emergency Command Hologram program…?)

•  One of the very first particulars fandom got from show producers was the through-line of kids finding a derelict Federation starship and cruising around therein on adventures. As it runs out, the ’ship and its new crew are in the Delta Quadrant, thereby making the presence of holo-Janeway extra beneficial.

•  “These six young outcasts know nothing about the ship they have commandeered,” a Paramount+ news release also described, “but over the course of their adventures together, they will each be introduced to Starfleet and the ideals it represents.”

•  According to Mulgrew, as quoted from her appearance as part of the First Contact Day 2021 festivities, the plot of season 1, episode 1 (perhaps even in the cold open) goes thusly: “Five kids are incarcerated on an obscure planet in an uncharted part of the galaxy. And they escape from their imprisonment, and race across the planet to find a defunct starship buried in the sand of the planet’s surface. They go in and of course the prison guards are coming after them, and they can’t get it up, and the shields won’t run, and the thing won’t go. And suddenly, somebody hits a button and bloop, ‘Hello kids. I see you’re a little bit stuck here. Can I help you out?’ And it’s Captain Janeway, in a holographic form…”

•  Incidentally, Star Trek Guide is assuming that Prodigy is the ship’s name, though no official word has been given on this.

•  As for the questions of when: In-universe, the time period has been established as 2383, five years after the events of the Voyager episode Endgame. Audiences will actually be able to watch Prodigy on Paramount+ at some as-yet unannounced date in 2021…