Spoilers Star Trek: Prodigy General Discussion Thread

[Wouter]

It's not just "memberberries," because the returning characters and story elements are advanced and used in a way that serves the story, rather than the story serving the nostalgia like in Picard season 3.

The way they handled Chakotay was particularly good. They didn't just rely on audiences having prior familiarity with the character. They went out of their way to have the core characters realize that they owe their freedom from Tars Lamora to Chakotay because of his decision to send the Protostar back through the wormhole. They established clearly why Chakotay matters to the main characters, why it's important to them to save him, in a way that requires no prior knowledge of Voyager.

I think Prodigy also handled Okona in a very good way. There was absolutely no need to know the character from TNG (Prodigy-Okona was much better written, and even acted, by a now much more experienced Billy Campbell), but he had a deep impact on Dal and was also a genuinely funny character. Was nice to see him appear again in S2.

And indeed, the Protogies need to encounter Starfleet characters anyway. Might aswell be someone the older audience knows, for the young viewers it makes no difference as everything is new for them. Would Kobayashi have been better for them if there were a bunch of unknown characters on the bridge?

I have just finished S2 via a binge over the weekend.

Def a good season of TV and a great season of Trek. Honestly I enjoyed that more than all of Discovery and Picard.

Spoiler

Ok, so explain to me how this time loop is sorted out?

2363 The Diviner arrives from future Solum through the collapsing wormhole. He starts searching for the Protostar, and establishes a slave mine colony
2366 Diviner creates Gwyn

2382 The Protostar is lost with Chaoktay and crew - it time travel's to a devastated Solum 50 years in the future: 2436- Chakotay originally sent the ship back through the wormhole remotely and it crashed on Tars Lamora at X point.

Early 2384 Protostar is found by a bunch of kids and they escape the Diviner and the events of S1 play out with the ship being destroyed to prevent the virus weapon taking out Starfleet, which creates a rift that allow them to get Chakotay's distress call from 2436.

Later 2384 The kids create a new timeline where Chakotay escapes with the Protostar back to 2374, spends 10 years on a planet until the kids find him in 2384 and reunites him with Janeway. Starfleet negates the weapon/virus thing.

After some mucking about the Protostar is sent back in time to X point and crashes on Tars Lamora to be found by the kids etc.

However, with Solum now not devastated by civil war in 238x and Ilthuran not becoming the Diviner how is Gwyn even born?

If Starfleet turned off the weapon does the ending of S1 still happen in 2384? Last Stardate we have for that series 61408.8 is before all the events of S2. Was there still a battle then and was the Protostar still destroyed to prevent the weapon infecting Starfleet? Did the ship not need to be blown up then?

Temporal Mechanics are such a pain!

Starfleet did not necessarily "negate" the weapon, they may just have put in in stasis or in sleep mode. The Diviner or Drednok checked the status of the weapon in the finale of season 1A, and thus could reactivate it.

Ilthuran does not become the Diviner in the S2 timeline, but that is the future, which is mutable (no pre-destination, luckily, the Prodigy characters have agency). In the past, which does need to be preserved in the logic of the season, the Diviner did arrive at Tars Lamora because he still followed (during early S2 - "if the odds are a 100-to-1, while even the odds by sending a 100 ships") the Protostar after it escaped the surface of Solum. The Diviner from destroyed Solum still went to Tars Lamora in the past, only the Protostar also needed to be there or he would not be able to follow its trail there.

 

[Ogrebear]

So the Diviner and Asencia must be from a branched timeline then cos Solum is not destroyed in civil war in ‘Prime’ now, and sure I could see Deathlok ‘fixing’ whatever Starfleet did to the virus/bomb.

Still not sure why Chakotay and Ar-veek decided to land on that planet instead of building a shuttle and warning Starfleet of the danger onboard this ship- they do have DTI to deal with these things afterall, or at least pick a better planet to strand yourself on…

 

[Nerys Myk]

So the Diviner and Asencia must be from a branched timeline then cos Solum is not destroyed in civil war in ‘Prime’ now, and sure I could see Deathlok ‘fixing’ whatever Starfleet did to the virus/bomb.

Still not sure why Chakotay and Ar-veek decided to land on that planet instead of building a shuttle and warning Starfleet of the danger onboard this ship- they do have DTI to deal with these things afterall, or at least pick a better planet to strand yourself on…

“Because then the show wouldn’t happen”

 

[Tuskin38]

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[Christopher]

Still not sure why Chakotay and Ar-veek decided to land on that planet instead of building a shuttle and warning Starfleet of the danger onboard this ship- they do have DTI to deal with these things afterall, or at least pick a better planet to strand yourself on…

Who says they decided? I thought it was pretty clear that they crashed there. Crashes are infrequently voluntary.

 

[fireproof78]

Unless you're Launchpad McQuack.


And I don't think any one of them is Launchpad McQuack.

 

[Wouter]

Money talks first and foremost. Prodigy had its supporters but season 1 didn't set the Internet on fire until the illusion of scarcity popped up.

I'm not sure "illusion" is the right word here. The odds for a season 3 getting made are probably not that good. I also don't think it was a sure thing season 2 would be broadcast, at the time P+ announced it would drop the series. The scarcity was/is real, in this case.

In recent threads on Prodigy on Reddit, I notice that it still has a significant number of detractors among Star Trek fans (animated, for children, too Star-Warsy, too serialised/too much mystery,...). I don't think Star Trek fans took Netflix accounts in large numbers to watch it, either. The difference is that the number of people who discovered and liked it has grown. Otherwise, those who liked it (like us here) were quite vocal about that long before the cancellation became clear.

I think Prodigy could well be popular among general fans of SF content who are not necessarily into Star Trek all that much, but the Star Trek moniker may actually be a detriment in that case.

It does strike me that even among those who like Prodigy, the people who say that the first 5 or so episodes are rough (but it gets better) are quite numerous. I still think the first 10 episodes may be the strongest of Prodigy's run, allthough 31-40 are running it close.

I think it's largely about two things: the crews' lack of competence in the beginning and the "it's Star Wars" thing. But the first has led to a wonderful arc for most of the core characters, and in so far as Prodigy is maybe not pure "Star Trek" and incorporates elements from other popular SF franchises, season 2 had Doctor Who elements and the final fight between Gwyn and Ascencia was more like a Star Wars fight than any other we had.

Then again, the wildly popular Picard season 3 also ended with a ship action scene that seemed copied from Return of the Jedi.

 

[fireproof78]

I'm not sure "illusion" is the right word here. The odds for a season 3 getting made are probably not that good. I also don't think it was a sure thing season 2 would be broadcast, at the time P+ announced it would drop the series. The scarcity was/is real, in this case.

It's an old retailers phrasing, perhaps not 100% accurate but captures the gist of my feeling. There was not the drive for Prodigy until it felt like it was going away and then suddenly *bam* "It's the greatest Trek in the Planet!"

Illustrated effect:

In recent threads on Prodigy on Reddit, I notice that it still has a significant number of detractors among Star Trek fans (animated, for children, too Star-Warsy, too serialised/too much mystery,...). I don't think Star Trek fans took Netflix accounts in large numbers to watch it, either. The difference is that the number of people who discovered and liked it has grown. Otherwise, those who liked it (like us here) were quite vocal about that long before the cancellation became clear.

Yes, but it wasn't the big draw that the vocal adherents insisted that it was. That's change, if slightly, so there is more eyes on it, but I don't think it would have gotten the bounce if there wasn't the "Save Prodigy" outcry.

 

[Wouter]

I don't think they were pretending to take it away. At least as in making no more after season 2 (which probably wasn't the plan Paramount had in mind originally; if commercially succesful they would have gone further) and the threat to not even broadcast the almost finished season 2 was probably real as well. It has happened to other productions, so it could have happened to Prodigy if, say, the sales of the disc boxes would not have been great.

 

[fireproof78]

I don't think they were pretending to take it away.

Not entirely, no.

But the upswing of support was intensified, from my view, than it would have been had they tried to just nurse it along.

 

[James Cole]

Variety has a piece up calling on Star Trek fans to give PRODIGY a chance

It is no secret that shows’ renewals depend on viewership. Netflix doesn’t release much viewer data, beyond its weekly Top 10 lists, so it’s hard to gauge how well “Prodigy” Season 2 is doing. Thus far, though, it has not appeared on the Global Top 10 list, nor the U.S. Top 10 list.

It would be a grave disservice to “Star Trek” as a whole to let a show as wonderful as this one go when it is just finding its legs. So this is me sending out a distress call on all channels: Watch “Star Trek: Prodigy.” To not do so would be highly illogical.

 

[aquova]

After hearing the good things said about the second season, I decided to go and give the show a try. I've just finished the first season, and although the premise didn't really appeal to me when it first aired, I must say I was pleasantly surprised by it. While not all the episodes were absolute winners, the show was much less "kiddy" than I was expecting, and I grew to like the crew and the overall plot quite a bit.

Some vague, spoiler-filled thoughts about the first season:

• Like I said, I ended up really enjoying all of the crew and their character development. Some of them took a while to get used to, but I enjoyed seeing how they all came to discover what their strengths were. I particularly liked how some characters ended up in fields that were not the "obvious" choice, like Rok going into a science field rather than security.
• Gwyn was definitely my favorite, and I'm really curious to see where her plotline goes next season. I honestly was expecting her to replace Dal as captain, to continue the trend of characters discovering what they truely want to be throughout their journey, but having her go off on her own is interesting too. I'm really not crazy about the Dal-Gwyn romance though, that felt tacked on.
• I've vaguely heard that the second season deals a lot more with the time travel aspect of the show, but from what little we've seen here, I think the "world accidentally ruined by the Federation in the future" villains are interesting ones. The ensign villain girl was a little one dimensional, but I think Gwyn and her father are compelling enough. The plot is very similar to the Sphere Builders from Enterprise though, my prediction for season 2 is that they'll tie this show more into the Temporal Cold War stuff, but we'll see.
• All the voice actors did well, but I was pleased to see how well Kate Mulgrew slipped back into the role of Janeway. I had issues suspending my disbelief for some of the TNG cast in Picard, but I had no issues with her as Janeway, including her comedic portrayal as Janeway-Dal.
• RIP Protostar. I feel the ship is very small compared to other starships, but I did enjoy its design. Things like the vehicle replicator seem like natural extensions of the technology we've seen at that point. I have some mixed feelings about the protostar drive, as between it and Discovery, they're making the vast size of the galaxy pretty trivial. I think the ship traveled between three of the four quadrants in this season.
• As a big Fringe fan, I was really excited to recognize John Noble's voice, and I think he did a great job. I still have questions about his character which seemed to just go unanswered. I'm not sure why he was living in that liquid tank or needed that special goo suit, as he seemed to get around just fine without them later.
• I was expecting to hear a lot of Voyager musical motifs throughout the show, but honestly a lot of musical stings reminded me of the Kelvin films, which I found interesting.
• I do have some nitpicks about the season though. A few episodes had some contrived plotlines in order to simply cause future tension. The episode where the crew literally bumps into Janeway on the ice planet, only to runaway due to a misunderstanding was pretty sloppily done in my opinion. I think at least one of the crew would try to at least explain, and their fear/insistence that they stole the Protostar isn't even really true, as they salvaged it. Holo-Janeway randomly taking over the ship to force them out of the neutral zone felt contrived as well to me, and it existed to oppose that previous episode.
• I have a visceral dislike of Dal's rat tail thing, I just don't like it. Similarly, while I liked Murf's original design, I really hate the one with arms and legs. It doesn't help that those two characters are the ones I liked the least on the show, although Dal definitely warmed up to me.
• While the anti-Federation device on their ship was both well conceptualized and well set up, Starfleet really should've been screwed at the end of the season. I assumed it would continue to send subspace messages across all of the fleets, not just be a local phenomenon. Even what we saw on screen would've been a massive fiasco for the Federation. This blunder honestly makes the third season of Picard weaker to me, as the Federation networked their ships and allowed basically this exact scenario to play out again. Plus this season had just finished airing a few months prior to Picard season 3; it seems the two writing staffs didn't coordinate together.
• That was Mars at the end right? Does the Defiant just show up back to the Solar System anytime there's a fleet wide disaster?

To summarize, I was surprised how much I liked the show. It's honestly above both Discovery and Picard for me, and if season 2 is as great as everyone says, I could see it beating some of the others too.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Keep watching. S2 does address some of your statements.

 

[Wouter]

After hearing the good things said about the second season, I decided to go and give the show a try. I've just finished the first season, and although the premise didn't really appeal to me when it first aired, I must say I was pleasantly surprised by it. While not all the episodes were absolute winners, the show was much less "kiddy" than I was expecting, and I grew to like the crew and the overall plot quite a bit.

Some vague, spoiler-filled thoughts about the first season:

• Like I said, I ended up really enjoying all of the crew and their character development. Some of them took a while to get used to, but I enjoyed seeing how they all came to discover what their strengths were. I particularly liked how some characters ended up in fields that were not the "obvious" choice, like Rok going into a science field rather than security.
• Gwyn was definitely my favorite, and I'm really curious to see where her plotline goes next season. I honestly was expecting her to replace Dal as captain, to continue the trend of characters discovering what they truely want to be throughout their journey, but having her go off on her own is interesting too. I'm really not crazy about the Dal-Gwyn romance though, that felt tacked on.
• [...]
• I do have some nitpicks about the season though. A few episodes had some contrived plotlines in order to simply cause future tension. The episode where the crew literally bumps into Janeway on the ice planet, only to runaway due to a misunderstanding was pretty sloppily done in my opinion. I think at least one of the crew would try to at least explain, and their fear/insistence that they stole the Protostar isn't even really true, as they salvaged it. Holo-Janeway randomly taking over the ship to force them out of the neutral zone felt contrived as well to me, and it existed to oppose that previous episode.

To summarize, I was surprised how much I liked the show. It's honestly above both Discovery and Picard for me, and if season 2 is as great as everyone says, I could see it beating some of the others too.

Glad that you liked it!

The lack of communication with Janeway's crew on the ice planet was flagged here as rather contrived, as well.

As for Gwyn and Dal, it was established from the first episode on that they knew each other well. She was effectively the only one who could talk with Dal (besides Drednok, not very pleasant as conversational partner), which helps. In Gwyn's first scene with the Diviner, when she rapports on the meeting with the Kazon and he asks her to get Dal to talk about Zero, you can see she's taken very much with Dal when she is talking about him. Their early relationship is weird due to the power unbalance, and due to both being angry with one another in the aftermath of the escape/abduction, but the mutual attraction is clearly there.

 

[ExtremeSail]

I finished S2, closing my experience with a strong series. Seriously, this is arguably the best season of Star Trek ever from a fresh show that sits among the best Trek shows. I'm really glad we have something perfectly encapsulating Trek that is accessible to younger audiences and hopefully Prodigy finds popularity even if it doesn't get picked up for a third season.

 

[Tuskin38]

If it doesn't get renewed, I hope they get a book or a comic continuation.

 

[tomalak301]

I'm not expecting it, but if they announce Season 3 at the panel today, I will be pleasantly delighted.

 

[137th Gebirg]

That would be awesome, but yeah, highly unlikely I’m afraid.

 

[Daedalus]

This means nothing, I know, but I wish it meant something.

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[tomalak301]

This means nothing, I know, but I wish it meant something.

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Isn't Prodigy kind of a Janeway series. She has a very prominent role.