Spoilers Star Trek: Prodigy and the Novels
- Thread starter Mike Doyle
- Start date
I've only just met them, but the Loom/Wesley stuff definitely gave me Coda vibes.
I was just looking around at Memory Alpha and found out that in Prodigy Season 2, which I haven't watched yet, that they brought back the Terran Empire in the MU, which I don't really like. I much prefer the more peaceful Galactic Commonwealth that the Rebellion turned into in the books, it just seems strange to me that after everything they went through with the Alliance, and with the influence that the Federation had on them, that the Terrans would just go back to the Empire.
Yeah, I’d just chalk that up to the multiverse. Even from the novels, there was evidence of a version of the MU where the empire was still active in the late 24th century. (There are probably other examples, but the one that jumps immediately to mind is Fleet Captain Sisko of the Terran Empire in the “Council of Siskos” scene.)
I assumed the MU we see in Prodigy was based on the one we see in the IDW comics, where the Terran Empire continues to exist in the 24the century, it's just extremely smaller and the reason why the characters on DS9's MU episodes think the Terran Empire is defeated is due to propaganda the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance is feeding them.
Oh, I like that idea, I really enjoyed those.
I'm more surprised he didn't look at Lower Decks- with its serious-Trek-but-also-comedy-parody-moments tone and tendency to explore the weird, goofy, and obscure side of Trek, and go 'oh, they're just ripping off the format of New Frontier (but with less sex)!'
I do think PD deserves credit for basically creating the template for Lower Decks (even if coincidentally and unintentionally) several decades ahead of his time. Between that and the Brikar, modern animated Trek owes a lot to Peter David.
Whaaaaa?? Lower Decks is an out-and-out sitcom that sometimes has a more serious side. New Frontier was a drama-adventure series that often had a snarky and comedic side. They bear only a vague tonal resemblance to each other, and nobody would attempt to claim ownership of a tone, let alone a format.
I don't see where you're getting that. The two series had very different casts, with NF featuring a mix of original and established characters while LD's cast was all original. They had very different formats and missions, with NF's characters being the command crew of Starfleet capital ships patrolling an important sector of space, while LD's main characters are the junior officers of a lower-tier Starfleet ship on a variety of routine missions. They're by no means the same template.
If any prose Trek series is similar in concept to LD, it's the S.C.E./Corps of Engineers series, which focused on a smaller vessel and crew generally assigned to routine or followup missions. The Cerritos is even an engineering-division ship.
I think we read their tones a bit differently. But no, my point was simply that if he was going through claim something exceedingly general as a ripoff of his work (as in the cited example with Prodigy), I would have seen *this* general similarity as the lower-hanging fruit.
I suppose I see the similarity less in the cast and assignment of the crew, as much as the lens through which the Trek universe is viewed. The satirical but loving look at the universe the defaults to outright comedy but also contains serious and dramatic moments and real stakes in the process.
To put it another way- fighting the Beings and battling triremes in space, or a conspiracy in which a hyper-intelligent tribble turns out to be the mastermind, would be right at home in an episode of Lower Decks; a snarky exo-comp or a Pakled invasion would easily be at home in the pages of New Frontier. I daresy if you scrubbed out ship and people names and put up a series of story outlines, people (that hadn't already read them) would be hard pressed to guess which storyline were New Frontier and which were Lower Decks- while I don't think either set could easily be mistaken for any of the other series out there.
I suppose a better way of putting it would be that I think PD originated the approach to Star Trek's lore that Lower Decks ended up using, 'before it was cool'. Not that Lower Decks was in any way ripping it off or intentionally copying it- merely that they were reading a conceptual (and to me, tonal) trail that had first been blazed by PD all those years before. Unintentionally following in his footsteps in the filter through which they referenced and displayed and played with the Star Trek universe.
I recall seeing Peter remark on the irony that people interpreted his writing as out-and-out comedy when he so often featured really dark themes and tragic storylines. I would definitely agree with him that his work falls more on the "drama with a lot of humor" side of the spectrum than the "comedy with moments of seriousness" side.
It's hardly the same. Space Cases and Prodigy were both about a diverse group of teenagers discovering an advanced alien (to them) starship and having adventures aboard it. (See also Star Wars: Skeleton Crew.) That's a much more specific similarity, while what you're talking about is just a matter of general tone and attitude.
Which is notable as a consistent trend across all Trek series pre-CBS (a major reason I was a detractor of the Discovery 'visual reboot' explanation, and relieved by the potential TCW explanation there). Every series that revisits TOS (save for Discovery/SNW) universally affirms that the TOS/TOS film era looked exactly the way it looked and wasn't merely a matter of budget or interpretation.
I hadn't considered that Prodigy joined that lineage (TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT, Kelvinverse, and PRO!), but I am glad that it did!
Lower Decks did as well kinda. When they showed TOS era stuff it was usually in TAS style.
Picard Season 3 also had a TOS style Connie.
None of the new shows, other than Lower Decks, has shown anything from the movie era yet.
Of course it was. In "Relics," they had to match the stock footage they were using to represent the bridge in the establishing shot, and had to borrow the command chair and helm console from a fan reconstruction, only building one wedge of the bridge wall. In "Trials and Tribble-ations," they had the same need to match footage from "The Trouble With Tribbles." In "In a Mirror, Darkly," they had to reuse the TOS-matching sets they'd built for the previous productions (and expanded on between productions as a hobby). It's only in DSC/SNW that they've had the freedom to start from scratch rather than matching TOS footage or reusing existing set pieces.
