• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Spoilers Star Trek: Prodigy General Discussion Thread

Ooh, now I wanna see that!

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.


I'll just leave this here ... :whistle:
 
Last edited:
If anything, while TAS did have to tone down the sex and violence somewhat for Saturday mornings, it mostly did not try to write the show any differently than TOS. It had none of the tropes that were typical of kids' cartoons at the time -- the characters didn't turn to the camera at the end to lecture the audience on the moral of the story, they didn't have teen sidekicks or cute animal mascots, they didn't form a garage band and perform pop songs, etc.

True, a lot of its episodes did follow the Filmation pattern where the problems were solved with talking and understanding rather than violence -- but then you got "The Slaver Weapon," the only TAS episode and one of the very few Filmation episodes ever where characters actually died violently onscreen, with no effort being made by the protagonists to talk or reason or negotiate. It's a startlingly ruthless, amoral ending both for Saturday morning TV and for Star Trek in general. I think that would've been a better Star Trek episode if it hadn't been so slavish an adaptation of the original "Known Space" story -- if instead of just letting the Kzinti mishandle the weapon and get themselves killed, Spock et al. had warned them of the danger, saved their lives, and paved the way to a peaceful resolution.

Still doesn't change the fact the cheap animation and tiny voice cast often undermined the show and that TV animation has changed a lot since the 1970s. Since at least the 90s, shows as Batman and X-Men raised the bar on what can be done on a kid's animated show (dealing with issues like drug abuse and genocide) and really animated shows have mostly went in that direction and really making Star Trek TAS show its age.

This show will have to be a bit more modern to thrive, certainly teach the Star Trek ethos, but present it something the kids would like today.
 
Still doesn't change the fact the cheap animation and tiny voice cast often undermined the show and that TV animation has changed a lot since the 1970s.

Of course not, but that's a different topic altogether from whether it was targeted specifically at kids. There was nothing about TAS's writing that was any more kid-oriented than TOS aside from the lessened violence and sexuality.
 
Of course not, but that's a different topic altogether from whether it was targeted specifically at kids. There was nothing about TAS's writing that was any more kid-oriented than TOS aside from the lessened violence and sexuality.

But my point is the low production values let down the stories in that series, the cheap animation and tiny voice cast undermined the stories and really the type of stories for an animated show that TAS is no longer that novel like there were in the 70s, nowadays you have kids cartoons that will take on heavier subject matter, that has been increasingly the case since the 90s.

Look at the production values in say this scene, in a series also made by Nickelodeon:

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Something like Avatar the Last Airbender tackles heavy subject matter and has great production values.
 
But my point is the low production values let down the stories in that series

And I am not refuting that point. I am addressing the other point you made about whether it was written for children. They're separate and unrelated questions, and clarifying one is not an argument against the other.
 
And I am not refuting that point. I am addressing the other point you made about whether it was written for children. They're separate and unrelated questions, and clarifying one is not an argument against the other.

Fair enough, but I am not sure it was the most adult thing Star Trek produced either, episodes like the Practical Joker or that episode with the giant Spock clone are pretty silly, there were some interesting ideas in some of the episodes, like the where Kirk meets an alien that looks like the devil or the one where Spock's pet died, but overall it is not one of the best things Star Trek has produced.

Just saying Star Trek TAS is better than its peers in the 70s in terms of being a complex doesn't really mean much now, how does the writing on Star Trek TAS compare to Batman TAS, X-Men TAS, Gargoyles, the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Steven Universe, Avatar the Last Airbender, etc. Star Trek TAS is more of a relic then people realize, being novel in the 70s doesn't really matter anymore if we have animated shows that are willing to tackle heavier subject matter and that has been the case since the 90s.

Heck I am not even comparing Star Trek TAS to something like Castlevania, which is something pointedly aimed at adults and has amazing animation and a pretty sizable voice cast.
 
Fair enough, but I am not sure it was the most adult thing Star Trek produced either, episodes like the Practical Joker or that episode with the giant Spock clone are pretty silly, there were some interesting ideas in some of the episodes, like the where Kirk meets an alien that looks like the devil or the one where Spock's pet died, but overall it is not one of the best things Star Trek has produced.

There is plenty of silliness in TOS too. A giant Spock clone is no sillier than a giant Apollo. Radiation shrinking the crew is no sillier than Flint shrinking the Enterprise down to a tabletop model. Kirk and Spock being changed into water-breathers is no sillier than Kirk being accelerated to superspeed by Scalosian water. Name any silly thing in TAS and I can name something equally silly in TOS. It's a category error to assume those silly elements had anything to do with the target age range. That's just how science fiction television was written back then.


Just saying Star Trek TAS is better than its peers in the 70s in terms of being a complex doesn't really mean much now

No, but it is still objectively true, and therefore it matters. I am not refuting that modern animation is better. I am not addressing that point at all. I am merely clarifying the facts about 1970s animation, because a lot of people get those facts wrong.
 
Full-size inflatable Enterprise?

Well, first off, that's not actually silly at all. There's been research into using inflatable structures as space habitats as far back as 1961. They work well in microgravity because you don't need structural bracing to support them, just internal air pressure -- and since the external pressure is next to zero, you don't need that much internal pressure for inflation. Also, something like a solar sail would be a component that was stored very compactly and could expand to an enormous size once in space. If the decoy Enterprise were made of thin enough Mylar or similar material, it would be quite compact before inflation, not that hard for the ship's fabricators to create.

But if you want something silly floating in space near the Enterprise, how about a gigantic amoeba? Or a disembodied green hand? Or Abe Lincoln? Or an immobilizing tractor web that takes so many hours to weave around a ship that it only works if the ship is already immobilized anyway?
 
I think it being a Dreadnought originated in the Alan Dean Foster Star Trek Log novelization.

I wanna see an inflatable USS Vengeance:lol:
 
I think it being a Dreadnought originated in the Alan Dean Foster Star Trek Log novelization.

Yes, I just checked, and it was. Foster had Sulu call it "one of the old Federation dreadnoughts," of a class that was never built because such heavily armed ships proved unnecessary. Also it was twenty times the Enterprise's size, which intimidated the Romulans into slowing their approach (at least until they got close enough to tell it was fake).
 
I would have thought the Kirk casting rumours related to this show, not Enterprise/Strange New World. But they could use the same actor for both (with their likeness and voice used here).
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top