Tag Archives: Star Trek franchise

Sep 10 2023

In Celebration of Star Trek: Prodigy

During the recent official celebrations for the 57th anniversary of Star Trek, its many spinoffs, and the 50th anniversary celebration of the original Star Trek animated TV show, it was noticed by many how the powers-that-be conveniently failed to mention Star Trek: Prodigy. It was so glaring because in the Paramount + Star Trek Day special and related promo material, even though all the Star Trek TV shows were noted, the animated TV show, Star Trek: Prodigy, was absent as if it never existed.

This is peculiar because until a few months ago, Star Trek: Prodigy was streaming on Paramount + until it was yanked out of the schedule and cancelled. This was part of a wider cost-cutting move by Paramount Pictures with its streaming platform that saw the cancellation of many projects. The sudden cancellation of Star Trek: Prodigy was unusual because a second season was already under production and the TV show was removed from the platform mere days after the cancellation announcement.

Honestly, this move by Paramount was disrespectful to the Star Trek franchise and its fans that were only starting to discover Star Trek: Prodigy. This action only reminds fans of how the studio is disdainful of its franchise.

Star Trek: Prodigy was met with a skeptical eye from many fans when it was first announced. Many automatically dismissed it as a kid’s TV show and what did not help was the prominent Nickelodeon logo plastered on top of the TV show’s logo and the announcements in promo materials that it was aimed at children.

While this reaction was understandable many missed out on how unexpectedly solid Star Trek: Prodigy turned out. Yes, it was not as complex as some other Star Trek shows but its stories were imaginative and embraced the Star Trek lore. It actually felt like it was part of Star Trek thanks to its stories, themes and characters. It also boasted beautiful 3D animation that showcased truly unique aliens and landscapes, while being grounded in the Star Trek Universe.

Star Trek: Prodigy takes place in the distant Delta Quadrant at a prison mining colony where a young alien prisoner named Dal R’El (Brett Gray) discovers in a mine an abandoned Starfleet ship called the Protostar. He activates the ship and escapes the colony with his companions who include Gwyndala (Ella Purnell), the daughter of the show’s antagonist, Jankom Pog (Jason Mantzoukas), a young Tellarite mechanic, Zero (Angus Imrie), a Medusan in a floating containment suit, Rok-Tahk (Rylee Alazraqui), a huge rock-like alien who is actually a brilliant young girl, and a gelatinous alien called Murf (Dee Bradley Baker). On the Protostar, they meet a training hologram that is patterned after Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew). She helps them run the ship and mentors Dal and the others on becoming Starfleet officers. The motley crew decides to embark on a voyage to return the Protostar to the Alpha Quadrant and the United Federation of Planets. Along the way they carry on with the Starfleet mission of exploring new worlds and civilizations in the hope they can become Starfleet officers once they return the ship.

The Protostar is an experimental starship that actually changes its shape to travel at tremendous speeds in warp space. The starship and its new crew are hunted across the galaxy by Gwyndalla’s father, the Diviner (John Noble), who rules the prison colony and has a personal vendetta against the Federation and its Starfleet. He covets the Protostar to use it as a Trojan Horse to decimate the Federation.

Also pursuing the Protostar is the real Janeway, who is now a Starfleet admiral commanding another Starfleet ship. Years ago, the Protostar was lost in the Delta Quadrant along with its crew, which was commanded by her former first officer, Chakotay (Robert Beltran).

For a TV show supposedly oriented towards children Star Trek: Prodigy has a surprising amount of depth considering that many episodes featured character arcs that fully developed the characters. Throughout the first season we see Dal change from an impulsive and rebellious teenager into a responsible and mature person who had the qualities for a Starfleet officer. The best episode that illustrates his development was “Kobayashi”. Dal activates a holo-training program that is the famous Kobayashi Maru test given to Starfleet cadets where they hopelessly try to rescue a freighter from Klingons. Making up his crew in the simulation are popular Trek characters like Spock (Leonard Nimoy) from the original Star Trek and Scotty (James Doohan) from the original Star Trek films. As Dal tries to win the test’s no-win scenario and learns some hard lessons about command, he interacts with these characters, which was amazing since some of the actors voicing the roles are no longer alive. It was a nice way to give tribute to the franchise.

Most of the other characters saw significant development, as well. Gwyndala fought an inner battle within herself as she was at first hostile towards Dal and the others but gradually formed a deep bond with them. In the episode “Time Amok” Rok and the others are trapped in different temporal loops. Being that in Rok’s loop time runs at the slowest rate she uses this as a chance to learn to become a scientist and save the crew. Many of the others have tragic backgrounds and this journey on the Protostar serves as a means to give them some meaning in their lives.

The best way to think of Star Trek: Prodigy is to compare it to Star Wars: The Clone Wars or Star Wars: Rebels. On the surface both TV shows were apparently made for children, but before long they evolved and became more complex and appealing to adults who otherwise might have been turned off by them. I’m pretty sure that if Star Trek: Prodigy was not cancelled and allowed to fully tell its story, which included the search for Chakotay, the show would have reached the same level of admiration that the animated Star Wars TV shows has received.

Cancelling Star Trek: Prodigy was one thing, but to remove it from Paramount + and having it unavailable to easily view elsewhere was a foolish decision. Even though it was not a massive hit it still would have found an audience. Right now the only way to see Star Trek: Prodigy is to buy it through Amazon Prime, Vudu or other video on demand services or to actually purchase it on physical media. It’s certainly worth buying and will help hold us over until season two is ready. As of this writing, post-production of season two of Star Trek: Prodigy is underway and the show’s producers are finding another place to air it. Given the way the actors and writers strikes have ground film and TV productions to a halt Paramount should reconsider its decision and bring back Star Trek: Prodigy to its streaming platform to at least let the fans see the final season.

José Soto

Sep 27 2021

Exploring Star Trek: Enterprise 20 Years Later

Twenty years ago, the final Rick Berman-era Star Trek show premiered on the former UPN network to a mixed reception, at best. Originally called Enterprise, the fifth Star Trek spinoff held a lot of promise with its premise—a prequel to the original Star Trek universe which detailed humankind’s initial exploration of space and the events, such as First Contact with famous Star Trek alien races, that led to the formation of the United Federation of Planets, and the acclaimed Star Trek universe.

When Enterprise was conceived, the Golden Age of Star Trek was already coming to a close. Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9), two highly revered shows, were no longer airing and Star Trek: Voyager (VOY) was ending its seven-year run. By the time the final episode of VOY aired, Enterprise and its premise was known to fans, as was the fact that popular genre actor, Scott Bakula, the star of the beloved sci-fi time travel show Quantum Leap, was cast to play the lead, Captain Jonathan Archer. However, around this time the Star Trek franchise under the helm of Rick Berman was running out of steam, creatively. Many episodes of Star Trek: Voyager were formulaic and many feared for good reason this malaise would carryover into Enterprise since Berman created it and was the main showrunner, along with Brannon Braga.

There were signs that the new show was going through the motions, starting with it premise, another starship crew exploring the unknown sectors of space; the characters seemed bland for the most part and echoed the makeup of the original cast with a few differences.

Still, many held out hope that Enterprise would deliver and rekindle the spark of imagination that the Star Trek franchise was noted for. Many were cautiously optimistic about the show, yet others were not enthused about the show and were ready to move on to other properties.

Enterprise premiered on September 26, 2001, which obviously was the first post-9/11 Star Trek show just a few days after the catastrophic event struck the United States.

The pilot episode “Broken Bow” introduced viewers to the crew of NX-01 Enterprise, Earth’s first starship that was capable of reaching warp 5. The more notable crew members consisted of Captain Jonathan Archer (Bakula), Chief Engineer Travis “Trip” Tucker (Connor Trinneer), and First Officer T’Pol (Jolene Blalock), a skeptical Vulcan who acted more as a guide to the humans when they ventured into unfamiliar space.

The ship and crew were pressed into service when an alien Klingon crash landed on Earth and the Enterprise crew undertook the mission to return the Klingon to his people. What they soon learned was that a shape-shifting alien race called the Suliban were after the Klingon. This put the humans into conflict with the Suliban, which Archer learned were being manipulated by a great power in the far future.

This was part of a confusing sub plot throughout most of the show’s run about a so-called temporal cold war. Apparently, the time period Enterprise took place in (the 2250s) was pivotal in history and certain unknown factions in the future wanted to change it. According to some reports, co-creators Rick Berman and Brannon Braga were forced to include this plot line by the network, and the duo even admitted the plot was never fully developed, and it showed. Berman and Braga also revealed that initially they wanted the series to take place on Earth for a large bulk of the first season as the Enterprise was prepared for its maiden voyage. But the network asked that the starship immediately launch into action during the pilot episode.

“Broken Bow” was entertaining but not as inspiring or memorable as previous Star Trek pilots. A bad sign for the show was the opening credits which featured a montage of humankind’s history of exploration. The montage was fine, but it was ruined by a rancid rendition of “Faith of the Heart” that was so treacly and annoying.

Many of the characters introduced felt too familiar or were not memorable. It felt like the showrunners were trying to recreate the famous Kirk/Spock/McCoy dynamic with Archer, T’Pol and Tucker. Just swap the sex of the token Vulcan and make the emotional member of the trio an engineer instead of a doctor. Some characters were interesting but never got the screen time they deserved, such as Dr. Phlox (John Billingsley), a quirky alien doctor who was the chief medical officer of the ship. Other characters were completely forgettable, such as Travis Mayweather (Anthony Montgomery), the ship’s helmsman. What was known about him was that he was one of the first generations of humans to be raised in deep space. Other than that he was relegated to being a glorified extra.

The early episodes themselves were not very exciting or captivating, though there were a handful of standouts, such as “The Andorian Incident”, which established first human contact with the Andorians and introduced Shran (Jeffrey Combs), a volatile Andorian officer who was one of the show’s best characters. But in other episodes basically not much happens and felt routine. The basic premise of the show was that it was supposed to chronicle the first steps humanity took when it began exploring deep space. The tech was supposed to be crude, shuttles and grappling hooks were used by the ship instead of transporters or tractor beams. With that in mind, the transporters were still brand-new technology that was not trusted, yet they soon used all the time instead of shuttles. It’s a shame since the early reliance of shuttles inspired one of the better first season episodes “Shuttlepod One”.

Some of the storylines had interesting premises but the execution was mundane and the end result was by the numbers. Other episodes were outright copies of previous Star Trek episodes. For instance “Vanishing Point” had the same premise as “The Next Phase” from TNG, which did it better. The same went for “Precious Cargo”, an outright rip-off of TNG’s “The Perfect Mate”. It was obvious that Berman, Braga and other crewmembers were burnt out and going through the motions. Many of them, including Berman, had been involved with Star Trek since the mid-1980s. It was time to bring in new blood but the people in charge refused to see this and this is why the show suffered.

By the time the second season of Enterprise came to a close it was clear something had to be done. Ratings were declining, as was interest in the Star Trek franchise. Many fans abandoned it for fresher properties that were making their mark at the time such as Stargate: SG1, Firefly and Farscape.

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