Star Trek: Prodigy Review: The Trek Universe Is More Accessible Than Ever

When the title of a new TV series begins with “Star Trek,” it’s natural to be intimidated. The Trek franchise has a well-deserved reputation for a dense canon built over the course of 55 years and more than 800 canon installments. It’s possible to start each individual series and eventually get your bearings, but many of them aren’t particularly inviting unless you’ve picked up on the presumed mythology either directly or through cultural osmosis. Star Trek: Child Prodigy, the new animated series that premiered on Paramount Plus on October 28th, completely breaks this trend and presents Star Trek in a whole new way and became the most accessible springboard for the franchise since JJ Abrams’ film reboot in 2009.

Most Star Trek Spin-offs assume a pre-existing involvement in the franchise and use their first few episodes to avoid reselling viewers Star Trek, but to sell them on this Star Trek. You’re in the business of iteration and contrast to prove that this incarnation has something else up its sleeve. For 1987 The next generation, the premise of doing Star Trek with no known characters, Kirk and Spock were new enough to distinguish the series. Deep Space Nine and Voyager are characterized by their placement in the room, Companies and discovery by their timely placement, Picard and Lower decks through their very different approaches to the legacy of The next generation. Each series has developed its own identity, but each one is determined from the outset by its relationship to the previous one.

But the twice as big premiere of wonder seems to be quite on its own track, refreshingly unconcerned about earlier ones Star Trek Series until two minutes before the credits. The first episode, “Lost and Found”, takes place on the asteroid of the Tars Lamora mining colony, where the juvenile prisoner Dal R’El (voiced by Brett Gray) makes his umpteenth unsuccessful escape attempt. During these hours, we see Dal assemble a ragged group of enslaved workers to hijack an advanced, abandoned spaceship that is buried in a crevice in the asteroid.

Who is even vaguely familiar with? Star Trek will recognize this ship, the USS Protostar, with all the aesthetic features of a Starfleet ship. However, Dal and his companions have not – in fact, they have never heard of Starfleet or the United Federation of Planets it serves. For them it is only a way out of bondage. The fact that it is also their gateway to a diverse spatial utopia only sweetens the deal. You are in the middle of your own space adventure only to discover at the last minute that you are in Star Trek, Whatever it is.

It was a conscious decision by series creators Kevin and Dan Hageman (Troll hunters, LEGOs Ninjago: Master of Spinjitzu), as they explained at New York Comic Con earlier this month. Star Trek Chief Honcho Alex Kurtzman hired her to develop an entry point through which young, uninitiated viewers could find their way Star Trek, and found that this would be the best way to use characters that would be introduced on it yourself.

Exploring the Star Trek Canon is usually easier with a guide, and the Protostar’s crew have their own – a holographic training program like that Star Trek: VoyagerCaptain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew). Introduced at the end of “Lost and Found”, the Janeway hologram is the only element that keeps the episode in a specific place or time in the Star Trek Universe.

wonder has a few other, looser connections to the franchise’s past. Three members of the main ensemble represent races from earlier times Star Trek works, but each one is more opaque than the last. Jankom Pog (Jason Mantzoukas) is a tellarite, the least recognizable of the four founding species of the Federation (besides humans, Vulcans and those blue guys with the antennae, the Andorians). Zero (Angus Imrie) is a Medusan, a non-physical entity whose people have not been heard from since the 1968 episode in which they were introduced. Rok-Tahk (Rylee Alazraqui) is a brikar, a species that originated from Peter David’s novels from the 1990s and has never been shown on screen before. Since the established traditions are also torn from oblivion, there are viewers for whom “Lost and Found” is the very first Star Trek miss nothing. At least at the moment, colored Trekkies have almost no advantage over the new kids.

This distance from the bigger one Star Trek Universe will not last, nor is it intended. The Hagemans have already indicated that the Protostar’s course will bring them closer to Federation space and that over time they will encounter more familiar characters and cultures. That doesn’t have to make the series less accessible to new viewers. While the young crew is arriving from the surrounding area, hopefully new fans can gradually acclimate themselves. Success would mean that a young viewer can explore the vastness Star Trek Library with wonder as a compass, not a homework plan.

The first episode of Star Trek: Prodigy’s The opening season of 10 episodes is now streamed on Paramount Plus, with new episodes arriving on Thursdays.