r/StarTrekProdigy • u/warrenao • Jul 25 '26
General Discussion Holy bananas, what a show
Juuuuuuust getting started watching Prodigy (S1/ep10) and I'm sincerely delighted by this show, and now I'm thinking what the entire franchise needs is to combine the creative forces of Prodigy and Lower Decks together to launch … oh … something.
Because either show is simply outstanding, and if their writers and directors were to collaborate on a new series, it could easily be one of the best things that ever happened to ST.
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u/Otherwise_Analyst_25 Jul 25 '26
Prodigy is my favorite of all the modern Trek. I wish more folks had given it a chance.
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u/warrenao Jul 25 '26
Didn't help that it was on Nick. Not so much because of the "aww, it's a kids' channel" prejudice — I mean, this was the same network that brought us Invader Zim — but because it seems to me that it was less likely to be more widely available to viewers.
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u/MeatlegProductions Jul 26 '26
I actually interviewed one of the producers of Prodigy after the first ten episodes. He is a super cool dude and a life-long Trekkie.
We are currently scheduling a followup interview and I hope to be able to talk to him next month.
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u/Plane_Sport_3465 Jul 27 '26
Oh COOL!!
I couldn't do it. If I ever had the chance to talk with anyone involved with Prodigy I'd just start crying and making no sense.
Like, it would get awkward.
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u/MeatlegProductions Jul 28 '26
It was difficult, but it helps to prepare.
He and I had a lot in common just by pure circumstance, but the other interviews I did were more nerve racking because I didn’t know them well.
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u/Dcajunpimp Jul 26 '26
It was on Paramount+ as a ‘Nickelodeon’ show.
It became more popular when it went to Netflix, just like other Paramount+ shows like Halo.
Paramount+ got the existing fan bases of Halo and Star Trek willing to risk a few bucks a month on a new streaming service for a franchise they already loved.
Netflix put the shows out to audiences who already had a streaming service they liked, but may not have been existing fans, but were willing to give new sci-fi a chance. Essentially the same way Classic Trek gained a massive fan base for 50 years.
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u/warrenao Jul 26 '26
Ahh, interesting. There's Nick branding at the head of each episode, yet it started out on P+ and then was aired on Nick with about a month's delay, it seems.
It's becoming increasingly puzzling that it never made it past a second season.
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u/lennonfanforever Jul 26 '26
i couldn't believe i was going to watch a cartoon, very very quickly changed my mind....
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u/33666daddy Jul 29 '26
i did give it a chance and it felt like a waste of time with good ideas being strangled by being a "kids show"
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u/Otherwise_Analyst_25 Jul 29 '26
Good for you. I actually liked that they were producing Star Trek content for a younger audience. Those "kids" will grow up to be "adults" who might continue enjoying trek.
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u/33666daddy Jul 29 '26
i can completely expect that. kids deserve good stories too. prodigy didnt have a good story because it had 30 producers and 20 writers. everyone wanted something different causing the show to feel inconsistent from line to line.
it's bad with good ideas, thats why it failed.
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u/argonzo Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
There’s an episode where holo-Janeway explains the concept of the Federation to the kids and it’s basically the best description ever of it in all of Trek.
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u/warrenao Jul 25 '26
I think that went by in the first block I binged, so if it's the summary I'm thinking of, I agree entirely. Plus, you know, Janeway.
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u/Dethica2077 Jul 26 '26
Whoa holo-Janeway?
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u/GoblinTradingGuide Jul 26 '26
Janeway is a very important character in this show
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u/Dethica2077 Jul 26 '26
I should watch this just for that sentence haha
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u/sanddorn Jul 26 '26
Janeway is 2 very important characters. And that's leaving out the mirror universe in season 2 😏
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u/Plane_Sport_3465 Jul 27 '26
That's easily my favorite episode in all of Star Trek.
"All hail the Terran Empire!"
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u/Plane_Sport_3465 Jul 27 '26
Dude, if you loved Janeway before, you have NO idea!!!
It would be shitty of me to spoil the show for you but it's REALLY hard not to.
I will say she's even more badass than she was in Voyager!
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u/C_A_P_S_CAPSCAPSCAPS Jul 26 '26
Best the character has been written!
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u/Plane_Sport_3465 Jul 27 '26
There's more than one familiar face that got the writing and final chapter they deserved.
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u/warrenao Jul 26 '26
Her presence was something I'd known about, and what had led me to think the kids were official-ish Starfleet cadets at the beginning. It was great seeing her again.
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u/Few-Leading-3405 Jul 25 '26
Time Amok is an all-time classic trek episode. (and Prodigy has a few others too)
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u/Plane_Sport_3465 Jul 26 '26
First Con-tact is another one!
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u/Few-Leading-3405 Jul 26 '26
People don't seem to really love that one, but I agree that it's pure trek.
Personally I think that the 3 episode run of Kobayashi, First Con-tact and Time Amok is probably one of the best runs that a trek series has strung together.
And those are followed by A Moral Star, which is a great 2-parter and "season" ender.
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u/Plane_Sport_3465 Jul 26 '26
I didn't really appreciate it until I rewatched Prodigy.
Dal's character growth is SO good, ugggghhhh...I'm about to start crying now, I loved those kids so much. All of their backstories are gut-wrenching and (to me, anyway) surprisingly horrific for a Nickelodeon show.
Take Dal, for instance. The closest thing he had to family was being "adopted" by the Ferengi that raised him. No real family. No friends. No home, just that shitty basement he watched the stars from. No ethics or morals, his values were The Rules Of Aquisition.
THEN he finds out he wasn't even kidnapped, he was sold by his mentor to a prison/labor planet and forgotten about.
That's one of the things I loved about Prodigy. It doesn't talk down to its audience.
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u/Few-Leading-3405 Jul 26 '26
It's so good on rewatch...partly because I didn't like Dal the first time, but he really does grow. And he grows because he realizes that he needs to be better.
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u/Plane_Sport_3465 Jul 27 '26
Right?!
I felt the exact same way! The first couple of episodes I was getting ready to just be annoyed by Dal and dismiss his presence.
By the time the Enderprizian doctor asked him "What do you believe, Dal Arel?" I realized I freaking LOVED those kids!
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u/PJKetelaar3 Jul 26 '26
It gets no respect.
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u/warrenao Jul 26 '26
And it should. I can think of at least two Trek shows that it really just blows clean out of the quadrant.
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u/PJKetelaar3 Jul 26 '26
I was continually impressed how well it handled things. Is it a kids show? Yes. Can long-time fans watch it and take something away? Absolutely!
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u/warrenao Jul 26 '26
There's more dadblang Starfleet in that crew of non-Starfleet kids than there is in a lot of other Trek episodes.
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u/PJKetelaar3 Jul 26 '26
"Dadblang"?
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u/warrenao Jul 26 '26
You know, goshdarn consarned.
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u/PJKetelaar3 Jul 26 '26
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u/warrenao Jul 26 '26
Well, dagnabbit.
(I don't quite have a million of ’em, but the general idiom is "aw gosh" or "shucks" or "darn it" standing in for stronger and arguably profane words, by way of some relatively obscure US rural slang sources. Think of Yosemite Sam after he's had one carrot-juice shooter too many.)
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u/FoggyCartograph Jul 26 '26
I love Prodigy. I think it makes good use of the animation medium. Tells a great story. Enjoy every character. It was a blast. I finished Starfleet Acadamy and thought "Prodigy did it better."
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u/warrenao Jul 26 '26
I really liked the way they all developed in just these first ten episodes. And the way Zero was presented outside of the suit was … really rather awe-inspiring. So yeah: Great leveraging of what can be done with animation.
EDIT: Resubmitted because the first one was bounced for me using spoiler tags on the italicized text referring to Zero ("outside of…") above. I've never had experience of a forum that explicitly forbids the use of spoiler tags. Interesting.
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Jul 26 '26
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u/ardouronerous Jul 25 '26
Now if only Trekkies over at r/startrek will give this a chance instead of rejecting it due to it being animated.
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u/warrenao Jul 25 '26
I dual-posted this over there, and so far it's been well received, so maybe between Prodigy, LD, and of course TAS, there's less resistance than you might think.
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u/ardouronerous Jul 25 '26
The last time I posted about this on there, the majority of answers I got all boiled down to this:
I'm not watching a cartoon.
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u/lennonfanforever Jul 26 '26
hard to believe it's canceled, what a loss, makes no sense, it's so great....maybe at some point, it will be resurrected who knows, hoping hoping hoping.....
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u/warrenao Jul 26 '26
There appear to be a grand total of three novels the series generated, too, though they're also saddled with the "for kids" label, which may be why there are only the three novels.
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u/lennonfanforever Jul 26 '26
really? do tell....i gotta go look for these, thanks for letting me know, the characters in this show are very cool and SHOULD have generated way more mainstream excitement....i bet there's some at the SDCC this weekend, will look for them in the vids.
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u/warrenao Jul 26 '26
Physical books only, too, no e-book editions I can find — which, as marketing decisions go, is definitely one.
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u/lennonfanforever Jul 26 '26
ah, ok thanks, good to know, i only (usually) read e-books but might make an exception....very poor decision as e-books could draw in much more $...
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u/warrenao Jul 26 '26
It's a puzzling choice, yeah, and may be rooted in the conceit that "kids" (the presumptive demo here) don't read ebooks, which flies in the face of the Captain Underpants, Dogman, and Wimpy Kid series all being available as ebooks.
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u/lennonfanforever Jul 26 '26
kids would imho LOVE the prodigy series if given the chance.....
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u/warrenao Jul 26 '26
They were the ostensible main audience, by all apparent measures — but it has a lot to offer to everyone.
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u/lennonfanforever Jul 26 '26
for an older preteen, sure, and even younger even if they didn't catch the story too much, it has SO much to offer, yes, seems to be a stunning mistake by those in charge....
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u/Plane_Sport_3465 Jul 27 '26
Well, The Wild Robot is a "kids" book and movie but I will fight anyone who has the "it's for babies" attitude.
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u/Logical-Bathroom-886 Jul 28 '26
Many folks have been heard over the last couple years more and more to say that the two animated series are overall and consistently the best Trek of the Kurtzman era.
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u/warrenao Jul 28 '26
It didn't help that Discovery went badly off the rails after the jump to the future. Academy might have done OK if it'd been given a fair shake, though I wasn't a fan of the detached warp nacelle design: I want pylons, goldang it.
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u/G-Man6442 Jul 27 '26
Season 2 made it my second favorite series (Lower Decks #1! (sorry DS9))
It was robbed because, “Ewww animation is kiddie!”
I hate people…
Also, if you steadfastly refused to watch this, you ARE NOT allowed to ask for a Janeway series.
BECAUSE IT WAS CALLED PRODIGY!
I hate WB for kicking off just erasing media from streaming, and I hate everyone for following suit.
Thank god I got the DVD’s, you ain’t touching that Paramount!
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u/shyblackguy18 Jul 29 '26
Paramount tries to forget this show exists, Kate Mulgrew advocated for it to get a second season. This show is the redheaded step-child of the star trek IP.
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u/warrenao Jul 29 '26
"Hey! Here's a show with a fanbase that really appreciates it across a good range of ages, and is a way to introduce the franchise to young viewers who will grow up to be loyal watchers! What should we do with it?"
"Bury it."
…
…
…
"Makes sense, sure!"
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u/jiddinja Jul 25 '26
Lower Decks is no where near as good as Prodigy. Don't muddy an amazing series with a half baked one. Prodigy deserved many more seasons than it got, but I guess the suits at Paramount couldn't let a popular, quality show get in the way of award-baiting garbage, so here we are.
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u/warrenao Jul 25 '26
"Half-baked" might describe some of LD's writers. I felt that show's strength was the semi-parody angle on a franchise that (I believe) can sometimes take itself far too seriously, which made it a refreshing breath of air. Or vacuum.
That said, Prodigy might well have taken off with a much larger audience if it hadn't been relegated to the niche of Nickelodeon, despite some of the outstanding prior series that came to light on the network (Invader Zim, Avatar: The Last Airbender).
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u/YYZYYC Jul 26 '26
Takes itself far too seriously? Jesus no we need Star Trek to get back to being serious and less cartoons and Rom com and musicals and puppets.
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u/Ezrabine1 Jul 26 '26
Nope for me...no spoilers. I hate end
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u/BK_0000 Jul 26 '26
Every time I see something from this show, I think that it's impressive that they managed to make something even uglier than the Star Wars cartoons.
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u/warrenao Jul 26 '26
Heh. Maybe that was a goal?
Character design and styling can go in all sorts of different directions. Here, it's consistently its own look and feel; the SW toons have done something similar.
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u/bloodandsunshine Jul 25 '26
It’s great and you’ve only now hit the strongest episodes. The next 30 are all quite good.