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Star Trek: Prodigy

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Star Trek: Prodigy is an animated series that premiered on 28 October 2021 , first on the streaming service Paramount+ , then on Nickelodeon , [1] a conglomerate sister broadcasting channel. It is the ninth Star Trek spin-off and the third animated Star Trek series, following Star Trek: The Animated Series and Star Trek: Lower Decks . Unlike the previous animated series, this is the first to be rendered entirely with computer-generated imaging and 3D modeling. Previously, the Star Trek: Short Treks episode " The Girl Who Made the Stars " was produced in a similar fashion. Two seasons were produced before the series' cancellation on 23 June 2023 .

Alex Kurtzman stated that unlike Lower Decks , Prodigy will be kid-focused with an " entirely different perspective and an entirely different tone, " adding, " What's exciting about it is not only looking at each animated series as what's the different tone, but what's the different technology we can apply to these things so that visually they're entirely different? " [6]

In February 2019, it was announced Nickelodeon had entered talks to air the show, and Trollhunters writers and executive producers Kevin and Dan Hageman had boarded the project. [7]

On 24 April 2019 , it was revealed that the series would indeed air (but not debut) on Nickelodeon and focus on a group of lawless teenage characters finding a derelict Starfleet ship which they use to " search for adventure, meaning and salvation. " [8]

In May 2019, CBS filed trademarks for the titles " Star Trek: Section 31 " and " Star Trek: Prodigy ", with posts on Reddit later in the year attaching the Prodigy title to the second animated series. [9]

On 23 July 2020, it was revealed that the show would, in fact, be named Star Trek: Prodigy , and that it would air on Nickelodeon in 2021. [10] [11] The premiere episode did air on the channel on 17 December 2021, but on that occasion it was an one-time-only affair. [12] It was eventually announced that the first ten episodes (parts 1 and 2) would belatedly air regularly on a repetitive basis on the broadcaster in the home market one year later, starting on 8 July 2022 . [13]

In 2022 , Prodigy 's first season was nominated for "Outstanding Animated Series" in the inaugural Children’s & Family Emmy Awards , and won the Emmy for "Outstanding Individual Achievement in Production Design." [14]

In 2023 , Prodigy 's first season was nominated for a Television Critics Association Award in "Outstanding Achievement in Family Programming," a category with both animated and live action content intended for family and young adult audiences. [15]

• 1 Opening credits
• 2.1 Starring
• 2.2 Recurring characters
• 3.1 Season 1
• 3.2 Season 2
• 4.1 Development
• 4.2.1 Products
• 4.3 Cancellation and pick-up
• 5 Related topics
• 7 Footnotes
• 8 External links

Opening credits

The opening title sequence for Star Trek: Prodigy was unveiled on 31 August 2021 , with theme by Michael Giacchino . [16]

• Brett Gray as Dal
• Ella Purnell as Gwyn
• Jason Mantzoukas as Jankom Pog
• Angus Imrie as Zero
• Rylee Alazraqui as Rok-Tahk
• Dee Bradley Baker as Murf
• Jimmi Simpson as Drednok
• John Noble as The Diviner
• Kate Mulgrew as " Captain Janeway "

Recurring characters

• Jason Alexander as Dr. Noum
• Robert Beltran as Capt. Chakotay
• Eric Bauza as Lt. Barniss Frex
• Billy Campbell as Thadiun Okona
• Ronny Cox as Adm. Jellico
• Daveed Diggs as Cdr. Tysess
• Jameela Jamil as Ens. Asencia
• Kate Mulgrew as Vice Admiral Kathryn Janeway

Episode list

PRO Season 1 , 20 episodes: [17]

PRO Season 2

Development

In July 2019 , the Hagemans announced the full writers' room for the show. [20] Among those revealed to be writing the series are Trollhunters writer-producers Aaron Waltke and Chad Quandt , The 100 writer-producers Shawna Benson and Julie Benson , Black Sails writer Lisa Boyd , Shades of Blue writer Nikhil Jayaram , and Diandra Pendleton-Thompson .

In October 2019 , Kurtzman said that this series will be animated in a digital 3D style, like Ninjago or Trollhunters , as opposed to the more "cartoon" look of Star Trek: Lower Decks . He also confirmed that the series had been picked up for a two-season order, and that a title had been chosen for the series, but he was not yet ready to reveal it. [21]

In the same interview, Heather Kadin said that, due to the time-consuming process of 3D animation, the series would likely air later than 2021 . Kadin also emphasized that the Hagemans' writing style will be accessible to kids without patronizing them or alienating their parents:

" The reason we went to the Hagemans is because if you've seen their work, you know that they're not writing " Muppet Babies ". It's not "Little Spock and Little Kirk." It's not playing down [to viewers] that way. " " Even [with] their characters in Ninjago – they are teenagers – I was able to watch that with my kids and they write with a very epic quality. They tell stories the way we tell stories in live action: serialized, turning over cards… " " I think it will be a great way for fans to introduce the franchise to their kids, and for new fans to be formed, because it's such a big franchise, [it can be hard] to get into as a kid. " [22]

In an October 2020 interview with Trek Report , producer and writer Aaron Waltke said that Prodigy aims to bridge the gap between old and new iterations of the Star Trek franchise , with a series that strikes a tone of hope and idealism. [23]

" It's been exhilarating to make a series that honors classic Trek for legacy fans like myself, but also provides an entry point for new audiences to be introduced to the world of the Federation and its aspirations for an idealistic future, even when facing adversity. Writing the return of our beloved Voyager captain feels oddly iconic, like a homecoming for me. And we hope to create something both young and old can watch together… just as I once did with my dad all those many years ago. " [24]

In February 2021 , it was announced that Prodigy would debut on Paramount+ in 2021. An image of the alien bridge crew was also released. [25]

On First Contact Day in April 2021 , the Hagemans revealed that the series will be set in the Delta Quadrant in 2383 . They also revealed an image of Captain Janeway as she will appear in the series, and explained that the character will appear as an emergency training hologram on board the starship. A new summary of the series' premise was also released:

Prodigy " will follow a motley crew of young aliens who must figure out how to work together while navigating a greater galaxy, in search for a better future. These six young outcasts know nothing about the ship they have commandeered – a first in the history of the Star Trek Franchise – but over the course of their adventures together, they will each be introduced to Starfleet and the ideals it represents. " [26]

In May 2021 , more details about the cast were released, with the main voice cast revealed. [27]

On 23 July 2021 , a teaser trailer was released during the Paramount+ Star Trek Comic-Con@Home panel, revealing the first animated footage of the series along with the first look and name of the vessel, the USS Protostar . [28]

The series' opening title sequence was publicly released on 31 August 2021 , as part of a Paramount+ presentation to the Television Critics Association . This presentation also confirmed that the series' theme music had been composed by Michael Giacchino , and the music for the series would be composed by Nami Melumad . [29]

In June 2019 , Eaglemoss/Hero Collector 's project manager Ben Robinson indicated that the company would manufacture starship miniatures from this series, [30] though that intent was thwarted by the company's bankruptcy on 5 August 2022.

On 13 July 2021 , ViacomCBS Consumer Products and Playmates Toys jointly announced that the latter had acquired new licensing for "action figures, vehicles and ships, role play and other toy categories," and slated the first of these products for retail release in 2022. Among other Star Trek series and films, this licensing encompasses Star Trek: Prodigy , Star Trek: Lower Decks , Star Trek: Discovery , and Star Trek: Picard . [31]

On 18 August 2022 , it was announced that two new tie-in books, Supernova (also the title of a video game releasing in October 2022 ) and A Dangerous Trade would be released on 17 January 2023 . [32]

Cancellation and pick-up

On 23 June 2023, Prodigy was cancelled by Paramount+. While Season 2 was allowed to finish post-production, it, along with the series as a whole, would be sold to any interested third-party outsider. [33] The series removal from Paramount+ was effectuated three days later, on 26 June 2023. [34] The series was on Nickelodeon already on a broadcast hiatus, and therefore not to return afterwards. [2]

Paramount did not provide a clear reason for the completely unexpected cancellation. News sites such as TrekMovie.com , ScreenRant, and Inverse suggested that the cancellation was motivated by cost-cutting measures and tax write-offs, whereas Paramount itself had intimated in a statement to TrekMovie.com that it was part of clearing the way of the upcoming merger of Paramount+ with Showtime by " refining our content offering to deliver the best streaming experience for subscribers ". Paramount concurrently assured TrekMovie.com that it remained stoutly "invested in growing the Star Trek franchise". The decision to place Prodigy outside the realm of that same franchise and offer it up to third-party outsiders however, was counter to their " Star Trek Universe" all-under-one-roof franchise umbrella concept instituted at the start of 2021 . [35] [36] [37]

On 21 July 2023 , showrunner Aaron Waltke announced on his Twitter account that the entire first season had become available for digital purchase at digital vendors like Prime Video , ITunes Store , Google, and others. Up until that point only the first ten episodes had been available, which was conforming to the recent physical PRO Season 1, Volume 1 DVD and Blu-ray home video format releases. [38] While the franchise had intimated that the series had not performed to expectations, Prodigy had managed in the meantime to gather a fanbase of its own, which had resulted in a run on the DVD and Blu-ray stocks still available at retailers at the time of the cancellation announcement, causing them to sell out quickly in the home market. [39]

Aside from that, this fanbase also tried to organize an online campaign to save the series. [40] On 24 August 2023 , in an effort to find the show another home, a fan raised US$1,200 on GoFundMe to have an airplane tow a banner reading, "#SAVE STAR TREK PRODIGY" over the Los Angeles offices of streaming services Netflix , Amazon Prime , and Hulu . [41] A drawing with the same hashtag is set to be among the items going to space on a Blue Origin (part of the empire of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos ) flight. [42]

Kevin Hageman expressed in an interview that his desire was to see a third season come to fruition, that will eventually lead up to an animated film series. [43]

On 11 October 2023 , it was Netflix that announced that they had picked up Prodigy , with season two set to premier in 2024 , [44] [45] after season one had debuted on the streaming service later in 2023 on 25 December. [46] [47] A consequence of this is that if Hageman is to see his hopes for post-season two productions come true, he has to convince Netflix to pay for the entirety of the production costs, as the franchise itself has distanced itself from Prodigy . [3] This could turn out to be a tall order for Hageman, considering Netflix's prior experience with the first three seasons of Discovery (see: Netflix: Footnote ), despite Prodigy hardly having caused any division within " Trekdom ", if any at all, as opposed to Discovery .

Related topics

• PRO directors
• PRO performers
• PRO studio models
• PRO writers
• Star Trek: Prodigy novels
• Star Trek: Prodigy on Blu-ray
• Star Trek: Prodigy on DVD
• ↑ The show did however premiere on some foreign Nickelodeon subsidiaries where Paramount+ was not (yet) available. One such market concerned the Netherlands and Flanders, where the in the Dutch language dubbed version of the show debuted for an one-time run on the local Nickelodeon Benelux channel on 18 April 2022 , albeit the first ten episodes (parts 1 and 2) only. [1] Repetitive regular airing of the entire first season started on 31 October 2022 in support of the local Paramount+ encompassing SkyShowtime which had been launched in the country six days earlier, and where Prodigy was included in its startup content catalog.

Dutch SkyShowtime Prodigy title card, still available for streaming pursuant its formal removal from the franchise

• ↑ There was very little doubt left, if any at all, that the franchise had no intent whatsoever to pay even a single penny more for Prodigy beyond the season two post-production completion, after they had taken their definitive leave of the series in their official statement, "Star Trek: Prodigy will not be returning for the previously announced second season. On behalf of everyone at Paramount+, Nickelodeon, and CBS Studios, we want to thank Kevin and Dan Hageman, Ben Hibon , Alex Kurtzman, and the Secret Hideout team, along with the fantastic cast and crew for all their hard work and dedication bringing the series to life. " [5]

External links

• Star Trek: Prodigy at Nick.com
• Star Trek: Prodigy at Wikipedia
• Star Trek: Prodigy at the Internet Movie Database
• 2 USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-G)
• 3 Star Trek: The Next Generation

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Published Jun 14, 2021

Meet Your Star Trek: Prodigy Cast

Breaking news inside...

StarTrek.com

Paramount+, the streaming service from ViacomCBS, today introduced the stellar lineup of voice talent behind the six young alien starship crew members featured in its upcoming all-new animated kids’ series Star Trek: Prodigy . First look images of the series were also revealed.

The new voice cast and their Star Trek: Prodigy characters are as follows:

Rylee Alazraqui (“Doug Unplugs,” “Home Economics”) as “Rok-Tahk,” a Brikar and an unusually bright eight-year-old girl. Rok is a bit shy, but not when it comes to her love for animals. Brett Gray (“On My Block,” “When They See Us”) as “Dal,” 17 years old and an unknown species, he fancies himself a maverick, who even in the toughest times, holds strong onto his unwavering hope. Angus Imrie (“The Crown,” “Emma”) as “Zero,” who is a Medusan: a noncorporeal, genderless, energy-based lifeform. Since others would go mad at the sight of their true self, Zero wears a containment suit they made themselves to protect others. Jason Mantzoukas (“Infinite,” “Big Mouth”) as “Jankom Pog,” a 16-year-old Tellarite. Tellarites are known to relish an argument, and Jankom is no different. Regardless of opinion, he will always play ‘devil’s advocate’ for the sake of hearing all sides. Ella Purnell (“Army of the Dead,” “Sweetbitter”) as “Gwyn,” a 17-year-old Vau N’Akat who was raised on her father’s bleak mining planet and grew up dreaming to explore the stars. Dee Bradley Baker (“SpongeBob SquarePants,” “Dora the Explorer”) as “Murf,” whose age and species is unknown but who is an endearing, indestructible blob with curiously good timing and an insatiable appetite for ship parts.

This new voice cast joins actress Kate Mulgrew (“Star Trek: Voyager”) who is reprising her iconic role as Kathryn Janeway. In the series, Janeway will serve as the Star Trek: Prodigy starship’s built-in emergency training hologram.

Produced by the Nickelodeon Animation Studio and CBS Studios, Star Trek: Prodigy will premiere on Paramount+ in the U.S. later this year.

Developed by Emmy® Award winners Kevin and Dan Hageman (“Trollhunters” and “Ninjago”) the CG-animated series Star Trek: Prodigy is the first “Star Trek” series aimed at younger audiences and will follow a motley crew of young aliens who must figure out how to work together while navigating a greater galaxy, in search for a better future. These six young outcasts know nothing about the ship they have commandeered – a first in the history of the Star Trek franchise – but over the course of their adventures together, they will each be introduced to Starfleet and the ideals it represents.

Star Trek: Prodigy is from CBS’ Eye Animation Productions, CBS Studios’ new animation arm; Nickelodeon Animation Studio, led by President of Animation, Ramsey Naito; Secret Hideout; and Roddenberry Entertainment. Alex Kurtzman, Heather Kadin, Katie Krentz, Rod Roddenberry and Trevor Roth serve as executive producers alongside co-showrunners Kevin and Dan Hageman. Ben Hibon directs, co-executive produces and serves as the creative lead of the all-new animated series. Aaron Baiers also serves as co-executive producer.

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Star Trek: Prodigy Season 1 is available to stream on Netflix outside of markets including Canada where it is available on CTV.ca and the CTV App, France on France Televisions channels and Okoo, in Iceland on Sjonvarp Simans Premium, as well as on SkyShowtime in the Nordics, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Central and Eastern Europe. Star Trek: Prodigy is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

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British actor Ella Purnell stars as Gwyn , a 17-year-old member of the Vau N’ Akat species, a new race to Star Trek , who was raised on her father’s bleak mining planet — and grew up dreaming of exploring the stars.

Purnell was most recently seen in Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead  which landed on Netflix earlier this year, and starred in the two-season run of  Sweetbitter on Starz.

Brett Gray stars as 17-year-old Dal — a purple alien whose race is not yet known — who fancies himself a maverick and holds strong onto his unwavering hope even in the toughest of times.

Gray currently stars as one of the leads on the Netflix coming-of-age series  On My Block , and recently made guest appearances on  When They See Us and  Chicago P.D.

Always-energetic comedic actor Jason Mantzoukas stars as Tellarite teenager Jankom Pog , a species which has been part of Star Trek  lore since the Original Series, with members of the argumentative race later taking on a prominent role during the final season of Star Trek: Enterprise .

At age 16, Pog loves a good argument like many of the Tellarites we’ve seen before, and regardless of his own opinion, he’ll always play ‘devil’s advocate’ for the sake of hearing all sides. (Many fans speculated this character would be a Talaxian — like  Voyager’s Neelix.)

Mantzoukas has been seen in many high-profile television comedies including Brooklyn 99, The Good Place , and The League,  and has performed many voice acting roles for shows like  Big Mouth ,  Invincible , and  American Dad! .

Angus Imrie stars as a member of another classic  Star Trek race: Zero the Medusan , an energy-based life form whose species was introduced in 1968’s “Is There in Truth No Beauty?”

Medusans are non-corporeal and genderless, and are known to cause madness to any humanoid who would lay eyes on their natural form — so Zero wears a containment suit to protect those around them.

The British actor has perhaps most prominently appeared as Prince Edward in Netflix’s  The Crown , with other recent guest appearances in  Fleabag and the Batman prequel series  Pennyworth .

Perhaps best known as the voice of Captain Rex (and all of the Empire’s other clone troopers) in the multitude of Star Wars animated television shows, the prolific actor also voices German man-turned-fish Klaus on American Dad!,  Animal on the current run of  Muppet Babies , as well as hundreds of other characters over his long career.

At just 10 years old, Alazraqui has only been in the business for a short time, and to date has most notably contributed voices to Cartoon Network’s Summer Camp Island. As for her character, Rok-Tahk may be the most interesting member of this alien crew, as her race actually began life among the pages of 1990s-era  Star Trek print storytelling.

The Brikar (or Brikarian) species was originally created by author Peter David in his 1993 young-adult  Star Trek: Starfleet Academy tale  Worf’s First Adventure , and later incorporated the race into his the original novel series Star Trek: New Frontier .

Zak Kebron , the Brikar who originated in Worf’s First Adventure and later served as New Frontier security chief aboard the USS  Excalibur , was an extremely strong rock-like creature who was raised in a high-gravity environment (like the other members of his species). Eventually, Kebron lost his rocky appearance as he matured, a natural change part of Brikar development.

While it’s hard to tell from this early description how much of that novel-based Brikar alien depiction will carry over to television, as the character was depicted in different designs as Kebron appeared on different book covers and in  New Frontier comics, but the young Rok-Tahk certainly appears “rocky” enough to bring the species into the television world.

Of course, rounding out the cast is returning  Star Trek: Voyager  series lead Kate Mulgrew as Kathryn Janeway, who in this show will be voicing a hologram of the USS Voyager captain — an “emergency training hologram” who will be the sole Starfleet representation on the unfamiliar ship that the young aliens find while escaping prison in the Delta Quadrant.

*   *   *   *

This breakdown of the cast and animated crew isn’t the only thing that Paramount+ is showing off today, as they’ve also released a few stills from  Star Trek: Prodigy  today — giving us a feel for the animation style and cinematography of the upcoming show.

JUNE 17 UPDATE : Four more images, showing some of the beautiful digital landscapes from  Prodigy , were released today.

This animated art design — with lush coloring and a dazzling depth of field — clearly puts Star Trek: Prodigy light-years away from the animated styles of not only the classic 1970’s  Animated Series , but this decade’s  Star Trek: Lower Decks as well.

While there’s still no air date past “later this year” for  Prodigy , this infusion of new information must mean we’re going to see some footage from the upcoming series sometime soon — and with San Diego Comic Con just over a month way, that’s when we’re thinking the next big news day will come for this animated show.

Star Trek: Prodigy  will debut on Paramount+ in the United States sometime in late 2021 before later airing on Nickelodeon; the show will also be available on the CTV Sci-Fi Channel in Canada.

Additional international availability has not yet been announced.

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Tuesday 15 June 2021

Star trek prodigy cast and character names and species revealed.

The cast of Star Trek Prodigy, the forthcoming animated series for kids, has been revealed , as have character names and species. The young alien stars of the show include two classic TOS species, and amazingly a species from the Star Trek novels! Continue below for a closer look, including the first still from the series.

...an unusually bright eight-year-old girl. Rok is a bit shy, but not when it comes to her love for animals. 

...a Medusan: a noncorporeal, genderless, energy-based lifeform. Since others would go mad at the sight of their true self, Zero wears a containment suit they made themselves to protect others. 

 Certainly an upgrade from the last time we saw a Medusan, stuck in a box!

Tellarites are known to relish an argument, and Jankom is no different. Regardless of opinion, he will always play ‘devil’s advocate’ for the sake of hearing all sides. 

Honestly I was expecting this character to be a Talaxian from the look (and would have been glad to get to know that species better too. But I can certainly see him as a Tellarite too. Pog joins a fairly diverse range of looks for the species, which has been reinvented each time a series has used them. He seems to me most aligned with the original TOS look, albeit with the more pronounced tusks seen in the contemporary live-action era versions of the species.

“Murf,” whose age and species is unknown but who is an endearing, indestructible blob with curiously good timing and an insatiable appetite for ship parts.

“Gwyn,” a 17-year-old Vau N’Akat who was raised on her father’s bleak mining planet and grew up dreaming to explore the stars. 

“Dal,” 17 years old and an unknown species, he fancies himself a maverick, who even in the toughest times, holds strong onto his unwavering hope. 

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Star Trek: Prodigy Cast and Characters Revealed

Paramount+ has blown the lid off character details for its upcoming animated kids show Star Trek: Prodigy , revealing names, faces, and voices for those we’ll be seeing on screen.

While we knew Kate Mulgrew was reprising her role as Captain Janeway (in emergency training hologram form), the only other info we’ve known about this show was that it would feature a group of teenage aliens embarking on their own adventure. Let’s break down what we know now thanks to the announcement from StarTrek.com.

Rylee Alazraqaui ( Doug Unplugs , Home Economics ) voices “Rok-Tahk,” an eight-year-old Brikarian who apparently has a deep love for animals. Rylee is the daughter of voice actor Carlos Alazraqui, and Brikarians are well-known to anyone who has read The New Frontier novels by Peter David.

Brett Gray ( On My Block , When They See Us ) plays “Dal,” a 17-year-old alien of unknown species who is described as a maverick.

Angus Imrie ( The Crown , Emma ) plays the Medusan “Zero,” a non-corporeal, genderless, energy-based lifeform. As such, Zero wears a containment suit to prevent others from going insane. This species was previously seen in The Original Series episode “Is There in Truth No Beauty.”

Jason Mantzoukas ( Big Mouth , Infinite ) plays “Jankom Pog,” a 16-year-old Tellarite (a well-known Star Trek species) who is described as someone who always “plays devil’s advocate for the sake of hearing all sides.”

Ella Purnell ( Army of the Dead , Sweetbitter ) is “Gwyn,” a 17-year-old Vau N’Akat who grew up on a mining planet and dreams of exploring the stars.

Finally, Dee Bradley Baker ( Star Wars: The Clone Wars , American Dad , many other things ) plays the indestructible blob “Murf,” who apparently has an “insatiable appetite” for ships parts.

How or why these characters all come together is still unknown, but the StarTrek.com article notes that “These six young outcasts know nothing about the ship they have commandeered – a first in the history of the Star Trek franchise – but over the course of their adventures together, they will each be introduced to Starfleet and the ideals it represents.”

Paramount+ also released a few screenshots that spotlight various characters and show off the quality of animation.

Stay tuned to TrekNews.net for all the latest news on Star Trek: Prodigy , Star Trek: Discovery , Star Trek: Strange New Worlds , Star Trek: Picard , Star Trek: Lower Decks , and more.

You can follow us on Twitter , Facebook , and Instagram .

Kyle Hadyniak has been a lifelong Star Trek fan, and isn't ashamed to admit that Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and Star Trek: Nemesis are his favorite Star Trek movies. You can follow Kyle on Twitter @khady93 .

September 7, 2022 at 7:15 pm

They left the adorable kitten/person behind. Typical people.

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Characters / Star Trek: Prodigy

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U.S.S. Protostar crew

• Audience Surrogate : Like the target demographic, the crew has no familiarity with the Federation or Starfleet until Hologram Janeway brings them up to speed.
• These kids are nowhere near as skilled or experienced as the crew of the Enterprise , Enterprise-D , Defiant , Voyager , Enterprise NX-01 , Discovery , or even the Cerritos —they're all a bunch of kids and teenagers who are trying to escape from a hellish nightmare from a villain who's desperate for their ship, and only just started to be able to understand each other. Fortunately, some good Character Development helps them to grow, showing they have the potential to be as good as Starfleet.
• They're also vastly different from the crew of the U.S.S. Valiant . Both of them are ships commanded by younger protagonists, all of them equally inexperienced and stressed out by the horrors they're facing, but the Protostar crew learns to overcome their challenges, while everyone in Red Squad blindly follows their captain's orders in spite of how incredibly stupid and egotistical they are and...well, they're all dead, Jim.
• Kid Hero : Dal and Gwyn are the oldest at seventeen years old.
• Locked Out of the Loop : The Diviner has worked to keep them and the rest of his slaves ignorant of the universe beyond Tars Lamora — including the Federation and Starfleet. Thus, Hologram Janeway has to fill them in.
• Ragtag Band of Misfits : This isn't a highly trained Starfleet crew. This isn't even the Bunny-Ears Lawyer crew of the Cerritos . This is a group of kids who commandeered an abandoned starship they have no idea how to fly in a desperate attempt to escape a cruel tyrant.
• Ship Tease : Dal and Gwyn get plenty of this.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift : All of them don Starfleet uniforms (or a similar paintjob, in Zero's case) in "A Moral Star", reflecting their change from merely trying to survive to actively helping others, just like any member of Starfleet would. They switch back to normal clothing when the crisis is resolved.

Warrant Officer Dal R'El

Voiced by: Brett Gray

• Alien Hair : In addition to normal hair, he has a short tentacle growing from the back of his head. It's prehensile, as we see him hand Gwyn a tool with it in "A Moral Star, Part 1".
• Aliens Speaking English : In the two-part season finale, Dal is noted to speak Federation Standard (English), which is a bit odd when one considers he was raised by a Ferengi.
• Badass Driver : In the pilot, he tries to escape Tars Lamora in a loading vehicle, performing several stunts and nearly managing to jump it off the asteroid using an ore chute, only failing because the Diviner disabled the anti-gravity system to stop him.
• Bio-Augmentation : Dr. Jago reveals that Dal is a human augment composed of the recessive DNA of 26 alien species (With those confirmed being Proto- Organian , Klingon, Vulcan, Tellarite, and Andorian).
• Break the Haughty : He accidentally discovers the Kobayashi Maru simulator and figures he can ace it just fine. To his horror, he loses dozens of times and on his last attempt he nearly beats it but foolishly causes the Bird-of-Prey to destroy the Enterprise-D , which causes him to fall into despair. It's only when the hologram of Spock tells him the true purpose of the simulation does Dal finally realize he's messed up by doing everything by himself and not considering the rest of his crew.
• The Captain : He appoints himself captain of Protostar , even though he's less experienced than a first-year cadet. He slowly grows into it.
• Character Development : He's a far haughtier and ego-driven character at the start of the series, a self-appointed Captain, and someone who's dismissive to his crew at best. The series has him grow out of this, slowly realizing that The Needs of the Many outweigh the needs of the few, and he can't act so half-cocked if he wants to keep those he cares about alive. As Spock's hologram, whose words helps him realize this, puts it: Holographic Spock: You’re the Captain of this ship. You haven’t the right to be vulnerable in the eyes of the crew. You can’t afford the luxury of being anything less than perfect. If you do, they lose faith, and you lose command.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character : Unlike many Captains from previous Trek series who are experienced officers, Dal is the opposite: being an inexperienced officer, let alone much more inexperienced than a first-year Starfleet cadet, who is reluctantly thrusted to be the Protostar's Captain chair after Chakotay's disappearance. Character Development prevails, however, when he slowly becomes more skilled in his duty as one, but had to learn from much more different methods of captaincy, being that he didn't go to Starfleet Academy, to be on equal footing to his predecessors.
• The Cynic : Years of living on Tars Lemora have soured him on any sort of authority. His first instinct upon learning of the Federation is to point the ship the other way, simply because he can't believe that any organization could be as selfless as Janeway describes them.
• Didn't Think This Through : His main flaw. While he has the drive and vision to escape where others see only despair, he lacks foresight and tends to fly by the seat of his pants.
• Heinz Hybrid : He's revealed to be genetically engineered from a mix of over 20 species.
• Humble Hero : Some of the time anyway. He tries to downplay saving Gwyn as something Janeway made him do, when he actually insisted on it.
• Hypocrite : Dal dismisses Janeway's exposition of the Federation under the belief it's sweet words to veil more self-serving authority like they've been getting on Tars Lamora. After assuming the position of Captain, he dismisses the question that he could be as self-serving and proceeds to throw around his authority while enjoying the perks, It's only through a narrow brush with death via a collapsing star that he drops this trope.
• The Kirk : He wants to be this, but his lack of experience tends to make his more Kirkesque personality traits a liability. Even more telling is that, when he's given the choice to recruit the James Tiberus Kirk for his Kobayashi Maru simulation, he dismisses him because "we already have a captain".
• Leader Wannabe : Fancies himself the captain, but the group doesn't know each other well enough for any sort of formal leadership. When he does take charge, his recklessness proves a serious flaw and he nearly gets everyone killed. Having to ask Janeway for help forces some humility onto him, but he's clearly a long way from proper leadership. It takes him failing the Kobayashi Maru simulator so close to actually beating it to realize that he needs their help.
• Leeroy Jenkins : He tends to do things without thinking them through .
• Mysterious Past : Dal is a genetic hybrid of over 20 species (including human), engineered by the disciples of Arik Soong. The question is why they designed him, and how he wound up abandoned and in the care of a travelling Ferengi.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero : Dal doesn't trust Holo-Janeway at first, believing the Federation to be another example of a self-serving organization like the Diviner mining operation . His response is to find the brightest red spot on the map and point the ship at it, refusing to heed her warnings, simply for the sake of being contrary. This in turn caused him to nearly fly the ship into a collapsing star.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist : Zero states that unlike most of the other prisoners, he has been able to keep hope and believing he will escape one day.

Voiced by: Ella Purnell

• Action Girl : She is shown to be quite skilled in combat in the pilot, briefly taking down the much larger Rok-Tahk.
• Alien Hair : Her "hair" appears to be tentacles that glow from within when using her psychic powers.
• Anti-Villain : She spends most of the first five episodes as an antagonist even while sympathetic to the slaves, believing her father's cause to be just. Him abandoning her in favor of the Protostar is the wake up call to join the good guys in earnest.
• Badass Adorable : A very pretty and endearing Green-Skinned Space Babe who's the fiercest fighter on the team.
• Bioluminescence Is Cool : The lines on her skin glow whenever she's communicating with telepathy, or when she is particularly angry.
• Broken Pedestal : The Diviner ditching her for the Protostar in "Terror Firma" ends any respect she had for him.
• Co-Dragons : She initially shares the role of dragon with Drednok.
• Designer Babies : Is apparently this, having been grown directly from her father’s genetic material with no apparent mother. It is currently unclear if this is how Vau N'Akat typically reproduce.
• The Friend Nobody Likes : Starts off as this, being the loyal daughter of the Big Bad , she's taken hostage in the crew's escape and kept in the brig throughout the first few episodes.
• Friend to All Children : When a slave trader brings a Caitian child to Tars Lamora, Drednok takes the offer but Gwyn threatens the slaver, saying that, should he ever bring someone so young again, he'll be enslaved instead. Gwyn is later seen showing the young Caitian a linguistics hologram.
• Heel–Face Turn : Officially undergoes this in "Terror Firma". After her father chooses capturing the ship over saving her life, she later helps the crew escape him.
• Hostage Situation : Does not join the Protostar 's maiden voyage by choice — she was taken hostage by the crew to escape Drednok and his forces.
• Last of Her Kind : Gwyn and her father belong to a mysterious race called the Vau N'Kat, and he states they are the last. It turns out that he is from the future where he was the last and their race is alive and well in the present.
• Locked Out of the Loop : The Diviner hid his search for the U.S.S. Protostar from her, not wanting to risk the Federation influencing Gwyn in a way that would impede his plans.
• Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter : She seems to fall into this, being the daughter and a reluctant dragon of the series' first Arc Villain , the Diviner.
• Malaproper : Despite her mastery of countless languages, certain words and phrases escape her. She accuses Dal of being in "cat boots" with Zero when she means "cahoots". She also thinks that a formation of stars is a "constipation" instead of "constellation".
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal : Her love for her father overrides any concern she might have for the crew, up until her father leaves her to die in favor of securing the Protostar . When Dal rescues her even though he could have ditched her, she turns against her father completely.
• Morph Weapon : The metallic lattice she wears on her arm is a shapeshifting metal that she controls by thought, willing it into whatever shape she needs. She's demonstrated blade and shield forms when fighting Rok. Besides using it as a weapon, she has also used it as a splint when she broke her leg and as a rope when Dal rescued her from the vines. She can control it over long distances, allowing her to summon it to her even when isolated in different rooms. She could even reassemble it when it is shattered into small pieces, albeit with some difficulty.
• Omniglot : Speaks an enormous variety of languages, without the aid of a universal translator. This makes her a translator for Tars Lamora, although she notes a redundancy here in that Drednok has the programming to do the same.
• The Paragon Always Rebels : The most noble of her father's enforcers, and makes her Heel–Face Turn by the end of "Terror Firma".
• Psychic Block Defense : Gwyn is resistant to telepathy, a trait which seems to be inherent to the Vau N'Akat species. This evidently has limits though, since it wasn't enough to stop the superorganism on "Murder Planet" from reading her mind and figuring out her greatest desire. Presumably, its spores physically infiltrating her body allowed it to bypass the defense.
• While the crew is attempting to escape the gravitational pull of a dying star, she drains the ship's power using the vehicle replicator for her own escape.
• While the others are exploring an alien world, she escapes, takes control of the ship, and contacts her father. Her attempt to escape while the vines have the ship ensnared is unsuccessful and she winds up marooning herself and the other children.
• Statuesque Stunner : Taller than even Hologram Janeway.
• Tyke Bomb : While taking control of the Protostar in episode three, she realizes that her father had been specifically training her in the use of the ship’s controls and technology.
• "Well Done, Daughter!" Gal : Is able to see through an illusion of her father when it tells her it is proud of her.

Warrant Officer Rok-Tahk

Voiced by: Rylee Alazraqui

• This trait is what led her to bring Murf along on the escape, though she had assumed Murf was capable of communication at the time.
• The superorganism in "Dreamcatcher" uses this to manipulate her by luring her into a trap with the image of dozens of cute fuzzy animals cuddling against her.
• When the crew's recreational holoprograms get mixed up, her elements are from children's holonovel/game based on a vetinary clinic for adorable alien animals.
• The Baby of the Bunch : Being eight years old, she is the youngest member of the crew.
• The Big Guy : The biggest, toughest, and strongest of the crew by a wide margin, and willing to use it in defense of her friends. Jankom lampshades it in the second episode when Dal sends her to apprehend Gwyn. This becomes a problem in "Time Amok", when everyone figures her as the security officer for this reason, despite her objection.
• Canon Immigrant : She is the first on-screen appearance of a Brikar.
• Cute Giant : She's a Gentle Giant Rock Monster with Innocent Blue Eyes and the voice of an excitable kid.
• Face of a Thug : She knows she's scary-looking to smaller humanoid races at first glance, and she doesn't like it.
• Innocent Blue Eyes : She has large, blue eyes, and is the youngest and more innocent member of the crew.
• Meaningful Name : She's a rock that can talk.
• Mighty Glacier : Strong and tough, but not particularly fast. Gwyn easily dances around her when they fight in the pilot, even though she can't damage Rok in turn, and Rok only manages to stop her because the sudden movement of the ship knocks Gwyn off balance, allowing Rok to grab her. Their second fight plays out similarly, with Gwyn having to stall until she can find a way to counter Rok's impenetrable defense, and the fight ends as soon as Rok can pin her down.
• Nigh-Invulnerable : A truck-sized boulder dropped on her head does absolutely nothing, and Gwyn's blade deflects harmlessly off her rocky skin.
• Samus Is a Girl : Dal initially mistakes her for an adult male before they encounter the U.S.S. Protostar and her translation devices .
• The Slow Path : Thanks to a temporal anomaly both slowing time and halting her ageing, she spent weeks, months, possibly even years alone on the ship, learning the necessary disciplines to solve the threat of the week.
• Smarter Than You Look : Despite being both young and a rock monster, she is smarter than people tend to give her credit for, though naive. In "Time Amok", she ends up spending years learning various scientific disciplines while stuck in a temporal anomaly that causes her to experience time very slowly.
• Tertiary Sexual Characteristics : The pink skin and shape of her face are the main ways of identifying her gender, other than the Vocal Dissonance .
• Took a Level in Badass : In “Time Amok”, her time is slowed down by a temporal anomaly, forcing her to teach herself advanced programming, engineering, and mathematics to save Janeway and repair the warp core.
• Top-Heavy Guy : Rok's upper body is huge, but she has stubby little legs.
• Vocal Dissonance : Has a giant, stoney body… and the voice of a child. That said, this appears to be a function of the universal translator, as her voice without it is still the deep, craggy voice you'd expect from a large rock monster.
• Wrestling Monster : She used to be the monster in a "Hero versus Monster" staged fight arena, but after she got sick of being huge and scary, she turned one show into a slapstick farce. It pleased the crowd, but not her owners, who sold her to Tars Lamora in punishment for going off-script.
• Younger Than They Look : Despite being the largest of the crew, she is also the youngest at eight years old.

Warrant Officer Zero

Voiced by: Angus Imrie

• Ace Pilot : Seems to have real skill at piloting, a trait stated to be common among their species when they were originally introduced. Downplayed, as unlike their counterpart in The Original Series , they have to figure out the controls on the fly, instead of having someone experienced with the controls to piggyback off of.
• Brown Note Being : Zero's unfiltered true form causes irreversible madness in almost all sentient beings who look upon them. This is a step down from the last time there was a Medusan in the series, who also caused death soon after exposure. Somewhat justified as it was stated seeing the Medusan true form would do that to humans . Some species, like Vulcans, were capable of viewing Medusans, but only with the use of a specially filtered visor. Zero is also a fair bit younger than the one Spock encountered, which might blunt the effect.
• Beware the Nice Ones : Possibly the most civil member of the crew, but is more than willing to Mind Rape the evil overlord who’s been keeping them captive for years...
• Brutal Honesty : Zero has no filter whatsoever.
• The Bus Came Back : The first on-screen appearance of a Medusan since the species' debut in an episode of the original series.
• Canon Immigrant : Zero's name and character concept as a non-corporeal alien in a containment suit seems to be lifted straight from the unrealized "Star Trek: Final Frontier" cartoon.
• Gadgeteer Genius : Manages to build a functional containment suit out of random scrap that can also hover and emote to an extent... without hands or even a corporeal form.
• Hive Mind : They mention in "Kobayashi" that being taken from a Medusan hive mind was sad for them.
• Little Green Man in a Can : Zero wears a containment suit to prevent other people from seeing their true form.
• Mind Rape : The Diviner used them for this against their will, exposing slaves to their true form to render them compliant.
• My God, What Have I Done? : Zero takes great satisfaction in forcing the Diviner to see their true, unshielded form, but they're horrified and immediately retreat to the containment suit once they realize that Gwyn has caught the reflection.
• Nightmare Fetishist : They find everything in the galaxy absolutely fascinating, even the stuff that's trying to kill them. Especially the stuff that's trying to kill them.
• No Biological Sex : Medusans are neither male nor female.
• Non-Action Guy : Zero's body isn't built for combat. Their one attempt to fight a security drone hand-to-hand was met with a No-Sell , and their aim with a phaser is terrible. They do have one potent weapon but they're understandably reluctant to use it... most of the time.
• Non-Human Non-Binary : Zero flat out states they don't have a gender due to having No Biological Sex , though the dialogue seems to go out of its way to avoid addressing them with pronouns most of the time.
• No Sense of Personal Space : In a telepathic sense. Zero has no problem casually reading the minds of the rest of the crew, and even sees the fact that they're friends as a reason to do so, rather than having any expectation of privacy. Having grown up in a Hive Mind that didn't have regular contact with sentient species, Zero sees this as typical behavior.
• The Smart Guy : Zero is the most scientifically-knowledgeable of the crew when they first come together. In "Time Amok", they have already figured out the temporal anomaly and how to correct it within minutes of it happening.
• Telepathy : Zero communicates telepathically and can read minds, which allows them to get around the lack of a universal translator. Zero's suit also appears to have some means of projecting their voice, however, since Zero can be heard over comms.
• Verbal Tic : "Hoot hoot" seems to be Zero's way of expressing excitement and/or amusement.

Warrant Officer Jankom Pog

Voiced by: Jason Mantzoukas

• Artificial Limbs : His right hand has been replaced with a prosthetic multi tool.
• Bait-and-Switch : "How is this even a debate? Rescuing the miners is a bad call...that Jankom Pog couldn't be happier to make with you dumb-dumbs!"
• Big Eater : The second he learns that the replicators don't require money, he orders a massive plate of Tellarite cuisine.
• Commander Contrarian : Argues simply for the sake of it, even pointing out that it's better to have someone giving an opposing viewpoint than an unthinking Yes-Man . Dal lampshades that it's typical for a Tellarite .
• Extendable Arms : Can launch his prosthetic hand via grappling wire.
• Gadgeteer Genius : Manages to get the Protostar flight-worthy inside a day, reasoning that if you've seen one starship, you've seen them all.
• Humans Are Ugly : The Holo Janeway is the first image of a human he's ever seen, and he expresses disgust at her appearance. Janeway gets a good dig in response, which he approves of.
• Insult of Endearment : He sometimes calls his crewmates "dumb-dumbs". No surprise coming from a Tellarite.
• Percussive Maintenance : Explicitly names the trope as part of his technique.
• Really 700 Years Old : He was born before Tellar even joined the Federation, having been preserved as a teenager through cryostasis.
• Sleeper Starship : Jankom was part of a pre-Federation deep space expedition, wherein orphans were gathered up and launched into deep space in hibernation.
• Small Name, Big Ego : He starts putting on airs after learning his people were a founding member of the Federation, claiming it makes him "practically royalty". However, when he finally meets another Tellarite, he's not only mocked for this attitude, but told that his last name means "runt" and that he's pretty much at the bottom of the social ladder.
• Third-Person Person : Almost always refers to himself in the third person. We eventually learn that this was a habit he developed as a result of having to deal with a maintenance robot that could only understand him if he gave his full name.
• Top-Heavy Guy : Not as extreme as Rok, but he's built rather stout with a disproportionate upper body.
• Younger Than They Look : He's listed in official materials as being 16 but, being a Tellarite and all, he looks like a 30- to 40-year-old by human standards, to say nothing of the time he spent in stasis on a sleeper ship as a child. In terms of birth date, Jankom is older than the entire crew combined, having been born before the Tellarites even joined the Federation.

Captain Kathryn Janeway (Emergency Training Hologram)

Voiced by: Kate Mulgrew

• Costume Evolution : In "A Moral Star", she switches from the original Janeway's Deep Space Nine / Voyager era uniform to the Prodigy era uniform when the rest of the crew suits up for the first time. Then she has an Evil Costume Switch when Drednok reprograms her.
• Deadpan Snarker : Janeway's wit is clearly integrated into the program, as seen when she trades barbs with Jankom.
• Hard Light : At first, this is averted, even though Starfleet holograms usually have the capability. Gwyn adds the functionality to her program in "A Moral Star".
• Heroic Sacrifice : She sacrifices herself to destroy the Protostar and the Living Construct, saving the rest of the crew and all of Starfleet.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia : Her memory files have been intentionally corrupted, leaving her unaware of her past time with the Protostar when it was actually crewed by Starfleet. All we know is that Drednok and the Diviner were somehow involved, though Drednok denies being responsible for her memory loss.
• Dal and the others initially didn't inform her of their true status as refugees escaping the Diviner. Subverted in Episode 8 when he finally admits it to her.
• She is not aware of the huge chunk of Classified Information in the Protostar's computer until Gwyn decodes it.
• Loyal to the Position : She immediately switches sides to serve Gwyn, after Gwyn rewrites her programming to recognize Gwyn as the captain. Subverted when Drednok rewrites her, as she seems to be on Drednok and the Diviner's side but is in fact in appearance only and still fully loyal to the Protostar crew.
• Manchurian Agent : Unwittingly has been against the crew from the very start due to having been influenced by the Construct, culminating in her taking over the ship and steering it directly to the Dauntless and Federation space. The real Janeway purges the infection which also restores her memory of what happened to Chakotay and the Protostar.
• The Mentor : Acts as one to the fledgling crew. As she explains, she only maintains the lower-level systems, while operation of the ship as a whole falls on the crew.
• Ms. Exposition : Introduces the children to the world of Star Trek as a whole, specifically the Federation, Starfleet, and the values they represent. She also has a tendency to introduce the theme of the episode.
• Must Have Caffeine : A trait inherited from the original Janeway; she'll generate a cup of coffee out of thin air, despite being a hologram.
• My God, What Have I Done? : She's horrified when she realizes that she was secretly programmed to hijack the ship and get it to the Federation if the crew wavered and deactivates herself in remorse. When the real Janeway shows up, she says she knows exactly how bad the holo-Janeway is beating herself up.
• Mythology Gag : When discussing the holodeck with Dal and Jankom, she mentions having a preference to a Jane Eyre -like program, which the flesh Janeway used on Star Trek: Voyager .
• Projected Woman : Not the true Janeway, but a hologram with her form and personality. She is aware that she is a facsimile of Janeway.
• Super Gullible : Janeway takes the crew at their word that they're cadets after drawing that conclusion herself, despite it being a fairly transparent lie the real Janeway no doubt would have seen right through. She's genuinely shocked when Dal admits the truth. Presumably, like the Doctor, she would have to be in service for a while to develop beyond her base programming.
• Token Human : Token image of a human, at least. So more like the closest thing to a human.
• Took a Level in Badass : In "A Moral Star", Gwyn upgrades her program with security protocols to prevent her from being reprogrammed and the ability to make her projection solid, allowing her to fight.
• Trigger Phrase : The word "help", regardless of context, summons her program, though she can also respond to her name and is apparently consistently "on" even if her avatar is not physically present.
• What Would X Do? : During "Terror Firma" when the planet's vines are attacking the ship, holo-Janeway considers what the physical Janeway would do to defend the ship. "Clean house."

Warrant Officer Murf

Voiced by: Dee Bradley Baker

• Batman Can Breathe in Space : A minute or two in the vacuum of space has no effect on him.
• Bizarre Alien Biology : Feeds on metal, can survive in a vacuum, is so tough that he can contain a compressed protostar in his stomach, and undergoes a chrysalis in the latter half of season 1 that transforms him into a bipedal form.
• Blob Monster : And an adorable one to boot!
• Extreme Omnivore : He loves to eat metal, devouring whatever tools or metal objects he can get his mouth on.
• Hidden Depths : Ladies and gentlemen, say hello to jazz singer Mr. Murfy No Shoes!
• Nigh-Invulnerable : Eating a box of photon grenades doesn't harm him at all. Gives him gas, though.
• No Name Given : His species was not named in an intelligible language onscreen until "Asylum" at which point he is identified as a mellanoid slime worm.
• Rubber Man : Shows some of these traits in his more humanoid form.
• Team Pet : Acts as this, as he plays no real part in the running of the ship. After his "metamurfosis", however, he becomes a more active combatant and security chief.
• The Unintelligible : Translator Microbes have no effect on his language and no one can understand it, assuming he even has a language.

Voiced by: Robert Beltran

• Rank Up : He's become a Captain since his return from the Delta Quadrant.
• Uncertain Doom : The Protostar ran into a temporal anomaly that shot it into the future after Solum's devastating civil war following first contact with Starfleet. The ship was captured and rigged as a Trojan Horse against the Federation, but Chakotay sent it back to the past on autopilot before the Vau N'Akat could board it. What happened to him after that isn't revealed. Things are further muddled by the creation of a second anomaly that leads to a point in the timeline prior to Chakotay launching the Protostar , so there's an iteration of Chakotay that is definitely still alive and a later one that may or may not be.

U.S.S. Protostar (NX-76884)

• Cardboard Prison : Gwyn escapes the brig two episodes in a row because of the obvious limitations of the Force-Field Door .
• Cool Starship : Naturally. She draws traits from quite a few Starfleet vessels: a compact size reminiscent of the Defiant , a hull design similar to the Nova-class like the Equinox , and nacelles that move during protowarp like Voyager . In addition, she has a third nacelle hidden in the engineering hull that emerges during protowarp.
• Critical Staffing Shortage : Zero estimates that the ship would likely be crewed by twenty people under normal circumstances. It's presently crewed by five whose qualifications lag far behind actual Starfleet officers.
• Driving Question : How the Protostar ended up buried beneath Tars Lamora, and what happened to the original crew, is the mystery that drives the first season.
• Dyson Sphere : Played with. The Protostar has a compressed protostar powering its protowarp engine.
• Fish out of Temporal Water : Zig-zagged. As revealed in "Preludes", during her original mission under Chakotay, the Protostar was pulled through an unstable temporal rift and ended up fifty years into the future, where it was captured by the Vau N'Akat. After they installed the Living Construct onboard, Chakotay was able to remotely send the ship back through the rift to keep it from being used against Starfleet. The ship ended up in the 2360s and buried beneath Tars Lamora, where it remained until found by Dal and Rok in the pilot episode (set in 2384). The Protostar has thus managed to wind up back to a point after it was declared lost, just with some troubling future tech and a missing crew.
• Force-Field Door : Like many vessels in Star Trek , the brig uses a force field door to keep prisoners in. Like many vessels in Star Trek , it can't keep a prisoner contained when it loses power.
• The Heavy : With the Diviner defeated and not as big of a threat (despite remaining as the Big Bad for the second half of Season 1) the ship and its systems (including Hologram Janeway) become the biggest threat when the crew discovers its true nature as a Trojan Horse against Starfleet.
• Hope Bringer : Zero describes the ship as a reason for hope and its first flight in the hands of the crew results in cheers from the other enslaved workers at Tars Lamora, by the time of "Starstruck", the Diviner and Drednok have had to suppress an uprising. Even the Diviner himself calls the ship "salvation", just for a different reason.
• Hour of Power : The protostar reactor can shoot the Protostar 4,000 light years across space in just a few minutes, but then immediately powers down and needs time to become operable again. Dialog in "A Moral Star, Part 1" indicates that this takes around ten minutes if a rapid recharge sequence is activated, and presumably a fair bit longer if the ship can't devote all its resources to the task.
• Ludicrous Speed : The ship's protostar reactor allows the ship to achieve protowarp, speed far exceeding regular warp drive. Spending mere minutes in protowarp allows the Protostar to travel 4,000 light years. To put that in perspective, Voyager would have taken 75 years to travel 70,000 light years, so at normal warp speeds a distance of 4,000 light years would equal a journey of slightly over four years.
• MacGuffin : The Diviner covets the ship for some reason, and even knowing what it is capable of, it is not readily apparent why. It turns out that the ship itself isn't as important as the fact that Starfleet will want it back, which is why the Diviner intends to use it as a Trojan Horse .
• Matter Replicator : In addition to standard food replicators, the Protostar has a vehicle replication bay that can assemble an entire shuttle in under an hour.
• Non-Standard Character Design : The Protostar is unusual among Starfleet ships in that her navigational deflector is mounted on the underside of the saucer instead of the engineering hull. Its shuttlebay mounted forward instead of aft as is common in Starfleet design, seemingly to accommodate the retractable third nacelle which takes up most of the engineering section, which is presumably also why the navigational deflector had to be relocated. Finally, she's rather small for her design, seemingly meant for a crew in the double digits, and is heavily automated on top of that for ease of use.
• No Ontological Inertia : A technological variant. Once the Living Construct is taken out of the vicinity and destroyed, the virus it spread to the Starfleet armada ceases its effect and the ships return to normal.
• No OSHA Compliance : The vehicle replicator will keep replicating while there are people on the floor, hanging off the fabrication arms, or even inside the unfinished vehicle as it's being constructed.
• Pintsized Powerhouse : She's rather small for a Starfleet vessel, comparable in size to the Defiant . Like the Defiant , she's overpowered for her size, possessing two warp cores and a third reactor containing a protostar, hence the name. The former are required to stabilize the latter, which requires half the ship's power at any given moment. She's also capable of impressive Beam Spam , firing multiple simultaneous phaser beams from one array.
• The Power of the Sun : The protostar reactor contains a compressed protostar, used as a high-tech booster rocket to give the ship a huge boost of speed in protowarp.
• Starship Luxurious : Downplayed. It's relatively spartan, befitting such a small vessel, with communal bunks and a single mess hall. However, the captain's quarters are huge, with a double bed, terminals, and plenty of storage space. It also has space for a holodeck.
• Trojan Horse : The Diviner hid a device on the ship that uploads a virus to any Starfleet vessel that the Protostar establishes an uplink with. Once infected, the systems go haywire, to the point of causing any available weapons systems to either self-target the vessel and cause it to destroy itself, or target nearby Federation ships if that isn't an option. A deep space communications outpost the crew stop at, once infected, destroyed itself in minutes once the virus took hold.

    Holodeck Characters 

Characters who make appearances in the holodeck.

Kobayashi Maru Crew

Voiced by: gates mcfadden (dr. beverly crusher), nichelle nichols (nyota uhura, archive recordings), rené auberjonois (odo, archive recordings), leonard nimoy (spock, archive recordings), james doohan (montgomery scott, archive recordings).

A crew assembled for Dal’s attempt at the Kobayashi Maru simulation, comprised of some of the finest officers in Starfleet history. For tropes related to their original appearances, please see their respective pages.

• Uhura and Scotty
• Beverly Crusher and The ''Enterprise''-D
• Fake Shemp : Spock, Scotty, Odo, and Uhura’s dialogue are composed of audio recordings from their respective series and films.
• The Enterprise -D is used as the base ship for the test, while the Klingons use Birds of Prey. At the time the episode aired, the D had been destroyed in battle with the Klingons (to be more precise, her stardrive section suffered a warp core breach after a narrow victory while the saucer crash-landed and was no longer spaceworthy). Star Trek: Picard revealed in Season 3 that Geordi had secretly rebuilt her .
• Scotty is seen wearing a naval-style uniform from the later TOS-era films, while the rest of the cast wear their uniforms from their respective shows.
• The Mentor : Spock takes on the role at the end of Kobayashi to give Dal crucial advice.
• The McCoy : Crusher fulfill this role in the Kobayashi, advocating that they should save lives, despite the potential political consequences.

Tars Lamora

The diviner.

Voiced by: John Noble

• Of the emotionally cold variety. So awful is his treatment of his daughter that an illusion of him mildly praising her is an immediate red flag.
• One episode later, he (albeit with some remorse) chooses claiming the Protostar over rescuing Gwyn from the vines.
• Arc Villain : Set up as the primary threat the children will face. Rules Tars Lamora with an iron fist and desires the U.S.S. Protostar for mysterious reasons. Is ultimately defeated in the first mid-season finale.
• Big Bad : Of the first season.
• Broken Pedestal : He was actually on the pro -Federation side during the controversy that erupted following first contact, excited by the promises they offered. However, when the debate turned into a destructive civil war and the Federation refused to take sides , he saw this as a betrayal, which developed into a fanatical hatred for them after the war almost wiped his people out.
• Dark Lord on Life Support : Spends much of the pilot in a tank of some sort. He trades the tank for a suit in the following episode. It has lines full of some kind of vital fluid; when one is severed, he's weakened and sputtering.
• Evil Is Petty : When he forces a Hostage for MacGuffin scenario on the crew, his intention is to leave them on the asteroid with no way to escape. When they instead barter for the Rev-12, he accepts, only to destroy its power generator on his way out so they'll all die, just because he has that much contempt for his slaves.
• Evil Old Folks : A frail old man who is nonetheless a brutal slave driver and a vile racist.
• Fantastic Racism : Views anyone not of his own species as a lesser being. His plan would save his race at the cost of many others even though diplomacy would work just as well, just because he doesn't care if they live or die.
• Fate Worse than Death : He's driven insane by exposure to Zero's true form , and reduced to a prisoner within his own damaged mind as a result. He eventually recovers, albeit after being amnesic for some time.
• Friend-or-Idol Decision : Is faced with one in "Terror Firma": claiming the Protostar or rescuing his daughter. He chooses the former, though he at least has the decency to regret that decision when Gwyn calls him out on it later.
• Hidden Agenda Villain : The Protostar is integral to his plans in some fashion, to the point he won't even risk damaging it.
• Is beaten the first time when Zero, the being he used to Mind Rape miners into submission for years, turns their power against him.
• He's ultimately killed at Asencia's hands with the very weapon he gave Gwyn.
• Hope Crusher : Flat-out states that "hope has no purpose" on Tars Lamora.
• He thinks the Federation are hypocrites and liars for preaching about a better future. Pretty rich coming from a guy who is everything he accuses them of being and worse. This goes double when his true plan is revealed. He sees the Federation as having ruined the future of his people through first contact, when he and others like him rejecting their ideology of coexistence is what led his people to ruin.
• As Gwyn points out, rather than talk to the Federation about how First Contact will cause a devastating civil war that will end up destroying his homeworld in the future, he plans to use the Protostar as a Trojan Horse to destroy the entire Federation , causing mass death and devastation on an even grander scale than what happened on Solum, trading one catastrophe for another.
• I Owe You My Life : He releases Admiral Janeway (actually Dal in her body) from her restraints after entering the room with the apparent intention to kill her and explains that while he is not abandoning his mission, he is still humbled by her kindness and feels it necessary to repay her for saving his life.
• It's All About Me : He only cares about himself and his mission, and will exploit anyone he has to in order to accomplish it.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk : Every time he shows signs of Hidden Depths , such as expressing concern for his daughter's safety, he promptly throws it away in pursuit of his goals. And that goal is to save his own people by destroying another.
• Lack of Empathy : His daughter and maybe Drednok are the only beings he shows any regards for, and even the former is highly conditional, as is shown when he abandons her for the Protostar . His ultimate plan to use the Protostar as a Trojan Horse to make Starfleet tear itself apart would cause far more devastation than what happened on Solum, and he rejects Gwyn's point that he could just talk to the Federation to prevent the disaster because he seemingly has that little regard for any beings not his own species.
• Last of His Kind : He claimed to have been the last of the Vau N'Akat until he created Gwyn. The truth is more complicated: he comes from an alternate future where First Contact with his people by the Federation caused a division between those who wanted to join and those who didn't, devastating their world. He and ninety nine others traveled back in time to use the Protostar to destroy Starfleet before that could happen, though his companions were lost in transit and presumed dead. So his species still exists in the present, but as far as he knows he's the last future Vau N'Akat. Until he was found by Asencia.
• He blames Starfleet for the destruction of his people, as they tore themselves apart in a civil war over isolationism vs acceptance. Everything we've seen of the Diviner suggests people as regressive as he is now are the reason his people destroyed themselves. This is made even worse by the fact that the Diviner is keenly aware that the worst elements of his society are the reasons it crumbled, as he was on the opposite side of the conflict until there was barely anyone left.
• His rationale for Gwyn betraying him is "She met a boy." Even if one were to be extremely charitable towards Dal as a positive influence, Gwyn's Heel–Face Turn was a Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal brought on by the Diviner prioritizing the Protostar over her, a fact he even acknowledged in the mid-season finale. At best, it was Dal's kidnapping of her that put her in a position where he had to choose his mission over her.
• Non-Action Big Bad : He's not much good in a fight, and relies on Drednok to bust heads on his behalf.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist : He claims the Protostar to be the salvation of his people, but his actions demonstrate a contempt for others that sails past disregard into actual malice. He causes pain and suffering because he can, not because he feels it's necessary. "A Moral Star" reveals his people destroyed themselves in a civil war after first contact with Starfleet, and the Diviner traveled back in time to destroy the entire Federation just to safeguard the future of his own people, showing no regard for the lives he would ruin.
• Ominous Floating Castle : His base of operations on Tars Lemora, the Rev-12, doubles as a starship.
• Powered Armor : His life support armor seems to compensate for his physical weakness, allowing him to make an impressive leap in "Terror Firma" when escaping the vines.
• Psychic Block Defense : He is resistant to telepathy, a trait which seems to be inherent to the Vau N'Akat species. Zero is only able to divine a basic intent from attempting to read his mind, without any specific details. Like Gwyn, this doesn't protect him from the spores of the telepathic organism on "Murder Planet".
• Red and Black and Evil All Over : The life support suit he dons in "Starstruck" certainly gives off this vibe, as does the design of his starship base.
• Redemption Equals Death : He tries to save Gwyn from the Vindicator and is killed for it.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong : He is from the future, from a time where his people destroyed themselves in a civil war after learning that they weren't alone in the universe. He intends to prevent the civil war by preventing first contact. Unfortunately, his solution to that problem is to destroy the entire Federation.
• Start of Darkness : He was actually in favor of joining the Federation and bringing Solum into the interstellar community until the civil war went out of control. His resentment of Starfleet not intervening lead him to believe that they were liars and traitors.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute : Confirmed by the writers to be one of Khan Noonien Singh , as a powerful tyrant who's trying to save his people. He also has a lot in common with Nero , being the Last of His Kind from the future who seeks revenge on the Federation at any cost.
• Truly Single Parent : He created Gwyn as an Opposite-Sex Clone of himself to complete his mysterious mission if necessary after his death.
• Villainous Cheekbones : His are quite pronounced, and he's most definitely a villain.

Voiced by: Jimmi Simpson

• Arch-Enemy : He seems to have a specific hatred of Dal. He bullies him while Dal is a prisoner on Tars Lamora, tries to kill him during their escape attempt, and aims for him first when attempting to gun down the crew on the vine planet.
• Arm Cannon : His hands can turn into blasters.
• Combat Tentacles : Armed with a pair of these on gis back.
• A Dog Named "Dog" : Drednok is also the name of his "species". Each Vau N'Akat that went back in time brought one along.
• The Dragon : He's the Diviner's second in command and enforcer, though he initially shares this role with Gwyn.
• The Dreaded : Everyone on Tars Lamora is terrified of him, and for good reason.
• Evil Overlooker : He looms over the Protostar in the opening credits.
• Flat Character : The Vindicator's Drednok, having not been active as long as the Diviner's and forced to stay in hiding for most of that time, lacks the sadistic edge of the original, being a mere bodyguard/muscle for the Vindicator.
• The Heavy : Keeps the Diviner's slaves in line and is capable of going up against a freaking starship .
• Love Is a Weakness : Shown to believe this in a flashback to Gwyn's birth. He attempts to discourage the Diviner from creating a child by arguing that his emotional attachment to her could be used against him. He directly tells Gwyn that creating her was the Diviner's greatest mistake.
• Mecha-Mooks : One of many Killer Robots built by the Vau N'Akat during their civil war.
• Morph Weapon : His body can shift into a starship-grade particle weapon.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast : His name sounds a lot like dreadnought , and boy does he live up to it.
• Off with His Head! : Decapitated by the Caitian child, of all characters, in "A Moral Star, Part 2".
• One-Winged Angel : Drednok normally looks vaguely humanoid, but when he's forced into battle in the pilot, he reveals himself to actually be a quadrupedal Starfish Robot armed with two Combat Tentacles and various ranged weaponry.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning : His eyes are red and he is dangerous.
• Remote Body : Simply knowing where the Protostar is allows him to transmit a copy of himself to the ship to be assembled by the vehicle replicator, even when he's thousands of light years away.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong : Traveled back in time with the Diviner to recover the Protostar and use it against Starfleet.
• Shout-Out : The "Dreadnoks" are a villainous outlaw biker gang turned mercenary troupe in G.I. Joe .
• SkeleBot 9000 : Design-wise, he's a cross between a Terminator and General Greivous .
• Soft-Spoken Sadist : Barely ever raises his voice, and is a nasty piece of work.

Caitian Child

Voiced by: dee bradley baker (pre-translator), rania sharkawy (post-translator).

• Badass Adorable : Leads a slave revolt to save Rok and Jankom in "A Moral Star, Part 2" and is the one who delivers the killing blow to Drednok.
• Cute Kitten : She's a young felinoid alien, and she's adorable .

U.S.S. Dauntless crew

Vice-admiral kathryn janeway.

The commanding officer of the U.S.S. Voyager -A, and the person on whom Hologram Janeway's personality and appearance are based on. Formerly commanded the U.S.S. Voyager and the U.S.S. Dauntless .

• The Ace : She's commanding a Dauntless class starship, has an entire compliment of elite officers at her side, and manages to persuade the Federation into letting a group of alien refugees join her as Warrant Officers to rescue one of her oldest friends by successfully arguing before the entire Federation Council about the Protostar 's crew's efforts to save an organization they never knew existed for so long. Not only that, but she manages to launch another starship lineage from her original vessel by commissioning a new Voyager — a distinction not afforded to any other vessel besides the Enterprise before her.
• Of Janeway's character on Voyager . Sure, Janeway was always championing Starfleet principles, and is indeed one of their most exemplary officers, but she made a lot of hard calls to protect her crew during the seven-year-stay in the Delta Quadrant. It might have worked out for her then, but back in Federation space, those hard calls don't fly anymore. In her mission to rescue Chakotay, her crew has to reign her in from literally inciting a war when she's prepared to violate the Neutral Zone with the Romulans in order to catch the Protostar , hellbent on getting answers the crew quite literally can't give without bringing the Dauntless down.
• This one gets Played for Laughs , but her Must Have Caffeine tendencies are hit with a Surprisingly Realistic Outcome . Doctor Noum puts her on a tea diet because all that coffee is affecting her health.
• Determinator : She's deadset on rescuing Chakotay from whatever befell him in the Delta Quadrant.
• Famed In-Story : One of Starfleet's most famous and decorated captains.
• The Fellowship Has Ended : Her original crew from Voyager left on different paths since they returned from the Delta Quadrant. Tuvok, Tom Paris, and B'Elanna Torres are still serving in Starfleet, Chakotay is lost in time, Seven of Nine quit to form the Fenris Rangers when Starfleet wouldn't accept her on account of her being an ex-Borg, Neelix is still in the Delta Quadrant at the Talaxian homestead, and Harry Kim's status is currently unknown. At the very least, The Doctor will be joining her again in Season 2 to find Chakotay.
• Four-Star Badass : Last seen in Star Trek: Nemesis sporting a set of admirals pips after her triumphant return from the Delta Quadrant, Prodigy wastes little time reminding returning viewers and introducing new ones to exactly why she is a Vice Admiral in Starfleet. As her hologram counterpart puts it: Hologram Janeway: The real me is hunting us with a quantum slipstream Dauntless -class starship? Heh. Good luck with that .
• Hero Antagonist : She serves as this to the Protostar 's crew during the second half of Season One, as she believes them to be responsible for the theft of the ship and Chakotay's disappearance, and is determined to track them down by any means necessary. The moment she realizes they're not criminals but a bunch of kids escaping slavery, she becomes suspicious of the bounty put on them, starting the process of her turning to their side.
• Locked Out of the Loop : The kids on the Protostar have no way of explaining themselves since contacting her ship will trigger the Trojan Horse set up by the Diviner. She gradually starts to unravel the situation from various clues in their behavior, as well as other details like the bounty put out on them by the Diviner. Eventually she gets the whole story when she winds up in Dal's body through a telepathic mishap, which gives the kids the opportunity to explain everything properly.
• A Mother to Her Men : It doesn't matter if you served under her before or currently; if you're in danger, she will raise hell itself to rescue you. It's given somewhat of a Deconstruction , as Tysess has to remind Janeway not to dive into trying to save Chakotay so recklessly when she's willing to take greater risks to get him back.
• The Mentor : Now that the prodigies have made it to Earth and Holo Janeway is gone, the real Janeway takes the kids under her wing as Warrant Officers.
• Must Have Caffeine : Judging from the size of her mug, Janeway's love for coffee hasn't waned in the slightest since the events of Voyager . Unfortunately for her, she had to switch to tea on doctor's orders. She wants a second (i.e. pro-coffee) opinion.
• Patrick Stewart Speech : She may not be the Trope Namer , but she gives one that could give Picard a run for his money by convincing the entire Federation Council to accept the prodigies as Warrant Officers, noting how they went from not even knowing about Starfleet in the first place to saving the entire organization all on their own merits.
• Reasonable Authority Figure : Once she makes contact with the crew of the Protostar she starts having doubts about her mission to capture them, noting that they're just kids rather than the thieves she was expecting. In the season 1 finale she successfully goes up against Starfleet Command over letting Dal join Starfleet with the rest of his friends since being a genetically modified human makes him inelligible.
• You Have to Believe Me! : After Dal's bizarre behavior in her body gets her removed from command and locked in the brig, she begs the security officer to understand that she's herself again and that she has vital information. The security officer happens to be someone she rescued in the Delta Quadrant, but she doesn't release Janeway quite soon enough to prevent disaster.

Commander Tysess

Voiced by: daveed diggs.

• Number Two : Janeway's current second-in-command, since Chakotay was promoted to captain and assigned to command the Protostar .
• The Spock : Although he's an Andorian and not a Vulcan, he acts in the same capacity and with a similar thought process, urging Janeway not to let her emotions drive her to recklessness to save Chakotay.

Doctor Noum

Voiced by: jason alexander.

• Doctor Jerk : Has a very abrasive personality. Justified in that he's a Tellarite , for whom this is a cultural trait.
• Insufferable Genius : He makes sure that everyone around him knows that he's a brilliant doctor and they'd be lost without him.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero : When he meets Jankom, he begins interacting with him as he would any Tellarite—starting an argument. Unfortunately, he doesn't realize that Jankom has had very little experience with his own culture, and unwittingly says something that legitimately upsets Jankom. As a result, he and Admiral Janeway lose a chance to learn about the Diviner's plan before it's too late.

Ensign Asencia

Voiced by: jameela jamil.

• Ensign Newbie : In her Trill guise, she behaves as a plucky young ensign willing to go above and beyond.
• Evil Brit : While she has an American accent in her Trill disguise, she speaks with a British accent once her antagonistic role is revealed.
• The Mole : She infiltrated Janeway's crew to find the Protostar .
• No-Nonsense Nemesis : The Vindicator does whatever she can to fulfill her goal. She jump-starts the Diviner's memory to get him back on track, sets their plan to bring the Dauntless in contact with the Protostar while removing Janeway from the picture, gets Jellico's authorization to answer the fatal hail, and kills the Diviner when he proves to be more attached to Gwyn than vengeance.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left : She manages to escape the Protostar with her Drednok after mortally wounding the Diviner.
• Viler New Villain : Unlike the Diviner, the Vindicator has no mercy for Gwyn, dismissing her as a burden and not a truly one of the Vau N'Akat , and doesn't hesitate to mortally wound the Diviner when he tries to save his daughter.
• Would Hurt a Child : She has no compunctions about killing Gwyn, regardless of the Diviner's sentiments.

U.S.S. Dauntless (NCC-80816)

U.s.s. voyager -a crew.

Voiced by: Robert Picardo

• The Bus Came Back : Season 2 marks The Doctor's first appearance since the end of Voyager .
• Character Aged with the Actor : Zig-zagged. Physically, the Doctor's appearance is unchanged from VOY — which makes sense, given the EMH Program's default avatar template is, for all intents, ageless (and also benefits from Picardo not having to reprise the role in live-action). Vocally, however, Picardo (much like Kate Mulgrew and Robert Beltran) hasn't played the Doctor since the early 2000s and his voice has unsurprisingly aged and changed in that interim.
• Costume Evolution : He's wearing the 2384 Type B uniform for his return appearance, after having last worn the original Deep Space Nine uniform on Voyager .
• Ink-Suit Actor : He's the spitting image of Robert Picardo .
• I'm a Doctor, Not a Placeholder : In the preview for Season 2, the Protostar crew drops their baggage right in front of his feet, leading him to proclaim he's a doctor, not a butler.
• Non-Standard Character Design : Downplayed . He still fits in the show's overall art style, but his uniform bears his mobile holo-emitter on his left arm—something the other characters obviously lack given they're not sentient holograms.
• Uncertain Doom : The show's second season takes place around 2384, but very shortly, Starfleet will ban sentient A.I. because of the terrorist attack on Mars, meaning he'll likely be shut down.

U.S.S. Voyager (NCC-74656-A)

• Composite Character : While she's the heir to the Voyager name, and features at least two of her previous crew, she has some design elements borrowed from the Sovereign class made famous by the Enterprise -E, including a slimmer set of nacelles and a more integrated, trimmed secondary hull. Her elongated shuttle bay also calls to mind the Discovery .
• Legacy Vessel Naming : She's the first of the Voyager legacy previously established by Discovery 's Voyager -J.
• Shout-Out : Her class is named after actress and scientist Hedy Lamarr .
• Superior Successor : She's decked out to the nines with all the latest bells and whistles that her predecessor wished they had in the Delta Quadrant, including a larger crew compliment of 800, and two school facilities onboard, not to mention she practically dwarfs the original Voyager .
• Uncertain Doom : Star Trek: Picard revealed that in 2401, a Pathfinder class Voyager -B is set to be placed online, so it begs the question of what fate befell her in between this series and Picard season 3. That said, in the same season, the latest iteration of the Enterprise was being retired despite obviously being still spaceworthy, so Starfleet may simply have adopted a more regular rotation of their most famous vessels to keep up with the latest advances.

Beings of the Universe

Unknown plant organism, voiced by: kate mulgrew (as janeway), john noble (as the diviner).

• Always Chaotic Evil : The vines live to consume whatever they can, and only communicate to the extent this facilitates capturing prey. Zero's attempt to communicate with the vines telepathically is completely rebuffed; the crew is food to them, nothing more.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With : It communicates with Dal through an illusion of Janeway, since it can't find anything to manipulate him with in his memories.
• Genius Loci : According to Zero this organism is the planet it inhabits. It can rearrange the topography at will and even control the weather.
• Hostile Weather : It can create acid rain, which is basically this organism's equivalent to stomach acid.
• Lotus-Eater Machine : Lures and traps its victims with illusions of their greatest desires.
• When it appears to Dal as Janeway, he remembers that the hologram Janeway can't leave the ship, though it was forced to be more direct since Dal wasn't being fooled by its illusions.
• When it appears to Gwyn as the Diviner, it tells her that it is proud of her… something Gwyn immediately recognizes as something her father would never do.
• Spanner in the Works : The superorganism ends up breaking the emotional control the Diviner has on Gwyn and any loyalty she has towards him by tricking the Diviner into coming towards an illusion of the Protostar while it consumes Gwyn close by. That the Diviner walks away from his daughter's pleas for help makes her realize just how much more he desires the ship over her.
• With Dal, it's how while he wants to know about his parents and people, his lack of knowledge of them means there is little to build their appearances on.
• With Gwyn, while she desperately wants her father's approval and the organism has the fake Diviner say as much, Gwyn also knows in her head her father would never actually say those things.
• When Trees Attack : The vines are able to read the minds of prey and reproduce their greatest desires in order to capture and feed upon them. They're even strong enough to restrain the Protostar .
• Would Hurt a Child : More than willing to absorb and kill the crew, the youngest of whom is eight , for sustenance.

Daimon Nandi

Voiced by: Grey Griffin

• Broken Pedestal : Becomes this to Dal after she lets it slip that she sold him to the Diviner.
• Establishing Character Moment : Is first seen faking a distress call with a fake burning ship and fake baby before recognizing Dal and abandoning the ruse.
• Evil Mentor : She raised Dal and taught him most of what he knows before she sold him into slavery. Later, she betrays him along with his crew after they agreed to help her.
• The Fagin : Taught Dal everything he knows about smooth talking and “The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition”.
• Failed a Spot Check : She didn't notice the combadge attached to the crystal she was holding, her fingers inches away from it. This causes it to be beamed away.
• Hate Sink : Any moments of sympathy she might have had goes out the window when she reveals she's a double-crossing scumbag who sold her own adoptive son into slavery for extra profit.
• Treacherous Advisor : Was Dal’s mentor before selling him into slavery for a profit.

    The Cymari 

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Star Trek: Prodigy's Connection to Voyager, Explained

Star Trek: Prodigy is a new series with new characters in the universe, but the series is directly connected to Voyager through characters and ships.

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Star trek: voyager was a historic entry into the ever-growing universe, star trek: prodigy turned to janeway to create a direct line to the past, star trek: prodigy also brought in the 'real' vice admiral janeway, season 2 of star trek: prodigy promises even more connections to voyager.

The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Prodigy , Season 1, now streaming on Netflix.

After being unceremoniously pulled from Paramount+, Star Trek: Prodigy has a second chance on Netflix to bring Gene Roddenberry's universe to a new audience. The animated series is clearly for kids, but good storytelling is good storytelling. The heartfelt adventures of a group of kids on a hijacked starship looking for a place to belong is one that appeals to all ages. However, a big selling point for longtime fans is how the series is connected to Star Trek: Voyager , working as a kind of stealth sequel. There are many ways that Star Trek defied conventional wisdom through history. The first series failed to reach 100 episodes before NBC canceled it.

Despite missing that milestone, it became one of the highest-rated shows in syndication for decades. This created a generational fanbase large enough to sustain a second wave of the universe, starting with Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1986 that lasted into the 20th Century until Paramount's network failing ended Star Trek: Enterprise . When the studio launched its own streaming service, like with its network, Star Trek was its flagship franchise. However, the new series, from Star Trek: Discovery to Star Trek: Lower Decks are squarely aimed at adult fans. Only Star Trek: Prodigy exists to attract a new generation of fans to the saga of Starfleet. Still, this is the first true "shared universe" in fandom, so it's only natural the show connects to its past. That connection is strongest to Star Trek: Voyager , the show that ran from January 1995 until the spring of 2001.

How a Set Fire Led to Star Trek: Voyager's Funniest Episode

Paramount wanted its own sci-fi feature film franchise, so it turned to Star Trek , which was even more popular a decade after its cancelation. The films led to The Next Generation followed by Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , a show set on a space station rather than a starship. This was followed by another "ship show," which made history as the first series to be led by a woman captain, Kathryn Janeway. The premise found the USS Voyager stranded 75,000 light years from home, meaning the writers couldn't rely on classic villains like Klingons or Romulans. However, they were able to bring the Borg to the show in a big way.

Voyager was the flagship show for the United Paramount Network (UPN), effectively a large-scale syndication strategy masquerading as the "fifth network." The series was met with criticism from fans (as all new Star Trek shows were), but over two decades later, it is as beloved as any entry. In Season 4, the show introduced Seven of Nine, played by Jeri Ryan, who has since gone on to return in Star Trek: Picard and now commands the USS Enterprise-G. However, it's Captain Kathryn Janeway who is Starfleet's most important commanding officer. She brought the crew home and dealt a disabling blow to the Borg, Starfleet's most fearsome enemy.

Because of the massive scope of the series finale, it left some fans unsatisfied when the show ended. The final shot shows the USS Voyager returning to Earth. However, outside of a brief Janeway cameo in Star Trek: Nemesis , fans never knew what happened when the crew got home after seven years together on the wildest frontier of the Milky Way Galaxy. Despite being centered on a group of new characters, Star Trek: Prodigy serves as the spiritual sequel Voyager never got.

How Voyager Became Star Trek's Wildest Show

The most prominent connection to Star Trek: Voyager in Prodigy is, of course, the inclusion of a holographic training advisor based on Captain Janeway. She isn't the Captain Janeway, but rather is a separate entity with the character's personality, experiences and duty of care for her crew. The USS Protostar is an experimental starship found by Zero, Dal, Jankom Pog and the rest of the kids who make up its unorthodox crew. Instead of being Starfleet-trained, they are simply trying to flee a life of oppression, bondage and forced labor.

Along with everything that's Janeway, including Mulgrew providing the voice, the holographic advisor has all the "powers" of a fully-integrated artificial intelligence. She is able to control functions on the ship, seemingly with her thoughts. She is knowledgeable about every aspect of the Protostar's functions, and she's an excellent teacher for these kids who'd never heard of Starfleet before. Like the organic version, Hologram Janeway becomes the maternal figure in the family of this crew. She is also willing to sacrifice herself to save her crew and make sure they get to their new home.

The second major connection to Star Trek: Voyager is the inclusion of Commander Chakotay, now a captain and voiced by Robert Beltran. He was originally the commanding officer of the Protostar. However, after falling through a temporal anomaly of some kind, he and his official Starfleet crew are lost in the future. The mystery of what happened to him in the Delta Quadrant is a major one throughout the first season of the show.

Star Trek: Prodigy Is a Must-Watch for Janeway and Voyager Fans

The first season of the animated series was split into two parts. Star Trek: Prodigy Season 1, Part 2 introduces the organic Kathryn Janeway properly. She is hunting both the USS Protostar and her long-lost friend. While Hologram Janeway was a loose connection to Voyager , this character is a direct one. Longtime fans, or kids who binge-watched the live action series in between the season's two parts, are able to see what happened to her since Voyager went off-the-air in 2001.

As any fan knows, Vice Admiral Janeway is relentless in her pursuit of the Protostar. She believes hostile forces have taken the ship, and she's partly right. While in the future, Chakotay made first contact with a species called the Vau N'Akat. The revelation they weren't alone in the universe caused a civil war. Two surviving members of the species were sent back in time to destroy Starfleet rather than prepare their people to accept the larger galaxy. However, upon learning who the crew actually is, she immediately becomes their advocate.

In the Season 1 finale, Janeway argues in front of a Starfleet tribunal to not just forgive the kids who "stole" the Protostar but admit them into Starfleet. Dal is revealed to be genetically augmented, illegal in Starfleet. Still, she is successful in convincing the powers-that-be to allow them to train with her to become warrant officers in the fleet. She will be taking on the role her holographic double did, but guiding these cadets through training, life-and-death adventures and turning them into officers who will do credit to Starfleet.

Star Trek: Prodigy Team Reacts to Fans' Aerial Banner to Save the Series

Hologram Janeway, at least the one with memories of her crew, was destroyed with the USS Protostar in the Season 1 finale. While she could technically come back, Prodigy has the genuine article now. Still, every good story tied to Voyager needs a holographic character, so Season 2 brings back the Doctor , the original sentient hologram. He will join the kids on their training mission, as they learn about the galaxy and continue the search for Captain Chakotay.

If that weren't enough, instead of another "Protostar-class ship," the main characters of Prodigy will embark on a different, more storied vessel. If the commanding officer's name is Janeway, the ship she leads should have a storied name as well. In a clip of Season 2 released on Star Trek 's website, the Doctor takes the kids to their new vessel, the USS Voyager-A. It's possible the Doctor and Janeway won't be the only former crew members on the vessel, so even more connections are possible.

Star Trek: Prodigy is a more episodic series, but it does maintain a narrative throughline along its seasons. Thus, Season 2 will likely be largely about locating Chakotay, perhaps even bringing him back onto the crew. Since Janeway is a vice admiral, there is no reason her first officer couldn't hold the rank of captain. While there will be many connections to past iterations of Star Trek , Prodigy deeply tied to Voyager .

Star Trek: Prodigy Season 1 is streaming on Netflix, with Season 2 expected in early 2024.

Star Trek: Prodigy

A group of enslaved teenagers steal a derelict Starfleet vessel to escape and explore the galaxy.

Screen Rant

Star trek: prodigy season 1 ending explained (in detail).

Star Trek: Prodigy season 1 ended with a noble sacrifice and hints about what's to come in season 2. We break down every big moment and what it means.

• Star Trek: Prodigy Season 1 finale resolves major storylines and sets up an exciting Season 2, as the young crew saves Starfleet and the galaxy.
• Hologram Janeway sacrifices herself to save the Protostar and becomes the kids' new mentor, passing the torch to Admiral Janeway.
• The heroic teens become Warrant Officers under Admiral Janeway's supervision, offering them a better option than joining Starfleet Academy. Gwyn chooses to return to Solum to change the outcome of First Contact.

Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Prodigy Season 1 Finale - "Supernova, Part 2" The Emmy award-winning Star Trek: Prodigy ended season 1 with a thrilling and emotional finale that paid off the season's major storylines while setting up an exciting season 2 . Now streaming on Netflix, Star Trek: Prodigy season 1, episode 20, "Supernova, Part 2" resolves "Supernova, Part 1's" epic cliffhanger as the Living Construct weapon about the USS Protostar corrupted Starfleet, causing the Federation's starships to attack each other. Although Gwyn (Ella Purnell) was able to summon the Federation's allies to help Starfleet, it wasn't enough to prevent the armada's imminent destruction.

Star Trek: Prodigy season 1's finale concluded the Vau'Nakat's revenge plot to destroy Starfleet and prevent First Contact with Solum from ever happening. Asencia (Jameela Jamil) AKA the Vindicator activated the Living Construct and killed Gwyn's father, the Diviner (John Noble), before escaping with Drednok (Jimmi Simpson). When the Protostar's young crew realized that Starfleet would just send more ships until the entire fleet becomes corrupted by the Living Construct, they realized the only way to stop the signal was to destabilize its Proto-Core and destroy their starship. To prevent the cataclysmic destruction of the solar system, Hologram Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) chose to stay behind to ensure the Protostar jumps into warp. Here's how every major Star Trek: Prodigy season 1 story wrapped as the heroic teens saved Starfleet and the galaxy.

Star Trek: Prodigy’s Young Alien Heroes & Starfleet Future Explained

Hologram janeway's sacrifice means admiral janeway becomes the kids' new mentor, admiral janeway believes in the protostar's young crew..

Hologram Janeway originally believed that she could transfer her program to a data chip and escape the Protostar with Dal R'El (Brett Gray), Gwyn, and the others. To her dismay, Hologram Janeway's program had evolved to become too big to fit on a data chip. Instead, Janeway recorded a farewell message for her proteges and stayed behind as the Protostar jumped to Proto-Warp and destroyed itself, along with the heroic Hologram. But their plan worked: the Protostar's self-destruct while at warp meant the damage caused by the baby star in the Proto-Core was mitigated by being spread across space, which saved billions of lives. And the Living Construct's destruction saved Starfleet .

Hologram Janeway was the mentor to Dal, Gwyn, Rok-Tahk (Rylee Alazraqui), Zero (Angus Imrie), Jankom Pog (Jason Mantzoukas), and Murf (Dee Bradley Baker) who taught them the values of Starfleet in Star Trek: Prodigy season 1. The Hologram gave up her life to save the galaxy in true heroic Starfleet fashion, but the loss of Hologram Janeway also passes the torch to Vice Admiral Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) as the kids' new mentor. Dal and his friends no longer need the Protostar's training hologram as they now have the real, flesh-and-blood Janeway to look up to.

Why Captain Chakotay Is Now In An Alternate Future Timeline

Chakotay is trapped on solum..

Ascenia and the Diviner's plan to destroy Starfleet was meant to prevent First Contact with Solum, which led to a civil war that decimated their world. Even though they didn't destroy Starfleet, the events of Star Trek: Prodigy season 1's finale still changed the future because the First Contact between Starfleet and Solum that's still to come will not happen now the way Ascenia remembers it. This means that Captain Chakotay (Robert Beltran) is now stranded in the year 2436 of an alternate 25th-century future timeline.

Chakotay and the USS Protostar initially traveled through a wormhole and arrived in Solum, where the Vau'Nakat took him and his crew prisoner.

However, Starfleet determined that the Protostar's destruction created an interspatial rift that duplicated the original temporal anomaly Chakotay and the USS Protostar fell into in 2383, which brought them to Solum 52 years into the future. Starfleet plans an expedition to that alternate future , and of course, Admiral Janeway will lead it because her original mission to the Delta Quadrant to find Chakotay remains unfinished. This is a clear and exciting setup for what should be the main storyline for Star Trek: Prodigy season 2.

Star Trek: Prodigy's Young Heroes Don't Get Into Starfleet Academy (But Get Something Better)

The protostar kids become admiral janeway's warrant officers..

Dal, Gwyn, and their friends dreamed of joining Starfleet throughout Star Trek: Prodigy season 1, and Admiral Janeway persuasively argued for their acceptance into Starfleet Academy to the Federation Council. However, they were not accepted into the Academy on the grounds that it would be unfair to the other applicants already in line. Yet the Protostar's former crew's heroism in saving every Starfleet ship must also be rewarded. I nstead of joining the Academy, the kids were given the rank of Warrant Officers under the supervision of Admiral Janeway herself.

This turns out to be a better option for our young heroes because had they been accepted into Starfleet Academy, they would have to remain on Earth and attend classes. This means Star Trek: Prodigy season 2 would be set in San Francisco and prevent the Protostar's ex-crew from gallivanting around the galaxy on a starship. Dal's status as an Augment was also resolved as Admiral Janeway persuasively defended the purple teen as a living embodiment of the Federation's multi-species culture. Thankfully, Dal was given a special dispensation to become a Starfleet Warrant Officer despite the Federation's ban on Augments .

Dal R'El was created by followers of Dr. Arik Soong from Star Trek: Enterprise , and his genetically engineered body is comprised of the DNA of over 2 dozen species, complete with their special abilities.

Gwyn's Choice To Return To Solum And What It Means For Season 2

Can gwyndala save the vau'nakat's homeworld.

Gwyndala made the heartbreaking choice not to join her friends in Starfleet, after all. Instead, she decided to travel to Solum, her homeworld she has never been to, in the hopes that she can be a voice that argues for Starfleet and prevent civil war when First Contact with the Vau'Nakat happens. Gwyn is optimistic that her own experiences can be a harbinger of change for the Vau'Nakat. Gwyn also hopes to meet the younger version of her father, the Diviner, who is still alive in the Prime timeline. Gwyn lost the father she knew, but the Diviner sacrificing himself to save her confirmed that he really did love his "progeny."

Although Gwyn left her friends behind, she is, thankfully, still going to be part of Star Trek: Prodigy season 2, which will apparently follow Gwyn's journey to Solum to change the outcome of First Contact . Gwyn also promised Dal they'd see each other again, and they shared a sweet kiss that paid off their budding relationship since Star Trek: Prodigy began. However, Dal won't meet an older Gwyn in the alternate future where Chakotay is because Gwyn isn't on Solum in that timeline. It remains to be seen how and when Gwyn will be reunited with her friends in Star Trek: Prodigy season 2 . It's also possible Asencia will return in season 2 since she survived Star Trek: Prodigy season 1, and Admiral Janeway has a score to settle with her treasonous ex-Ensign as well.

Is That Tendi From Lower Decks In Star Trek: Prodigy?

Admiral janeway has "something bigger" that sets up star trek: prodigy season 2, janeway isn't flying another protostar class starship..

They may not be Starfleet Academy Cadets, but Dal, Rok-Tahk, Jankom Pog, Zero, and Murf were still deservedly welcomed by Starfleet as heroes as their individual character arcs were rewarded . Zero was given a new mechanical body to house his Medusan energy, Jankom showed Starfleet's engineers a trick or two, and Rok-Tahk met Starfleet scientist Lt. Commander MacDonald , played by Star Trek 's Science Advisor Dr. Erin MacDonald, which officially makes her a canonical character. After everything the kids endured aboard the Protostar, it was a joy to see them as part of Starfleet as they begin to grasp their unlimited potential.

After the kids watched Gwyn's starship depart for Solum, Admiral Janeway unveiled a new Protostar Class starship, which means it's no longer an experimental NX-class ship. However, the heroic teens won't be crewing a new Protostar because Janeway has "something bigger" in mind instead. This likely means Star Trek: Prodigy officially leaves the Protostar behind in season 2, which makes sense since Dal and his friends leveled up and are no longer "baby stars."

What Comes Next In Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2

Prodigy season 2 premieres on netflix in 2024.

Star Trek: Prodigy season 2 promises to be even more epic than season 1, and will touch upon every other Star Trek i n the franchise in some way. Already revealed about Star Trek: Prodigy season 2 is the arrival of The Doctor (Robert Picardo). Star Trek: Voyager 's former Emergency Medical Hologram takes charge of Dal and his friends to become their new mentor at the request of Admiral Janeway. The young warrant officers will join Janeway on her expedition to save Captain Chakotay, and they will do it in style aboard the brand-new, Lamarr Class USS Voyager-A. Janeway's second coming of Voyager will need all of its advanced technology for its time travel mission.

For Dal, Zero, Rok-Tahk, Murf, Jankom Pog, and Gwyn , Star Trek: Prodigy season 2 will immerse them into the greater world, and complications, of life in Starfleet. Star Trek: Prodigy season 2 will also feature callbacks and guest stars beyond Star Trek: Voyager , and time travel as an element of the next 20 episodes means Voyager-A could potentially visit different Star Trek eras as well. Star Trek: Prodigy season 2's finale will also wrap up the 40-episode saga of both seasons while leaving the door open for Star Trek: Prodigy season 3. Hopefully, the Netflix viewership will be sufficient to warrant season 3 and more.

Star Trek: Prodigy Season 1 is available to stream on Netflix. Star Trek: Prodigy season 2 premieres on Netflix in 2024.

The Conundrum of Engaging Younger Audiences with Star Trek

A midst attempts to rejuvenate its viewership, Star Trek is grappling with a generational engagement issue that has left its creators perplexed. The prevailing assumption among showrunners is that if the series portrayed younger protagonists, it would naturally attract a younger audience. Yet, Star Trek’s charm lies in its depiction of older, established characters whose deft expertise and strong moral compasses have captivated fans for generations. Introducing youthfulness into this equation seems counterintuitive to the series’ ethos. Star Trek thrives on depicting fully-realized adults at the pinnacle of their professions, not the coming-of-age tales of adolescents.

One example diverging from this pattern is “Prodigy”, a narrative centered on teenagers discovering Starfleet values through their experiences aboard the U.S.S. Protostar. This spin-off represented the franchise’s youthful venture before its untimely cancellation. The larger problem, however, stems from franchise decision-makers like Alex Kurtzman and Akiva Goldsman. They aimed to convert the traditionally niche and subdued Star Trek into a blockbuster saga rivaling Star Wars, but the plans didn’t quite materialize as expected.

The solution seems simple yet challenging: to return to the roots of what made Star Trek great. Embrace the intellectual, intricate, and unhurried storytelling that resonates with the inner nerd of both young and old. Though it might not command the highest ratings, such a strategy can cultivate a loyal fanbase that will endure for years to come.

FAQ about Star Trek’s Fanbase Dilemma

What is the main challenge facing the Star Trek franchise?

The main challenge is adapting the series to attract younger fans while staying true to the essence of Star Trek, which typically features mature characters who are experts in their fields.

Why doesn’t the idea of making a “younger” Star Trek seem to work?

Because this idea contradicts the foundational appeal of the franchise, which is less about youthful growth and more about seasoned professionals performing at the top of their game.

What example did the franchise attempt to attract a younger audience?

The series “Prodigy” was aimed at younger viewers by focusing on teenage characters in a distant part of the galaxy who learn Starfleet ideals through their journey on the U.S.S. Protostar.

What has been suggested as a solution to this problem?

It’s been suggested that the franchise should focus on creating high-quality, thoughtful, and slow-paced Star Trek content that appeals to intellectually curious audiences, rather than trying to mimic the widespread appeal of series like Star Wars.

The struggles of Star Trek to capture a newer, younger audience reflect broader challenges within the entertainment industry: how to honor a storied legacy while evolving to meet the tastes of new generations. While various strategies have been attempted, with varying degrees of success, the enduring solution may lie in the very qualities that have long defined the franchise. By emphasizing thoughtful storytelling, complex characters, and the imaginative exploration of ethical and philosophical dilemmas, Star Trek can continue to inspire legions of fans, both young and old. As the series voyages into unknown territories of television and streaming, it must do so with an awareness of its heritage and the unique interests of its multifaceted fanbase.

• April 4, 2024 | Recap/Review: ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Embraces Second Chances In “Under The Twin Moons”
• April 4, 2024 | Recap/Review: ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Returns With New Vitality And A Lore-Fueled Quest In “Red Directive”
• April 4, 2024 | Watch The ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Season 5 Premiere For Free On YouTube In USA
• April 3, 2024 | Paramount Reportedly Close To A Deal With Skydance
• April 3, 2024 | Zoe Saldana Is Still Holding Out Hope For ‘Star Trek 4’

‘Section 31’ Movie Director Says It’s A “Different” Star Trek + New Character Details Revealed

| April 1, 2024 | By: Anthony Pascale 48 comments so far

Last week we got some of the first details on the Star Trek: Section 31 streaming movie starring Michelle Yeoh, including the first image. We now have some commentary from the director as well as some detail on that first image, specifically the new character it features.

Director talks Section 31

Star Trek: Section 31 is being directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi who is also the producing director for Star Trek: Discovery . Over the weekend he attended a Wondercon screening of Discovery’s season 5 premiere (which he also directed) and during the follow-up panel discussion, he talked briefly about Section 31 .

The movie brings back Michelle Yeoh, who appeared in the first three seasons of Discovery . Her last episode (“Terra Firma, Part 2”) was shot in late 2019 and since that time she has appeared in several TV series and films, including her Oscar-winning role in Everything Everywhere All at Once . Osunsanmi talked about her returning to her Star Trek role of Emperor Georgiou for Section 31 , which began filming earlier this year:

“Michelle came in that very first scene that we shot and she just – it was like she had never left. It was incredible. Actually, that was literally what I told her, “Wow, it feels like we just stopped filming with you yesterday.” And so you know what happens in that very first scene is – oh wait, I can’t give that away. [laughs]”

Michelle Paradise and Olatunde Osunsanmi at Wondercon 2024 (TrekMovie)

Yeoh has described it as “ Mission: Impossible in space,” and likened the tone to the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. In the Variety piece last week, Section 31 screenwriter said “It was always my goal to deliver an entertaining experience that is true to the universe but appeals to newcomers. I wanted a low barrier of entry so that anybody could enjoy it.”  At Wondercon Osunsanmi also talked about how Section 31 fit in with other Trek shows and movies:

“All these Treks are a little bit different. This one is definitely different, but it’s still Trek and we just finished shooting just a week and a half ago. And it is awesome.”

The official synopsis describes the movie: “Emperor Philippa Georgiou, joins a secret division of Starfleet tasked with protecting the United Federation of Planets and faces the sins of her past.” Georgiou joined Section 31 in the second season of Discovery , but apparently how the infamous organization is portrayed is one of the ways the movie will be different. Executive producer Alex Kurtzman tells Den of Geek Magazine in a new interview, that Section 31 in the new movie is “very different” than the one seen in Discovery season 2, adding “We’re not just repeating the thing that we did already.”

New character details

Last week’s Variety article had a first-look image which we shared here as well . It showed Michelle Yeoh whispering to an interesting-looking character who we could only see from behind. Paramount has now released that image to the press with some extra details in the official caption. We now know the character is named “Dada Noe” and he is played by Joe Pingue.

Michelle Yeoh as Georgiou and Joe Pingue as Dada Noe in Star Trek: Section 31 (Jan Thijs/Paramount+)

We still don’t have any details on who “Dada Noe” is. Canadian actor Joe Pingue was not one of the names officially announced with other members of the cast when Section 31 started filming in January. However, he did get a mention from another member of the cast announcing the end of shooting in March. Pingue has dozens of credits, primarily guest star roles including on The Expanse and Suits , as well as recurring roles in Orphan Black and Station Eleven . Pingue shared the above image on his Instagram with the following message:

Last week we wrapped filming #section31 I can’t begin to describe what a trip it was to play in the Star Trek universe. For now, enjoy this first official image which features the real deal @michelleyeoh_official and my uh….backside. More love and stories to come. What a cracking still!

Dada Noe is only the second named character for Section 31, in addition to Georgiou. Last week it was revealed that Kacey Rohl is playing a younger Rachel Garrett , who will eventually meet her fate as captain of the Enterprise-C (from TNG “Yesterday’s Enterprise.”) There are eight more members of the cast in unknown roles: Omari Hardwick, Sam Richardson, Sven Ruygrok, Humberly Gonzalez, Robert Kazinsky, James Hiroyuki Liao, Miku Martineau, and Augusto Bitter.

Waiting on release date

There still isn’t a release date or timeframe for when Section 31 will arrive on Paramount+. The fifth and final season of Discovery wraps up at the end of May. And we just learned season 3 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds  is confirmed to be arriving in 2025 . With production already complete on Section 31 , it could be it arrives ahead of season 3 of Strange New Worlds , possibly even by the end of this year.

The fifth season of the adult animated series Lower Decks is expected to arrive later this year on Paramount+. And the second season of Star Trek: Prodigy will be released this year on Netflix as well. The new YA-focused live-action Starfleet Academy series doesn’t start shooting until late summer and may not arrive until 2026 .

Keep up with news for the  Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com .

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Dada Noe is a very Star Wars sounding name! Can’t wait for this movie, love Michelle Yeoh. Such charisma. I know a lot of people hate her character and call her “space hitler” but to me she was the best part of Discovery and the show suffered when she left.

I know a few people in real life with the name Noe.

Sounds like a Bond villain to me!

I’m very down for her. Yeah, I don’t like the character, but let’s see how it goes as a launch point. I think this might be good fodder for the campy style that they went with in the Mirror Universe.

Sounds like Data Node. Lol

I’m cautiously optimistic about the movie and while we know very little everything we have heard so far has been a positive for me at least.

And I just read another interview about it from Kurtzman who made clear it won’t be the Section 31 from Discovery which sounds to me we’re getting the original, more underground and secret version again. If so that’s amazing news.

Agreed. It has to be better than their configuration.

Yeah. Given the timeframe, this puts things in the 24th century again, circa 2320 or thereabouts. It’s not canon, but Garrett is supposed to be born around 2300; we do know she became captain of the 1701-C at some point prior to 2344, when the C vanished into the temporal rift into the ‘bad’ alternate 2366.

So if we have a younger Garrett in the show who’s in her twenties, she would be a junior officer, maybe just recently graduated from the Academy. And Section 31 would again be the shadowy organization we later see in DS9.

I’d be okay if in this era they were less evil. That might be a nice change of pace…

Ricky loves the headline! “…It’s A “Different” Star Trek…” – one nobody asked for! DISCUSS!

Stop. CLOSED

Guardians of the Galaxy? Oh, yikes. That’s actually the wrong vibe for a Section 31 movie. Section 31 are not the good guys.

It’s definitely the wrong tone. It should not be a comedy.

People like to laugh though.

Everything is not so black and white. Section 31 are the not so bad guys if they’re fighting against the real bad guys at their level to protect the real good guys, aka the Federation. Sometimes you need to break the rules for the greater good… The end justifies the means, depending on the end and the means.

Do you get to take up arms against the Union if the Confederate states had as their main principle that black men should all be free men? Because such a stand is ethically right, doesn’t that transcend government or conventional ‘sides?’ (i’m just paraphrasing an exchange from THE ANDERSONVILLE TRIAL, but you get the idea.)

The justification for every atrocity committed by tinpot despots throughout history. Who gets to decide where to draw those lines, let alone who the real good and bad guys are? You?

I’ll pass, thanks.

Which is why I tempered my statement with “depending on the end and the means”. The problem is the “bad” guys do whatever they need to to achieve their nefarious ends. Their potential for harm is unimpeded. If the “good” guys are stuck in red tape before they do anything, the bad guys are going to get their ways. Rules are made to be broken isn’t a cliché for nothing. Again depends which rules and when. “Who gets to decide where to draw those lines, let alone who the real good and bad guys are?” I completely agree.

That jumped out at me too. Why can’t the tone be Star Trek instead of a completely different franchise?

100% agree with you Trellium G. I very much don’t like it when they describe or pitch a new Star Trek production by comparing to a different franchise that isn’t Star Trek.

It’s very disappointing when you come to find out that the original concept for Star Trek Picard’s second season or the original script by Bob Orci for the third (Kelvinverse/JJ Abrams) Star Trek movie were rejected because they were “too Star Trekkie.” Can someone remind the people in charge that this IS Star Trek and not something else.

If someone wants to make Guardians of the Galaxy, then call up Disney and Marvel Studios and pitch them your idea for a new Guardians of the Galaxy movie.

As a general rule of thumb, Star Trek shouldn’t try to be something else that isn’t. Star Trek should be Star Trek. Inspiration can be drawn from great literary works or classic WWII films such as “Run Silent, Run Deep,” but Star Trek should not be copying or mimicking other franchises.

Hopefully Section 31 will be inspired or similar to Guardians of the Galaxy but not necessarily mimicking aspects of it, like we’ve seen the writers on Discovery, Picard, and even Strange New Worlds mimic other franchises.

ST has been apeing ‘star wars’ with the movies for years

“ I very much don’t like it when they describe or pitch a new Star Trek production by comparing to a different franchise that isn’t Star Trek. ”

In fairness, though, that’s not endemic to Star Trek. It’s been how Hollywood works since decades before Star Trek existed. At pitch meetings, writers will often describe new concepts in terms of other franchises. “It’s Murder She Wrote meets The Fugitive.” “It’s Indiana Jones, but with a Casablanca motif.” And so on. Heck, even Star Trek was sold to the networks with the phrase “It’s Wagon Train to the stars.” TV shows are created, pitched, and marketed by how similar they are to other shows. That has always happened and it will always happen. I have no issue with that since I see it all the time at work. What I ***do*** have an issue with is when the comparisons make no sense, as with Section 31 and the Guardians of the Galaxy. That just means the people involved don’t understand the property they’re writing.

The whole “Guardians Of The Galaxy” reference is meant to appeal to Guardian movie fans, nothing more. They want eyeballs in front of this film, period.

As much as I agree with this, that ship has sailed.

GoTG was about a bunch of outlaws and killers

Sounds pretty cool to me.

But does it sound like Star Trek?

People actually liked Guardians of the Galaxy. Don’t knock it.

When did I knock Guardians of the Galaxy? I didn’t.

Honestly? At this point it’s fine. What they did with it in Disco kind of ruined the mystery anyway, so just embrace it and let’s go have some fun.

I just hope it isn’t a “quippy” and “zippy” tone like every Marvel movie, where the characters are all sassy and sarcastic just for the sake of making the public laugh. Every time the writers at SH try to write quippy dialog, it’s just nauseating. Their jokes – not funny. “Yum yum” comes to mind.

Er… “new character details”? So… a name. For *one* character. And nothing else.

Looking forward to this – I’m still of the opinion that this is aimed squarely at the international market, so it’s natural for it to have a different look and feel. It’ll offend some sensibilities, they’ll just have to get over it.

As an international Trekkie I agree with this. This can be a possible gateway to the Asian market where Trek and even Star Wars are quite weak.

What exactly does “All these Treks are a little bit different. This one is definitely different, but it’s still Trek” mean? How is Section 31 different?

Does he mean different in the sense that the main cast are not members of Starfleet, or different is some other way, such as tone, pacing, and style? Star Trek: Prodigy’s first season, albeit intentionally aimed at younger audiences, was not based around a Starfleet crew.

I wonder why these current show runners feel the need to make all of these “different” Treks, instead of simply making just making good old-fashion Star Trek, like they’ve achieved with Strange New Worlds? Discovery and Picard (especially the first season of Picard) both felt so dark and unfamiliar to the Star Trek I grew up enjoying in the 90s and early 2000s. At first, I was not interested in a Section 31 series or movie, but the announcement that Kacey Rohl is playing a younger Rachel Garrett honestly has been intrigued.

I’ve always loved the Enterprise-C, Captain Garrett, and Lt. Richard Castillo, so anything that sheds a bit more light into the backstory of Captain Garrett definitely peeks my interest. I hope Section 31 won’t be too “different” and be a well-written enjoyable film. The fact that it will be a movie rather than tv series, has me hopeful that the story will be tight and well-paced rather than dragged out like Star Trek: Picard’s first two seasons were.

I agree that it’s annoying that every new creative direction the franchise takes is supposed to be “different” in the sense of trying to compare it to existing franchises. But in rare praise I’m about to give for Secret Hideout, I think they were right to do Discovery as this dark, action heavy, serialized show. The problem is that it wasn’t good, and the writing was terrible and the characters insufferable. I think if they had made good, interesting characters, good stories, like Battlestar Galactica, we would all be lauding it for updating the Trek formula for modern audiences. Instead we got schlock. At the same time, I don’t see why they would make five identical shows either, so yes, I think their approach is right to make different kinds of shows. I just wish at least one of them was good Star Trek like we all knew and loved.

I think Discovery was hampered somewhat by all the behind the scenes drama after Fuller left in season one. They were stuck with the creative decisions he made and had to make the best of it.

As for the complaints about every new creative direction being ‘different’ I see that as a positive. Would you prefer they just kept making all of the same type of show?

I love Michelle Yeoh, but I just have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of some sort of redemption arc for a character that pretty much made Darth Vader and Hitler look like boy scouts when it came to death count. Yeoh’s great performance aside, the character was written to comic book levels of evil in the beginning of the mirror universe storyline to make her a believable protaganist. And for the record, I was also always bothered with the redemption arc of Vader, the guy murdered billions but he gets to still go to Jedi Heaven because he tossed Palpatine down a giant shaft. Anyways, some of what is coming out of this production (bringing Rachel Garrett back e.g.) has me interested, so I wish nothing but the best for this production and look forward to seeing how they navigate Georgiou’s development.

Mirror universe Spock also got ‘red on his ledger’ but was redeemed as someone who could turn the Terran empire around.

I am fine with the idea of a redemption arc. Play it up as nature vs nurture and seed it over a long period of time where she starts to thaw but still has an edge – they did it with Seven, that’s a perfect template. Have her realize the merit of empathy and compassion and Starfleet values and form friendships beyond Burnham.

They did none of that. They had her act like she never wanted to be there, antagonize everyone, fixate on Burnham because she reminded her of hers, and then suddenly at the end she is redeemed and getting hugged because she can’t stay in the Prime Universe so far in the future. They practically gaslit the audience by saying she was on a redemption arc this whole time. Through sheer force of talent, Yeoh pulls off a lot in her last two episodes, but none of it was set up properly. All the time they wasted on her needling people or goofing off with Linus for some reason etc. Emperor Georgiou is Exhibit A when discussing how Discovery was muddling its way through things.

I always felt that for Vaders redemption, he was only redeemed in Luke’s eyes and not for the entire galaxy. Plus killing a tyrant emperor who is probably responsible for much more deaths than Vader should count for something.

We certainly need a different Star Trek. The same old Trek is pretty boring and will not generate new and younger fans. Thank goodness for Discovery, it made me a Trek fan again.

I saw TMP at 5 or 6 years old and that was what made me a lifelong fan. That movie got me interested in TOS and then every show and movie that followed until the current version of Trek happened. I mean, I’m still a Star Trek fan, but the newer stuff seems like it is trying to be everything except Star Trek. Just my opinion.

I hope this is good. I love Michelle Yeoh. The one thing that’s encouraging is that it’s not intersecting with eras previously explored. Does this mean we get the monster maroons???

While I’m looking forward to this, I’m tiring of the “this is an [even more!] different Trek.” Arguably, the two most successful Kurtzman-era Trek productions, Picard Season 3 and Strange New Worlds, have returned in large part to proven formulas that bring old fans back en masse while attracting new fans (as evidenced by my 13 and 12-year old boys).

Why do different?

I think this in large part of Academy, the Trek show no one asked for, while there’s a literal campaign to do Legacy. Trek leads say it’s all about the fans while ignoring, in large part, what the fans want.

Some fans seem to think they can turn these shows around at the snap of a finger. That once an idea is trending they should just drop what they are doing and chase that instead. Academy was simply further along in development and made it to production. Maybe being able to reuse some of the sets from Discovery also makes it cheaper. The main barrier to a Legacy show right now seems to be Paramount and their financial difficulties.

My guess would be Thanksgiving 2024 for its release. (Unless Yellowstone is ready first.)

I hope that I will enjoy this. I was not a big fan of Emperor Georgiou or the writers making Section 31 into a mainstream part of Starfleet Intelligence. Also, please don’t have Garrett or anyone else know of her fate on the Enterprise-C.

'Star Trek: Discovery' opens its 5th and final season in unremarkable fashion (Red Directive recap)

Hello smartmatter, my old friend, I've come to watch you once again. Because no item is impossible, it makes the story unbelievable... ♬

Warning: Spoilers ahead for "Star Trek: Discovery" season 5, episode 1

Well, here we are. Again. It's the fifth and final time around for "Star Trek: Discovery" and the single biggest question every sci-fan will be asking themselves is, will this season actually be any good. The tragic thing is, no one can really remember what happened in season 4 and that speaks directly to the fact that "Discovery" is not exactly a high-scoring show when it comes to rewatchability.

It's been two years and two weeks, give or take a day, since we last saw the crew of the USS Discovery risk everything to save all life in the universe, again. During that time, we've seen a lot of sci-fi, both awesome and awful, including two seasons of " Picard " and " Strange New Worlds ," the third and final season of " The Orville ," season 1 of " Andor ," "The Book of Boba Fett," "Ahsoka" and the less said about "Obi-Wan Kenobi," the better. If you're wondering where to see all that Trek, check out our Star Trek streaming guide for Paramount Plus and more.

Not to mention, the vastly underrated second season of "Invasion" and "Halo" seasons 1 and 2, plus, the first mind-blowing season of "Silo" the second and sadly last season of " Avenue 5 " and two seasons of " For All Mankind ." The point is that the standard has, for the most part, been refreshingly high. And frankly before we even get into season 5 of "Discovery," it's worth remembering that what executive producers and showrunners Alex Kurtzman  and Michelle Paradise have given us up until now, has not exactly been a consistently high quality of sci-fi writing. In fact, it's been rather disappointing.

Related: 5 things Star Trek: Discovery season 5 needs to fix

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Are we in-store for another cookie-cutter season of what's-in-the-box plot threads that deliver misdirected build ups with unsatisfying pay offs...you know like we have for the past two seasons plus all three seasons of "Picard"..? Even "Andor," despite its peak and trough-style of repetitive set-piece storytelling, was impressive and that was down to how well those set pieces had been fleshed out along with well written character development and dialogue. Less can very easily be so much more. 

Moreover, now we're in the 32nd century and we've seen that transporter technology can be used to replace stairs and even change outfits, so to be perfectly honest, there really isn't a single story idea that cannot be solved by a simple combination of transporter and replicator technology. Not to mention smartmatter. Ah, hello smartmatter, my old friend. Because this is what happens when you throw three seasons of a "Star Trek" series 1,164 years into the future.

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Regardless, it would seem that within the story, between four and six months have passed since the events of last season , where you may remember, the United Federation of Planets was desperately trying to save all life as we know from being accidentally exterminated by species 10-C, all while Ruon Tarka (Shawn Doyle) was still hell bent on using the illudium Q-36 explosive space modulator to destroy the dark matter anomaly. Book (David Ajala) gets killed when his ship explodes then bought back to life before he faces repercussions for siding with Tarka. General Ndoye (Phumzile Sitole) seems to get away scot-free despite sabotaging the Discovery's warp drive and everyone lives happily ever after. 

 —   Watch the bittersweet trailer for 'Star Trek: Discovery's final season (video)

 —  'Spaceman' sees Adam Sandler shine as a cosmonaut in crisis in Netflix's somber sci-fi film (review)

—  Star Trek's Seven of Nine returns in new novel 'Picard: Firewall' (exclusive)

Coming in at nearly 60 minutes long, the premiere episode is titled "Red Directive" and drops at the same time as the second episode, entitled "Under The Twin Moons." Michelle Paradise wrote the former, which could explain why it's so dull, and Olatunde Osunsanmi directed. The latter was written by Alan B. McElroy and directed by Douglas Aarniokoski, so fingers the second installment might be a bit better. Aarniokoski directed the season 3 premiere episode of "Picard" and while the rest of that was a disappointing, drawn out, nostalgia-fueled, 10-episode long epilogue to another series that ended three decades ago, the premiere installment was actually okay. 

The gang seems mostly all here, including Lt. Tilly (Mary Wiseman) and Adira (Blu del Barrio) and there are some characters who don't seem to have made it back, some of whom will be very much missed, like Grudge, while others won't be. No sign of Zora yet either. It's also entirely likely that the amazing talents of Callum Keith Rennie, who plays a Starfleet Captain named Rayner, will be spectacularly underused, much like Todd Stashwick was in season 3 of "Picard."

Credit to the production team though, as they're are really making the most of their Volume-esque video wall soundstage. There are a couple of interesting choices in terms of editing, much like there were in the second season premiere where Alex Kurtzman showed us what he'd learned in the Vince Gilligan School of Cinematography. It's doubtful we'll ever see them again, just like we didn't before. 

To conclude then, the opening episode of the final season "Star Trek: Discovery" is a far, far cry from strong openings that this show has demonstrated it's capable of in the past. And that's a sentence we've had to write far too many times. The TNG throwback right at the end is...well, disappointing, mostly because of the extent that nostalgic fan service has been dialed up since the first episode of Nu-Trek aired in September 2017. However, it could still provide an interesting story thread — we will just have to wait and see.

The fifth and final season of "Star Trek: Discovery" and every episode of every "Star Trek" show — with the exception of "Star Trek: Prodigy" — currently streams exclusively on Paramount Plus in the US while "Prodigy" has found a new home o n Netflix.  

Internationally, the shows are available on Paramount Plus in Australia, Latin America, the UK and South Korea, as well as on Pluto TV in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland on the Pluto TV Sci-Fi channel. They also stream on Paramount Plus in Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. In Canada, they air on Bell Media's CTV Sci-Fi Channel and stream on Crave.

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When Scott's application to the NASA astronaut training program was turned down, he was naturally upset...as any 6-year-old boy would be. He chose instead to write as much as he possibly could about science, technology and space exploration. He graduated from The University of Coventry and received his training on Fleet Street in London. He still hopes to be the first journalist in space.

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Star Trek: Discovery is cracking open a box Next Gen closed on purpose

The USS Discovery is on a mad chase across the galaxy for one of Star Trek’s biggest secrets

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Calling back to a single 30-year-old episode of television is a time-honored Star Trek tradition , one that’s led the franchise to some of its most fascinating detours. And in its two-episode season premiere, Star Trek: Discovery seems to be kicking off an entire season calling back to one particular episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation .

And not just any episode! The 1993 installment of Next Gen in question delivered a revelation so seemingly earth-shaking that it should have rewritten galactic politics on a massive scale. But then, as was the way in the 1990s era of episodic TV, nobody ever mentioned it again.

At least until now.

[ Ed. note: This piece contains spoilers for the first two episodes of Star Trek: Discovery season 5.]

Writer Michelle Paradise and director Olatunde Osunsanmi lay out the connection at the end of the first of two episodes released this week, “Red Directive.” Discovery’s mission is to follow a series of ancient clues leading to a cache of ancient technology, and to get there before a couple of professional thieves, Moll (Eve Harlow) and L’ak (Elias Toufexis), do.

The technology, as Doctor Kovich (David Cronenberg) explains, belongs to the so-called Progenitors, a barely understood ancient spacefaring species that “created life as we know it […] every humanoid species in the galaxy.” Presumably such tech holds the key to understanding how the Progenitors did that, and how that power could be used again.

The Progenitors are from the Star Trek episode “The Chase”

Kovich also calls up a helpful video presentation of the moment the Progenitors were discovered by an assembled group of Federation, Klingon, Romulan, and Cardassian captains, including Jean-Luc Picard. But you don’t have to be a Star Trek lore nerd to know you’re actually just looking at clips from an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation .

Specifically, from the 20th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation ’s sixth season, “The Chase,” in which Picard and crew discover pieces of a computer program hidden inside the DNA of species from dozens of different planets. Questions abound: What does the program do? And what kind of entity could have been so ancient and powerful that it had determined the genetic legacy of most of the known galaxy before sentient life had even evolved here — and then left no trace of its existence except the genetic codes themselves?

In a nutshell, the mysterious death of Captain Picard’s old archeology professor (did you know that if he hadn’t gone into Starfleet, Jean-Luc was studying to be a space archeologist? Well, now you do) sets the captain and the Enterprise on a search for the missing DNA fragments necessary to complete his unfinished work.

The action of the episode becomes a grand chase, as Klingon and Cardassian captains come to believe the program must be a great weapon or dangerous secret. Eventually Picard and his rivals all discover the lonely planet with the final DNA strain — and when they get there, some Romulans who’ve been secretly following all of them show up, too, just to make things even more tense.

In the end, the program isn’t a weapon or a secret, but a message from an ancient race of humanoids that apparently created sentient life in our galaxy as we know it.

Actor Salome Jens appears as a Progenitor hologram, and delivers a speech that’s stirring by any standard of Star Trek monologues, telling the story of a race of sentients that took to the stars and found them empty. They had evolved too early to meet other forms of sentient life, and knew that their time was too limited to ever expect to.

“We knew that one day we would be gone; that nothing of us would survive, so we left you,” Jens’ Progenitor explains. The Progenitors seeded humanoid life across the galaxy in their own image; life that tended to evolve into bipedal, tailless, largely hairless creatures with two eyes and two arms and five fingers on each hand. And they left clues in the genetic signature of their work, broken up among the stars.

Wait, was this really all about lampshading the limits of Star Trek’s alien design?

Kinda, yes! The writers of “The Chase,” Ron Moore and Joe Menosky, were inspired by elements of Carl Sagan’s Contact , but also by Menosky’s pet fascination creating an in-universe explanation for why all the common alien species in Star Trek are basically shaped like humans (albeit with latex on their faces).

In other hands, it would be hokey and trite, but even under heavy makeup, Jens sells the hell out of her single scene on voice and stance alone — it’s no wonder she was asked back to the Trek fold to play a major antagonist role in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine .

“It was our hope that you would have to come together in fellowship and companionship to hear this message, and if you can see and hear me, our hope has been fulfilled,” the Progenitor hologram concludes, with gentle compassion. “You are a monument, not to our greatness, but to our existence. That was our wish: That you, too, would know life. [...] There is something of us in each of you, and so something of you in each other.”

But though “The Chase” carried a sweeping revelation, nothing ever really panned out from it. You’d think that a message of togetherness that fundamentally rewrote the origin of life in the universe would have to have tweaked Star Trek’s galactic politics a bit, right? Seems like this would give the Star Trek setting a radically different understanding of the origins of life than we have in the real world — this is literally intelligent design! At the very least there’d be some other characters talking about how humans and Vulcans, Klingons and Romulans and Ferengi and Cardassians and Trill and Bajorans, all share the same genetic ancestor.

But nope: The Pandora’s box of Progenitor lore remained closed. Gene Roddenberry’s successor and Trek producer Rick Berman seems to have been disenchanted with the episode’s reveal — and you can’t really blame him for not wanting to rock the whole cosmology of Star Trek in an episode that’s mostly about explaining how if you turn the DNA snippets like this they make a cool spiral. Now look at this computer screen with the spiral :

Except now, Star Trek: Discovery is opening the box and rocking the boat. This new mad, puzzle-box chase around the galaxy promises to expand on the Progenitors, an idea so big that not even The Next Generation was willing to touch it. It’s a tall order, but Discovery has never been more free to shake up Star Trek continuity than it is right now — we’ll have to wait for more episodes of the show’s final season to find out how free it intends to be.

Star Trek: Discovery is finally free to do whatever it wants

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The Future of ‘Star Trek’: From ‘Starfleet Academy’ to New Movies and Michelle Yeoh, How the 58-Year-Old Franchise Is Planning for the Next Generation of Fans

“I can’t believe I get to play the captain of the Enterprise.”

“Strange New Worlds” is the 12th “Star Trek” TV show since the original series debuted on NBC in 1966, introducing Gene Roddenberry’s vision of a hopeful future for humanity. In the 58 years since, the “Star Trek” galaxy has logged 900 television episodes and 13 feature films, amounting to 668 hours — nearly 28 days — of content to date. Even compared with “Star Wars” and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, “Star Trek” stands as the only storytelling venture to deliver a single narrative experience for this long across TV and film.

In other words, “Star Trek” is not just a franchise. As Alex Kurtzman , who oversees all “Star Trek” TV production, puts it, “‘Star Trek’ is an institution.”

Without a steady infusion of new blood, though, institutions have a way of fading into oblivion (see soap operas, MySpace, Blockbuster Video). To keep “Star Trek” thriving has meant charting a precarious course to satisfy the fans who have fueled it for decades while also discovering innovative ways to get new audiences on board.

“Doing ‘Star Trek’ means that you have to deliver something that’s entirely familiar and entirely fresh at the same time,” Kurtzman says.

The franchise has certainly weathered its share of fallow periods, most recently after “Nemesis” bombed in theaters in 2002 and UPN canceled “Enterprise” in 2005. It took 12 years for “Star Trek” to return to television with the premiere of “Discovery” in 2017; since then, however, there has been more “Star Trek” on TV than ever: The adventure series “Strange New Worlds,” the animated comedy “Lower Decks” and the kids series “Prodigy” are all in various stages of production, and the serialized thriller “Picard” concluded last year, when it ranked, along with “Strange New Worlds,” among Nielsen’s 10 most-watched streaming original series for multiple weeks. Nearly one in five Paramount+ subscribers in the U.S. is watching at least one “Star Trek” series, according to the company, and more than 50% of fans watching one of the new “Trek” shows also watch at least two others. The new shows air in 200 international markets and are dubbed into 35 languages. As “Discovery” launches its fifth and final season in April, “Star Trek” is in many ways stronger than it’s ever been.

“’Star Trek’s fans have kept it alive more times than seems possible,” says Eugene Roddenberry, Jr., who executive produces the TV series through Roddenberry Entertainment. “While many shows rightfully thank their fans for supporting them, we literally wouldn’t be here without them.”

But the depth of fan devotion to “Star Trek” also belies a curious paradox about its enduring success: “It’s not the largest fan base,” says Akiva Goldsman, “Strange New Worlds” executive producer and co-showrunner. “It’s not ‘Star Wars.’ It’s certainly not Marvel.”

When J.J. Abrams rebooted “Star Trek” in 2009 — with Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and Zoe Saldaña playing Kirk, Spock and Uhura — the movie grossed more than any previous “Star Trek” film by a comfortable margin. But neither that film nor its two sequels broke $500 million in global grosses, a hurdle every other top-tier franchise can clear without breaking a sweat.

There’s also the fact that “Star Trek” fans are aging. I ask “The Next Generation” star Jonathan Frakes, who’s acted in or directed more versions of “Star Trek” than any other person alive, how often he meets fans for whom the new “Star Trek” shows are their first. “Of the fans who come to talk to me, I would say very, very few,” he says. “‘Star Trek’ fans, as we know, are very, very, very loyal — and not very young.”

As Stapf puts it: “There’s a tried and true ‘Trek’ fan that is probably going to come to every ‘Star Trek,’ no matter what it is — and we want to expand the universe.”

Every single person I spoke to for this story talked about “Star Trek” with a joyful earnestness as rare in the industry as (nerd alert) a Klingon pacifist.

“When I’m meeting fans, sometimes they’re coming to be confirmed, like I’m kind of a priest,” Ethan Peck says during a break in filming on the “Strange New Worlds” set. He’s in full Spock regalia — pointy ears, severe eyebrows, bowl haircut — and when asked about his earliest memories of “Star Trek,” he stares off into space in what looks like Vulcan contemplation. “I remember being on the playground in second or third grade and doing the Vulcan salute, not really knowing where it came from,” he says. “When I thought of ‘Star Trek,’ I thought of Spock. And now I’m him. It’s crazy.”

To love “Star Trek” is to love abstruse science and cowboy diplomacy, complex moral dilemmas and questions about the meaning of existence. “It’s ultimately a show with the most amazing vision of optimism, I think, ever put on-screen in science fiction,” says Kurtzman, who is 50. “All you need is two minutes on the news to feel hopeless now. ‘Star Trek’ is honestly the best balm you could ever hope for.”

I’m getting a tour of the USS Enterprise from Scotty — or, rather, “Strange New World” production designer Jonathan Lee, who is gushing in his native Scottish burr as we step into the starship’s transporter room. “I got such a buzzer from doing this, I can’t tell you,” he says. “I actually designed four versions of it.”

Lee is especially proud of the walkway he created to run behind the transporter pads — an innovation that allows the production to shoot the characters from a brand-new set of angles as they beam up from a far-flung planet. It’s one of the countless ways that this show has been engineered to be as cinematic as possible, part of Kurtzman’s overall vision to make “Star Trek” on TV feel like “a movie every week.”

Kurtzman’s tenure with “Star Trek” began with co-writing the screenplay for Abrams’ 2009 movie, which was suffused with a fast-paced visual style that was new to the franchise. When CBS Studios approached Kurtzman in the mid-2010s about bringing “Star Trek” back to TV, he knew instinctively that it needed to be just as exciting as that film.

“The scope was so much different than anything we had ever done on ‘Next Gen,’” says Frakes, who’s helmed two feature films with the “Next Generation” cast and directed episodes of almost every live-action “Trek” TV series, including “Discovery” and “Strange New Worlds.” “Every department has the resources to create.”

A new science lab set for Season 3, for example, boasts a transparent floor atop a four-foot pool of water that swirls underneath the central workbench, and the surrounding walls sport a half dozen viewscreens with live schematics custom designed by a six-person team. “I like being able to paint on a really big canvas,” Kurtzman says. “The biggest challenge is always making sure that no matter how big something gets, you’re never losing focus on that tiny little emotional story.”

At this point, is there a genre that “Strange New Worlds” can’t do? “As long as we’re in storytelling that is cogent and sure handed, I’m not sure there is,” Goldsman says with an impish smile. “Could it do Muppets? Sure. Could it do black and white, silent, slapstick? Maybe!”

This approach is also meant to appeal to people who might want to watch “Star Trek” but regard those 668 hours of backstory as an insurmountable burden. “You shouldn’t have to watch a ‘previously on’ to follow our show,” Myers says.

To achieve so many hairpin shifts in tone and setting while maintaining Kurtzman’s cinematic mandate, “Strange New Worlds” has embraced one of the newest innovations in visual effects: virtual production. First popularized on the “Star Wars” series “The Mandalorian,” the technology — called the AR wall — involves a towering circular partition of LED screens projecting a highly detailed, computer-generated backdrop. Rather than act against a greenscreen, the actors can see whatever fantastical surroundings their characters are inhabiting, lending a richer level of verisimilitude to the show.

But there is a catch. While the technology is calibrated to maintain a proper sense of three-dimensional perspective through the camera lens, it can be a bit dizzying for anyone standing on the set. “The images on the walls start to move in a way that makes no sense,” says Mount. “You end up having to focus on something that’s right in front of you so you don’t fall down.”

And yet, even as he’s talking about it, Mount can’t help but break into a boyish grin. “Sometimes we call it the holodeck,” he says. In fact, the pathway to the AR wall on the set is dotted with posters of the virtual reality room from “The Next Generation” and the words “Enter Holodeck” in a classic “Trek” font.

“I want to take one of those home with me,” Peck says. Does the AR wall also affect him? “I don’t really get disoriented by it. Spock would not get ill, so I’m Method acting.”

I’m on the set of the “Star Trek” TV movie “Section 31,” seated in an opulent nightclub with a view of a brilliant, swirling nebula, watching Yeoh rehearse with director Olatunde Osunsanmi and her castmates. Originally, the project was announced as a TV series centered on Philippa Georgiou, the semi-reformed tyrant Yeoh originated on “Discovery.” But between COVID delays and the phenomenon of “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” there wasn’t room in the veteran actress’s schedule to fit a season of television. Yeoh was undaunted.

“We’d never let go of her,” she says of her character. “I was just blown away by all the different things I could do with her. Honestly, it was like, ‘Let’s just get it done, because I believe in this.’”

If that means nothing to you, don’t worry: The enormity of the revelation that Garrett is being brought back is meant only for fans. If you don’t know who the character is, you’re not missing anything.

“It was always my goal to deliver an entertaining experience that is true to the universe but appeals to newcomers,” says screenwriter Craig Sweeny. “I wanted a low barrier of entry so that anybody could enjoy it.”

Nevertheless, including Garrett on the show is exactly the kind of gasp-worthy detail meant to flood “Star Trek” fans with geeky good feeling.

“You cannot create new fans to the exclusion of old fans,” Kurtzman says. “You must serve your primary fan base first and you must keep them happy. That is one of the most important steps to building new fans.”

On its face, that maxim would make “Section 31” a genuine risk. The titular black-ops organization has been controversial with “Star Trek” fans since it was introduced in the 1990s. “The concept is almost antagonistic to some of the values of ‘Star Trek,’” Sweeny says. But he still saw “Section 31” as an opportunity to broaden what a “Star Trek” project could be while embracing the radical inclusivity at the heart of the franchise’s appeal.

“Famously, there’s a spot for everybody in Roddenberry’s utopia, so I was like, ‘Well, who would be the people who don’t quite fit in?’” he says. “I didn’t want to make the John le Carré version, where you’re in the headquarters and it’s backbiting and shades of gray. I wanted to do the people who were at the edges, out in the field. These are not people who necessarily work together the way you would see on a ‘Star Trek’ bridge.”

For Osunsanmi, who grew up watching “The Next Generation” with his father, it boils down to a simple question: “Is it putting good into the world?” he asks. “Are these characters ultimately putting good into the world? And, taking a step back, are we putting good into the world? Are we inspiring humans watching this to be good? That’s for me what I’ve always admired about ‘Star Trek.’”

Should “Section 31” prove successful, Yeoh says she’s game for a sequel. And Kurtzman is already eyeing more opportunities for TV movies, including a possible follow-up to “Picard.” The franchise’s gung-ho sojourn into streaming movies, however, stands in awkward contrast to the persistent difficulty Paramount Pictures and Abrams’ production company Bad Robot have had making a feature film following 2016’s “Star Trek Beyond” — the longest theaters have gone without a “Star Trek” movie since Paramount started making them.

First, a movie reuniting Pine’s Capt. Kirk with his late father — played in the 2009 “Star Trek” by Chris Hemsworth — fell apart in 2018. Around the same time, Quentin Tarantino publicly flirted with, then walked away from, directing a “Star Trek” movie with a 1930s gangster backdrop. Noah Hawley was well into preproduction on a “Star Trek” movie with a brand-new cast, until then-studio chief Emma Watts abruptly shelved it in 2020. And four months after Abrams announced at Paramount’s 2022 shareholders meeting that his 2009 cast would return for a movie directed by Matt Shakman (“WandaVision”), Shakman left the project to make “The Fantastic Four” for Marvel. (It probably didn’t help that none of the cast had been approached before Abrams made his announcement.)

The studio still intends to make what it’s dubbed the “final chapter” for the Pine-Quinto-Saldaña cast, and Steve Yockey (“The Flight Attendant”) is writing a new draft of the script. Even further along is another prospective “Star Trek” film written by Seth Grahame-Smith (“Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”) and to be directed by Toby Haynes (“Andor,” “Black Mirror: USS Callister”) that studio insiders say is on track to start preproduction by the end of the year. That project will serve as an origin story of sorts for the main timeline of the entire franchise. In both cases, the studio is said to be focused on rightsizing the budgets to fit within the clear box office ceiling for “Star Trek” feature films.

Far from complaining, everyone seems to relish the challenge. Visual effects supervisor Jason Zimmerman says that “working with Alex, the references are always at least $100 million movies, if not more, so we just kind of reverse engineer how do we do that without having to spend the same amount of money and time.”

The workload doesn’t seem to faze him either. “Visual effects people are a big, big ‘Star Trek’ fandom,” he says. “You naturally just get all these people who go a little bit above and beyond, and you can’t trade that for anything.”

In one of Kurtzman’s several production offices in Toronto, he and production designer Matthew Davies are scrutinizing a series of concept drawings for the newest “Star Trek” show, “Starfleet Academy.” A bit earlier, they showed me their plans for the series’ central academic atrium, a sprawling, two-story structure that will include a mess hall, amphitheater, trees, catwalks, multiple classrooms and a striking view of the Golden Gate Bridge in a single, contiguous space. To fit it all, they plan to use every inch of Pinewood Toronto’s 45,900 square foot soundstage, the largest in Canada.

But this is a “Star Trek” show, so there do need to be starships, and Kurtzman is discussing with Davies about how one of them should look. The issue is that “Starfleet Academy” is set in the 32nd century, an era so far into the future Kurtzman and his team need to invent much of its design language.

“For me, this design is almost too Klingon,” Kurtzman says. “I want to see the outline and instinctively, on a blink, recognize it as a Federation ship.”

The time period was first introduced on Season 3 of “Discovery,” when the lead character, Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), transported the namesake starship and its crew there from the 23rd century. “It was exciting, because every time we would make a decision, we would say, ‘And now that’s canon,’” says Martin-Green.

“We listened to a lot of it,” Kurtzman says. “I think I’ve been able to separate the toxic fandom from really true fans who love ‘Star Trek’ and want you to hear what they have to say about what they would like to see.”

By Season 2, the “Discovery” writers pivoted from its dour, war-torn first season and sent the show on its trajectory 900-plus years into the future. “We had to be very aware of making sure that Spock was in the right place and that Burnham’s existence was explained properly, because she was never mentioned in the original series,” says executive producer and showrunner Michelle Paradise. “What was fun about jumping into the future is that it was very much fresh snow.”

That freedom affords “Starfleet Academy” far more creative latitude while also dramatically reducing how much the show’s target audience of tweens and teens needs to know about “Star Trek” before watching — which puts them on the same footing as the students depicted in the show. “These are kids who’ve never had a red alert before,” Noga Landau, executive producer and co-showrunner, says. “They never had to operate a transporter or be in a phaser fight.”

In the “Starfleet Academy” writers’ room in Secret Hideout’s Santa Monica offices, Kurtzman tells the staff — a mix of “Star Trek” die-hards, part-time fans and total newbies — that he wants to take a 30,000-foot view for a moment. “I think we need to ground in science more throughout the show,” he says, a giant framed photograph of Spock ears just over his shoulder. “The kids need to use science more to solve problems.”

Immediately, one of the writers brightens. “Are you saying we can amp up the techno-babble?” she says. “I’m just excited I get to use my computer science degree.”

After they break for lunch, Kurtzman is asked how much longer he plans to keep making “Star Trek.” 

“The minute I fall out of love with it is the minute that it’s not for me anymore. I’m not there yet,” he says. “To be able to build in this universe to tell stories that are fundamentally about optimism and a better future at a time when the world seems to be falling apart — it’s a really powerful place to live every day.”

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Why Star Trek: Discovery Chose That Classic Next Gen Storyline To Explore In Its Final Season

Shields up! This article contains major spoilers for the season 5 premiere of "Star Trek: Discovery."

Who knew that "Star Trek: Discovery" would be saving its biggest reveal for last? After being responsible for kickstarting the new era of "Trek" on streaming , the fifth and final season is signaling the beginning of the end for the flagship series. But as fans would expect, the opening episode proves the writing team has no intentions of taking its final bow without crafting one last adventure worthy of Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), Mr. Saru (Doug Jones), and the rest of the Discovery crew. (For more on that, you can check out /Film's "Discovery" season 5 premiere review by Jacob Hall here .) So perhaps it was inevitable that the biggest twist of the young season would have its roots in one of the most game-changing hours of "Trek" lore ever.

Trekkies will no doubt remember the classic "Next Generation" episode "The Chase," which first introduced the extinct race known as the Progenitors. Responsible for seeding humanoid life throughout the galaxy, these ancient beings were meant as an in-universe explanation for why almost every alien race encountered by Starfleet looked mostly like, well, ourselves ... give or take a few random ridges on foreheads and such. This also had the side effect of linking even the biggest enemies — humans, Romulans, Cardassians, and even Klingons alike — on a foundational genetic level.

"The Next Generation" mostly breezes past this revelation and reverts to business as usual in later episodes, despite the startling implications, so leave it to "Discovery" to pick up this major dangling thread and weave it into the fabric of this new season. At the season 5 world premiere, producer Michelle Paradise addressed why the show's creatives went back to this  storyline in particular.

'Huge ideas and huge themes'

How do you raise the stakes even higher than the time-traveling shenanigans of "Discovery" season 2, the mysterious dilithium "Burn" of season 3 that caused the breakdown of Starfleet, and the impossibly advanced species of extraterrestrials that put the entire galaxy at risk in season 4? Well, going all the way back to the origin of life as we know it is definitely one way to get the job done and end things with a bang.

It took until the closing moments of the season 5 premiere for the full picture (or part of it, at least) to round into shape, but what a twist it is! As it turns out, the pair of scavengers who absconded with an item of top priority to Starfleet couldn't have possibly picked a more important piece of "Trek" lore: the leftover Progenitor tech that helped them create humanoid life in the first place. So why tie things back to that underrated "The Next Generation" episode , of all things? At the SXSW premiere of "Discovery," producer Michelle Paradise had this to say:

"'The Chase' is an episode that had stuck with many of us because it addresses such huge ideas and huge themes. Where do we come from, the creation of life. And then it was this one episode, and then that was it [...] And it just left us with many, many questions."

That's putting it mildly. Even for a sci-fi franchise like "Star Trek," those are some incredibly heady ideas to attempt to tackle. It's one thing for a random episode in the early 1990s to suddenly establish such a massive change to canon. It's quite another for "Discovery" to double down. According to Paradise, however, this was done with character and theme in mind.

Tackling the big questions

Arguably more than any other ongoing series, "Discovery" has always worn its heart on its sleeve. That doesn't appear to be changing in season 5, but it's only fitting that the final adventure for this cast digs deeper into the psyches of the characters than it ever has before. The biggest question on the minds of the creative team, as it turns out, revolved around ideas of meaning and purpose for Burnham, Saru, and all the rest. According to Michelle Paradise, those are existential topics that translate naturally from the events of "The Chase," set hundreds and hundreds of years before the future timeline of this current season of "Discovery." She went on to say:

"And so when we were thinking about this season in particular and what we were going to be doing thematically and our characters looking at questions of meaning, questions of purpose. It felt like that was a really great place to go back to as a launching point for this adventure and that it was going to have that resonance."

For a crew that's been stranded in the future and cut off from everyone they used to know, these are poignant issues that previous seasons of "Discovery" have sought to explore. After having rebuilt Starfleet to something close to its former glory and putting the officers of the Discovery through the wringer, the rest of season 5 is now primed and ready to push these characters where they have never gone before.

New episodes of "Star Trek: Discovery" season 5 premiere on Paramount+ every Thursday.