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Star Trek: Prodigy, on Paramount+ & Nickelodeon (s1) / Netflix (s2)
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Caution: spoilers.

This CGI series started in 2021, airing first on Paramount+ and later on Nickelodeon. It was cancelled by Paramount+ after the first season, and the second season premiered on Netflix, which is where I first watched the series in 2025. It's aimed more at kids than adults, and it took me awhile to get into it, but I think it got better as the story progressed, and the situation became more serious.

Season One
It takes place in 2383, five years after the end of the live-action series Star Trek: Voyager. The story begins in a prison/mining colony in the Delta Quadrant, called Tars Lamora, which is overseen by someone called the Diviner (voiced by John Noble). He has a teenage daughter named Gwyndala (Ella Purnell), or "Gwyn" for short, whom he refers to as his "progeny". There's also a teenage prisoner named Dal R'El (Brett Gray), who has no idea where he's from or what species he is. The Diviner is searching for a lost Federation starship, a prototype called the Protostar, which has an experimental "proto-warp" drive, which allows the ship to make incredibly fast jumps through space. One day, Dal and a young (but large and rocky) prisoner named Rok-Tahk (Rylee Alazraqui) discover the Protostar deep within the mines. They're joined by a Medusan prisoner named Zero (Angus Imrie) and a teenage Tellarite prisoner named Jankom Pog (Jason Mantzoukas). The ship's universal translator allows them all to understand one another's languages for the first time. They're pursued by Gwyn and a robotic enforcer called Drednok, and they end up taking Gwyn hostage and escaping on the Protostar. For much of the season, they will be pursued by the Diviner and Drednok. Meanwhile, they have random adventures on different planets, as they get to know each other better and take on different positions on the ship. Dal basically declares himself captain, and the others more or less go along with it. Jankom becomes the engineer, Rok becomes a science officer, and I'm not sure about Zero. (Maybe they're a helmsman/tactical officer, or something.) Before too long, they free Gwyn and she becomes part of the crew, as well. They also receive guidance from a hologram of Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew, reprising her role from "Voyager"). And there's a blob-like creature called Murf (Dee Bradley Baker), who becomes a sort of pet, but later in the season becomes the security officer (despite seemingly being non-intelligent).

The crew decide they want to find and join Starfleet. Meanwhile, the real Vice Admiral Janeway, now commanding the Dauntless, learns of the Protostar's re-emergence after having been lost. It had been captained by her former first officer on Voyager, Chakotay, and she's eager to find him as well as the starship. So she and her crew pursue the Protostar throughout the season. Halfway through the season, the Diviner reveals the truth of his mission to his daughter: He came back in time after his homeworld had been destroyed by civil war, which had resulted from Starfleet's first contact with their people, the Vau N'Akat. He has placed a weapon on the Protostar, a construct that holds a computer virus that will infect any Starfleet computers it makes contact with, and cause the systems turn on themselves. It will cause any infected starships to turn on each other, ultimately destroying Starfleet. This is to prevent them from ever making first contact with the Diviner's people, to save his race from near-extinction.

In the second half of the season, Gwyn reveals her father's plan to the rest of the crew, so they realize they can't contact Starfleet, but still want to find a way to warn them of the danger that the Protostar poses to them. Meanwhile, the Dauntless crew find the Diviner, who has lost his memory, and take him aboard their ship as they continue to hunt the Protostar. Murf eventually undergoes a metamorphosis, emerging from a cocoon with a somewhat humanoid body. The crew eventually meet a geneticist who reveals the truth about what Dal is, but I won't spoil that here. And an ensign on the Dauntless named Asencia (Jameela Jamil) reveals to the Diviner that she is a member of his race, actually called the Vindicator, who had also been sent to destroy Starfleet. (She uses a device that changes her appearance to look like a Trill.) She and a Drednok of her own help the Diviner regain his memories. Eventually, Dal and the others manage to contact Janeway through a method I won't spoil, and warn her about the construct. However, the warning comes too late, and a Starfleet armada begins firing on each other, leaving the Protostar crew to figure out a way to save them all. I won't spoil how they do that but suffice to say, they do ultimately save Starfleet. And that's all I want to say about season one, for now.

Anyway, when the series started I barely liked it at all. But by the end of the first season, I thought it was pretty good, especially considering it's supposed to be for kids. A lot of the things that happen throughout the season are kind of ridiculous, and some of the characters and voice acting could be a bit too much on the silly side, but ultimately there were some very serious plot developments, and some decent character development (including an episode where characters told each other their backstories). So the show definitely grew on me. I even finally got used to Jankom always referring to himself in the third person. I really liked how the season ended, and I look forward to seeing what happens in the next season.


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