Hey everyone! How's it going? Did you have a good holiday season? I had an interesting one. I got alot of cool movies, toys, comics, books, and movies from friends and family. It was definitely a weird Christmas for me though. Today I'm here to review the first season of Star Trek: Prodigy which finally wrapped up yesterday after more than a year since it premiered. I'm going to be as spoiler free as I possibly can, but I might have to mention a few things in order to talk about the season. So, if you've been watching the show and haven't seen the season finale yet, or dropped off the show after episode 10 came out at the beginning of this year, then this is your spoiler warning. Let's get into it.
When Star Trek: Prodigy was announced as an animated series aimed at children back in 2019, I was concerned because any franchise that has been primarily geared towards adults, but could be watched by children, and have tried to be refocused towards only kids, or only adults, have never quite gotten it right. Either because the show or movie or whatever medium it is is still trying to get as big an audience as possible or they skew too far in whatever direction the show is being geared towards, be it children or adults. But with Kate Mulgrew involved as the voice of Hologram Janeway, I had to at least check out the show if I was able to since Nickelodeon shows tend to air on either Teletoon or YTV, and I don't have Teletoon. And for the first ten episodes, I enjoyed it. It was a bit more on the kids side of things, but there was still enough there for adults watching it to get something out of it. That changed with the second half of the season. Before I get to that though, I would like to talk about the characters a little bit.
Our main characters are Dal R'El (voiced by Brett Gray), a being made up of the DNA of basically all of the major races in the Star Trek Universe, except for the Borg, Gwyndala "Gwyn" (voiced by Ella Purnell), a member of the Vau N'akat race, whose father is the antagonist in the first half of the season, Jankom Pog (voiced by Jason Mantzoukas), a Tellarite, Zero (voiced by Angus Imrie), a Medusan, whose race was first introduced in the 1968 TOS season 3 episode, "Is There in Truth No Beauty", Rok-Tahk (voiced by Rylee Alazraqui), a Brikar, whose race was first introduced in the 1993 young adult novel, Worf's First Adventure, the first book in the Star Trek: The Next Generation - Starfleet Academy series, Murf (voiced by Dee Bradley Baker), a Mellanoid slime worm, and Hologram Janeway (voiced by Kate Mulgrew), an Emergency Training Holographic Advisor that the kids found on the mysteriously abandoned USS Protostar deep in the Delta Quadrant.
The entire cast is likeable, though Dal and Jankom can be a bit obnoxious at times. And the voice cast, despite some of them being very young, is excellent. I do wish we could've learned more about each character across the 20 episodes of the season, rather than a big info dump in episode 11, the first episode of the second half of the season. But, given my experience with Power Rangers being produced by Nickelodeon from 2011 to 2019, I should've expected this sort of thing to happen.
One of the things that I loved about the first half of the season is that, while there were nods to past Star Trek shows and movies that the adults watching the show would enjoy, particularly episode 6, "Kobayashi", which I talked about in a previous blog post, it stood on its own as a perfectly good Star Trek series that kids and adults could watch together or on their own. And you still had dramatic tension because not only are the kids getting to know each other and are learning how to get along with each other, but they also have the Diviner and Drednok after them. Especially with Gwyn being the Diviner's daughter.
But, I think what happened with the second half of the season is that Nickelodeon put the same restrictions on Prodigy that they had on Power Rangers throughout its time on the channel. But that's only sheer speculation on my part as we probably won't find out for sure for years, if ever. The only reason we found out about those restrictions on Power Rangers is because the casts of Megaforce/Super Megaforce and Dino Charge/Dino Super Charge have talked about it in interviews, after their seasons were over. That probably won't happen with Prodigy, especially not with the adult cast such as Kate Mulgrew, Jason Mantzoukas, and Dee Bradley Baker.
It's not that the season was bad or anything. The problem is that all of the mystery, intrigue, and character development from the first ten episodes were gone in the second half and there was just nothing going on the entire season until the last three episodes. In fact, you could probably take out six or seven episodes in this entire second half of the season, and it wouldn't do much to change the story. The biggest problem is the same one that the seasons of Power Rangers that were on Nickelodeon had. The season finale was a two-parter, and part two had nothing happen with the entire season just ending abruptly. Now, luckily it ended in a way that makes room for a second season, which is good because it was greenlit for a second season when the first season was announced.
It was nice that Kate Mulgrew also got to voice an older Admiral Janeway in the second half of the season as well as Hologram Janeway. It just felt right to have actual Janeway back since Seven of Nine is on Picard and Tom Paris had appeared on Lower Decks. It also felt right to have Chakotay, voiced by Robert Beltran, return as well, even if it was just in holo-recordings and flashbacks to when Chakotay took command of the Protostar. It kinda felt like the writers took elements from the post-series Voyager relaunch novels, where Starfleet Command sent Voyager back to the Delta Quadrant with a fleet of starships in order to do more exploration and to contact some of the friendlier races that Voyager had encountered during its seven year journey back to the Alpha Quadrant. Except in the case of this show, rather than having Voyager go back to the Delta Quadrant with Chakotay in command, they wrote it so he took command of the Protostar and go back that way. So I thought that was pretty cool.
At the end of the day Star Trek: Prodigy is aimed at kids but if it weren't for it being on Nickelodeon as well as Paramount+ I suspect the second half of the season would've been much better than it ultimately ended up being. However, I don't think this show will last beyond the second season because it took over a year for all 20 episodes to air, and most animated shows these days, particularly those on streaming services have around ten to twelve episodes. But, Nickelodeon clings onto that archaic 20 episode episode count for some reason. Just like they did with Power Rangers in the 2010s. And it didn't help that there was a short break between episodes 5 and 6 for the holidays, and then that huge break between episodes 10 and 11 for Discovery season 4, Picard season 2, Strange New Worlds season 1, and Lower Decks season 3 to come out, so the series lost its momentum from having those first five episodes come out before the holidays, and then lost even more momentum coming off the long break after episode 10. So we'll see what happens, but I think that, unless they have kids who love it, people didn't return for the second half of the season. I don't know for sure though because I'm not on Twitter anymore and that's where I saw alot of discussion about the show happening, even if they weren't talking about the episodes week to week.
I think that out of all of the modern Star Trek shows, Prodigy would work better if you binged it all at once rather than watching it week to week. Especially the second half of the season as it just moved too slowly and ended up not being very interesting. It's like they chose to put all of the filler episodes into the back end of the season rather than spreading them out across the entire season.
It is hard for me to recommend it though unless you have kids. But watch the first few episodes if you haven't watched the show yet and see what you think. Maybe you'll like the second half of the season more than I did. It's not the worst Star Trek show ever, but it also isn't the best either. It's on the lower side of the middle.
Alright my friends, that's gonna be it for me for this year. 2022 was such an amazing year for this blog. I got to do stuff that I've wanted to do on here since I started blogging back in 2015. In 2023 I'll be doing more of that stuff. Including continuing my reviews of Power Rangers, which I'll be getting back to after I've watched seasons 1 and 2 of Stargirl and do a few other movie reviews as well. Don't worry though my Power Rangers reviews aren't going anywhere. I'm also going to review single issues of comic books rather than entire story arcs and trades. It saves time. And I'm getting back to some reviews of novels in 2023 as well. So thank you for sticking with me and this blog in 2022, and here's to 2023 being another awesome year for the blog. Until then have a wonderful weekend and I will talk to you all in the New Year. Take care.
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