GET ready for a brand new adventure set among the stars, as Star Trek: Prodigy premieres on the Nickelodeon channel on April 25. The first season has 10 episodes, while a second season has already been greenlit.
The 3D animated series will introduce the amazing world of Star Trek to a younger audience, and follows a unique group of young aliens who discover a starship and use it to escape the prison planet on which they are trapped.
Helping them on their journey is the ship’s AI, which manifests in the form of a hologram of Captain Janeway (voiced by Star Trek: Voyager alum Kate Mulgrew. They will need all the help they can get, as both they and the starship, the USS Protostar, are being pursued by the sinister Diviner and his robot henchman Dreadnok.
Leading the group is Dal, a spunky teenager from an unknown species; Gwyn, a Vau N’Akat and the Diviner’s daughter; Rok-Tahk, an eight-year-old Brikar; Zero, a snarky Medusan; and Jankom Pog, a cynical Tellarite.
The series is the brainchild of brothers Kevin and Dan Hageman, and is part of executive producer Alex Kurtzman’s expanded Star Trek Universe. Recently, theSun got the opportunity to speak to the Hagemans as well as Ben Hibon, who directed the pilot and the season’s final two episodes.
What immediately strikes viewers is how different the series is in both tone and style compared to other Trek shows. The audience gets to truly experience the ship through the eyes of the crew, who – at the start of the series – have never heard of Starfleet before.
Dan Hageman explained: “I think what [other Star Trek] series has is it always starts with a uniformed officer on a bridge, and for a younger audience, you know, we have to remind ourselves that they don’t know what that uniform represents [and] they don’t know what that ship represents. So we wanted to start with characters who were not in that world.”
This sense of newness also lent itself into the fact that the main cast is comprised of alien species, instead of other Trek shows where we tend to follow a human protagonist.
Kevin Hageman explained that aside from the fact that the crew were all from alien species, “hopefully they’re very relatable [and] they feel like real kids.”
He added: “We want the audience to fall in love with our characters first, and then they discover the ship, and then as the next few episodes start to happen they will start to know Captain Janeway and learn about what Starfleet is.
“And they’ll discover holodecks, transporters, and brave new worlds and all the great stuff that we love about Star Trek.”
The fact that the show was intended to introduce the world of Star Trek in a fresh way also influenced how they approached the concept. Dan said: “We knew we wanted to make an entry point. The Star Trek canon world is so large, even now I think a lot of people have a hard time [deciding] what show would you a tell a new person to start watching first. There are so many different answers.
“So we thought it would be best [to] create something [where] it’s not just for kids. I think it’s even for adults who have always been curious about Star Trek.”
It is for this reason that Star Trek: Prodigy has a distinct visual style, with a remarkable colour palette and character design.
Director Ben Hibon spoke about setting the tone by playing on the visuals.
He explained: “I think we wanted to make sure that the sense of spectacle and scale, and scope and discovery of the show had the same resonance as other live action Trek shows and the movies, and we wanted to have this very cinematic feel to the adventures because it was very much about this endless, fantastical discovery of what’s out there for these kids, what the promise of the journey is.
“And I think that we really wanted to use the cinematic tools to make the journey as spectacular as possible because there is this idea of hope and renewal and self-discovery for these alien kids that I think that we as fans of sci-fi, and fans of this endless journey of the unknown – we were very excited about the ambition of that.”
Key to everything was finding the balance between making a show that not only looked great, but could also touch the hearts of viewers.
As Dan put it: “We want to have the best adventure scene, and then we want to have a great heartfelt moment, then you want to have a great joke.”
Ben said: “We’re always looking for these moments and opportunities to establish and apply awe-inspiring visuals that will make all of us, like kids, dream. And just get our imaginations running wild.”
While season one ends the first arc of the crew’s story, the team behind the series is already putting the touches on season 2.
Kevin revealed: “On Episode 20, I swear, I can’t wait for people to watch it. I cried multiple times in Episode 20. It’s so good, Ben’s done such a great job on it, and our writers did such a fantastic job with it.
“But we’re also – my brother and I – we are finishing writing Episode 40, so we have 20 more episodes that fully conclude the epic story of this first chapter.”
Star Trek: Prodigy also features guest voice appearances by some Star Trek alums. Robert Beltran, who played Chakotay on Star Trek: Voyager, is featured, and audio recordings of original Star Trek legends James Doohan, Nichelle Nichols and Leonard Nimoy can be heard, along with several others.
Asked whether more Trek legends will feature in season 2, Kevin enthusiastically said: “Yes, yes, yes. That is why [we have] the style of the animation, why we wanted to keep it grounded, was so that you could put a great iconic character from another one of the shows standing alongside ours, and it’s going to work.
“We can’t reveal any secrets, but oh, a big mighty yes.”
From April 25, learn more about the U.S.S. Protostar and its crew and stand a chance to win your own crew pack on the STAR TREK: PRODIGY microsite at NickelodeonAsia.com/StarTrekProdigy.
