Star Trek fans absolutely deserve a Captain Proton series
By Chad Porto
Star Trek: Voyager actors Robert Duncan McNeill and Garrett Wong want to bring Captain Proton to life in a web series and fans should welcome it.
Robert Duncan McNeill and Garrett Wong rose to fame in the ’90s as Tom Paris and Harry Kim respectively on the hit UPN series Star Trek: Voyager. During their seven seasons on the show, the two actors were put in many scenes together, but maybe none more tongue-in-cheek than their spin as Captain Proton and Buster Kincaid in the holodeck adventures of Captain Proton.
Fans loved the bits of levity, especially with two such good friends who played well off of one another. Well, McNeill and Wong, who are preparing to launch their Voyager themed podcast The Delta Flyers, did a digital fan panel and revealed that the duo have talked about a Captain Proton series.
The two revealed that there’s been a pitch already for the concept. From trekmovie.com
"McNeill: I have talked seriously about that with David Goodman, who worked on Enterprise as a writer but is also on The Orville, where I got to direct a couple of episodes. I talked to Goodman about maybe writing that serial. I don’t know if it would be a CBS All Access thing or something that we could do that would be fun and silly and we can get our cast back together, which would be a blast.Wang: Even if we went the crowd-funding route, similar to Alan Tudyk who you have been working with on Con Man. I think they received their funding within two days. It just flowed in. Millions of dollars. I do feel we would get the same reaction if we were to crowd-fund."
The pulp fiction nature of the serial would be a huge change of pace from what many fans are used to in the superhero adventure realm. The Star Trek series has already branched out in the comedic tone in Lower Decks and Short Treks. While not every fan is too keen on in-universe series being comedic in tone, the fact that this would be done outside of the character canon of Kim and Paris may make it a more welcoming idea for Trek fans.
Also, who doesn’t love the idea of two middle-aged men running around an obvious set, fighting obnoxiously named villains and their multitude array of ironically named laser cannons?