Star Trek: Discovery just introduced a new ship named after a Starfleet legend.
Observant Star Trek: Discovery fans may have caught an easter egg in the Star Trek: Discovery episode “The Examples”. In the episode, we find out that Starfleet still feels the resonance of one former Starfleet admiral some 800 years later. The former captain of the U.S.S. Voyager herself; Kathryn Janeway.
Naming a ship after a former officer is a huge honor and probably has only happened a handful of times in the franchise’s history.
In case you missed it the ship is named at the start of the episode, where three ships are investigating a Dark Matter Anomaly that is causing untold destructing in the galaxy, and no one knows why. One of the ships is a Vulcan (Ni’var) ship, the NSS T’Pau, while the other two are Federation and one is appropriately named the USS Janeway.
It’s unknown exactly which of the twos is the Janeway.
Kathryn Janeway is having a major renaissance in 2021
Fans were hoping that Kathryn Janeway would get her own series in the vein of Star Trek: Picard, which saw Patrick Stewart return as Jean-Luc Picard for the first time since 2002. No such like would happen for Janeway’s actress Kate Mulgrew, but the folks at Star Trek still tapped her anyway.
Mulgrew returned to the world of Star Trek playing a version of her character, a hologram Kathryn Janeway, in the new animated series Star Trek: Prodigy. It’s a return to form for the former captain, who is being introduced to new fans for the first time since 2001 when Voyager ended its iconic run.
Mulgrew is a hot commodity at the moment and is getting her own fair share of love from the Trek faithful. Just last October, a statue was dedicated in her and her character’s honor in Blooming, ID, the fictional home of Janeway.