Star Trek: Prodigy gave iconic characters one last ride

Star Trek: Prodigy gave classic characters one last ride

In the latest episode of Star Trek: Prodigy, “Kobayashi”, the creators of the series gave some of the most dearly departed actors and characters of the Star Trek series past one last ride on the bridge of a Starfleet vessel. The episode follows two plot lines (three if you include Rok-Tahk’s and Murf’s). The second story arc sees Gwyn try to access secured files pertaining to U.S.S. Protostar’s history.

The primary story arc has Dal discovering the ship’s holodeck. Once he finds it, the hologram Janeway explains to him the purpose of the holodeck and shows him all the programs that he could test out. One of which is the Kobayashi Maru. Since the test is for prospective captains in Starfleet, Dal opts to take the test as he sees himself as the ship’s de facto captain.

Things do not go according to plan at first, and while Dal grapples with his anxieties and shortcomings as a captain, he gets to interact with a whole host of iconic Star Trek characters including Spock, Uhura, Montgomery “Scotty” Scott, Odo, and Dr. Beverly Crusher. All of whom used their original actors to provide the lines.

Only Crusher’s actress, Gates McFadden, recorded new lines. The rest of the lines used were taken from other episodes and movies of Star Trek. There was a slight audio issue you can hear as the lines pulled from the original cast of Star Trek’s first series are nearly 60 years old. Yet, the lines from Rene Auberjonois are wonderfully crisp.

Star Trek: Prodigy gives former cast members a wonderful last ride.

Hearing the voices of Leonard Nimoy, Rene Auberjonois and James Doohan in Prodigy was wonderful. While each has since passed on, it’s beautiful to be able to hear them and see them in a brand new episode of Star Trek, even if all of their lines were from past episodes. It was also wonderful to hear Nichelle Nichols as Uhura again. While Uhura is still alive, her health is declining and the reports of her having dementia have all but guaranteed we’ll never see her in another new Star Trek property ever again.

Seeing the four of them get one more turn on the screen with a new cast of characters was profound and heart-warming. It’s been many years since some of them said goodbye for the last time but it’s a great thing to know that they may not be around anymore but they’re far from forgotten.

What made it all the more special was that the four of them got to cameo on the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise-D.

The four of them weren’t the only ones who got a nice nod. The Enterprise-D got another go of it as previously noticed, and Gates McFadden was back recording new lines but she wasn’t the only other legacy Trek character who came back in this episode.

While we know that Kate Mulgrew is the voice actress for the holographic version of her Kathryn Janeway character, her former number one, Robert Beltran returned to Star Trek as well. His return brought the total number of legacy characters in this one episode of the show up to six, seven if you count the U.S.S. Enterprise-D is another returning character.