Ranking the classic Star Trek character cameos on Prodigy
By Chad Porto
We’re ranking the Star Trek: Prodigy cameos from “Kobyashi”.
In Star Trek: Prodigy’s episode, “Kobyashi”, fans got to see a host of old characters come back to the franchise for the first time in decades for some characters. In a scene set on the Holodeck, Dal recruited some of the greatest all-time Federation officers to help him win the Kobyashi Maru test. All of these classic characters were voiced by their original actors, but most of them have been gone for some time.
This caused the show’s writer and producer, Aaron J. Waltke, to speak about how hard it was to get the right lines from past shows to make these cameos work. Only Gates McFadden, aka Beverly Crusher, was able to come back and record new lines.
Due to the fact that so many of these characters will never again be voiced by their original actors, it made the moment so much more special. The episode got even more sentimental when fans saw Chakotay return to the series, once again voiced by Robert Beltran. Though he wasn’t a part of the test, I’m still including him in this.
I won’t be including Kate Mulgrew’s Hologram Janeway due to her character being one of the main character of the show.
So which of these cameos were my favorite? Well, let’s find out.
Ranking the Star Trek: Prodigy cameos.
7. Beverly Crusher
Seeing Beverly Crusher get new lines were cool, that said, I was never the biggest fan of hers on The Next Generation, so her arrival on the holodeck didn’t get a huge pop from me.
6. Scotty
Montgomery “Scotty” Scott is probably my least favorite character from the original show, and while I love Simon Pegg, his version of the character didn’t do much for me either. Like with Crusher, there were so many other characters I’d rather see.
5. Uhura
The original Uhura, played by Nichelle Nichols, broke barriers but wasn’t exactly the most interesting character in the original series. Her more modern counterpart is more what I’m looking for in my Trek characters. That said, Uhura still rocks.
4. Spock
The issue with Spock’s arrival was the quality of the audio was all really bad. At least compared to the others. His audio made it very clear they were just sampled from other episodes, while everyone elses’ was hard to pick apart.
3. Odo
Who doesn’t love Odo? His sardonic approach to life and unwavering devotion to the law and his friends made him probably my favorite character on Deep Space Nine.
2. U.S.S. Enterprise-D
This is a fun one because you expect character cameos, but ship cameos? That’s not done nearly as often. There were other ships I’d rather have seen but just getting any was a neat little treat.
1. Chakotay
While he didn’t appear in the test portion of the episode, I’m still counting him as he was an unexpected cameo. I loved Chakotay on Voyager and seeing him as the original Protostar captain really made me excited for the rest of the season. Something I don’t say often about the Nu Trek.