Did Star Trek: Prodigy pay homage to Galaxy Quest with latest episode?

Star Trek: Prodigy may have paid tribute to Galaxy Quest

Star Trek: Prodigy is a wonderful little show. A nice quick bite for those who may not have a lot of free time to sink in 40+ minutes per episode. It’s a show finding its fanbase, in part, due to their love of the franchise. The big hype as of late is the return of Thadiun Okona, played famously by the Rocketeer star Billy Campbell.

The show has also done touching tributes to Spock, Odo, and other deceased characters and actors from the days of Star Trek gone by.

They’re even doing deep cuts for older fans who are watching it with their children. Bringing in the Denobulans was a neat treat. You can tell this show is made by fans, for fans, and they’re not even just referencing Star Trek anymore.

Maybe it’s not deliberate, maybe it is but in the Prodigy episode “All the World’s Stage”, the series seemingly did a nod to the infamous Star Trek parody film; Galaxy Quest. Galaxy Quest told the story of a group of actors, who rose to fame as part of a Star Trek-like show called Galaxy Quest. One day a group of aliens, called the Thermians, having watched the show and believing the series to be recordings of real adventures, get the actors to help them fend off their own extermination.

A lot of the Thermians’ culture ends up being taken from the broadcast of Galaxy Quest, thus thrusting the actors into a series of rather unique and hilarious situations.

It appears as though Prodigy decided to do something similar. In the episode, we found out that former Enterprise crew member, Ensign David Garrovick crash-landed on the planet and when he realized rescue wasn’t coming, decided to help the natives of the planet survive.

Thus, they ended up becoming very much like the Galaxy Quest aliens, the Thermians. The only difference is that the Prodigy aliens (called the Enderprizians) modeled their culture around the stories told by Garrovick, not interstellar syndication reruns.

Intentional or not, Prodigy did Galaxy Quest proud

Whether or not Star Trek: Prodigy intended to do a Galaxy Quest tribute is unclear right now but what we do know is that whether it was the intention or not, it was truly a lovely episode. Seeing just how inspirational one member of Star Fleet can cause an entire race of people is inspiring.

Moreover, the way they recreated and changed some of the typical nomenclatures to fit their identity was a solid little touch. It helped the aliens feel authentically them, while still hoping to be part of Star Fleet.