Star Trek’s Strange New Worlds and Prodigy have a surprising connection

Star Trek: Prodigy and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds have a connection.

Star Trek’s Prodigy and Strange New Worlds don’t have much in common beyond the obvious; “they’re both Star Trek”. One is set before the Original Series, the other is set around the time of Picard. One features young kids trying to join Starfleet, the other is about one of Starfleet’s most decorated captains.

One is live-action, and the other is animated.

They don’t share much in common at all. That is, until you realize that both shows are going to handle a very unique subject matter; augmentations.

On Strange New Worlds, we know that Number One, aka Una Chin-Riley, is actually an augmented Illyrian. This is something she keeps to herself until the end of season one when she is subsequently arrested for it.

Now, Prodigy is diving into the same idea, revealing that the “captain” of the Protostar, Dal, is actually an alien created in a lab of about a dozen species worth of DNA. In many ways, Dal is the perfect augment, created with the best genes of many other species.

Strange New Worlds and Prodigy may be setting up a unique reference

While Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks are crossing over sometime in 2023 (we think), having Prodigy and Strange New Worlds interact may make more sense. Specifically with this big revelation that Dal, like Chin-Riley, is an augment.

Now, it doesn’t seem likely that the show would do an actual crossover of characters, but it seems possible if not probable that at some point after Dal and company end up in Federation care, there is a callback or reference to Chin-Riley and maybe even Julian Bashir.

In fact, Bashir doing a cameo on Prodigy would make all the sense in the world considering the augmented nature of his life as well as Dal’s.