Star Trek: Voyager’s finale is the reason for Star Trek: Prodigy’s biggest issues.
Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Prodigy for forever linked in more ways than you may think. That’s because, while all Trek shows are a continuation of one another, Prodigy is more of a sequel to Voyager than anything. In fact, the events of Voyager’s finale, “Endgame” are directly why the events of Prodigy have transpired.
See, in Prodigy, just about every main character at one time or another was captured and sold into slavery by the Kazon. For those who remember, the Kazon served as Voyager’s first real major villain throughout the first few seasons of the show.
The Kazon were violent, prideful people, not all too dissimilar from the Klingons but lacking the noble honor that made Klingons so likable. Well, due to the events of Voyager’s “Endgame”, the Borg, who were the standard in the Delta Quadrant for so long, were crippled. Leaving very little left of their once-growing collective.
With the Borg now held in check, that allowed for slavers like the Kazon to rise in power and take hold of the Delta Quadrant by expanding their slave trade. This is effectively how most of the main characters of Prodigy came together in the first place.
Star Trek: Prodigy is perfectly carrying on the legacy of Star Trek: Voyager
The big hook of the Nu Trek brand is to carry on stories set up in past shows and films. This has largely been a bad idea, as many fans are not on board with the drastic changes the shows have made to established lore.
Picard picked up from The Next Generation, Discovery from Enterprise, and of course Prodigy from Voyager. Heck, even Strange New Worlds picked up from Discovery. Yet, with all that in mind, it’s Prodigy that has done the best job of honoring what came before while carving out its own niche.
It’s not recontextualizing things like Picard and Discovery have done, but instead, showing how one decision can have a dramatic effect. The Borg’s defeat is not looked at as a bad decision in the eyes of the Prodigy writers. It was still a necessary thing for those involved.
That doesn’t mean there wasn’t going to be something bad that would come out of the good of not having to worry about the Borg anymore.
Prodigy carrying over the events of Voyager and showing the aftermath of the previous series is the type of lore-building fans want.