My thoughts on Star Trek: Prodigy
I grew up on Star Trek: The Original Series, which aired at 6 p.m. and 11 p.m., two different episodes that bookended the last parts of my day. 6 p.m. meant I could sometimes eat dinner in my room — a small but meaningful victory; thanks, mom — with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy for company.
11 p.m. meant falling asleep with the Enterprise cruising through space, unresolved but comfortably so. By the time I finished college and Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered in 1987, Star Trek wasn’t just something I watched. It was something I lived with — and, eventually, something that became part of my professional career as well.
So, decades later, when Star Trek: Prodigy arrived — animated, kid-forward, and clearly not built with me in mind — I considered my skepticism reasonable. Star Trek had been animated before. The Animated Series deserves respect: genuinely ambitious sci-fi stories, the voices of our favorite actors, and even a memorable guest star or two. It felt like Star Trek.
The animation, however, was… let’s charitably call it uneven. Star Trek: Lower Decks also preceded Prodigy — by a little more than a year — giving us Final Frontier hijinks complemented by copious fan service and nostalgia — and top-notch animation to boot. Its comedic approach and affectionate callbacks were something new for the franchise, expanding what animated Star Trek could do.
I didn’t grow up with Star Trek: Prodigy. However, when a show can make me feel that same mix of awe, hope, and delight I first felt in my own little bedroom decades ago — well, it’s a shame to see it disappear. The universe it built (and expanded on), even briefly, deserved a longer voyage. And it's no wonder the critics reviewed it so favorably on Rotten Tomatoes.
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