Protostar
To appeal to the younger audience of Star Trek: Prodigy, the USS Protostar was designed as a small experimental prototype that combined the traditional saucer-plus-nacelles language with an incredibly streamlined, nearly animated minimalism.
Everything from its elongated shape, high-tech details, and dramatic nacelle light trails to the way its interior exposes components of the warp system through open decks to sell that prototype feel all highlight speed and state-of-the-art propulsion.
The Athena shares the Protostar’s experimental vibe; both are clearly “special project” ships, but applies it to architecture instead of propulsion, using modular sections, retracting walkways, and a campus-ready landing configuration to sell its innovation.
Where the Protostar refines the Starfleet silhouette into a futuristic dart, Athena explodes the silhouette outward, turning Starfleet’s familiar delta and circle motifs into a literal floor plan for education, complete with a central atrium and multiple landing pieces that form a grounded Academy.
Side by side, Protostar feels like a testbed starship that just happens to host kids; Athena feels like a school first and a hero ship second, and that inversion is exactly what makes its design stand out among Star Trek’s most beloved vessels.