Why Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2 Outshines the Star Trek Shows for Grown-Ups 

the main issue now is, that prodigy is cancelled. let's see if it stays cancelled or if it gets renewed.

Ok, now I have to watch!!! I still wanted a seen where Beverly opened a darkened room and we hear Wesley's voice say, "Hi mom" 🥺

Now I have to watch it!

They are NOT WRONG! It absolutely is!

@@robertheinrich2994it really seems like they ended at a logical conclusion. I don’t see a season 2 in the future sadly

I enjoyed shouting "shut up, Wesley!" at the screen. But with love.

@@OsirisMalkovich 👍

he got a role that he deserved. that's the really important part.

And they somehow made it work to play him straight, as EXACTLY the character his detractors complained about. I really loved this show.

Wesley: Uh, oh. Forgot to make this universe large enough to contain the Prodigy. Mom will kill me.

Chakotay totally needed a meaningful role. Loved that they finally did that and righted a wrong from Voyager.

Agreed

Jellico is what happens when an evil admiral doesn't go rogue. He's totally amoral and focused on the security of the Federation above all other considerations. He is ruthlessly practical about what makes the most sense even if it doesn't feel right to others in Starfleet. He made it clear that he remained as purely pragmatic as ever in S1 when he ordered Janeway to open fire on the Protostar.

As an adult now, working as a public servant first responder, he reminds me of management 😑

Nail on the head, friend. As I mentioned in my own comment, Batman TAS, Avatar The Last Airbender, Ductales 2017, and now Star Trek Prodigy. You described the common element perfectly.

I remember Kate Mulgrew and the creators talked about exactly this in their appearances leading up to season 1.

I noticed that too!

Where No Sweater Has Gone Before.

Nice catch. Easter egg? Call back? Inside joke among the travelers?

His orange jumper and brown leather jacket also means he's dressed very similarly to another time traveller's most recent incarnation

All I know is I want that jumper. :-)

I know what you mean. The hard core fans are tripping over the small things. Sure there was some hit and miss writing, but there was some really bad TNG episodes too.

Yeah even in S3 of Picard a Vulcan just casually asserts utopia logically DEMANDS crime and none of the Starfleet officers present feel the need to challenge that and it’s such a gross abuse of the power the writers were given to create in the Trek sandbox.

Yeah, I wasn't expecting the Mars Attack to hit the _Prodigy_ kids as hard as it did. The closing of the Academy was clearly a direct reference to Covid, and the evaporation of Starfleet's scientific missions felt a lot like how our society rugpulled college grads after 2020-all the opportunities they went into crippling debt for were suddenly, if not gone, then a lot rarer and of fundamentally different natures.

@@GSBarlev I wasn't keen on ending there initially, but I'm hoping the writers mine that regressive societal turn into story thread, how the crew confront it, learn to thrive despite it, etc.

The Picard tie ins were the worst part imo. Every time the shipyard was mentioned was cringe inducing since it only further cements that depressing timeline as canon.

@@WaylandYT You really missed the point of the OP.

Crazy how much better Prodigy did with Picard as a background plot than Picard did with itself as the main plot. I actually liked seeing ongoing events in Star Trek affect one another (of course prodigy ended up in development hell greatly increasing the distance between the two shows) and personally the attack tying into the end and ruining their "happy ending" felt so powerful and real to me. We actually got to see how scary that was from the perspective of kids just trying to go to starfleet and how it had massive negative impact on starfleet as a whole. Also kudos to the writers because I instantly could tell it was from another show even having avoided Star Trek Picard after like the first episode (I'm actually a little mad at Prodigy for writing it so well I went and skimmed through Picard season 1 and 2; that wasn't very fun).

Came to mention that. It's basically just a minor glow up of his original look!

Showing us something that didn't seem to make sense in episode 1, the escape from Tars Lamora on the unsecured Protostar, then showing us that it does make sense in season 2 was very bold and paid off. If season 2 hadn't been made, most people would have never heard about what they were trying to do.

It had also been built up pretty well with Beckket's arc and that reveal of her knowing nova squadron in school and having the person she looked up to eventually killed on what seemed like a war mission not exploration one.

“Doesn’t he look a lot like Tom Paris?” “I don’t see it.” “How can you not see it? They have the same face?!”

I do love the consistency of how every series of Star Trek ever made that introduces "elite" cadets shows them being the worst screwups in Starfleet. TNG had Nova Squadron trying to cover up accidentally killing their own member. DS9 had TWO instances, one where the elite team takes a ship and gets so obsessed with fulfilling their orders that they may as well have left Starfleet and become pirates, and another group on Earth being the hatchet team for traitors and infiltrators. PROD is somewhat less harsh, but they're still very hidebound and superior towards our heroes, who have already done more to aid the Federation than the Nova cadets are likely to achieve in their careers depending on what their assignments are.

All of that. I'd also consider it's more of a * family* show, not just a kids show, which makes it more like 1st & 2nd Gen Trek than most of the new series, which can have some more ... adult themes. I started watching TNG as it aired when I was about 8, and those (maybe not so) subtle moral messages were easy to digest - even when the topic was about big ideas, like war and terrorism. Prodigy tackles those same moral issues, and big ideas, and goes back to telling them through stories that make sense and hit on a personal level. This show would still pass the 80s-early 90s TV censorship. Voyager was the first Trek show I introduced to my nephew, when he was about 6 or 7... and he was later interested in TNG. While I enjoy a lot of DISCO, even through all the things I really, really don't like, and I'm sure he'd enjoy it, it's not one I'll introduce him to until he's a bit older... He'll have to find Picard on his own, as an adult, and I'm not sure how he'll fare with Icheb 😢 I inherited my step-mom's cat after she died - the cat's name is Icheb (she's 16 years old, and my nephew's known her his whole life).

And in doing so they pander to us all completely!

Avatar the Last Airbender, Disney's Gargoyles, and most of the 90's Saturday morning lineup (Batman, Spiderman, X-men) are also good examples of children TV that also do this.

Simply put, it is well written. The writers even put the DEI issue in the show and nobody bats an eye. Why? Because it is well written! There is nothing to hate about this show, ...because it is well written! We care for all characters. My favorite, the heart of the show, is Zero. I love this creature so much, I am freely willing to use the "they/them" acronym for they (despite confusing me most of the time). Angus Imrie is simply put just wonderful in this voice role. And if there is something I'd complain about is the fact, that to this day there is no greenlighting of season 3 (yet).

I also like to imagine that somewhere during prodigy Harry Kim is still an ensign somewhere.

Poor dumb Harry.

In the best possible way I got a kind of _Star Trek_ version of _Doctor Who_ vibe from Wesley. And I loved it.

@@sparquisdesade likely a time displaced clone

I always had faith in Wesley.

I am looking forward to the future of Star Trek with Skydance purchasing Paramount.

Right?!? I was like, wait, I'm not at "reading tech manuals" level, what is this physics? 😂

Yes, this! I wondered why I liked the Mirror Universe here - I usually find it incredibly boring. 😂 Thank you for putting this into words!

@@coffeeblack7520 The mirror universe is so campily evil, too. Mirror Janeway's first reaction is, "I thought we made it impossible to cross!" and Chakotay didn't even bother suggesting they just seal the rift and go back to their own universes to pretend it hadn't happened. Because no one in the mirror universe thinks that way.

LOL. You're right.

Ah Hugh. What a disaster. Didn’t even make sense for drama’s sake. Were he still alive he would have been horrified at Seven jacking in as a Queen and enslaving the remaining Borg to her will, even if it was the only way forward, their debate on it would have been epic. Like any ethical quandary from Trek. Instead we had padding elsewhere to meet their subscriber locks and they just permanently threw away a character. Who didn’t even get to reconnect with Geordi the human that literally helped him back from being Borg, who in any sane narrative would be the second person Picard would have ethically been required to contact upon learning of Data having daughters. Just terrible self indulgent edgy writing and it’s worst sin was it was bad with easy fixes.

Yeah, I was going to say that Locarno was a bad example for that, they definitely played on that character being that character. Could they have used a new character instead? Sure, but you could argue the same for all legacy character uses.

Yeah. I agree with Steve on a lot of the Lower Decks fanservice. It does often lean too much into it. I'm not a fan for example of the whole thign with the voyager cheese or whatever. But Locarno fit well into the role of that story and as a villainous foil for Mariner that season.

I disagree about Gomez. I enjoyed her appearance on Lower Decks, to the point that the “for some reason” comment took me by surprise. Like…was it not clear she was an illustration that even messy ensigns could exist, their awkwardness could be played for humor, and they can still go on to do great things? It wasn’t a character type started by LD by any means.

It's true. They took the Chakotay character and said, "let's make him a person" and they did.

@@AstriaStarwynd this is crazy talk. A person? That goes against everything Chakotay stood for,

Well Chakotay is a Captain now so yeah..... Difference between Chakotay and Ricart is Ricart was a womanizer, he love jazzed he had peronality. Chakotay in Voyager was very 2 Dimensional. They actually gave him depth but his historical debth is literally him living under the shadow of Captain Janeway which made him lame. So yeah his boringness as being a second in command is actually part of his character development within the show.

This was the arc he was so badly robbed of on VOY.

Bravo 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

They didn't need redemption and that's the only reason people like the show if it didn't feature any legacy characters it wouldn't be so liked

'Cause well written! *sings "The power of wriiiitiiiiiing!" kekekekekeke 😘 You know what I did there. 😉

Really unique and beautiful artwork. Some of the space scenes were movie-worthy, imo. My only quibble is with the actual animation (motion) of the characters - I wish it were a little smoother. But it's a minor complaint in an otherwise amazing show.

I dunno. I loved the show, but the animation kept low-key triggering the Uncanny Valley, for me.

@@borkabrak Yeah, it looked like CGI claymation!

I was hoping for reformed shadow archer

@@protoroc When Murf was talking to hologram Wesley, my first reaction was "holy smokes, it's Future Guy!" Who might be Wesley for all we know :p

Episodic storytelling is your friend when you have to fill an episode count. The problem with modern streaming is episode orders are all about keeping subs locked in for a certain number of months not to tell the story in as long as it takes (like early in house Netflix where most of what they made was at least quality). So they threw away the one advantage of streaming and went right back to old network methods….but threw away how creatives navigated that with interchangeable self contained episodes and so they stretch a thin movie plot into 6-10 hours of visual media. How much better could Disco and Picard had been if we had a random stuck in the Holodeck episode or stranded on a planet episode that only involved 1-2 characters so we could get invested and have them get a “win” without referencing some meta plot where everyone has to periodically get dumb so the story doesn’t just end right now. Ie all we get fed now are losses by our protagonists and antagonists not compelling wins and so the narratives always fall flat.

Yeah they added to the band and it worked out great. That alone deserves praise. But the rest of it was outstanding

I love these kids! It took a while with Dal, but he grew on me 💜

I remember that feeling as a kid ... when you find out a character/actor you liked existed before this thing you've seen them in, and going back to "discover" what they did back then ❤ Love it. Actually, I had it with Kate Mulgrew, because I just loved her Janeway character so much. For characters, seeing Spock & Scotty on TNG made me more interested in TOS ... though, admittedly, the bold colours of the show could never quite appeal to my attention for long (I still enjoy the movies and novels). I don't think either either of those examples equate quite the same effect as seeing these old adults with a parental presence of a show I love as they were in their "youth" (still old, to kids), when they all first meet eachother 💕 ... they might be a little disappointed by Chakotay though 😅 They made him so good here, as a character and as a presence (he's so lean and rugged!), they won't know what to think! Please come back and share their reaction!

The best part is Zero is legitimately pissed they lost their body to Wesley's plan with no consent on their part

@@Dracattack I do like it when characters don't forgive in Star Trek just because it's "greater good." Wesley in this season spent so much time acting like the annoying scientist of the week from TNG. I loved the character, but he'd lived long enough to become someone who Picard reluctantly hosted on his ship long enough for them to screw up an experiment, put the ship in danger, and then get justifiably shouted at.

I would say Picard season 3 was perfect. Well written. Fantastic send off to the TNG we never got.

@@cpt.walker6273 So was that episode of Lower Decks. It's honestly shocking to learn that there's negativity about them.

I'm torn because yeaaaaah it was a lil too much like dr who but to be fair 1. kids show and 2, like steve said, a personality like that would most likely be the result of being time traveling who doesn't see reality the same way anymore

Wes is totally different now to the character we knew on TNG - he is basically a Time Lord at this point, in fact even more "powerful" since he has "powers" what with the whole thought thing and able to travel to every kind of dimension, timeline and universe apparently.

It's funny you say that because about a decade ago, Wil Wheaton said his personal headcanon for what happened to Wesley after _TNG_ is that he became a Timelord. Guess his dream came true!

You say that like it's a bad thing :)

I suppose it could be a bit disappointing to hardcore Wesley fans, if they couldn't recognise him as the same character But it's not surprising that they went that way. A really large section of the fanbase loves Will Wheaton, but hated original-flavour Wesley. This performance felt like an exaggerated version of Will Wheaton's own public persona, the one that's gotten him so much love in the past few decades. And personally I think I had more fun watching that than I would have had watching something that was truer to early-Wes

Steve dislikes lower decks and it shows every time he mentions it. (Like it would if I were to talk about discovery)

@@keit99 Yeah, I've disliked Discovery and Picard, but I think Lower Decks is a lot more respectful toward the rest of the franchise than either of them. Even the third season of Picard that a lot of Trek fans seemed to like felt too pandering to me, even if it did have some good nostalgic moments.

I do wonder if LD simply feels more Trek to me than the rest of these shows just because it *is* episodic. When I put on a classic Trek episode, from ToS to Enterprise, I expect to see a full story, and very rarely does it fail to deliver. And only extremely rarely do I have to watch more than a second episode.

It's odd how some sources claim CGI is more expensive but others say live-action is. I guess really good detailed CGI is expensive, like seen on Transformers: Prime.

That was one slight issue I had. Wesley felt on the edge of doing a fourth wall break several times.

Guys ive been really tured of the multiverse multidimensional stuff, it's really getting old. Is the story well done and does it give a good reason why he is able to travel like this?

When my nieces were very young, they wanted to watch Star Trek with me. Their mom okayed it as long as I chose a kid -friendly episode. The Way to Eden seemed like a harmless, goofy episode. When we got to the end with the pain and death, I thought, "Oh, fuck! I've traumatised them". I was about to go into comfort mode when a tiny voice piped up, "Oh, good, the annoying one died". Kids are hardier than we sometimes think, is what I'm saying.

I had no idea! (I live in DE)

Star Trek was considered kid friendly here just without any of the facist censoring.

The main characters of Lower Decks being written like people who watch Star Trek rather than people who are actually living in the world of Star Trek is, in itself, a form of jingling the keys at the audience, which also facilitates further jingling of the keys. Lower Decks is key-jingling all the way down.

I gave a thumbs up for the DT17 shout out because that show was underrated as hell

Lower Decks wears what it is very clearly on its sleeve. The show is basically more about fandom than it is about Trek itself. So I don't mind all the things Steve hates about it - they make sense in that show. 1,000% agree that Picard is mostly embarrassingly bad, though.

Ditto that, it too often feels like Steve finds fault in Lower Decks simply for being exactly what it set out to be: a goofy, shameless, self-parodying *comedy* show, made by and *for* the ultra-hardcore Trek geeks. If the show's style simply isn't his cup of tea, which he's said before, then that's perfectly fair, but that doesn't mean the show is actually doing anything wrong. Even then, when Lower Decks uses obscure nostalgic references, they're usually just for inconsequential background gags or quick one-liners and stuff like that, scattered amongst a sea of original, non-referential jokes to boot. When legacy content *does* get more focus, more often than not it's used to tell genuinely good, episodic stories, rather than trying to use nostalgia as a *substitute* for a story the way Picard S3 did. The way S4 brought back Nick Locarno and turned him into a villain, for example, felt like a funny yet believable endgame for the character which I thought was very cleverly done. Likewise for somewhat smaller cameos like Sonya Gomez or Sulu in their brief, story-contributing roles. Yes it's still fanservice, but as far as I see it, it's fanservice *done right.* Need I also mention that Lower Decks is the only one of the modern shows where the main characters are all original to that show, without a single "legacy" character in the bunch? Granted there's also stuff like the Mugato episode, but realistically they can't all be winners...

I agree wholeheartedly ​@@KaboomKrusader

Same and other replies have explained my reasons for me. Lower Decks knows it's just a celebration of everything Star Trek that came before it and doesn't hide it and actually plays into it very well. It's also really grounded by its original character cast all of whom have great core traits and fantastic development.