YouTube Logo for "Star Trek: Prodigy"
The First Contact Day virtual celebration hosted by StarTrek.com and Paramount+ featured a panel about the newest addition to the Star Trek universe, Star Trek: Prodigy. The panel featured showrunners Kevin and Dan Hageman and Kate Mulgrew, also known as Captain Kathryn Janeway.
As they talked about the upcoming show, which is scheduled to release by the end of the year, the trio revealed the answer to the question that’s been on fans’ minds since Mulgrew revealed she would be reprising Janeway on the show.
How is Janeway Coming Back?
All the information about Prodigy so far has been about the ragtag crew of teenage aliens that the show will follow. Though Mulgrew announced that she would be coming back as Janeway for the show in October 2020, she wasn’t specific about how she would fit in with the crew.
Last month, when Paramount+ revealed the first pictures of the Prodigy crew, Janeway was notably absent. At the time, the showrunners said that they wanted the focus of the first reveal to be on the main characters, so they’d left Janeway out. However, they promised that they would soon reveal her animated character and her role on the show.
During the panel, the long-awaited answer finally came. Captain Janeway won’t be appearing as the captain of Prodigy’s motley crew. She’ll be appearing as an “Emergency Training Hologram.”
The Holographic Janeway
Nickelodeon/Paramount+
Of course, they then revealed the first look at Captain Janeway as the Emergency Training Hologram. The animated rendition of Janeway was a stunning likeness, seemingly based on her character in the first or second season of the show. The animated character wore the same Starfleet uniform as Janeway did in Star Trek: Voyager, which fits with where Prodigy will take place in the Star Trek timeline. The Hageman brothers announced that the show will be set in 2383, five years after the Voyager crew returned home from the Delta Quadrant.
They also answered another question that’s been floating around the fandom since the crew of the show was revealed — where the show will take place. The aliens of the Prodigy crew don’t look like any aliens that Star Trek fans have seen before. Additionally, the Hageman brothers revealed last month that they don’t have any knowledge of Starfleet. This led many fans to speculate that the show is set in the Delta Quadrant. Today, that theory was confirmed.
The teenagers of Prodigy are all from the Delta Quadrant, and they’ll find a Starfleet ship there. When they board the ship and fire it up, the teens discover the Janeway Emergency Training Hologram. They’ll learn all about Starfleet and the Alpha Quadrant from the training program, and Janeway will become the guide for their adventures and misadventures.
Is This the Same Janeway Fans Know and Love?
CBS Photo Archive
After the big reveal, the host of the panel asked Mulgrew about bringing Janeway to life in a different way. She got right to the heart of the issue, asking whether this Emergency Training Hologram would be the same Janeway that fans know and love.
Mulgrew insisted that Janeway’s personality is so intense that it shines through, even in holographic form. She conceded that the character was a little bit different, but promised that fans will get to see the Janeway they adore in Prodigy. Mulgrew went on to say that she loved the experience of bringing Janeway back in a new and different way and that she’s excited for fans to see this version of her beloved character.
Though these were huge reveals about the brand new series, Prodigy was the only upcoming show that didn’t give fans a new trailer to pore over. Teaser trailers for Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Lower Decks were released during the event.
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