Star Trek: Prodigy recently wrapped its first season on Paramount+ with the finale episode “Supernova, Part 2,” but now the show’s first 10 episodes have arrived on Blu-ray and DVD. Making up the first half of Prodigy‘s first season, these episodes saw the ragtag Protostar crew — Dal, Gwyn, Rok-Tak, Jankom Pog, Zero, and Murf — first come together to escape the prison planet Tars Lamora and begin their journey toward Federation space under the tutelage of Hologram Janeway, concluding with the 10th episodes that reveal that the flesh-and-blood Vice Adm. Janeway in hot pursuit with the Dauntless. And, of course, they had some wild adventures along the way, from discovering how to turn the ship to their first contact mission and learning how to use the holodeck.
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ComicBook.com had the opportunity to talk to Star Trek: Prodigy creators Dan and Kevin Hageman about these early episodes, and to ask about how Season 2 will be different. Here’s what the producers told us:
When you think about these first 10 episodes, does anything stand out in your mind as something you leaned into in a way we might not now, or that you would have done differently? Does anything stand out as an example of an early approach that has changed as the series has progressed?
Kevin Hageman: No. I mean, I have to say, with our entire writer’s room, we felt very confident with our concept. When our first pilot came out, you saw some people going, “It feels like Star Wars,” and I’m like, “Well, you ding dong, of course it’s going to feel like Star Wars because they’re outside Federation space right now.” The whole concept, it’s taking our time, it’s for a new audience, and introducing these things, and our characters getting closer and as they get closer, they’re going to meet Admiral Janeway at the end of episode 10 and suddenly now Starfleet gets involved and more and more characters. So I’m just so relieved and happy because it was a show that we wanted to design for kids and adults. Even the Hardcore Trek fans. That was our goal. And so when it first came out, we heard a lot of, “Here comes this kids show,” and I’m so happy and relieved to see that the adult fans are embracing it too.
Dan Hageman: We were nervous about Murf though too because we had written Murf’s transformation before, I think, the Murf design ever was created. And then to see the world embrace Murf the way that they did, we’re like, oh my God, Murf’s going to go through a — I guess that’s season two. That’s not the first 10, I guess. Well, sorry, it’s hard to talk about.
We have seen part of Murf’s transformation, not in these first 10, but in the episodes airing now. Which by the way, how in the world do you plan to top Murf singing with a fedora on? Because I feel like you’ve said an impossibly high bar at this point.
Dan: I remember there was some fan on Twitter, he was like, “Oh my gosh, if we could only see Murf start singing.” And we were like, oh my god, we’ve written that. Just wait, just wait, just wait. Again, we’re all in the same boat. We all want to see Murf in the same stuff. As we’re writing this character, we’re like, oh my gosh, could we do this? This sounds horribly cheesy, but at the same time, I just want to eat it all up. So it worked in the broken holodeck, or the holodeck gone awry.
Speaking of the holodeck gone awry, when I think of these first 10 episodes, maybe it’s just me, but I feel like the first 10 were a little more breakneck-pace considering the Diviner is literally giving chase. In the episodes we’ve seen in the second half, things are a little more settled and we get the classic holodeck gone awry episode and the “let’s share the stories of our pasts” episode.
Kevin: The Borg episode.
Exactly. Is that part of what you were talking about, where the show, as it enters Federation space, it embraces a little more of the familiar Star Trek tropes? Or am I seeing something that you did not necessarily intend?
Dan: I think it’s just a natural progression of the crew. As writers, we’re emphasizing how these characters just got on a starship, they don’t know each other, they just learned to talk to each other; How is Dal going to act? He’s going to try to be the de facto leader and push his will on people and they’re going to react to that. How is that going to go? So I think there is a bit of a ramshackleness to the first 10
Kevin: Well, hold on. Even in the first 10, it was always about the greatest hits. It was always about what makes Star Trek great. And so the first 10, even though it was quick and we had to continue with the Diviner and stuff like that if you think about it, episode three is just about flying the ship, learning how to make it turn, trying not to fly into a sun. It’s a simple idea, but we got to enjoy the ship and you’re discovering aspects of it, so we wanted to take our time. And then even the Murder Planet, going on an away mission, that’s Star Trek, going to a new alien planet. So we are trying to really enjoy those aspects.
Dan: I think it was episode six was the Samari. That was funny. It was the first alien species they were going to come across. When I think about in Star Trek, I just loved how they blew my mind of more so than Star Wars. You have more thought-experiment characters, and so that was a big issue. And then having a Ferengi in there, it was so fun to be able to have the first bite of all these different desserts all in a season.
One of the episodes that stands out is “Kobayashi,” which is just a wild episode when you think about it. Can you talk at all about how that came up in the room, where it came from, and what your initial reaction to the idea was? Because it seems like one of those things where it sounds great but it might not be practical.
Dan: I think we’re always trying to hit home runs, whether we foul out or whatever, hit a foul ball. So when you’re doing your first episode of Trek legacy characters, we knew that there was a magic in the room of what if you could pick your greatest crew? That would be something that any Star Trek fan could shuffle in their head for days of who would be on that bridge. And then we had Aaron Waltke and we had other massive Star Trek fans, but this was Aaron Waltke’s episode. And so I think you have close to 30 to 40 years of pent-up Star Trek energy from Aaron Waltke that comes out into that episode, and that’s how you got “Kobayashi.”
Kevin: Well, and you think at the very beginning, greatest hits. We had a big board of ideas about what makes Star Trek episodes, and Kobayashi Maru was on the board. And then separately, there is the holodeck. And like I said, let’s have an episode just about the holodeck. Kids don’t know what a holodeck is and what you can do and how far you can go. One of my favorite moments in Kobayashi is when Spock tells him, “Well, we can be beam on board the Klingon ship if you want.” He’s like, “We can do that?” Boom, you’re beaming on. It’s the endless VR game that goes on forever.
Dan: Yeah, because of time, there was one scene that we had to cut where it showed him actually leaving, going into the transporter, it’s all holodeck, to see him walking around the ship and really, for a kid understanding, I don’t understand how I can walk through five different rooms and I’m still in the same room. But again, we pack our episodes so tight that we had to cut some stuff.
These 10 episodes are coming to Blu-ray right after the first season ends with Prodigy‘s 20th episode. I know Season 2 is coming. What you can say about how progress on the new season is coming along? Also, what will set Season 2 apart from Season 1?
Dan: I think what’s interesting is you’ll see the seeds of Season 2 at the end of Season 1, but there’ll be a lot of different speculation on what it is, and I think that’s something we don’t want to reveal now, but we’ll reveal much closer to Season 2’s air date. But we are hard at work on episodes 21-40. We’re working on them all at the same time, so it’s turning out to be a beautiful season. It’s different than Season 1, but it’s all the more enjoyable.
Kevin: I think one thing that we’ve learned when we were doing multiple seasons of Ninjago, it’s a mini-series. We think of a season as a mini-series, and I grew up on the Indiana Jones movies or the 007 movies, and each one, like Moonraker or whatever, each one had its own little flavor, each film. It was still James Bond or Indiana Jones, but it had a special flavor to it. And we want season two to have a little extra, I can’t say what it is. At the same time, it’s the twilight of childhood for these kids. These are kids growing up and becoming adults and becoming Starfleet hopefully one day, and so just to continue to see them grow is just a beautiful thing.
Star Trek: Prodigy’s first 10 episodes are available now on Blu-ray and DVD. The entire first season is streaming now on Paramount+.
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Image courtesy of Lucasfilm
