Kate Mulgrew Reveals How Star Trek: Prodigy Reintroduces Captain Janeway

Kate Mulgrew returns as the voice of Captain Kathryn Janeway, her character from Star Trek: Voyager, in Star Trek: Prodigy, the upcoming Paramount+ animated series. However, First Contact Day revealed that Prodigy's Janeway isn't Voyager's Janeway. Prodigy's Janeway is a hologram, an emergency training hologram aboard the show's starship. She'll help guide a group of children who stumble upon the ship but have none of the Starfleet training needed to pilot it. During an episode of the Dennis Miller + One podcast, Mulgrew revealed how the Prodigy introduces hologram Janeway, offering new details about the kid-focused Star Trek animated streaming series.

"Five kids are incarcerated on an obscure planet in an uncharted part of the galaxy," Mulgrew says. "They escape from their imprisonment and race across the planet to find a defunct starship buried in the sand of the planet's surface. They go in, and of course, the prison guards are coming after them, and they can't get it up, and the shields won't run — and suddenly, somebody hits a button, and [hologram turns on noises]: 'Hello kids, I see you're a little bit stuck here. Can I help you out?' It's Captain Janeway, in a holographic form.

"It's really, I think, going to capture the imagination of little kids. And if they can sit with their mothers, who watched me in live-action, and their fathers who loved the other guys, we've got a family affair and that will bring it full circle."

Mulgrew announced her return as Janeway in Star Trek: Prodigy during the Star Trek Universe New York City Comic Con panel in 2020. At the time, Mulgrew said, "I have invested every scintilla of my being in Captain Janeway, and I can't wait to endow her with nuance that I never did before in Star Trek: Prodigy. How thrilling to be able to introduce to these young minds an idea that has elevated the world for decades. To be at the helm again is going to be deeply gratifying in a new way for me."

Emmy Award-winners Kevin and Dan Hageman (Trollhunters and Ninjago) developed Star Trek: Prodigy. The CG-animated series is the first Star Trek series aimed at younger audiences and will follow a motley crew of young aliens who must figure out how to work together while navigating a greater galaxy in search of a better future. These six young outcasts know nothing about the ship they have commandeered – a first in the history of the Star Trek franchise – but they will each be introduced to Starfleet over the course of their adventures together and the ideals it represents.

Star Trek: Prodigy premieres on Paramount+ in 2021.