Star Trek: Prodigy Aims for Animated Success

A new Star Trek goes where (almost) no Trek has gone before… into animated territory

Star Trek‘s certainly had its share of younger fans over the years, but rarely has a spinoff made so direct an appeal to the kids as Star Trek: Prodigy.

The enduring sci-fi franchise goes where it hasn’t often gone before with the Thursday debut of this cartoon. Produced by the animation arms of Nickelodeon and CBS Studios, the saga brings back Kate Mulgrew to voice a hologram version of her iconic Star Trek: Voyager character Captain Kathryn Janeway. However, the show centres more around her cohorts: six young Delta Quadrant aliens who learn about working together—and the ins and outs of Starfleet—while joy-riding aboard an abandoned spaceship.

“Janeway defined an era for me and, as it turns out, the rest of my life,” Mulgrew reflects. “To play a hologram is probably the most clever way to introduce this character to children. To introduce ‘Hologram Janeway’ to 10-year-olds, 15-year-olds is an exciting approach, and very smart. From there, of course, the sky is the limit… but I am delighted to be back playing her. I love her. When a character defines a part of your life, you are in turn deeply grateful, which I am. And she has never left me.”

Prodigy executive producer Alex Kurtzman has been a major keeper of the flame, having co-created and overseen fellow Trek reboot series Discovery and Picard, and also having a hand in the animated but more-adult Lower Decks. He maintains Star Trek has “always been a family show, the show that parents watched with their children—and those children become parents, and they pass it on to their children. I think that legacy is important.”

Star Trek also yielded a 1973-’74 Saturday-morning NBC cartoon show (with the voices of the original series’ cast), but Kurtzman credits sibling Prodigy creators Dan and Kevin Hageman with bringing “such a wonderful objectivity, just based on their own experience doing kids’ shows [Netflix’s Trollhunters, among others], about an area in Star Trek that felt like a really wonderful place to look at. It was great. And obviously, having Kate back to play Janeway is everything, because that blessing allowed us to tell this story in a way that I think we otherwise would not have been able to tell.”

With a second season already ordered, Star Trek: Prodigy also features in its voice cast Brett Gray, Jason Mantzoukas, Ella Purnell and—as the tyrannical Diviner and his enforcer Drednok—John Noble (Fringe) and Jimmi Simpson (Westworld). “The Star Trek world has been pervasive for a lot of my life, and I’m 73,” Noble notes. “I’m really thrilled to do [this].”

Star Trek: Prodigy airs Thursdays at 3 p.m. & 5:30 p.m. on CTV Sci-Fi