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Envisioning a Brighter Future Star Trek: Prodigy continues to boldly go where few animated series have gone before on Paramount+. By Tom McLean
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t’s been 55 years now since the original Star Trek series started its journey to boldly go where no one has gone before. And after hundreds of hours of seeking out new life and new civilizations across nine TV series (with more on the way), and more than a dozen movies, Gene Roddenberry’s creation is still boldly going — this time, into CG animation with Star Trek: Prodigy, the first TV series in the franchise aimed at younger audiences. Developed by Kevin and Dan Hageman, Star Trek: Prodigy follows a crew of young aliens who come together aboard an abandoned Federation starship to search for a better future. Guiding their voyage and exposing them to the ideals of Starfleet is an emergency training hologram with the likeness and voice of the legendary Captain Kathryn Janeway of the USS Voyager. Kate Mulgrew reprises her role as Janeway, joined by a cast of young talent playing aliens both familiar and new. Among them: Rylee Alazraqui as Rok-Tahk, a bright but shy eight-yearold female Brikar whose hulking body resembles a pile of rocks; Brett Gray as Dal, a hopeful, 17-year-old maverick from an unknown species; Angus Imrie as Zero, a formless Medusan who wears a containment suit to keep others
from going mad at the sight of its true self; Jason Mantzoukas as an argumentative, 16-yearold Tellarite named Jankom Pog; Ella Purnell as a 17-year-old Vau N’Akat named Gwen, who’s always dreamed of exploring the stars; and animation veteran Dee Bradley Baker as Murf, a blob-like alien who likes to eat ship parts. Produced by the Nickelodeon Animation Studio and CBS’s Eye Animation Productions, Star Trek: Prodigy is animated by Technicolor and its first season is set to premiere this month on Paramount+ in the U.S., followed by a linear TV run next year on Nickelodeon.
Embracing Optimism The approach had immediate appeal for Nickelodeon, says Claudia Spinelli, Nick’s senior VP of animation development. “It was just immediately apparent that this is a story we needed to tell and needed to have become part of our library,” she says. “It captures so many of the things that are just inherent in kids today, and also those qualities that are always about what it is to be a kid.” Director, co-executive producer and creative lead Ben Hibon says Star Trek: Prodigy was a great chance to reconnect with the ever-pres-
ent and overarching themes Roddenberry established for the series. ”It’s a story of the many rather than the story of a few, or the one,” he says, paraphrasing a classic line from Mr. Spock. ”That’s something that always really connected with me. There’s also that positivity of Trek … this idea of finding that better version of yourself by empathy, by connecting, by integration, by trying to understand others.” Hibon says much of the first season was already written when he beamed aboard. “There was a great sense of the arc of the characters and how they were fleshed out, and the arcs of the story — but there was no visuals whatsoever,” he says. “I came on board as a storyteller, but also to start visualizing what the show and that world would look like.” Building the look of the show required using his storyboarding skills to find visual narrative ways to express concepts and figure out what was the right amount of newness required to extend the look of Star Trek without making it unrecognizable. He also, as director, worked on the tone of the show. “The cinematic style was very important for the show,” he says. “It needed to have a grand
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november 21
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