Netflix Paramount+ Star Trek: Prodigy (Paramount+ → Netflix) (1 Viewer)

[Adam Lenhardt]

Gentle note: the next season will be the second season

I can't keep the wacky Nickelodeon-style season numbering straight. Next run of episodes then!

assuming that this is indeed the official end of the first season and not simply another year long break before more season one episodes.

According to this tweet, they finished writing the second season back in March:


So hopefully it won't be that long.

 

[Jason_V]

"Supernova Part II" felt like a series finale or a natural end point for the series ahead of a soft reboot in Season Two. The main storylines are all wrapped up, there is no cliffhanger left to resolve next season. Our characters are all in good places. The one thing they have not done is find Chakotay, but that storyline feels secondary for me in this show, something tacked on as a "reach out" to classic Trek fans. I'm not complaining, per se: it led to real Janeway doing her Janeway thing equal to or better than she did on Voyager.

I did have a thought, though: with all the ships which got destroyed or severely damaged in the battle, how many more times can the fleet survive something like this? Wolf 359, the Dominion War, this encounter...ships and lives aren't cheap and, while I understand time separates all of these incidents, they still decimate-or severely cripple-the fleet.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I’m holding off on watching the final few episodes until I finish reviewing the disc set for the first ten. I’m about halfway through the early episodes on disc and these are all playing way better for me than they did originally. Part of that is watching them for what they are rather than what I thought they’d be, and part of that is seeing them in closer succession.

 

[Jason_V]

Star Trek: Prodigy cancelled and being removed from Paramount+.

Season 2 will finish post-production and it's looking for a new home.

‘Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies’, ‘Star Trek: Prodigy’, ‘The Game’ & ‘Queen of the Universe’ Canceled At Paramount+ As Streamer Pulls Shows From Service & Takes Content Write-Down

 

[joshEH]

^ Screw all this "content write-down" bullshit that Paramount, Disney, et al are doing right now.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Frankly, this isn’t terribly surprising.

I don’t particularly enjoy being a Debbie Downer about this show, but I don’t think it ever quite achieved what it’s stated goals were.

It was announced as a Trek show that could be an entry point for young children. But the premiere was incredibly dark and violent, focusing mostly on child slavery and genocide. I can’t imagine I’m the only Trekkie parent excited by the news that there would be a Trek show I could watch with my children, only to find that in many ways, the show is less appropriate for small kids than TOS is.

The roll-out of the episodes was extremely confused, making it difficult to develop a following. The first season had a quarter season break that lasted months, which was quickly followed by a half season break that lasted nearly a year. That kind of scheduling might work with episodic content, but for a show as heavily serialized as this, those kinds of breaks can be fatal.

By setting the show outside of Starfleet’s jurisdiction and adopting a visual style that all but ripped off the Star Wars animated programming, it never came across that the show was expanding what it meant to be a Star Trek show - it instead felt like it was chasing after a different audience altogether at the expense of the audience that was actually predisposed to like it.

The creators/showrunners in interviews and bonus features stated upfront that they weren’t familiar with Star Trek and even asked the studio why they were pursuing them to work on the show. Now, I don’t think it’s a requirement that good Star Trek can only be made by people who have made Star Trek before - that’s far too limiting. But maybe when the people you’re hiring for a job say to you, “I don’t know why you want to hire us for this,” maybe listen to that.

The real shame is that the season finale left the characters in such a place that the show was finally poised to deliver on what it had been advertised as being: younger cadets learning about what it means to serve in Starfleet. In my opinion, everything that happens in the twenty episode first season of the show should have been the background story for the pilot. What happens in the last few minutes of the final episode should have been the launching point for the show. But even then - I think the conception was wrong. The premise should’ve written itself: just let the show focus on the lives of children living aboard a Galaxy glass (or similar type ship that allows people to bring their families with them), with a child’s perspective of life on a starship. Essentially Lower Decks, but for kids. That’s a show that both writes itself and brings in an audience eager to share it with their children.

I do hope the second season can find a home elsewhere and flourish, but it’s also disappointing that Paramount+ is failing at its states objective of being the one-stop-hub for all things Trek, and to have a new episode of one Trek show or another most or every week of the year.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Doh! Sounds like I better get back to catching up on Prodigy S1 this coming week, which I had neglected, as part of my usual month end binging of content leaving various streaming services...

_Man_

 

[Jason_V]

I don’t particularly enjoy being a Debbie Downer about this show, but I don’t think it ever quite achieved what it’s stated goals were.

I don't think that's Debbie Downer...I think that's reality. It seemed like they tried to serve all masters at once:

- Kids: with Murf and Rok especially;
- Adult Fans: addition of Janeway, Chakotay, Okona, et al.; and
- Adult Non-Fans: setting it outside of Starfleet so continuity baggage didn't come with it...

...and no one was particularly served by the show in the long run.

The thing is, I did enjoy the show for what it was: animated Trek for a half hour a week. Is it my favorite show or something I come back to over and over? Nah, but I appreciated it. The themes were pretty all over the place, like Josh stated, and it just ended up being a weird amalgamation of stuff.

This is now the third Trek show not renewed for another season/cancelled/at the end of its pre-decided life this year (Picard, Discovery and Prodigy).

 

[Josh Steinberg]

^ Screw all this "content write-down" bullshit that Paramount, Disney, et al are doing right now.

The difference here between this show and Disney+ shows is that Paramount at least has been releasing these both on disc and for purchase at digital storefronts, so they’re not quite disappearing into the ether. This is more like when a network show finishes its run and it stops airing there. It certainly falls short of streaming’s implicit promise that the content you watch will be there in perpetuity at your convenience, but I also understand the rock-and-hard place choice the streaming service faces if they’re forced to continually make royalty payments that exceed the value the show brings to the service.

...and no one was particularly served by the show in the long run.

I think that was the key problem, and it’s a shame, because ironically in this case, a show that tried to do less could have accomplished so much more.

This is now the third Trek show not renewed for another season/cancelled/at the end of its pre-decided life this year (Picard, Discovery and Prodigy).

It’s disappointing that it’s looking like the Paramount+ experiment of swinging for the fences with Star Trek is winding down, and it seems that a big part of that is due to unforced errors that the studio has been making ever since they decided to bring Trek back to TV. It’s a really fine needle to thread: you don’t want to just copy everything that’s already been done, and you can’t succeed by listening only to the loudest and most dissatisfied fans; I’d argue they’ve been mostly right not to do so. But you also have to be aware of how stuff is landing with the audience you’re trying to curate and to not necessarily chase that audience but be receptive to what they’re reacting to. The one time they really did that was when they spun Pike off from Discovery to Strange New Worlds. But they’ve so far ignored the widespread consensus among longtime fans clamoring for a “present day” Trek that follows the events of “Picard,” they’re making “Strange New Worlds” darker and more serialized than it needs to be, and they’re going forward with a “Starfleet Academy” idea that doesn’t seem likely to appeal to the fanbase they have or likely to broaden the franchise’s appeal outside that base. I’d also argue that CBS is spreading Alex Kurtzman too thin by putting him in charge of multiple non-Trek projects in addition to his Trek workload. Say what you will about Rick Berman’s era, but the studio and Berman both understood that Trek was the job, and you didn’t see Berman being tasked with producing both Trek and generic procedurals simultaneously. They’ve overrated Akiva Goldsman’s abilities and contributions and asked too much of him as well.

There is room for there to be multiple Trek ideas running simultaneously that appeal to different audiences by espousing the ideals of Trek in different contexts and the basic concept of what the studio wants to achieve is sound, but the execution isn’t living up to the intention as consistently as it should.

It makes me sad to see the unforced errors piling up and starting to have negative consequences when there’s such a large audience out there that wants programming like this to succeed.

 

[Jason_V]

And even those unforced errors go further than that, IMO. How many directors have been announced for new movies which ultimately don't happen? Why was another Kelvin movie announced before the cast was approached? Star Trek Beyond was botched in a dozen ways. Anniversaries came and went with barely a whisper. Sure, some of this happened when the TV and film assets were divided, but the point is no one really has a handle on this stuff.

Is having two animated shows on at the same time also a problem? Probably. But it's just another problem with TPTB...the suits don't know what they're doing and Kurtzman either doesn't know better or has zero pull to stand up to them.

Thinking back to Berman-Trek...Rick and Brannon at one point were told to have a pop music band on the ship every week so they could sell music and whatnot. Say what you will about Berman and Braga, but they knew enough to torpedo that idea.

In time, I'd like to hear all about the Kurtzman-Trek era...unvarnished, truthful and laid out bare.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

And even those unforced errors go further than that, IMO.

I’m giving Paramount+ a pass on what theatrical is doing (or not doing) for the sake of this discussion but in the grand scheme of things I agree. It’s not like the 50th anniversary was a surprise. And I look at what the BBC did for Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary in 2013, and it’s like, if a low budget public television show could pull out all the stops and construct a feature-length special to air simultaneously world-wide bringing together cast members new and old, along with a made-for-TV movie about the creation of the show, how is it that Paramount with comparatively infinite resources not even match that effort?

This is probably a dead horse but they went all in on Bryan Fuller to begin with and even though there was nothing in his career history to indicate he had the temperament or capability of being showrunner for such a tremendous project, gave it to him anyway and let him delay the launch of the show by years, blowing through the anniversary, only firing him after the damage had already been done. They’ve been hands off when they needed to be hands on, and hands on when they needed to be hands off.

In time, I'd like to hear all about the Kurtzman-Trek era...unvarnished, truthful and laid out bare.

Agreed. I thought the unauthorized “Center Seat” documentary did a great job of that for the Roddenberry and Berman eras, and it would be interesting to see the same team do the Kurtzman era in the future.

I hate that it feels like we’re closing in on the end of the Paramount+ era rather than feeling like it’s just getting started.

 

[John*Wells]

All I want from Paramount is a follow on to voyager. What happened post getting back from the delta quadrant etc. and as far as DS9 goes, what happened post what you leave behind? Nog and Odo wouldn’t be there as both actors passed away but in the case of DS 9 and especially Voyager, I’ve always felt we were left hanging

 

[Sam Favate]

Let’s hope Paramount will release the remaining episodes on Blu-ray. Only the first 10 have been released.

 

[Museum Pieces]

Let’s hope Paramount will release the remaining episodes on Blu-ray. Only the first 10 have been released.

I don't think they sold well. I didn't buy it for this exact reason. If they'd waited and released the entire first season, I'd have been all over it. Hopefully the rest of the episodes will be forthcoming. But I saw a future in which they weren't, and never bothered dipping my oar in that stream. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy, all because of a split season and a split release.

 

[Nelson Au]

I just saw this news, and I’m a bit surprised. Though I must confess, I had trouble engaging with this show. I fell asleep a few times.

I did want to watch the series and see where Janeway and Chakotay play into the story. I only watched it up to the 10th episode I believe. i had planned to try to binge through the second half of the series.

I’ve been having a thought in the back of my head that this is 2004 all over again. In the past year, I was concerned there are too many Star Trek shows being produced. I know, that sounds crazy from a long time fan. But maybe it’s creating that same over exposure that was being experienced all those years ago.

I quite like that we’ve had some very high quality Star Trek from Picard S3 and Strange New Worlds. I hope SNW can maintain its quality and have a good run of 5 seasons. And I hope the success of Picard will lead to a Legacy series. I had hoped Discovery would have been more to the fans liking, before SNW, it was pretty good before it got repetitive. But perhaps it’s better to slow down and not have so many shows on at once.

I feel bad for Kate Mulgrew and Robert Beltran. It would have been interesting to see what they were going to do with their characters. Perhaps this allows for live action Janeway and Chakotay in another series or mini-series.

I just hope Paramount+ doesn’t pull the plug on all Star Trek.

 

[Museum Pieces]

I just hope Paramount+ doesn’t pull the plug on all Star Trek.

I don't think they will pull the plug on all Star Trek. They would lose too many subscribers. It's just too bad so many years and resources were wasted on Discovery. But we got Strange New Worlds out of it. I wonder if they will develop another ST series in Discovery's absence other than Starfleet Academy 90210, or all we'll get is the Section 31 movie and more Lower Decks, which I understand is popular, but it's hit or miss for me.

Thankful for Strange New Worlds. To have a gem of an episode like last night after so long. Nearly two decades.

Don't get me wrong. Picard season 3 was good. But what I loved about it came from nostalgia, not drama. Picard season 3 was good, IMO, because we got to see the cast of TNG together again, and the writing wasn't Season-2 stupid.

I've watched the last episode of SNW, Ad Astra, four times in 30 hours because the drama is generated by the characters and the important subject matter that lives at the heart of Trek. I watched Picard season 3 episode 9 twice because I wanted to see them all back on the Enterprise D again. It's not even remotely the same thing as the power of a good character driven drama like SNW. I don't confuse nostalgia, even well-done nostalgia, for good drama that will bring me back time and again.

That's why I am not in favor of Star Trek Legacy. The nostalgia of Picard season three was lightning in a bottle that will be virtually impossible to duplicate.

I bring all this up to make a point about the cancellation and banishment of Prodigy. Why would P+ create season two and finish it and not want to drop it on their own streaming service? My guess is they don't want to pay residuals, etc., that come with dropping it. If that's the case, and residuals were always on the table, what's changed? A huge drop in subscribers, is my guess.

 

[Edwin-S]

I thought this was about Star Trek: Prodigy according to the thread title, but apparently that header was wrong.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

It is about Star Trek Prodigy, which has just been canceled. That cancelation is part of a larger trend with how Paramount+ is managing their Star Trek output and comes on the heels of another Trek show just having had a series finale, and yet another one being sunsetted earlier than expected. These decisions don’t happen in a vacuum and it’s a reasonable point of discussion. If and when Paramount finds a new network to sell the mostly-completed season 2 to, the discussion will naturally pivot to that.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

I suppose we can maybe redirect that particular discussion to the more general P+ thread that's otherwise populated by nothing, but crickets...

Doesn't bother me either way though...

But presumably, they are fully aware Prodigy's not drawing nearly enough viewers (for them) unlike SNW...

_Man_

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Look, there are probably few people here that were as excited about Prodigy as I was, or as disappointed as I was when the show didn’t come out quite as advertised. I’m especially disappointed because the show wrapped up its previous season with a soft reset that finally put it in a position to be the show it had been advertised as being. With production on season 2 nearly complete, it seems very likely that the show will continue elsewhere, at least for that second season. Maybe that means on Nickelodeon only instead of both Nick and P+, maybe that means Cartoon Network or some similar cable channel, and maybe that means an ad-supported, free streaming service. I think it’s unlikely they’ll throw away an entire season if there’s a chance to recoup even part of that investment. I don’t mean to pull anything off topic. It just is frustrating that Paramount never seems to know what to do with Star Trek, especially after these past few years where the future seemed to hold so much promise. Prodigy debuted in a year where there was a new episode of some Star Trek show or another nearly every week of the year. It was a glorious moment to be a Trek fan and I’m sorry that Paramount hasn’t figured out a way to sustain that. I wanted - and still want - this show to thrive. I don’t think every show needs to be perfect right out of the gate and I miss living in a time when TV shows got multiple seasons to find their way, when studios and networks afforded their programming the breathing room to grow.