YMMV / Star Trek: Prodigy

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Has Holo-Janeway really mistaken the crew for wayward and ignorant Starfleet cadets as she claims, or has she already figured out the truth and is just allowing them Plausible Deniability while they learn to fly the ship? "Time Amok" reveals that, while she did fall for the ruse, she still cares for the kids and considers them her crew even after the truth is revealed.
• Complete Monster: Drednok is the assistant to cruel warlord the Diviner. Drednok manages the Diviner's asteroid slave colony, Tars Lamora, for him. Drednok accepts all sorts of slaves from various mercenaries, including children. Drednok puts his slaves into unsafe working conditions, with Drednok often sending slaves to the surface of the asteroid to die. Drednok also uses an unwilling energy creature to mentally torture rebellious slaves until they become mindless drones. Drednok is also willing to assist the Diviner's scheme to introduce a virus into the Federation's computer systems so that Federation starships will destroy each other, which will kill millions of people.
• Fan Nickname: The main cast is often collectively named "the prodigies", due to the show's title and their role of commanding a starship
• Just Here for Godzilla: While Prodigy captures a new audience, classic fans, in particular those of Voyager, are drawn in by Holo-Janeway.
• Love to Hate: DaiMon Nandi is a ruthless profiteer who sold her own adoptive son into slavery. But she's also a very fun character.
• Memetic Mutation: The first series finale led to jokes that Holo-Janeway finally achieved what Janeway always wanted to do (and did on several occasions such as the "Year of Hell" two-parter) on Voyager: blow herself up along with her ship.
• Moe:
  • The adorable Caitian child brought to Tars Lemora in the pilot. There's a pretty clear consensus among viewers that the Protostar crew needs to go back and rescue her at some point. Hilariously subverted when they do go back to rescue the miners — the Caitian child ends up leading a prisoner revolt to save Rok and Jankom, which ends with her decapitating Drednok with her bare claws, complete with a Pre-Asskicking One-Liner.
  • Rok-Tahk manages to evoke this while also being The Big Guy and made of rock.
• Narm Charm:
  • Is the reused dialogue for Spock, Scotty, Uhura, and Odo the subject of Special Effects Failure considering how choppy it sounds? Yes. Does it stop it from making it any less awesome how the series is able to have their respective actors, most of whom had passed away (with the exception of Nichelle Nichols, who passed away less than a year later), appear at least one more time? Not at all.
  • Janeway's Evil Costume Switch has quickly gone memetic due to being "gothic", yet it fits well with the Diviner's preferred aesthetics.
• Special Effects Failure: The dialogue for Spock, Scotty, Uhura, and Odo in "Kobayashi", all of which was lifted from their respective series, is very choppy, especially in Spock's case, which reuses his lines from TOS, TNG, The Wrath of Khan, and even Star Trek (2009). Though given how most of them have passed away, there really weren't many options.
• Salvaged Story: The Protostar has a vehicle replicator, giving an explanation as to how Voyager was always able to replace their lost shuttles, and presumably, the photon torpedoes.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Having Chakotay involved in the series is one thing, given that a holographic version of his commanding officer is one of the series' leads. Yet "Kobayashi" rolls out the red carpet for having the biggest amount of returning legacy characters in a single episode courtesy of the holodeck — Spock, Scotty, Uhura, Odo, and Dr. Crusher, all of whom were reprised by their original actors via archived recordings (sans Crusher, of whom Gates McFadden reprises the role). Crusher's return is especially surprising, as Star Trek: Picard had yet to bring her back in spite of fan demand (though this eventually did come to pass for season 3).
  • Captain Okona, a one-off character from the much reviled TNG episode "The Outrageous Okona", whose only other appearance is a non-speaking cameo as a DJ in Star Trek: Lower Decks, gets a speaking role in "Crossroads" and is still on the ship for their journey into the Neutral Zone.
  • In terms of ships, the Enterprise-E^note There's a bit of confusion as to which ship it actually is, as its saucer section has the name and registry number of USS Sovereign on it, but the nacelles have USS Enterprise-E's name and registry and the Defiant, neither of whom have been seen on screen since Star Trek: Nemesis and the end of her debut series respectively, make their grand return in the last two episodes as part of a massive Starfleet Armada via Freeze Frame Bonuses. Both are especially shocking since the E wasn't brought back for Picard (and given that her successor is due to debut in that show, likely won't) and the Defiant wasn't on the franchise's last trek back to DS9.
  • Season 2 is bringing back another Voyager face in the form of The Doctor himself!
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley:
  • Holo-Janeway falls here occasionally. Doesn't help that she's the Token Human of the group and thus her CGI model is subject to more scrutiny. The same applies to the other reprised human (or humanoid) characters when they appear, as their movements look somewhat stiff compared to the real actors.
  • Rok-Tahk is a big, chunky rock-like alien. Except for her mouth. That part of her face is smooth and distinct from her rocky skin, and the teeth look almost human.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Prodigy's visuals are among the most awe-inspiring in the franchise. From the Used Future of Tars Lamora, to the intricately-detailed interior of the Protostar, to the splendor of interstellar space, the animators clearly spared no expense, and help prove, along with Star Trek: Lower Decks that animation is a viable medium for Star Trek shows.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: The pilot episode has children being enslaved in a dangerous mine, under threat of Cold-Blooded Torture at the claws of a violent and sadistic robot that looks like something you'd see in a Terminator movie. There's plenty of humor to offset the horror, but still, for a kid's show, that's dark.
• The Woobie:
  • Virtually the entire crew due to the fact they didn't grow up in the post-scarcity freedom-loving Federation but a hellish mine as slaves or a dark lord-in-training.
  • Dal, especially, as he's desperate to know what species he is. He now knows that the information is in a classified Starfleet database, but he also knows that the Protostar has malware designed to tear the Federation apart, meaning that he can't even learn where he comes from without putting countless lives at risk. And when he does learn that, it turns out he's an Augment, which prevents him from ever entering Starfleet, though at least that gets taken care of.
  • Rok-Tahk's story. In the first episode, Dal assumes she's a big, angry lug before the Universal Translator renders her voice as a little girl's, revealing that she's a child. Later on, she explains that she was a slave before the mines, too, cast as the villain in a staged combat show—and no one there understood her either. The friendliest anyone was to her was the slave playing "the hero", and that ended when the people running the show sold her off in punishment for going off-script.

---