The upcoming animated series Star Trek: Prodigy is set to branch out into new territory, including tackling some long-time creativity issues around Star Trek alien character design. Star Trek: Prodigy will premiere in 2021 on Paramount+, Paramount Studios’ new streaming service. The show will be joining the franchise as part of a new renaissance of Star Trek projects, as the first show in the franchise specifically geared towards a younger audience, and will also be bringing back veteran Star Trek actress Kate Mulgrew to reprise her iconic role of Captain Janeway. A recent first look at the show’s main character designs has also revealed that Prodigy is seemingly moving away from depicting typical Star Trek aliens.
The Star Trek franchise has many iconic alien species, but has occasionally been criticized by fans for not being inventive enough when it comes to alien makeup and prosthetics. It is certainly true that the majority of aliens on Star Trek are humanoid in nature, with only minor facial prosthetics or elaborate hair to denote that they are not human. Some of Star Trek’s most iconic species, such as the Vulcans, Klingons, and Romulans, are the best examples of this. The lack of truly alien-looking species does make sense since most Star Trek shows aired in a time where makeup and prosthetics were less sophisticated, and the ability to create more strange-looking aliens using CGI was rudimentary at best.
With the growing inclusion of animated content into the Star Trek universe, however, the ability to create non-humanoid aliens has become much easier, and the creative team for Star Trek: Prodigy seems to be taking full advantage of this. The first look at the main characters for Prodigy shows 6 distinctly alien-looking characters, from a large creature that seems to be made out of rocks, to a small blob-like alien, to a character who is clearly some sort of robot or artificial intelligence. Additionally, none of the characters are from recognizable Star Trek alien races, meaning that Star Trek: Prodigy intends to introduce at least 5 or 6 completely new species into the Star Trek canon. For a franchise that has such an established set of aliens that are frequently reused in storylines, the possibility of exploring something completely new should be extremely exciting for fans.
Animation has provided the Star Trek franchise the chance to create more inventive aliens before. The short-lived Star Trek: The Animated Series in the 1970s included characters from races like the Caitians and the Edosians, two distinctly alien-looking species that would have been hard to create with makeup at the time. More recently, Star Trek: Lower Decks has attempted to branch out a little with their character designs as well, introducing species like the Galardonians or characters like Badgey, an anthropomorphized Starfleet badge created on the holodeck that would have been extremely difficult to depict convincingly in a live-action show.
Star Trek: Prodigy, however, seems to be taking this ability to a whole new level, and the first look at its main cast of characters demonstrates both a stunning animation style and a new step forward for the franchise. While the names of Prodigy’s characters and what species they are from have yet to be revealed, their character designs have certainly piqued fan interest in a big way. This combined with the announcement of Captain Janeway’s return has demonstrated that fans can expect some very exciting things from Star Trek: Prodigy.
