Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Prodigy Season 1, Episode 13 – “All The World’s A Stage”The Starship Enterprise’s famous shuttle makes a surprise return in Star Trek: Prodigy. In a brilliant tribute to Star Trek: The Original Series, the young teenage crew of Prodigy’s USS Protostar beams down to a planet and meets the Enderprizians, natives who modeled themselves after Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and the crew of the USS Enterprise. Captain Dal R’El (Brett Gray), Gwyn (Ella Purnell), and their friends also solve the mystery of the planet’s unstable geology, which was caused by the Enterprise’s original shuttlecraft.
It turns out the shuttlecraft Galileo inadvertently created the Enderprizians’ planetary problems. The Galileo crashed into a cave over a hundred years prior, and its damaged warp core was leaking plasma that seeped into the planet, causing earthquakes and instability. Gwyn, Rok-Tahk (Rylee Alazraqui), and Jankom Pog (Jason Mantzoukas) discovered the Galileo but became trapped inside as the shuttle threatened to fall into the planet’s radioactive magma. But thanks to the Enderprizians, who Dal recruited to serve as the Protostar’s temporary bridge crew, the incredibly fast Starfleet ship was able to beam their friends back onto the Protostar, although the Galileo was lost. But the reappearance of the Galileo in Star Trek: Prodigy answered a lingering open question.
Galileo’s History In Star Trek: The Original Series
The original Galileo shuttlecraft debuted in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode fittingly titled “The Galileo Seven.” The Galileo crash-landed on Taurus II, but its crew led by Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Scotty (James Doohan) was able to launch the shuttle into orbit so that they could be beamed aboard the USS Enterprise in the nick of time. The Galileo was lost but was soon replaced by a second shuttle also named Galileo. The new shuttlecraft Galileo was seen in the TOS episodes “Metamorphosis,” “Journey to Babel,” and “The Immunity Syndrome.” A third Galileo, named Galileo II, was then seen in the TOS episode, “The Way to Eden.”
In Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, a newer Galileo shuttle picked up Captain Kirk, Spock (Leonard Nimoy), and Dr. Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley) from their camping trip at Yosemite National Park. In Star Trek: The Next Generation, the USS Enterprise-D also had two shuttlecraft named Galileo. While many shuttles have appeared in Star Trek named for famous scientists and explorers, the Galileo is the most well-known. Some Star Trek fans have even built life-sized replicas of the Galileo, but, of course, they don’t actually fly or have warp cores.
How Star Trek: Prodigy‘s Galileo Return Fits Into Canon
Star Trek: Prodigy solved a mystery of what happened to the Enterprise’s Galileo shuttlecraft after Star Trek: The Original Series. In “All The World’s A Stage’s” backstory, Captain Kirk sent Ensign Garrovick (Fred Tatasciore) to make First Contact with the people who would become the Enderprizians a century before the USS Protostar landed on the planet. Garrovick’s shuttle crashed, but he was rescued by the natives, who learned all about the heroics of Kirk and the Starship Enterprise.
The Enderprizians were inspired to recreate their entire society in the image of the 23rd-century heroes of Starfleet, which they mistook as Starflight. It’s likely Ensign Garrovick’s ill-fated mission happened after the events of Star Trek: The Original Series season 3. However, it’s not clear why Kirk and the Enterprise didn’t rescue Garrovick themselves. But it’s great to see the classic Galileo one more time in Star Trek: Prodigy.
Star Trek: Prodigy Season 1 streams Thursdays on Paramount+.
