Post by RobinBland on Jan 12, 2023 21:00:18 GMT
'Ported this over from OmegaSector before she went down - originally written October 28, 2021:
...
[No spoilers]
I really enjoyed it. Yeah, it's aimed at a younger crowd, but it's got a great premise that drew me in immediately. It's very Star Trek, but it's inverted Trek - this time none of the characters are immersed in the Federation or Starfleet, they just "happen" upon it. It's like The Outsiders, but Trek-style, so how they take to the ethics and morals of the people(s) that created the vessel they inhabit should be a ride.
When I first heard we were getting animated Trek, I was hoping for something much more like this than the puerile forced humor and inane characterisation of Lower Decks. This is one hell of an improvement - a quantum leap - over that ghastly stablemate and, unlike that show, this has less baggage that it needs to conform to. Not perfect, but a great start.
Prodigy is smart, it's fun and the animation and design is top-notch. Maybe some of this first episode is a little showy and maybe too cutesy in places, but it's a pilot - it has to cram a lot in and it has a lot of different types of viewers to win over. I think it did a good job and I'm looking forward to seeing how it evolves.
[Spoilers follow]
...
I love that one of the crew is a Medusan! The USS Protostar is a great looking ship - both sexier, more streamlined than anything in Discovery and yet mysteriously more in keeping with the design of older Trek series.
What the animated Star Wars shows (particularly Rebels) had was the appeal of pure drama beyond their target demographic, an ethos that arguably started with the later seasons of The Clone Wars and carried over into Rebels and The Bad Batch (but definitely not Resistance). Regarding writing, that's a very tough balance to pull off (and I think it is, in large part, due to the overall stewardship of Dave Filoni).
Prodigy appears to be wanting to eat the same cake, although if this first ep is anything to go by, it's skewed younger to be on the safe side. It's fulfilling its remit, and maybe the wider "family audience" appeal will come later, as it did with The Clone Wars. I'm optimistic, I think it was a really good start. I didn't sit there wondering why characters were behaving the way they were behaving (hi, Lower Decks) and how this show fit into the wider Trek universe. My suspension-of-disbelief shields were not called into action. These days, that alone is enough for me to feel good about about a new Trek show and make a return visit. I sat through the whole first series of LD (and even attempted the first ep of S2) in an effort to comprehend precisely why it had any reason to exist other than making money off the Trek brand. (I made it halfway through S2E1 before concluding that this parody of all things Trek wasn't worth the time. I really did give it a chance. (And it is a parody - a spoof, not a Trek comedy.)
Prodigy has a few rough edges, but it charmed me. It felt like it was made by people who not only understood Star Trek but wanted to add something to the myth without treading on it or beating it out of any recognisable shape for the sake of some cheap laughs. I can only applaud that and wish them well. While it might not yet be date TV, I'm definitely gonna follow along for the time being.
...
[No spoilers]
I really enjoyed it. Yeah, it's aimed at a younger crowd, but it's got a great premise that drew me in immediately. It's very Star Trek, but it's inverted Trek - this time none of the characters are immersed in the Federation or Starfleet, they just "happen" upon it. It's like The Outsiders, but Trek-style, so how they take to the ethics and morals of the people(s) that created the vessel they inhabit should be a ride.
When I first heard we were getting animated Trek, I was hoping for something much more like this than the puerile forced humor and inane characterisation of Lower Decks. This is one hell of an improvement - a quantum leap - over that ghastly stablemate and, unlike that show, this has less baggage that it needs to conform to. Not perfect, but a great start.
Prodigy is smart, it's fun and the animation and design is top-notch. Maybe some of this first episode is a little showy and maybe too cutesy in places, but it's a pilot - it has to cram a lot in and it has a lot of different types of viewers to win over. I think it did a good job and I'm looking forward to seeing how it evolves.
[Spoilers follow]
...
I love that one of the crew is a Medusan! The USS Protostar is a great looking ship - both sexier, more streamlined than anything in Discovery and yet mysteriously more in keeping with the design of older Trek series.
What the animated Star Wars shows (particularly Rebels) had was the appeal of pure drama beyond their target demographic, an ethos that arguably started with the later seasons of The Clone Wars and carried over into Rebels and The Bad Batch (but definitely not Resistance). Regarding writing, that's a very tough balance to pull off (and I think it is, in large part, due to the overall stewardship of Dave Filoni).
Prodigy appears to be wanting to eat the same cake, although if this first ep is anything to go by, it's skewed younger to be on the safe side. It's fulfilling its remit, and maybe the wider "family audience" appeal will come later, as it did with The Clone Wars. I'm optimistic, I think it was a really good start. I didn't sit there wondering why characters were behaving the way they were behaving (hi, Lower Decks) and how this show fit into the wider Trek universe. My suspension-of-disbelief shields were not called into action. These days, that alone is enough for me to feel good about about a new Trek show and make a return visit. I sat through the whole first series of LD (and even attempted the first ep of S2) in an effort to comprehend precisely why it had any reason to exist other than making money off the Trek brand. (I made it halfway through S2E1 before concluding that this parody of all things Trek wasn't worth the time. I really did give it a chance. (And it is a parody - a spoof, not a Trek comedy.)
Prodigy has a few rough edges, but it charmed me. It felt like it was made by people who not only understood Star Trek but wanted to add something to the myth without treading on it or beating it out of any recognisable shape for the sake of some cheap laughs. I can only applaud that and wish them well. While it might not yet be date TV, I'm definitely gonna follow along for the time being.
I am so sorry...