Friday 23 July 2021

New trailers for Prodigy and Lower Decks, reveal new ship, characters, and more

At the Comic Con @ Home panel today the creators and cast of both Prodigy and Lower Decks shared lots of new details of the forthcoming seasons of both animated Star Trek shows. Continue below for the latest, including the first look at the Prodigy starship, and trailers for both shows. 

So first up, here's the first teaser trailer for Prodigy, which gives us a little set up and a lot of teases for the sexy new ship that will feature in the series (also available geolocked on YouTube if you prefer to the square cropped Instagram below):


So the setting of the show is the USS Protostar NX-76884, which reminds me of the USS Aventine; could this, with the experimental NX designation, be a lost slipstream prototype?




In the panel the cast each talked about their characters and revealed some new details.

Brett Gray described Dal's role as being at the centre of things in the series, which would seem to confirm he is the main character, which the slight bias to promo images featuring the character suggested before:

One thing I love about playing Dal, [...] I get to sort of understand myself, and who I am and my place in this universe, along with all the other characters, and then being trained by Captain Janeway. So it's this awesome sort of zipper effect that I get to have playing Dal, meeting everyone, and learning everyone's sort of goal, and seeing them on their arc, while also discovering who Dal is. 

Brikar rock-alien Rok-Tahk is voiced by Rylee Alazraqui. Who described the character thus:
They think it's this big rock monster, but really it's just this cute little eight-year-old.
She's an animal-loving cute, little rock monster.
While series creator and executive producer Kevin Hageman talked more about the expectations about the character:
We had some pressure about hiring an adult to play a child; because you know, they're very highly skilled and they can do child voices. But we were like no, we want a real kid. When we started to create these characters, like in every Star Trek show you have your crew; everyone's got their position. Our crew comes in, they don't know what they're doing, they don't know they parts. But right away they're like, "look at the Brikar, look at the tank here, clearly this going to be our security office right?" But this is a child, she hates to fight, she loves science, and we fell in love with that.
Dee Bradley Baker discussed his blob character Murf, revealing it to be sidekick to Rok-Tahk:
Murf is sort of this blob, it’s this sentient blob, that’s kind of like Rok-Tahk’s familiar, or a lieutenant or sidekick or something. So it understands what’s going on, but you don’t always understand what Murf is saying. And that I think is going to evolve as the series evolves.
Also sounding fun is the Tellarite Jankom Pog, voiced by Jason Mantzoukas, who outlined enjoying playing the argumentative character:
He's the engineer, he's the mechanic, he's always trying to fix what's wrong, always trying to make things work. Frustrating to greater or lesser degree, not always successful. So frustrated, annoyed, and always offered contradictory opinions to whatever everyone else is trying to put forth.

Angus Imrie discussed the genderless Zero the Medusan who lives in a mechanical suit, and sounds like a great primer character for younger viewers on how to understand both trans and neurodiverse people:
They are not very good at social conventions. They can read other people's minds, and tend to blurt out exactly whatever everyone else is thinking; creating completely incoherent social situations. But part of the joy of playing them is that they learn, they learn how to understand other character's emotions, and grow with that.
The most intriguing character though sounds like Gwyn, voiced by Ella Purnell, who gave a pretty good overview of this new alien, a Vau N’Akat:

She starts quite closed off. And I think that's where the mystery comes. She's very much under the thumb of her father, and she has her own sort of ideals and beliefs, but she's very conflicted. There's two sides that she's fighting with constantly. And throughout the season, she gets to be a kid, like, her actual age. And she gets to find herself. And I dunno, I guess learn how to let loose a little and enjoy herself. And I think the real Gwyn starts to come out.

I get the impression from that description and the trailer, that Gwyn's father might be the one imprisoning these kids in the first place!

Kate Mulgrew also discussed her  return to Janeway, and the character's role in the series:
She's there to help this motely crew, get this defunct ship working; and she does. She is the essential Captain Janeway. She's full of warmth, she's going to help these kids, and she's determined to help them get off this very very dangerous and dark planet, and into a much better place.


Moving on to Lower Decks, the panel talked a little about things coming in season two, and revealed this typically reference-crammed trailer (on Youtube too if you're not geolocked):

Series creator Mike McMahan noted the Pakleds are becoming the series big-bad in place of the classic major bad-guys of previous series:

The Pakleds, we kind of treated a little bit like how the Klingons were in TOS or maybe the Romulans were in TNG, you know, kind of a big bad force that’s been growing, that’s out there that has to be dealt with. But remember, the Cerritos isn’t necessarily in charge of the big missions. So every once in a while, because they did encounter the Pakleds first, they do get involved in some stuff. But you’ll see the Titan kind of having to deal with more Pakled stuff, because like, the Titan's a little bit equipped, and Riker kicks a little bit more butt.

Paramount have also released several stills from the new season. These mostly come from two episodes. From an episode called Strange Energies we have quite a variety of aliens, plus the return of the USS Titan:






Then we have the episode called Kayshon His Eyes Open, which clearly focused on the new Tamarian chief of security Kayshon, and also has the Titan facing off against the Pakleds.






One other still is from an as yet unknown episode, with all four the main characters in EV suits as seen in the trailer:




You can watch the full panel, cover both Star Trek shows plus coverage of a couple of other non-Trek Paramount+ animated series, here:



You can find forthcoming season of Prodigy and Lower Decks, along with all current and future Treks, in the US at least, on Paramount+(ad). In Canada look to Bell Media services, while in the rest of the world Trek is split, so far, between Netflix and Amazon Prime Video(ad); it's not yet known where Prodigy will end up, but the first series of Lower Decks landed on Amazon before.

Meanwhile to keep track of all the latest Trek TV updates, check back through my TV tag, or for the specific series see my Lower DecksProdigy tags




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