At Star Trek Day 2021, BadCulture TV had the chance to speak with Kevin & Dan Hageman, the showrunners of the new series, Star Trek: Prodigy. The two remained tight-lipped about many specifics, not wanting to spoil any surprises they have cooked up, but they did reveal a few interesting tidbits about cameos and the Protostar.
The question of how the Protostar ended up in the Delta Quadrant will most likely be answered fairly early on, but the brothers did offer a little bit of insight. They revealed that the ship definitely has a bit of a kick to it, it’s fast, and can travel between Federation Space and the Delta Quadrant fairly quickly. They didn’t quite go so far as to tell us how, but I think it’s safe to assume they’re not using a Spore Drive. You can watch the full interview below or read the transcript.
KEVIN & DAN HAGEMAN TRY NOT TO SPOIL HOW THE PROTOSTAR GOT TO THE DELATA QUADRANT
BadCultureTV: Good. All right. Awesome. Great. Star Trek: Prodigy is probably one of the new series coming out that I am really looking forward to, just everything from the animation to the fact that it’s a show tailored towards kids. I find really kind of fascinating. In making the show, what were you guys looking to get out of it, either personally or for the audience watching?
Dan Hageman: I think, I mean, outside of kids, kids today are pretty smart, and we don’t want to ever undersell them. And I, and we, so we kind of look at it from the view of someone who may not be familiar with trek. And so really that’s like eight years old, 18, 88. There’s a lot of people out there who want to get into Trek, but they don’t know how to get into it. And we always thought this would be a great entry point show for that.
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Kevin Hageman: Yeah. Also the universe that we’re doing, it’s the Trek universe, it’s the adult Trek universe, just with kids in it, and they’re thrusted into it, and they have to survive it and do the right thing. And they learn all the beautiful virtues and things that we’ve all discovered through Trek.
Dan Hageman: I think another thing too, even though they’re kids, we don’t pull any punches. We don’t treat them like kids. They got to deal with adult problems. I love how he’s shaking his head. He’s like, that’s exactly how to do it.
Kevin Hageman: Yeah, they fail all the time, but they’re failing forward, right? Just like all of us are. So,
BadCultureTV: One of the things that I’m also excited about is obviously cameos. We’ve been starting to get them in lower decks. We, I know Billy Campbell let slip that he was going to be making an appearance. Is there anyone else that you guys are able to hint at?
Kevin Hageman: That we could slip? I wish.
Dan Hageman: I wish we could.
Kevin Hageman: I wish we could. There’s, if you only knew what was inside these tiny brains, there’s a lot of really, really cool things.
Dan Hageman: They’re going to go on a long journey and we don’t want to spoil the little mile marker that they come across.
Kevin Hageman: Yeah. They’re discovering Trek. How are you going to discover Trek without characters of Trek? Or alien species of Trek or entities of Trek, so.
BadCultureTV: Well, maybe a question that you can answer, we know, or I think we know, that the ship that they find is in the Delta quadrant. So, Janeway as the emergency training hologram has been on the ship was involved with it somehow. Is it safe to assume that in the world of Star Trek now, when prodigy takes place, we’re able to travel pretty seamlessly between the Delta Quadrant and the Alpha Beta Quadrants?
Kevin Hageman: Good question. Good tricky question.
Dan Hageman: I mean, it took her quite a long time to go from the Delta Quadrant to the Alpha Quadrant before, and I wouldn’t say they can go that fast, but I will tell you the Protostar does have some kick to it, and-
Kevin Hageman: That’s a good way of saying it, yeah.
Dan Hageman: Maybe that’s for the kids. We want to skip a couple pages, get to the good parts.
Kevin Hageman: Kids like a fast car.
BadCultureTV: So, also this is the 55th anniversary of Star Trek. It’s been a cultural staple since it really, since it premiered. Where has Trek come to you guys in your lives? Obviously you’re working on Star Trek now, which is amazing, but how has your, has your personal journey at all been affected by Star Trek when you were younger?
Dan Hageman: Yeah, we grew up on, Wrath of Khan was a really big influence for us. It really-
Kevin Hageman: That was our entry point, right. So we didn’t see TOS, we just jumped right into Wrath of Khan.
Dan Hageman: And honestly, we can honestly point through that seedy EAL moment where that thing goes in, checkouts ear where we were like, this is outer space. What? Oh my gosh. And it was so different from Star Wars, that it really kind of got us thinking even after the movie. And it’s kept us thinking.
Kevin Hageman: Spock dying at the end, I mean, they went for a huge dramatic, emotional swings, where sometimes some Trek episodes don’t do that. It’s a little more cerebral and less hard, but our entry point in was that cerebral plus that heart. And we’d love that. That’s why we fell in love with Trek. And so I think when you start watching the episodes of prodigy, you’ll start to see that, that along with the brains is a lot of heart.
Learn more about the Protostar when you tune into Star Trek: Prodigy!
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