By the point Voyager returns dwelling from the Delta Quadrant on the finish of its seven-season run, Kathryn Janeway has seen extra in her tour of obligation than most Starfleet captains see of their lifetimes (even when she and her crew obtained to skip out on that entire, y’know, cataclysmic interstellar war thing). So it is sensible that she shortly shoots up Starfleet’s ranks into Admiralty, and is obtainable a bunch of plush positions—however it additionally is sensible that she’d insist on returning to her personal robust little ship.
A kind of plush positions virtually turned a factor in Star Trek: Prodigy’s second season, which lastly begins streaming on Netflix in the present day after a long, strange road to launch noticed it ushered away from Paramount. Within the new season, with Prodigy’s younger alien heroes having made their approach to Starfleet and helped save the day—incomes their place among the many subsequent era of Academy cadets—they’re tasked with becoming a member of Admiral Janeway on a harmful rescue mission to search out her former first officer and the lacking captain of the experimental ship Protostar the youngsters spent season one racing round in, Chakotay. To take action, Janeway heads out on a newly refitted Voyager-A, however she virtually commandeered a much more prestigious vessel within the type of Starfleet’s flagship, the Enterprise.
Prodigy is ready round 2384, which suggests on the time the Enterprise in operation is both the Sovereign-class Enterprise-E—though a ship with its registry is seen in Prodigy’s season 1 finale having been closely broken, if not destroyed outright—or its comply with up, the Odyssey-class Enterprise-F. They’re each fairly superior ships, so far as the Enterprise goes, however… they’re no starship Voyager. I may be slightly biased, however hey, so is Kate Mulgrew herself, as she needs to be: as a result of apparently when instructed that Janeway may commandeer the Enterprise in Prodigy, the actress behind her flatly refused.
“There was a second the place we had been enjoying with the concept that [season 2’s ship] could possibly be the Enterprise as an alternative,” Prodigy co-creator Dan Hageman instructed IGN in a new interview. “We [asked] Kate, ‘What do you assume for those who’re the brand new captain of the Enterprise,’ and she or he was not thrilled. She’s like, ‘I’d slightly or not it’s the Voyager.’”
Placing apart that Voyager is without doubt one of the all-time nice Star Trek ship designs, giving Janeway a refit of her home-away-from-home within the Delta quadrant on a mission to relocate Chakotay of all individuals simply is sensible, for the sentimentality of all of it. Plus, in-universe, the Voyager herself at this level is an admired and beloved ship in its personal rights, a champion of Starfleet’s exploratory beliefs in having survived the most effective a part of a decade in a far-flung sector of the galaxy with little in the best way of Federation help. It’s solely becoming that Janeway get an opportunity to eventually see what Starfleet may do in a souped-up refit of her most beloved ship, slightly than simply handing her the Enterprise prefer it’s a prize for passing into Admiralty.
Certain, a vaunted Admiral is “worthy” of the flagship, however possibly we needs to be asking: is the Enterprise worthy of Kathryn Janeway?
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