The seventh episode of the first season of Star Trek: Prodigy arrives on Paramount+ this week. And it looks like the connections to Star Trek canon will continue. We have details and photos to get you started.
“First Con-tact”
The new episode is titled “First Con-tact,” a variation on the Federation’s “first contact” protocol for first contact with new species, which has also been the title of an episode of The Next Generation and one of the TNG films as well. Prodigy’s take on “First Con-tact” debuts on Paramount+ on Thursday, January 13.
Synopsis:
When a mentor from Dal’s past persuades him to use their Federation cover for personal gain, they quickly discover Starfleet has protocols for a reason.
Prodigy’s first Ferengi
The released photos reveal the crew will run into a Ferengi, a first for the series, and another indication the ship is getting closer to familiar elements from Star Trek canon, as seen in last week’s episode. The Ferengi is named Nandi and could be the “mentor from Dal’s past” mentioned in the synopsis. Nandi is played by veteran voice actress Grey Griffin, whose roles include Daphne in the Scooby-Doo franchise and a number of characters in Star Wars games and animated series.
Grey Griffin and Nandi
More Photos:
Rylee Alazraqui as Rok-Tahk, Ella Purnell as Gwyn, Brett Gray as Dal, Jason Mantzoukas as Jankom Pog and Angus Imrie as Zero
Ella Purnell as Gwyn, Jason Mantzoukas as Jankom Pog, Kate Mulgrew as Janeway, Angus Imrie as Zero and Rylee Alazraqui as Rok-Tahk
Brett Gray as Dal, Kate Mulgrew as Janeway, Jason Mantzoukas as Jankom Pog, Rylee Alazraqui as Rok-Tahk, Ella Purnell as Gwyn and Angus Imrie as Zero
Dee Bradley Baker as Murf
No video
Usually, Paramount+ does not release a trailer or clip for Prodigy. But if anything becomes available we will update this preview.
Discovery is back in February
Episode 407 of Star Trek: Discovery was a mid-season finale. The series will return with episode 408 on February 10.
Discovery is on a brief hiatus
New episodes of Prodigy premiere on Thursdays on Paramount+ in the U.S. and on CTV Sci-Fi Channel in Canada, where it’s also available to stream on Crave. It is available on Paramount+ in Latin American, the Nordic Countries, and Australia. It will debut later in 2022 in parts of Europe with the launch of the Paramouint+ Sky partnership.
Keep up with the Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com.
A female Ferengi wearing clothes? Disgusting… :-)
Seriously, Nandi? That’s an Orion name like Tendi…
Stop living in the 2360s. It’s 2383.
Why must any name that kind of, sort of, sounds like Tendi be an Orion name? No other Orion names have sounded like that. D’Nesh, Devna, Gaila, Harrad-Sar, Bashorat Harral, Harral, Ithor, Maras, Marta, Navaar, Osyraa, Shava, Shavo, D’Vana Tendi, Tolor… nope, not Nandi-like, other than, sort of, Tendi. There’s no reason a Ferengi couldn’t be named Nandi. Human names don’t all sound like John and Mary. Plus, Nandi IS a Ferengi name: https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Nandi_class.
Nandi makes me think of Nandi Bushell, the amazing 11-year-old drummer who’s played with rock stars.
I love it how Prodigy doesn’t repeat titles by repeating them. Kobayashi Maru/Kobayashi. First Contact/First Con-tact. I’m waiting for All Good Stuff… for the finale. LOL
“What We Left Over There”
this is so great!
For the World Is Solid and I Have Touched the Ground
‘Cue Too…
Heheh, this is fun. Encounter at Closepoint
The Beast of Both Words
Best of both Worlds and milkshapes
Death squish
The Measure of a Marble
Try and error and tribbles
The Big Good Mourning
Perpendiculars
Blow Up Decks!
Whatabout Intruders?
Is There In Groove No Booty?
The Speedsters of Tridention
The Village on the Verge of Eternity
Whom the Q Annoy
The Sign of Jerubbaal
Too Short a Series
Tomorrow’s Protostar
Personality Crisis
The Outer Darkness
The Week of Purgatory
It’s Only a Cardboard Sun
What You Take Beyond
The Chilling Game
Through a Rabbit Hole, Bleakly
Trouble at the Trinary Star / The Klingon Goodbye
The Peace Within, Without the Peace
Such Bitter Joy
Reminds me of Giacchino naming his score tracks :-)
The Deviner’s New Clone
The Groundkeeper / The Janitor
Rights Brighter Than Life or Day
Lirpa of Surak
The Worst of Both Realms
Weaponry of Liberty
And the Adults Shall Guide
The Ragnarok Device
The Demon in the Gloom
What Are Little Rockgirls Made Of?
The Path of the Combatant
We have a winner! :-)
Favor the Old
… and Game (the Crew accepts a dangerous Challenge)
No good Things ( Q Shows Up and the Day is ruined)
The adversary (a powerfull Alien keeps Tabs in the protostar)
The 7 gallileos ( a temporal Anomaly duplicates a newly custructed Shuttle 7 Times… Only one can stay)
Accidently romulan ( the Crew meets a Vulcan. He is convinced to be a romulan. Eventually His mother Shows Up.)
Undiscover countrys ( the Crew must forget a Planet in Order to protect it)
Bread and Cereal
Just a note about your availability info at the bottom of the article. At present, this part of the season appears to not be coming out at the same time in Australia. Episode one is still not on P+.
Yep, super frustrating. There’s no explanation for it anywhere. It’s another one of those “do you want me to pirate!?” situations.
Talked to several dozen 8-14 year olds since mid-December… lots of mentions and comments on Star Wars TV and animated shows. Not a single mention of Star Trek of any kind – – certainly not this or Below Decks…
…and I got a pair of Star Trek TOS pillow cases which prompted questions about what it was and why i was into it. When I mentioned there were more than a handful of Star Trek shows right now – – dead fish-eye stares.
Not a surprise. Kids been watching Star Wars cartoons since 2008. And there have been many since. These are brand new shows on a smaller streaming site. It’s going to take awhile to reach a larger set.
I would hope that 8 year olds were not watching Lower Decks
Well, the teens in our household are into it, but access to Trek is easy as we’re in Canada and have the CTV Sci-fi Channel.
Unless the kids you were checking in with kids who have Paramount+ in their homes, they won’t have exposure to Prodigy until it debuts on Nickelodeon (very soon).
However, given how quickly our kids recognized the stylistic similarities to Trollhunters (a good and popular series also by the Hagemans) just from the promos, it’s likely that Nickelodeon will be the entry point for many young viewers in the United States.
Lower Decks isn’t a kids show.
Well, there’s no Trek show called Below Decks, so that’s not surprising.
Hehehe!
Isn’t Below Decks the show about a yacht…..
My 11 year old sisters LOVE Lower Decks. They wanted to watch it because I had a pic from the show as my desktop background, and now it’s one of their absolute favorites. I haven’t shown them Prodigy yet. They might like it (they like other scifi) but they might miss the humor from LDS.
Hopefully more kids will watch it once it airs on Nickelodeon.
Paramount+ in the US now has a good library of content for younger kids and Disney is out there too, but many or most parents still return to linear television and cable when they have young kids.
The fact that ViacomCBS decided to prioritize release of Prodigy on its streamer is a strategic move for the future, but they know that Nickelodeon will be the major driver in building audiences for this show, much as it was for Avatar, the Last Airbender.
interesting, there’s a Ferengi Ship Class in Star Trek Online named “Nandi”
This Ferengi seems consistent with the classic Ferengi look and inconsistent with the purported “updated Ferengi” from Star Trek: Discovery. The new Ferengi’s appearance in Discovery has a less prominent brow and wrinkly skin with kinda droopy ears. I’m not sure if this is intentional or whether these production teams can’t get on the same page. I can live with them updating alien make-up, but not if they’re wishy-washy about it.
There are a few issues here to consider.
First, Discovery is 800 years in the future and populations will have mixed (as we see with the Federation President).
Second, there were Ferengi of different types in DS9, most noticeably the Grand Nagus, so there are precedents.
Next, we can see the Ferengi in Discovery as holding more closely to Roddenberry’s original design concept. The more batlike ears were not achievable for TNG, which is why the prosthetic makeup team went for the rounded ones as the norm.
In the case of Prodigy which is intended to be an entry point for new viewers, it makes sense to stick more closely to 1990s renditions.
When is season two of Picard?
Lots of scheduling complexity for a trek this year.
My guess is that the constraint is the roll out of Paramount+ internationally, and whatever scheduling commitments ViacomCBS has with Amazon Prime for the release of Picard outside North America.
If there is no overlap with Discovery, Picard could wait another 10 weeks (3 more weeks of Prodigy after this Thursday and 7 of Discovery).
But with the production schedule impacts across all the shows, perhaps Paramount+ will double up on weekly releases this year. Or at least release another show in tandem with Picard since Picard won’t be on Paramount+ where Amazon has the licence (unless it non-exclusive).
We know that the music for Picard S2 recorded and Mike McMahan has tweeted that Lower Decks season three is close to finished.
Add SNW S1 into the mix, and there are 40 episodes close to ready to be streamed.
Add in others currently in production or about to start (the second 10 episodes of Prodigy S1, Picard S3, SNW S2), and it seems clear that Paramount+ could double up on weekly releases this spring and still have something new every week well into 2023.