The Tale of Star Trek: Prodigy

With it recently being saved by Netflix, how was Star Trek: Prodigy saved, and how did fans help?

            Star Trek: Prodigy was a shot in the dark for the executives at Paramount+ and CBS Studios. Whilst it used an existing and successful intellectual property, there had never been a Star Trek show aimed at children before. It was set five years after the crew of the USS Voyager returned to Earth following their seven-year long trip in the Delta Quadrant, and follows a young crew attempting to return the USS Protostar to the Alpha Quadrant.

It was released from October 2021, and continued to air until December 2022, with all episodes being available on Paramount+. Season two was announced back in 2021, and work was almost completed before it was cancelled and removed from Paramount+ with a slew of other shows, including Grease: Rise of The Pink Ladies, The Game and Queen of the Universe. This action came as a shock, as not only was the season nearly completed, but Paramount+ had frequently been referred to as “a home for all things Star Trek”. Rumours quickly began to spread as to why these shows had been cancelled and removed despite their popularity.

            Shortly thereafter, a fan campaign was started to bring the show to a new home. Behind the scenes, the producers were searching for a new distributor, whilst the fans shared online campaigns to save the show. Michele Stokes is a British, long-time Star Trek fan said:

“I first got involved with the #savestartrekprodigy campaign because I honestly felt like the show hadn't been given a fair shot at success. So many people had poured their talent, passion, and creativity into the production of the show, and it really didn't sit right that Paramount+ were going to reportedly write it off for cost-saving reasons. It didn't seem fair that it was being cut short before it had a chance to establish itself, especially after how great the episodes we'd seen had been, and I felt compelled to act. I set up the http://change.org petition to begin with, which quickly gained traction among the fan community.

            The petition, found on change.org, received over 33,000 signatures within a month of the original cancellation.

“I wanted to keep the momentum going, so did a quick search of what other fan communities had done to save their shows. Fans of The Expanse had flown a banner five years earlier and Warrior Nun fans paid for a billboard earlier this year - both shows went on to be saved. Aaron Waltke tweeted soon after that the creative team would get a kick out of seeing a banner, so I approached a few companies to see what sort of costs were involved. Once I'd received a competitive quote, I decided to accept the challenge and set up a GoFundMe page in the hope that the fans who'd signed the petition would likewise support this endeavour.

“Amazingly, we'd raised enough money to fund the banner within eight days, so I closed the funding page, arranged the flight plan with the company, and helped spread the word. Prodigy is not the first show to be saved by a fan campaign (with Star Trek: The Original Series being a major success), it is an incredibly successful story framed by a story of changing attitudes to media. However, for every show that is saved, there are plenty more that never return, regardless of their fan’s efforts.

            The banner followed first stopped at Netflix, its eventual home, before moving on to Santa Monica to visit other companies’ offices.

“The writers’ strike was still active at the time, so the creators of the show weren't involved in the organisation of the campaign, but they were really great at retweeting links to both the petition and the banner funding page. Their support in tweeting is definitely what helped the campaign gain traction.

            Despite the strikes, the cast and crew remained interested in saving the show, continuing to monitor the campaign without crossing the picket line. Their support continued on social media. Script writer and co-executive producer Aaron J. Waltke shared a thread on X (formerly known as Twitter) dedicated to what fans could do to save the show, which featured the fan campaign.

“I obviously have no idea what went on behind the scenes, but I'd like to think that our efforts helped Netflix see how loyal and dedicated the fanbase is; that we would follow Star Trek Prodigy wherever it ended up. The series had a ready-made fanbase, and the banner was the visual representation of that loyalty, which was hard for the streamers to ignore.”

In the following weeks, it was announced that Season One of Prodigy would join Netflix in December 2023, with Season Two starting to air in early 2024.