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Star Trek: Prodigy provides a fresh, family-friendly spin on the Star Trek Universe. Here is the animated series’ surprising setting and time period.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Prodigy Season 1, Episode 1, “Lost and Found,” streaming now on Paramount+.
The latest Star Trek series is officially here, with the launch of Star Trek: Prodigy. And interestingly, the new animated series is the first in the franchise not to follow a main cast predominantly made up of Starfleet personnel. Instead, Prodigy takes place far outside of Federation space but rather in the Delta Quadrant, a setting familiar to Star Trek: Voyager fans, with a misfit crew helming a discarded Starfleet vessel as they explore the cosmos. Here’s where and when Star Trek: Prodigy takes place within the ever-expanding Star Trek mythos.
The Delta Quadrant was introduced in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Q Who,” with the Enterprise flung across the galaxy by the omnipotent Q to introduce Starfleet to the Borg Collective, giving them enough time to adequately prepare for the overwhelming threat before being transported back to the Alpha Quadrant. The Delta Quadrant would go on to serve as the primary setting for Voyager, with the eponymous Starfleet vessel commanded by Captain Kathryn Janeway stranded in the hostile region and embarking on a long journey back home, braving anomalies and combative alien civilizations across the multi-year odyssey.
By the start of Prodigy, the Delta Quadrant still has virtually no detectable Federation presence, save for the USS Protostar, a large starship that had been scuttled on the harsh mining planet of Tars Lamora for some time. Tars Lamora is run by a brutal despot known as the Diviner, who has been scouring the planet for the Protostar for years for reasons unknown. While the Borg Collective is nowhere in sight, having evidently been dealt decisively with by a time-traveling Admiral Janeway in the Voyager series finale, the Kazon remain a presence in the quadrant. The Kazon were one of the first hostile species introduced in Voyager, with Kazon marauders pursuing Janeway and her crew throughout the early seasons of the show attempting to commandeer the Starfleet vessel and scavenge it.
In regards to when in the canonical Star Trek timeline that Prodigy takes place, the Protostar contains a hologram training program of Janeway, appearing much as she did on Voyager. This suggests that Prodigy takes place sometime well after the events of Voyager, with Janeway becoming something of an icon within Starfleet for her actions in the Delta Quadrant; Star Trek: Lower Decks confirmed that the entire Voyager crew had become celebrated figures in the Federation upon their return. And the Diviner’s comment that he has been searching for the Protostar for years, further underscores that Prodigy begins quite a bit of time since Janeway and her crew returned home.
It is currently unclear how Prodigy compares to Lower Decks and Star Trek: Picard in the timeline, with Lower Decks taking place shortly after the events of Star Trek: Nemesis and Picard taking place nearly two decades later. And with the hologram Janeway very much a fixture for the Protostar’s new crew, hopefully the program of the respected, decorated Starfleet officer will be able to better fill in the blanks on what has occurred since audiences last saw Janeway in a brief role in Nemesis, promoted as an Admiral by Starfleet Command and wishing Jean-Luc Picard well on his next mission.
To see when and where the animated series takes place, Star Trek: Prodigy releases new episodes Thursdays on Paramount+.
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