Paramount Plus Cancels “Prodigy,” and I have thoughts…
A few days ago, I got up to read that Paramount Plus (aka P-Plus) — the streaming service that had finally garnered all of the various Star Trek shows under one roof, so to speak — had unexpectedly cancelled the animated series Star Trek: Prodigy.
How unexpected was this? Well, they’d nearly finished post-production for the entirety of season two.
In other words, this came out of the clear, blue sky.
Making matters even worse, Prodigy was an entry-level series meant for both kids and adults. It was co-branded with Nickelodeon, even…then, with about three days’ notice, Prodigy was gone off the P-Plus streaming service.
Now, this ticked me off. It ticked me off to the point that I found a way to send a message with my wallet. I bought the digital-only copy of the entirety of season one, which was available through Amazon’s Prime Video service. I also started watching the show, something I’d intended to do for months but just hadn’t gotten around to due to so many different things going on that aced that out, priority-wise…and managed to stream six episodes before P-Plus took the series off the site completely.
I also have to add that this was a show — Prodigy, I mean — my late husband Michael would’ve loved. He loved animated shows anyway, but a new Star Trek animated show? He’d have been all over that one, just as I am.
So, what’s so great about Prodigy? It’s funny in a low-key way, it has a holographic Admiral Janeway (the wonderful Kate Mulgrew), and it’s a roundabout continuation of Star Trek: Voyager in some ways as the USS Protostar — a ship the youngsters that end up constituting the crew find on a mining planet where most of them were prisoners and commandeer — had been Captain Chakotay’s ship before it went missing. Chakotay, of course, was Kathryn Janeway’s first officer for many years on the Voyager before they finally made their way back to the Alpha quadrant and home.
So what happened there to the original crew of the USS Protostar? No one knows, as far as I can tell, though I haven’t finished season one yet. From what I’ve read online, at least some of the mystery was to be solved in season two…providing it gets picked up by someone else.
I hope it does, because I like it. I wish I’d found time to start watching sooner, mind you; still, I’ve done what I can, for the moment, and that’s going to have to stand.
If you, like me, are frustrated by P-Plus’s move, there is a petition here that you might want to sign. You also may want to buy a physical copy of the first ten episodes (half of season one), which is all that’s been released on DVD as of yet, though it’s selling out nearly everywhere. Or, like me, you may want to buy a digital copy of Prodigy from Amazon…though it may be unavailable. (How can a digital copy of anything be unavailable? Mine’s there, ’cause I’ve already bought it. I just checked.)
Anyway, I have been enjoying Prodigy and I intend to talk more about it once I’ve finished watching the first ten episodes. (There are twenty episodes in the digital-only version of Prodigy, mind.) But for now, my thoughts are these:
P-Plus, you blew it. Seriously. If you want all of Star Trek to be under one roof, figuratively, you just screwed that up. No tax break is worth this negative-three trifecta of “angers the fans, angers the Prodigy showrunners, angers the media.” These three things are now going to only keep getting bigger, like a snowball going down a steep hill.
If you want my advice, it’s this: Get Prodigy back on the P-Plus platform, stat. Apologize to the fans and the showrunners. Say you had no idea so many people wanted to watch this show. Say that you are floored by the fan outburst going on — the only outburst more prominent than this one re: any version of Star Trek is the proposal for Star Trek: Legacy, a hopeful spinoff of Star Trek: Picard — and vow to do better in the future.
Anything else is unworthy of the people who support your streaming service. Including me.
Barb Caffrey's Blog 
Any idea why they cancelled it?
annabellefranklinauthor
June 27, 2023 at 4:47 am
It seems to have been because they want a tax write-off. They don’t want to have to pay the writers or the actors streaming residuals (they may come up with a different term for that down the line, but that’s the only one I know now). The writers’ strike going on isn’t helping much, because the studios want to play hardball.
I think, Annabelle, that after Netflix and Disney Plus did similar things (not only cancelling a series, but removing it entirely; also, remember that Warner Brothers shelved the completed Batwoman movie last year for similar reasons. Not letting anyone see a completed movie after they spent all that money seems like a remarkably dumb move. It must be one Hell of a tax write-off to do all this.), P-Plus felt they could get away with doing the same thing. They somehow figured that no one would care, which is completely nonsensical…they also apparently figured the public has less attention-span than an amoeba, because earlier this year P-Plus was still trumpeting that season 2 of Prodigy was on the way.
The thing I find egregiously wrong, here, is that they took Prodigy off the P-Plus site altogether. Here P-Plus has been bragging about having “all the Star Trek shows under one banner” (or as I put it, under one figurative roof), but now they don’t. It makes no sense, also, with an almost completed second season waiting to go.
So, they went for the tax write-off and figured that Star Trek fans would stay quiet. Why they thought this considering it was fan involvement and agitation that kept Star Trek alive in the first place, I have no clue.
In general, ticking off your paying customers is a bad idea. I think this particular idea, unless it’s quickly reversed, is going to cause P-Plus to take a major bath. Lots of folks have said once the second season of Strange New Worlds is done, they’re done with P-Plus until SNW comes back unless Prodigy is restored.
Down the line, Prodigy may be better off somewhere else. Sometimes the studios just do not know what to do with a good show. (They only gave “Forever” one season, too, on ABC, and that made no sense. “Almost Human” on Fox only got one season, and that also made no sense.) Most shows need at least a year’s worth of episodes to whet fan interest, and some of the biggest hits of yesteryear — including “Happy Days” and “M*A*S*H” — needed at least two seasons to get up to speed IIRC.
So, the way I see it, it’s a combination of short-term financial gain via a tax write-off and remarkably stupid PR and fan service (in this case, fan non-service seems to apply more) that tells most of the folks who subscribe to P-Plus that what they want doesn’t count… the bean counters control all, and if they don’t think Strange New Worlds is hitting the right amount of numbers, maybe they’ll pull that next. (Not right now, but down the line.)
That’s my best guess.
Barb Caffrey
June 27, 2023 at 9:06 am
It’s infuriating when a series you’ve been looking forward to doesn’t get shown. And, like you say, it seems an incredibly dumb move.
annabellefranklinauthor
June 27, 2023 at 12:27 pm
Yes, agreed.
Kate Mulgrew has hope, I guess. (She’s said “we’ve only just begun” on Twitter.) The showrunners also have hope. If not for P-Plus, they believe somewhere else will pick them up.
P-Plus has a lesser presence than, say, Netflix. They have about 60M subscribers. That’s lower than some of the other streaming services, too. So, if some other place picks them up, maybe it’s ultimately going to be for the best.
But to put the fans through all this, especially the little kids who love the show and who are never going to understand this BS (if we adults don’t, how on Earth can the kids?), is completely unnecessary, stupid, and pointless.
Until now, I’ve only used those words about the Brewers’ trade of reliever Josh Hader last year right before the trading deadline in July. (Stupid, unnecessary, and pointless, I mean.) But they definitely seem to apply here as well.
Barb Caffrey
June 27, 2023 at 8:16 pm