Paramount Skydance deal: Don’t mess up the good modern Star Trek--Prodigy and Picard

With the potential Paramount sale to Skydance, let's hope the powers that be keep Star Trek's recent history in mind and don't mess up the best parts of the modern versions—namely Star Trek: Prodigy and Star Trek: Picard.

As I watch Star Trek: Generations, First Contact, and episodes of TNG, DS9, and Voyager, I can't help but feel this is peak Star Trek. It never gets better than this—at least for me. I know these characters, their ships, their lines, and ultimately their voyages by heart. The return to that era in both Picard and Prodigy was unimaginable only a few years ago. But through some kind of miracle, we got to do what most people never do—go back. We learned what happened to the Enterprise crew, the Voyager crew, and even some of the DS9 crew. Sure, there were misfires, especially with Picard's first and second seasons, but the third delivered a masterpiece of 24th and 25th century Berman-era Trek with Jean-Luc Picard and his crew in an adventure that restored the long-lost ship, gave a coda to the TNG crew and introduced a next next generation for countless adventures to come.

Prodigy, while animated, is for all intents and purposes a sequel to Star Trek: Voyager, with Kathryn Janeway as a lead character and recurring appearances by Chakotay and the Doctor. Even Seven of Nine and Tuvok appeared on Picard. Others showed up on the animated comedy Trek Lower Decks which, while good, doesn't quite rise to the level of Picard or Prodigy. In the end, this underscores the importance of this era of Trek—in many ways the best—which shouldn't be cast aside by the Paramount sale. If Secret Hideout and the current Trek overseers are removed—and I'm not saying they should or should not be—the legacy of Captain Picard and his crew, Seven of Nine, Admiral Janeway, the Voyager-A, and Enterprise-G must not be lost and forgotten due to corporate machinations. Though no confirmation has been provided, it is widely believed that should Secret Hideout no longer spearhead modern Trek development, thier original contributions would not be owned by Paramount. This would essentially mean prime Trek canon would stop with Star Trek: Enterprise. While many fans are perfectly fine with this it also means everything since the 2017 launch of Discovery is no longer considered part of the official universe. Our biggest concern with Star Trek today is the lack of a steward. When Gene Roddenberry could no longer lead the TNG, Rick Berman took over and, while criticized during his tenure, presided over decades of Star Trek that is today considered the golden age of the sci-fi giant. Alex Kurtzman is the closest thing in today's corporate Trek structure, but he has never come off as a steward who is protecting and guiding Roddenberry's creation--rather he comes off as only interested in how best to exploit the brand. And while we're not keen on offering comparisons, it is noticeably evident that those responsible for Picard Season 3, Prodigy and Lower Decks are Star Trek fans--and took care of their creation's place in the Star Trek universe. That isn't felt at all with Discovery or Strange New Worlds. In fact, just the opposite. They seem to want to buck the standards set by the timeframe they exist in--Star Trek's original series.

But this isn't the concern of this post--our objective is to call out the need to retain the 24th and 25th century exploits. And if that means we take a little bit of modern Trek's rough edgest to get the return of the Enterprise-D, that's fine with this Trekkie.