For Star Trek fans it’s common knowledge that the place to stream new Star Trek shows is Paramount+, with one exception. The child-friendly, animated series, Star Trek: Prodigy, now lives on Netflix with its first season already there and its second season dropping on July 1.
The show is actually one of the best bits of Trek to emerge since Paramount started churning out new Star Trek content to bolster its line-up on what was then CBS+ and is now Paramount+. Given that, why did Paramount+, where the first season was released, let the series go to Netflix?
Why is Star Trek: Prodigy on Netflix?
Those seeing Star Trek: Prodigy on their Netflix banner after logging in may think they’ve opened the wrong streaming app, but they haven’t. The show made the jump to Netflix after it was canceled by Paramount in June of 2023. Well, not exactly that quickly. It took a while for Netflix to pick it up.
Prodigy was part of Paramount’s initial glut of Star Trek shows that the company hoped would pull subscribers into Paramount+ and pull younger fans into Star Trek. Focussed on a misfit crew of young aliens who escape a mysterious mining colony onboard an experimental Star Fleet ship called Prodigy, the series was stripped down to Trek‘s bare bones to help introduce younger audiences to its concepts. This resulted in one of the purest versions of Trek to come out since Star Trek: Discovery launched and it had the added bonus of featuring a slew of great characters and Captain Janeway herself.
However, as the streaming bubble crashed and the entertainment industry contracted, Paramount found itself on shaky ground (and is in fact still searching for a buyer). This meant a rash of streaming cancelations — of which Prodigy was one thanks to the series not catching on despite positive word of mouth.
Paramount and the series’ creators Dan and Kevin Hageman, however, were happy to shop the show around. Fans of the series even went as far as to fly banners over major broadcast and streaming companies asking for them to pick up the series’ second season, which had already been in the works before the cancelation. Sadly, it took longer than anticipated. Thanks to the writers’ strike, negotiations for another season were put on hold and it wasn’t until after the strike ended that Netflix, Paramount, and the Hagemans could come to an agreement.
Thankfully, they did, and, in October of last year, the series was picked up by Netflix, giving the streamer the rights to release the second season and also to become the new home of season one. While it may be strange that the series is available separately from every other Star Trek show, Prodigy wouldn’t be around at all any more if not for Netflix coming in and breathing new life into it.
Published: Jun 28, 2024 08:20 pm