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'Star Trek: Prodigy' is the 'Voyager' spin-off you never knew you wanted — and we love it

And you thought it was just a kids' show… Why "Prodigy" is the perfect continuation of Captain Janeway's story.

Unlike "Picard", which used its third season to deliver the perfect send-off for the "Next Generation" crew, "Prodigy" substitutes wall-to-wall nostalgia for youthful exuberance, to tell the story of a bunch of kids who stumble on a grounded Starfleet vessel in the Delta Quadrant. That aforementioned mentor is an Emergency Training Hologram based on a certain Captain Kathryn Janeway (voiced by original actor Kate Mulgrew), and she ties the voyages of the USS Protostar to nearly six decades of "Trek" storytelling — while helping her protegés to learn the ropes, and shape the future of the universe. But with Janeway as their guide, their close encounters with Tribbles, the Borg and even the Kazon (Klingon-esque antagonists so lame that "Voyager" quickly left them behind) provide a gateway to "Trek"'s wider universe, plotting a course for the real story to get started.

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