Hello all! Ric here with a little lore update for Star Trek Prodigy!
So for those keeping up with Star Trek Prodigy and the mysteries that series opens with,
we finally got some more information on just what is special about the USS Protostar.
We know from the intro sequence that it had some form of transwarp drive, but what exactly it is
and where it came from was still up in the air. But now we know that that the Protostar was named
so, quite simply for the fact that it contained a literal protostar within its engineering section.
Additionally, we already found out that it had twin warp cores, so this ship was made
for speed at warp 9 and beyond. The two nacelles fold down from a raised position to below the
secondary hull, which itself opens up to reveal a third nacelle-like engine tied directly into the
protostar core. When the system is activated, it propels the ship well beyond its conventional warp
maximum, and seemed to exit the long range scan radius of a pursuing vessel in seconds.
This gives us a clear method of how the vessel made it to the Delta Quadrant in such a short
amount of time from the Alpha Quadrant. I say a short amount of time, as the ship must have been
commissioned after the USS Voyager returned to the Alpha Quadrant in 2378, as the training hologram
of Janeway introduces herself as a replica of one of Starfleet’s most decorated captains,
which was only true of Janeway after Voyager’s odyssey across the galaxy led her to become so,
Voyager is what cemented her reputation. The in-universe year of the Prodigy is 2386,
which leaves us with 8 years at most for the vessel to be developed and launched,
and we should probably shave off a couple of years either end because the vessel had
already been in an abandoned state for years. This still does not rule out the use of some of
Voyager’s discoveries or Endgame future technology in the formation of this new Protostar Drive.
So back to the drive itself. Part of the system was the gravimetric protostar containment and
even the holographic Janeway had no knowledge of this system, which is understandable, she’s
a delta quadrant training program and advisor, not an actual ranking captain in Starfleet.
Gravimetric containment suggests a form of safety system designed to harness the power
being produced by the protostar, without allowing the intense gravitational effects from tearing the
vessel apart. This sort of core has seen use before, but not often within Starfleet. The
Romulans and Hirogen favoured a similar form of power, except for a couple of differences.
They used artificially created singularities, miniature black holes in effect, instead of a
warp drive in the Romulan D’Deridex class and the communication hubs of the Hirogen.
Secondly, these drives were comparable to matter-antimatter reactions in terms
of power generated and generally featured no faster-than-warp ability. But the ability to
contain and harness such gravitationally strong masses for power, is already in existence.
Protostars themselves may have a comparable mass to such a singularity core, and a similar level
of gravitational force, kept in check by the gravimetric containment system, but they have
another interesting property in Trek. A Protostar, as described in the show is a “baby star”, a ball
of gases just beginning its process of nuclear fusion and undergoing gravitational collapse.
They throw out a lot of interference and specific gravimetric distortions that in theory could be
used to generate an artificial wormhole. While a wormhole was not seen to form when
the drive was utilised, a wormhole is basically a fold in space-time, connecting two points and
this is similar to how conventional warp works. It’s just that warp is less like folding space,
and more like surfing a ripple across it. But this protostar drive evidently combines the theory of
using a Type 6 Protostar to form a wormhole, with warp drive to drastically enhance the rate and
level at which space can be deformed with a warp field. It’s worth noting that this drive consumed
a lot of power, probably hence the twin cores and, you know, the harnessed energy of an entire
micro-sun. It also is probably the reason for the USS Protostar’s small size. For a Federation
vessel, it is on the smaller scale end, comparable to a Defiant, Sabre, or Nova-class ship,
and it required only a crew of 40 to operate. We’ve yet to see more on this drive but like the
spore drive or slipstream before it, its potential impact to the lore is immense. For example,
Star Trek Picard is set 13 years after Prodigy, so will we see the drive creep into more common
use by then or is the Proto-drive written off in a similar fashion to those I just mentioned.
As Starfleet expands and the final frontier gets farther and further away,
it is going to need faster vessels to reach it so I wouldn’t mind seeing a new form of warp drive,
slip in. I suspect that the proto-drive is basically a way to add more oomph to
a conventional warp drive, pushing the ship up to warp 9.999 for a limited time or something,
as opposed to the Quantum Slipstream Drive, which is a little more complicated.
So this is probably how a Starfleet vessel got to the Delta Quadrant. But now I just want to
know why there was a Klingon vessel there, and why there are so many species from the opposite end of
the galaxy in the same area? My current theory is that they’re from various events, like deep space
exploratory missions, sleeper ships (which were mentioned), and other journeys that were rounded
up and brought to the Diviner’s mines. They were referred to after all as the “Unwanted”, perhaps
those not native to the quadrant are sold to him? Let’s hope that gets answered, although the
target audience of kids probably doesn’t care. Am I wasting my time?
Anyway, thanks for joining me for this video, no I’m off to revaluate my life. Goodbye.