Gizmodo’s James Whitbrook has yet more to vent on Paramount+‘s cancelation and erasure of Prodigy.
I hadn’t considered the cancelation from the perspective of systemic misogyny, which Whitbrook effectively is carating.
However, given that Janeway was surely chosen as the legacy captain for Prodigy because Voyager had proven itself to be an effective gateway for younger and new viewers on Netflix, Whitbrook’s inference Paramount views her less important to the franchise than Picard is biting.
Paramount wouldn’t dare treat what it’s done for Patrick Stewart and Jean-Luc Picard as a tax break. Casting aside everything that Prodigy stood for, and in the process doing the same to Mulgrew and Janeway’s legacy, is a cruel twist on what is already a cruel fate for the show.
Perhaps they weren’t seeing the long-term demand they were hoping for… as in, even if it was pulling in ok numbers now they didn’t see a way to ramp those numbers or even maintain them going forward.
In general, compared to the other new Trek shows I’ve seen much less buzz around Prodigy on both the web and with real life acquaintances, with it not even being acknowledged in many cases. I have yet to watch it myself not because I hold anything against it personally, but because its trailers didn’t grab me and I suspect that’s a somewhat common experience among Trek viewers… I think Prodigy may have faired better had it been a much more direct sequel to Voyager (similar tone, feel, etc) and had been marketed as such.
I’m no expert in showbiz though so I might be catastrophically wrong, haha.