Annotations for Star Trek: Prodigy Episode 2x01 Sneak Peak:
Dal refers affectionately to his friends as “criminals”, since they technically stole Protostar to find the Federation. He also says that he and the others are in different divisions. As we saw in last season’s finale, Rok is in Science/Xenobiology, with Jankom in Engineering and Dal I assume is in Command.
Gwyn left the others to go on a mission to her home planet of Solum, to try and stave off the war-torn future they were told about.
Jankom has a new haircut, takes sonic showers and is trying to be more polite - something a bit disturbing for Tellarites, known for their belligerence, as Zero points out. Zero is in their new suit that we saw at the end of last season.
The kids are going with Janeway on a mission, which Jankom points out will stand them in good stead when applying for Starfleet Academy. As pointed out last season, the kids are not in the Academy, but warrant officers-in-training.
The shuttle carries the registry number NCC-74656-A, indicating it belongs to the Voyager-A. The Doctor, while a hologram, can walk about thanks to his mobile emitter, a 29th Century piece of technology (VOY: “Future’s End”). We saw a 25th Century version of the emitter used by Raffi in PIC: “Imposters”.
The destruction of the Protostar occurred in the Season 1 finale, and opened up a wormhole to the alternate future Chatokay is now in, 52 years from now where he is a captive on Solum (about 2436-7; the last time we saw the kids it was 2384, with the Stardate in the 61000s, 20 years after TNG’s first season).
Dal complains about “timey-wimey” stuff hurting his head. The term entered popular usage in the Doctor Who episode “Blink”, when the Doctor said: “People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a nonlinear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey… stuff.” His mentor, Janeway, also complained that time travel and paradoxes give her a headache (“Future’s End”).
The new ship is the USS Voyager-A, NCC-74656-A, a Lamarr Special-class starship, refitted and outfitted with technology Voyager gathered from her 7-year journey through the Delta Quadrant. It has 29 decks, 800+ crew and 2 schools, compared to Voyager’s 15 decks and 160 crew. The presence of schools may either mean a training vessel or families on board.
The Doctor also mentions that the original Voyager is now a museum ship. This was established in background production art in PIC: “The Star Gazer” and confirmed when we saw her at the Fleet Museum in PIC: “The Bounty”.
The Lamarr Special-class is named after actress Hedy Lemarr, who was also a gifted inventor, patenting a frequency-hopping signal method to prevent American torpedoes from being jammed in WW II, although this was never formally adopted anywhere. There is also a claim that this helped in the development of WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS, but that’s an exaggeration at best.
The Doctor says the rest of Starfleet is busy with the Romulan Evacuation, to help the Romulans escape the impending supernova of their star, which we know has been going on since 2381 (PIC novel The Last Best Hope, LD: “The Stars at Night”). Jellico mentioned in PRO: “Masquerade” that the Federation and the Romulans were working towards peace, which tracks with this. Alas, we also know the effort will collapse very soon on April 5, 2385 with the Mars Attack (PIC: “Remembrance”). The Romulan star itself will explode in 2387 (ST 2009).
As we’ve seen in PIC with the Titan-A, Starfleet engineers have a very loose definition of what constitutes a refit. Basically as long as you use some of the old structure in the new one, no matter how many doodads you add or on to expand it, they call it a refit.
I may have misinterpreted what the Doctor was saying - “Lamarr Special-class… refitted from stem to stern”. He could be referring to a refitted Lamarr. I’ll edit that.