Executive Producer Aaron Waltke comments on Star Trek: Prodigy's USS Dauntless
Vice Admiral Janeway (voiced by Kate Mulgrew) in the STAR TREK: PRODIGY episode "A Moral Star, Part 2"
JUNE 13, 2022 - Way back in season four of Star Trek: Voyager, in the episode “Hope and Fear,” the Voyager crew believe they have discovered a Federation vessel sent to bring them back to the Alpha Quadrant via quantum slipstream technology. While it turns out [SPOILER ALERT] that the vessel is not of Federation origin, its ostensible designation is the USS Dauntless.
Then in the most recent episode of Star Trek: Prodigy, “A Moral Star, Part 2,” Vice Admiral Janeway is in command of a ship, also powered by quantum slipstream propulsion, that detects the proto-warp signature of the Protostar. That ship is designated … the USS Dauntless. All this has apparently raised questions among fans regarding the relationship between the two Dauntlesses. Aaron Waltke, Prodigy screenwriter and executive producer, took to Twitter to answer those questions, according to TrekMovie.
Waltke points out, to start, that it is not the Dauntless-2 or the Dauntless-A, because the Dauntless in the Voyager episode was not a real Federation ship. But there are plenty of similarities, because the crew of the Voyager were able to scan the alien vessel from stem to stern and return with all that data to the Alpha Quadrant. [Wait, should that have been another SPOILER ALERT?]
He also promised that we will be seeing more of the actual Dauntless in the upcoming second half of season one of Prodigy. (There is no release date yet.)
For more details on the actual USS Dauntless’s backstory, including the “secret” behind its registry, head over to TrekMovie.
And for more adventures with the actual and hologram Janeways, Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Prodigy are streaming now on Paramount+.
David is a contributing writer for Daily Star Trek News on the Roddenberry Podcast Network. He is a librarian, baseball fan, and book and movie buff. He has also written for American Libraries and Skeptical Inquirer. David also enjoys diverse music, but leans toward classical and jazz. He plays a mean radio.
