Star Trek: Voyager’s Robert Duncan McNeill has pitched a “Captain Proton” Short Treks episode to Alex Kurtzman’s production company
(L-R) Garrett Wang, Robert Duncan McNeill and Kirsten Turner in Captain Proton/Star Trek: Voyager
AUGUST 1, 2021 - It’s been twenty years since we’ve seen Doctor Chaotica attempt to hatch an evil plan, only to be thwarted by our hero, Spaceman First Class, Protector of Earth, and Scourge of Intergalactic Evil Captain Proton. But if Star Trek: Voyager’s Tom Paris, Robert Duncan McNeill, has his way, Captain Proton will return.
In Voyager, Captain Proton was the protagonist of the holo-novel, The Adventures of Captain Proton, an homage to the science fiction serials of the 1930s like Flash Gordon. Paris, a huge fan of the novel, created a holodeck version of it, which ended up appearing in several episodes of the show.
While Tom Paris has apparently come close to appearing in Star Trek: Picard and will appear in season two of Star Trek: Lower Decks (if only on a commemorative plate), McNeill has been pitching the idea of a revival of Paris’s alter ego, in one format or another, to “the powers that be”. According to TrekMovie, McNeill told the Primitive Culture podcast that he “thought about trying to produce it as a podcast during COVID. I thought that might be fun, do an old radio drama with Captain Proton, but get all of our actors back together. And I actually talked to [Alex] Kurtzman’s company [...] about producing either a podcast version of Captain Proton or a web series or Short Treks kind of version with just Captain Proton.” And though there has been no indication of any new Short Treks, Kurtzman has expressed interest in doing black-and-white versions. Star Trek: Voyager’s Kate Mulgrew has also indicated her interest in returning for a Captain Proton revival.
However we get to see or hear further adventures of Captain Proton, you can find out more about that and Robert Duncan McNeill’s other current adventures at TrekMovie.com. And if you’d like to go back and revisit the original, Captain Proton first appears in the Voyager season five episode “Night”, available to stream 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.
