Star Trek: Prodigy would possibly before everything be supposed to be an onboarding for younger newcomers to the franchise, however that doesn’t imply it’s unafraid to throw in some deep lower references for older followers who’re watching. This week’s episode, “Kobayashi,” is actually no exception—and the way one in all its most stunning moments happened was suitably extremely fannish.

In an episode of main reveals, maybe probably the most pleasant in “Kobayashi” is when Dal, desperate to show himself to his mates that because the Protostar’s self-proclaimed captain they need to hearken to his each command, begins up the iconic Starfleet Academy take a look at, the Kobayashi Maru, within the ship’s holodeck. Unlike the final time we really noticed the take a look at happen in the primary Trek timeline in Wrath of Khan, or after we really final noticed it within the first Kelvin timeline film, Star Trek 2009, placing the take a look at by way of the holodeck as a substitute of with a “live” crew to assist the candidate meant that Prodigy may go buck wild with its personal nerdy draft of what Dal asks the pc for: a collection of the perfect officers in Star Trek historical past.

What he will get is a veritable, fannish who’s who—the return of Scotty, Uhura, and Spock from the unique sequence, and Deep Space Nine’s Odo, by way of edited voice clips from their respective reveals, and The Next Generation’s Dr. Beverly Crusher, with Gates McFadden returning to the function for the primary time in twenty years. Who Dal then proceeds to get nearly killed again and again and over as he takes the notorious no-win situation.

“I’m not gonna lie, it was probably one of the hardest writing experiences I’ve ever had,” episode author Aaron J. Waltke instructed Polygon about assembling the Kobayashi Maru holo-crew. “Obviously rewarding, but there were cases where I thought I had finally found the perfect line and then I would go track down the audio and the [actor] was just too far away from the 1960s microphones that were recording, or they were rattling something.”

Waltke and the Prodigy staff began hashing out simply who can be a part of Dal’s dream staff—regardless of Dal having no thought who any of those Federation officers really are, having lived his complete life within the Delta Quadrant—identical to Star Trek followers have since there’s been a number of Star Trek reveals to debate about: a fantasy draft of the final word bridge crew. Hell, even we’ve accomplished that! Eventually although, the restrictions of who may feasibly be introduced again by way of archival recording (the truth that Dal wanted to extra immediately work together with at the least one officer result in McFadden recording her new materials) narrowed down the staff’s forged decisions. And even from there, cuts needed to be made—a deliberate look by TNG and DS9 icon Worf, for instance.

But apart from the nostalgia and arduous work of discovering the precise strains of dialogue to elevate and provides new context to, for Waltke the scenes with the previous characters needed to work on an emotional degree for Dal, as he begins to study the pains of command. “We specifically pivoted it in a way that there’s an irony there, so newer audiences can still be on the adventure with Dal. He’s with this dream team and has no idea who any of them are, but senses that they’re good at what they do,” Waltke mentioned. “He thinks ‘aha,’ finally I have a crew that I can work with,’ only to find that the problem is with himself. So there’s a story there that works whether or not you understand any of the Star Trek references at all. But the fun was, if we’re gonna go there, why not pack as much stuff for the super-fans as we can? Let’s just make this the Trekkiest Trek that ever Trekked.”

Star Trek: Prodigy is streaming on Paramount+.

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