Warp Factor Trek

Recently, I had the pleasure of interviewing Aaron Waltke, a writer and producer who has worked extensively on the animated show Star Trek: Prodigy. This includes the show’s second season, which was released by Netflix on 1st July 2024. In this interview, Waltke tells us about his Star Trek experiences and the future of Star Trek: Prodigy.

What are your earliest memories of Star Trek?

My path to Star Trek personally started when I was very young. One of my first memories as a human being was sitting on the couch with my father, watching the bridge section separate from the secondary hull, the saucer separation, as the Jerry Goldsmith fanfare played. I realized, years later, I was watching the premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation live with my dad, way back in September of 1987. Obviously, I was very young at the time, and I had no idea what was going on, but my dad was very excited.

I caught the Star Trek bug then and there and, you know, I continued well through my formative years. I watched TOS reruns on our local PBS affiliate at my aunt’s house because she thought they would be educational. And then coming home from middle school and high school, my local FOX channel aired all of the Deep Space Nine reruns in order every day, right when I came home from school. So, I got to ‘binge’ that show, effectively, at a time when there wasn’t a word for that.

How did you find yourself working on Star Trek: Prodigy?

I worked with the Hagemans on a show created by Guillermo del Toro called Trollhunters, which eventually evolved into a trilogy of shows for Netflix called Tales of Arcadia. They knew that I was a huge Star Trek fan, and I had snuck a few references even into Trollhunters. They had an office that was right next to mine at DreamWorks Animation when myself and another Season 1 writer and producer, Chad Quandt, were showrunning on the third installment of Tales of Arcadia, and the Hagemans were writing the movie that was going to capstone the entire trilogy. We were already working together on that when they had a meeting with Secret Hideout. They came into the office and they were like, “You like Star Trek, right?” and I said, “Yes. Yes, I do.” They proceeded to tell me that they were invited by Secret Hideout to pitch a show because they wanted to do a Star Trek YA series with the people who did Trollhunters. I happened to fit that Venn diagram perfectly!

Even before they solidified the pitch and brought it to Nickelodeon, the Hagemans would come in, workshop ideas, and ask, “What do you think about aliens on a mining planet who come across a derelict Federation starship?” I was like, “That’s a perfect idea.” I guess I didn’t realize how much I needed a show like that because, for the first time, we were getting to make a show that was told from the perspective of those strange new worlds and civilizations as they set a course for Starfleet and slowly come to embrace the ideals that it represents as they learn more about it.

I’ve long known that there is a need for an entry point to Star Trek. Most of the Star Trek fans, including myself, watched hundreds of episodes and figured out what it was by osmosis. But especially in today’s day and age, there’s so many Star Trek-curious or sci-fi-curious people that don’t necessarily have the time to watch a hundred episodes of TNG. So, it’s nice to have a show that could intrigue them and onboard them into the greater Trek universe.

And so, I helped them. They’d say, “Well, what if we had an advisor or something like that?” And I [would make suggestions like], “Well, maybe you could make it a hologram.”

Very quickly, Nickelodeon picked up the show. The first season, I was moonlighting on it as a writer and producer, while wrapping up showrunning on Wizards: Tales of Arcadia. And then, for the second season, I was lucky enough to be brought back as Co-Executive Producer and co-head writer.

Congratulations on your promotion.

Oh, thank you. You know, I was no stranger to being a head writer. I’d done it a few times before, but I wanted to work on Star Trek so badly, I was happy being a writer/producer on Season 1.

Talking about Season 2, what did you find the most challenging aspect?

I think it was paying service to all of the narrative threads that we knew we had to answer from Season 1 in a way that felt satisfactory but did not prevent us from having some traditional high concept science fiction episodes of the week, finding that balance of a slightly more serialized opening – as many fans have pointed out – with the ability to go to strange new worlds and have esoteric or interesting mysteries to solve that could wrap up but perhaps have consequences that carry on throughout the season. It became this increasingly expanding house of cards that all of us were very delicately building on, because we knew from the beginning that we wanted this to go places that ascended even beyond what the audience’s expectations were for a ‘kids cartoon’ and really take its place as an entry point into Star Trek that could stand alongside all of those other amazing series, animated or live action. So, it was a challenge, but I would always tell the writers room, “Just think of John F. Kennedy. ‘We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.’”

It was stated, at first, that Prodigy had a five-season story. Has that been changed and is there a new plan for the future? Will there be a third season?

We definitely have ideas for how the story could continue. That was in the back of our minds even before we started writing Season 2. We were mapping out, Where do we want this end point of the season to occur, and where is the potential for more stories? I think, in many ways, the beauty of the Star Trek formula, if you will, is that it is evergreen and, in many ways, this season was about getting our now-ensigns to a point where, if they were aboard a training ship, they could earn that right to be goodwill emissaries on behalf of the Federation on these Starfleet missions out in space.

So, I don’t think our plans necessarily have changed much at all. We always try our best – with the exception, I guess, of Season 1 – to wrap up as much as we can, so that it doesn’t feel like you’re always having this carrot dangled in front of you, like, ‘Oh, it’ll be satisfying next season.’ We wanted this to feel like a delicious course in a however-many-course meal. The metaphor I use is, if you go to a restaurant, hopefully – if it’s a really great restaurant – you can have one course and be like, ‘That was a great meal. I’m going to recommend this restaurant,’ and then, if you get more courses and they’re even more delicious, you realize it’s sort of proverbial mint frosting on a polypeptide cake.

So, I think we certainly have ideas for how the show could continue. Because of the nature of where streaming is as an industry, there’s a lot of unknowns. But that’s not to say that it’s, by any means, impossible for us to continue the story. I think there’s actually many ways it could continue – as a season, as a film, as a crossover. Who knows? You know, the door is open.

Now with Prodigy on Netflix and Paramount’s merger with Skydance, will you and your colleagues pitch to bring production back to Paramount+ and write more seasons?

That sort of stuff is completely determined by somebody else, but I can tell you right now that, as far as distribution goes, Netflix has the rights and the license to produce more seasons. I do know that nothing will really change if we get to make more. CBS Studios and Paramount Global still own the rights to Star Trek, and they would be treated like a studio like any other, and the distribution would be handled by Netflix. So, we would still get to be part of the greater universe. I don’t think there would be any limits, necessarily, on the stories we could tell. The future of Paramount+ and what shows wind up where is still very much in flux. But all we can do as artists is keep producing what we think is quality content, and the audience will find us.

Would you be in favor of a crossover between Prodigy and Lower Decks?

Oh, yeah. We talked a lot about what was possible. The issue that we had, at least when we were writing Season 2, was, if we did happen to bring a Lower Decks character over, then it kind of puts Mike McMahan in a bind, because unless we use some time travel shenanigans – like they did on Strange New Worlds – then we’re kind of locking that character into where they are three years later. We didn’t want to take that agency away from Mike unless he was okay with it, and obviously they’re still making Season 5 right now.

That’s a long way of saying anything is possible. But obviously, just like we did with Picard and even a little bit with Lower Decks, like, I spoke with Mike specifically about the shout-out that we give to the Cerritos in Season 2, and he loved it. So, we always try to be very respectful of the other creators, either of current shows or even past shows. I always try to do my due diligence.

Will there be any new action figures created for the Season 2 design of characters, for example Zero’s new suit? Will there be a Rok-Tahk figure?

I would absolutely love that. I think the challenge that some merchandise faces is the 1990s’ appetite for action figures is a different beast than today. However, the more people watch our show, the more merchandise there will be. I can’t reveal anything yet, but there are some very cool things that hopefully will be announced very soon. The short answer is: if people buy the merchandise, there will be more merchandise.

If you have to nominate one, which Prodigy character would you say is your favorite?

Gosh, it’s very difficult for me to choose one character who is my favorite, because in many ways I relate to and care about a lot of them, and many of them I write from a perspective of a little bit of myself being put into the characters. But in terms of which one I enjoy writing for, Zero is quite fun because, specifically, they have sort of an outsider’s perspective and can say things like, “Oh, a binary star. What a novel and interesting way to meet our doom.”

I love the very Short Treks episode you did (which came out between the two seasons of Prodigy). How did you find that experience?

Working on very Short Treks was very interesting. I was contacted, more or less out of the blue, by Secret Hideout and then Casper Kelly. They essentially said, “Hey, do you want to write some short comedy sketches that celebrate Star Trek?” Of course, before they even finished the sentence, I said, “Yes, absolutely.”

It was a very quick experience. Essentially, I just wrote up five or six ideas that I thought could make for fun comedy sketches. We pitched them out, then Casper picked one. I wrote it, and they didn’t really change much of anything. I think they tweaked the ending a little bit to give it a little bit more of an absurdist, weird punch.

I kind of used it as a challenge to myself, like, How can I gently poke fun at “These Are the Voyages…”, which is obviously one of, arguably, the most controversial series finales? It was a chance to bring Trip Tucker back and imply that maybe he survived and it was just a holodeck simulation after all.

But then, as I went on, I thought it would be fun to try to take that and push it as far as I could and point out how crazy it is to have people watching holo simulations of other shows and trying to get something out of them. Very quickly, I was like, Oh, maybe I could just do a representation from all of the series, or at least all the crews. I kept putting people in, and they kept not saying no. So, I think, to date, that might be the one piece of Star Trek media that has the most characters from the most franchises in one episode, so I’m proud of that.

Thank you so much for this interview.

It was my pleasure. And please, if you get a chance, I encourage all of your readers to check out Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2. It’s currently on Netflix in most locations, coming soon to SkyShowtime and other places. Hopefully we’ll get more news on that, but if you can, check it out on Netflix.