Star Trek: Prodigy's Brett Gray Prepared For His Role By Keeping Himself In The Dark
The second season of "Star Trek: Prodigy" is still awaiting a release date in North America, although French readers should be able to view it right now on the region-specific France.TV. The story of the cancelation of "Prodigy" is sad for Trekkies, as the kid-centric animated series, created by Kevin and Dan Hageman, was just growing into its own and emerging as a proper "Star Trek" series.
The premise was fun: in an unknown and distant part of the galaxy, a group of teenage aliens — fleeing slavery in a mine — discover an abandoned Starfleet vessel called the U.S.S. Protostar. On board, they meet a holographic version of Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), who assumes the teens are Starfleet cadets and require tutelage. The teens are hotheaded, feisty, and brooding in the way that teens tend to be, but Janeway teaches them to operate as a crew and mature as individuals. By the end of the first season, the teens were wearing uniforms and staging dangerous rescue missions.
The ersatz captain of the crew was Dal R'El, played by actor Brett Gray. Dal didn't have a family and didn't even know what species he was. He initially took command out of bluster and unearned confidence but eventually learned to get along with his crew and even came to care for them as friends. Scant exposure to Starfleet ideals was enough to inspire ambition and growth.
It seems that Gray, when preparing for "Prodigy," deliberately didn't do any "Star Trek" research. Gray was not a Trekkie by any stretch and had no working knowledge of the franchise. However, since Dal was also clueless about the details of Starfleet, Gray felt it was fitting to keep his homework to an absolute minimum. Gray admitted as much in a 2022 interview with TrekMovie.
Barely preparing
Of course, Trekkies would likely prefer to hear from actors that they are as learned in "Star Trek" as most diehard fans. "Star Trek" is a vast and complicated universe and I think many Trekkies would be comforted to know that the actors they watch every week are just as sensitive to continuity as they are. Not so with Gray. When asked about how much "Star Trek" knowledge he entered "Prodigy" with, Gray was frank, saying:
"You're not going like this answer. I tried to barely prepare it all. I was really nervous coming into it. I thought maybe I should watch every 'Star Trek' and I should go learn about everything; see who the people are and things like that. But as I was reading the scripts for the first season, I realized that I could discover this all as myself with Dal. I don't know if that was the right way to do it but I feel like it's freed me up so much."
To be fair, ignorance would actually aid Gray in creating a character like Dal. If the character had never heard of Starfleet, then it would stand to reason that the actor shouldn't have either. Dal and Gray could, then, go on parallel growth arcs, learning about "Star Trek" through snippets of knowledge, all while offering their own eye-rolling, irreverent viewpoint. Dal didn't find Starfleet sacred, allowing Gray, as he said, to do more with his character. Indeed, when it came to a known element of "Star Trek" narration, Gray said that his ignorance impressed the producers.
'I don't even know what a captain's log is'
Gray went on to relate a story about his unique read of the classic "Star Trek" exposition device — the captain's log:
"I remember my first captain's log — I don't know if you've heard any of them, but they're getting better — but when I first started them it was super flippant and the producers loved it. They said, 'Wow, these are usually done very matter-of-factly and super seriously, did you choose to do that?' And I was like, 'I don't even know what a captain's log is!' I think in some ways, it's freed me up to bring some freshness and to bring some life into these characters in a different way than we've seen before."
Indeed, "Prodigy" is one of the most in-depth examples of an outsider character learning about Starfleet for the first time. Gray reinforced that he and Dal were learning at the same time.
In June 2023, it was announced that "Star Trek: Prodigy" had been canceled and that the show would be removed from Paramount+. This came as an utter shock to the "Prodigy" cast and crew. They were given leeway to finish the second season, but there was to be no more "Prodigy" after that. Currently, "Prodigy" is available on Netflix. The sudden removal of "Prodigy" was the first sign that Paramount had invested too much in "Star Trek" and that the franchise needed to contract. "Picard" is over, "Prodigy" and "Discovery" have been canceled, and "Section 31" was transformed from a series into a movie.
Those of us outside of France will have to wait and see if Dal truly grows up.