Star Trek Just Changed The Canon Of Its Best Villain
The latest episode of Star Trek: Prodigy adds a new twist to Borg canon, connecting it to Star Trek: Picard.
An interesting plot point in the latest episode of Star Trek: Prodigy has fans speculating that it may have implications for Borg canon, and a connection to the live-action adventures. Episode 12 of the show’s first season, entitled “Let Sleeping Borgs Lie” (which premiered November 3 on Paramount+) features the crew of the USS Protostar encountering a dormant Borg cube, which fans are theorizing may be the same cube featured in the first season of Star Trek: Picard.
Although Prodigy is a Nickelodeon production and promoted as a “children’s show,” it has found an audience among Trekkers of all ages, who appreciate the entertaining and insightful stories of a crew of enslaved teenagers of various alien species who band together and steal a derelict Federation ship and go on adventures throughout the galaxy. They are joined by a hologram training program designed to look like Admiral Kathryn Janeway (voiced by Kate Mulgrew).
Those adventures come to a halt when they encounter a dormant Borg cube in space, with a sleeping crew of Borg still aboard. The crew board the cube in hopes of using it to find a way of removing the deadly weapon onboard the Protostar. Of course, the Borg awaken, Zero the Medusan gets assimilated (temporarily), but frees itself and the crew manages to escape.
Fans, however, are speculating that the cube is the same one from Picard, for several reasons, mainly because Prodigy is set in the same timeframe. Inverse points out that Prodigy takes place in 2383, and the first season of Picard takes place in 2399, where the cube is found and being studied as “The Artifact.” There also aren’t that many Borg cubes drifting around to just run into that are visually similar.
We do know the Borg cube in Picard is found deactivated and drifting in space because it attempts to assimilate a Romulan ship and fails. One could argue that this is the same cube, and its failed efforts to assimilate the Romulans may even be tied to the fact that Zero’s successful de-assimilation may have affected the cube collective in some way.
For fans who need a refresher, the real Janeway was able to defeat the Borg in Star Trek: Voyager using a neurolytic pathogen. That’s likely why the Borg cube found by the Protostar crew is adrift. If this cube is the same one that is later found and identified as “The Artifact,” it serves as a cool little “Easter Egg” for fans to connect the animated series to the live-action storyline.
When a fan brought this theory to the attention of Star Trek: Prodigy writer and producer Aaron J. Waltke, he didn’t confirm it, but did speculate that it possibly could be the same cube. “Maybe…,” Waltke wrote, after breaking down the chain of events logically.
We do know that, according to details from Star Trek: Picard season one, the Borg cube shut down after being emotionally overwhelmed by a Romulan it assimilated. It wouldn’t be wild speculation to say that Zero’s ability to break free, due to the emotional attachment to the other members of the crew, planted a seed in the Borg Collective that was exploited by the Romulan.
