Star Trek: 10 Secrets About The USS Protostar You Need To Know

The look is familiar, the style instantly recognisable but under the hood the USS Protostar NX-76887 there is anything but your average starship.

As the smallest starship ever to headline a Star Trek series, the Protostar offers a confined environment in which to transport the main cast of the show as they develop into Starfleet cadets.

The singular goal of the Diviner, the USS Protostar is lost in time before the series commences and later discovered by Dal, Rohk, and Zero crashed on the mining world of Tars Lamora.

It would be the first to be placed in real danger on a planet surface, attacked by vines in Dreamcatcher and, later, buried in ice for safekeeping in Crossroads. It was also a ship that would make the quantum slipstream drive look like a snail standing still.

Thanks to the arrival of Netflix fans will soon be enjoying season one again and season two in 2024 with more Protostar action likely to come.

Initially commanded by Chakotay, the Protostar would encounter the Vau N'Kat on its first mission although the situation would turn nasty leaving viewers to wonder about the fate of its crew. Season two's premise seems to be that the cadets and the Voyager-A will be part of the search for the missing Protostar crew but for now we're going to focus on the details of the first season's stunning starship.

In the extras for the season one DVD and blu-rays, the Hagemans explain that there were certain aspects of starships that they knew they needed to bring back to both help acclimatise new viewers and also to nod to the Star Trek franchise history - a Greatest Hits if you will.

One such piece was the holodeck. An element of Star Trek since its (sort of) introduction in The Animated Series, it would arrive fully formed in Encounter at Farpoint and lead into a whole series of appearances right through TNG, DS9 and Voyager. Murf is the first Prodigy character to take a stroll in the simulated environment before Janeway takes Jankom and Dal on a quick tour of its features. Skydiving on Ceti Alpha V you say? Why not!

The budget did constrain the number of sets that the behind the scenes team were able to bring to the screen although they would produce the Captains' Quarters, the bunk room and the brig.

Where the cost restraints did make them work a little smarter was in building sections of corridors and rooms which could be interchanged, have displays added and change from being a corridor on the Dauntless to a corridor on the Protostar - much in the same way as redressing sets in live action Trek!