Gizmodo’s James Whitbrook has yet more to vent on Paramount+‘s cancelation and erasure of Prodigy.
I hadn’t considered the cancelation from the perspective of systemic misogyny, which Whitbrook effectively is carating.
However, given that Janeway was surely chosen as the legacy captain for Prodigy because Voyager had proven itself to be an effective gateway for younger and new viewers on Netflix, Whitbrook’s inference Paramount views her less important to the franchise than Picard is biting.
Paramount wouldn’t dare treat what it’s done for Patrick Stewart and Jean-Luc Picard as a tax break. Casting aside everything that Prodigy stood for, and in the process doing the same to Mulgrew and Janeway’s legacy, is a cruel twist on what is already a cruel fate for the show.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
It’s very easy to take a point of view that makes it look like mysogyny whenever a show with a woman-led cast gets canceled but let’s face the simplest facts first: Paramount+ is a shit streaming platform with a limited library. Prodigy is a kids show and kids shows don’t drive subscribers. If they really wanted the show to succeed they would have put it somewhere with an actual audience.
When it comes down to it, Paramount+ itself was an idiotic play. They should never have tried to go solo but all they could see was a gold rush, now they are finally starting to see that they were actually late and are stuck scrabbling for scraps with their limited offerings
If there’s one thing the Voyager series proved to us, it’s that you do not fuck with Janeway.
She’s crazy. Your whole species will end up erased from history if you piss her off.
She really does sound terrifying when you put it that way.
Perhaps they weren’t seeing the long-term demand they were hoping for… as in, even if it was pulling in ok numbers now they didn’t see a way to ramp those numbers or even maintain them going forward.
In general, compared to the other new Trek shows I’ve seen much less buzz around Prodigy on both the web and with real life acquaintances, with it not even being acknowledged in many cases. I have yet to watch it myself not because I hold anything against it personally, but because its trailers didn’t grab me and I suspect that’s a somewhat common experience among Trek viewers… I think Prodigy may have faired better had it been a much more direct sequel to Voyager (similar tone, feel, etc) and had been marketed as such.
I’m no expert in showbiz though so I might be catastrophically wrong, haha.
Agreed on the buzz. Even among Trek discussions it feels like Prodigy is mentioned about as often as TAS.
I think it’s a worthy addition to the franchise, and if you’re enough of a fan to be commenting in a Star Trek Lemmy instance of all places, I recommend watching it at some point. Just be warned it takes several episodes to find its groove and feel like Trek. I enjoyed it from the start (I love seeing different perspectives within this universe), but it kicks off in a very different setting than we’re used to, and I think that turned some people away. I.
Just as Roddenberry’s utopian future transcends sexism, racism, ableism and other isms, so too does the cold-blooded calculation of the corporate accountant. Networks will cancel shows that lose money and renew shows that make money over whatever timeframe their cost/benefit ratio is run on. Personally, I think Prodigy is a breath of fresh air for the franchise, and cancelling it/removing it the network is a mistake from a brand/franchise/portfolio management perspective. But spinning its cancellation as an example of misogyny is silly. You might as well argue that Paramount hates kids cause there are many more children as main characters in the show and only one adult woman.
Some thoughts here.
I agree these kinds of assessments require a bit of a deep dive.
Let’s look at the business case then, the economics and the long haul marketing strategy.
Does the narrative around Prodigy being unprofitable, a write off hold up? Could Whitbrook be putting his finger on something valid?
Let’s also keep in mind that the head of scheduling for streaming at Paramount has been saying that their business strategy for Paramount+, as they integrate Showtime, has said repeatedly that their streaming strategy is built on ‘the 3 Fs’:
Fandoms, franchises & familiar faces.
Prodigy quite obviously was designed to tick off all three elements of the strategy, so what’s the failure point or mismatch as they winnow?
The narrative that Prodigy wasn’t popular enough on Paramount+ doesn’t scan.
First, from what metrics we have available publicly for 2022 (Parrot Analytics mainly),
- Prodigy was one of only two Paramount+ animated originals that performed well in audience demand, falling slightly behind Lower Decks.
- Overall demand for the franchise and subscription uptake continued to build during Prodigy’s run in the fall-winter of 2022-2023 in contrast to the acute fall-off earlier in 2022 during the runs of Discovery season 4 and Picard season 2.
- Star Trek and the Sheridan Yellowstone franchise accounted for half of Paramount+‘s subscription demand in 2022, with net subscription increases during the runs of SNW, Lower Decks and Prodigy.
So then, if Prodigy is doing well in attracting and retaining subscribers and Star Trek is one of two principal franchises supporting their business strategy, where’s the problem?
Let’s look at Nickelodeon, the original destination for the show.
Nickelodeon’s linear audience numbers have been falling overall. Prodigy’s numbers aren’t great on Nick, but none of Nick’s new shows are taking off as they once were.
Going into the pandemic, Nick was such an important anchor for cable in the US that Paramount was obliged to make promises for content exclusivity windows for Nickelodeon when it negotiated its last carrier contract for the US with Comcast. When the pandemic came, suddenly kids were online as never before, and Nickelodeon quickly diminished in its power to attract linear viewership.
So, one can draw an inference that it’s Nickelodeon, not Paramount+, that’s financial trouble is a key point in the decision. Nick is losing money on Prodigy, that needs an exit pathway for an expensive show it can’t afford to partner in.
BUT…
Why then, given Paramount’s 3F streaming strategy, animated shows less expensive and underrepresented in Paramount’s streaming offerings, doesn’t Paramount just rework the deal between the streaming side and Nickelodeon?
Here’s where systematic bias may be coming into it -
Paramount+ has been successful in building a broad subscriber base across ages, genders, race and ethnicity while still gaining ground in ‘middle America.’
This is not the case for other streamers. MAX is struggling to bring together the male-skewed HBO audience and the older-female Discovery one.
Let’s look at what else was cut along with Prodigy.
-
a show targeted at the LGBTQ audience canceled during Pride month
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a show targeted at a niche female demographic
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a family show headed by one of the strongest female leadership icon characters of the 90s, with another principal character voiced by a Black actor.
Paramount used a lot of dense marketing technobabble about fit and alignment to explain that the choice to cut and write this particular set of 3 shows. They’ve previously talked about popularity during the cuts of Showtime’s more niche, arty products.
If we listen to them, and accept their justification, the implication is that these LGBTQ, women and black targeted shows no longer are their demographic priorities. They don’t fit with where P+ with Showtime is going even if they all obviously check the 3F boxes. Meanwhile, there’s been no language backpedaling on the 3F strategy.
At the same time, Paramount Global is trying to sell off BET and BET+.
The conclusion isn’t necessarily misogyny, but clearly that Paramount Global is no longer strategically prioritizing its diverse representation of demographic groups.
They are telling us, their advertisers and their investors that Paramount/CBS is turning the entire business back towards prioritizing a much less representative audience.
There’s an implicit assumption that they can continue to retain the demand of women, racially diverse and LGBTQ demographics, while skewing their new investments towards the older, middle American audience of the Yellowstone franchise and the slice of the Trek audience that Picard season three was targeted to draw back in.
My conclusion - Whitbrook has a point. They wouldn’t have done this with Picard or Kirk.
It says more about Paramount’s strategic shift away from prioritizing representation and diverse demographics more broadly.
It’s not just misogyny, but it’s in there. Without unconscious bias and systemic misogyny, the scheduling folks wouldn’t assume that they can hold girls and women as an audience while taking them out of principal roles.
@StillPaisleyCat I appreciate the long, well-thought out reply. But I’m not convinced. Lower Decks has a black woman, Tawny Newsome, first on the call sheet and Mike McMahan has said (IIRC) that by default all of the characters in the show are bisexual (something that’s been shown in various ways on-screen), so I don’t think you can point to Prodigy’s cancellation due to some bias against LGBTQIA+, women or people of colour when you have a counterfactual right there in its sister show. In fact, every modern Trek show has its diversity boxes well and truly checked, but nobody is accusing Paramount of cancelling Picard because of some network executive’s bias against an interacial lesbian relationship in Raffi/Seven.
I haven’t watched any of the Yellowstone shows (they’re on my list) but I understand that franchise has Kevin Costner, Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren in its stable. A show starring these actors is just going to do better than a show starring Kate Mulgrew (who’s last-billed, albeit with the “and” credit), just as a show starring Patrick Stewart as the lead is inherently going to do better numbers than a show where Kate Mulgrew is a supporting character. Bring in, oh say Beyonce, as a lead on a Trek and I’m pretty sure the ratings will spike through the roof. It’s not because they’re white or male, it’s because they’re more famous.
They wouldn’t have done this with Picard or Kirk.
Maybe, maybe not. But if not, it’s because Picard and Kirk are more iconic, more well recognised characters than Janeway. Star Trek was never more popular in the mainstream than in the mid 80s-early 90s, with the TOS movies and TNG TV series both in full flight. VOY ran during the Berman era’s middle-age as Trek’s star (nyuk nyuk) was beginning to fade. Fans know who Janeway is, but most people on the street wouldn’t, whereas most people on the street would recognise Captain Kirk and the bald English guy from that space show.
By the way, I say all this as someone who thinks that Prodigy is a far more worthy addition to the franchise than the fan-lauded season 3 of Picard.
“misogyny is silly”
In a universe of corsets and decon gel, you might have missed some rather large cues.
Maybe this allows them to bring back Janeway in the new spin off from Picard. I would love to see the whole voyager crew appear in that.
If anything Janeway and the Voyager officers should be given their own limited live-action series or direct-to-streaming event movie.
I’m in no way sold on the idea of a 25th century using the Titan-to-Enterprise G as a nostalgia tour for legacy-of-the week and supporting an overarching arc of Jack’s hero’s journey.
While Picard season 3 made a strong case for an early 25th century show, what’s been proposed in the series finale and Matalas Twitter and interviews isn’t a satisfactory concept. Matalas is overpromising relative to what a single ship-based show can carry. I’d rather have the Titanprise really get out further across the galaxy, not be tied down to featuring legacies, not locked into serving a principal character’s journey, but rather to build a new ensemble exploring the 25th century that we still haven’t seen much of.
For Janeway, other Voyagers, the DS9 ensemble, I like Kurtzman’s idea rather of legacy characters getting each their own vehicle and focus be it 1 or 2 hour standalones or a limited series.
I would prefer a SNW monster of the week style with maybe a guess appearance here and there from Voyager. Nothing like what Picard did were one character shows up and all needed at the end. I much prefer the old school one off episodes with maybe a background over all goal.
I feel like Paramount always saw Voyager as a family show. That’s why they were so irked when they wanted to make it darker.
@Tired8281 @StillPaisleyCat I dunno about that! The only reason the Borg plot wasn’t a few-episode one-off was because 7/9 was providing some T&A the franchise…basically lacked entirely given it’s sausage party crew and Neelix macking on Ocampas in a way that was totally weird and creepy.
@Tired8281 @StillPaisleyCat Let’s not kid ourselves. The late 90s were pretty problematic in a lot of ways that Voyager basically leaned into while also passively calling out.
They cancelled it?? The bastards!
I don’t think that the cancellation of Prodigy has anything to do with systemic mysogyny, (though I can see how it can look that way).
First off, a Star Trek aimed at kids was a hard sell. Sure, it might have made sense to Paramount, seeing all the Jar Jar Binks toys that got sold, but Star Trek has always been at it’s best when it’s aimed at hard questions that society is dealing with right now. If it’s an ethical dilemma that an 8 year old can figure out, it’s not exactly an ethical dilemma. It was experiment that was tried and didn’t work; unlike Lower Decks which is an experiment that tried and did work.
Secondly: TNG literally re-launched the franchise from a 3 year 1960s sci-fi serial that managed to get 5 movies (two of them good at the time), to an entire franchise, from which Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and all the rest were launched. Of COURSE Picard was more important to the franchise than Janeway.
But mostly, Voyager wasn’t very good.
That’s really what it comes down to. People saw Picard, rightly or wrongly, as the continuation of a character and a story that they absolutely loved - TNG. Who wouldn’t have wanted another season of TNG (which we kind of got in Picard Series 3)? Now, honestly - look me in the eye and say: Do you really want another season of Voyager? Especially near the end when they were really running out of ideas?
There might have been a nostalgic draw to having Mulgrew come back as a holographic version of Janeway, but that’s about it - in all honestly, the inclusion of Janeway turned me off from wanting to check Prodigy out, because I did not like Voyager.
There’s also one last counter to the “This is systemic misogyny” argument and that is - Star Trek doesn’t seem like a franchise to be unaware of systemic misogyny and, if anything, works to combat it. Yes, there were a lot of problems in the Brannon/Braga era (I got turned off of Enterprise with the obvious fanservice in the first episode, and what’s up with Troi’s first/second season uniform?), but by and large, if there ever was a franchise that took a hard look at prejudices and systemic problems, that’d be Star Trek. The joke, of course, is “When did Star Trek get so woke?”- the answer is 1966!
So - I get how taken in a vacuum, this can seem like systemic misogyny. And maybe it even is, I just don’t think the preponderance of evidence supports the theory, and I don’t think it fits Occam’s razor.
