WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Prodigy Season 1, Episode 5, "Terror Firma," streaming now on Paramount+.
While Star Trek: Prodigy takes place deep in the Delta Quadrant, far from the jurisdiction of Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets, Starfleet's presence is still acutely felt as Dal and his ragtag group of friends make their escape from the harsh mining planet of Tars Lamora on the Starfleet vessel the Protostar. Guided by a hologram projection of Kathryn Janeway, the amateur spacefarers have cruised the cosmos and encountered their fair share of classic Star Trek peril. And as the crew of the Protostar survive their latest brush with death, they discover their spacecraft has a powerful secret lying in its heart: The warp drive is powered by an actual protostar.
While exploring an M-class planet in their travels, Janeway takes command of the Protostar when it is threatened by sentient thorny tendrils that attempt to pull the entire starship into the planet to consume it. As Janeway assesses the ship systems that she has available to her, she notices an unusual amount of power consumption dedicated to an unspecified portion of the ship. When attempting to redirect power from this process to other areas to combat and elude the rapidly growing tendrils, Janeway is surprised to learn she is not only locked out from accessing the power supply to this system but is restricted in learning what it even is before moving to different strategies to save the Protostar.
As Dal leads his friends back on the Protostar after narrowly evading the tendrils and hallucinogenic spores on the planet's surface, he discovers the mysterious system that is impeding the Protostar's escape before Zero discovers the system actually involves maintenance on a protostar in the ship's engine room. And tapping into the protostar's full potential, the starship is able to hit astonishing velocities at warp speed, completely eluding the Diviner and his fiendish right-hand man Drednok whom had both been in hot pursuit of the Protostar since it departed from Tars Lamora.
While most Starfleet vessels -- like most vessels capable of warp speed in the Star Trek Universe -- are powered by refined dilithium crystals, Starfleet has experimented with alternative fuel sources to achieve warp speed before. The most notable example of this is Star Trek: Discovery, with the eponymous Starfleet cruiser utilizing a spore drive to jump through subspace itself. Powered by tardigrades interacting with a symbiotic figure -- in Discovery's case, Chief Engineer Paul Stamets -- the ship was able to traverse great distances through a mycelial network in seconds. However, because of Stamets being uniquely interfaced with the spores, Starfleet was never able to adequately replicate the technology, leading to its continued reliance on dilithium.
The full capabilities of the Protostar's stellar engine remain to be seen, but, as it currently stands, this upgrade makes it the fastest starship seen in Star Trek: Prodigy, if not the entire Star Trek franchise to date. The Protostar already unveiled impressive ship systems, including a replicator capable of manufacturing an entire spaceworthy spaceship in a matter of minutes, potentially powered by the stellar-fueled warp drive. And with the crew of the Protostar still learning more about their new starship, the Protostar likely has plenty of additional secrets within its hull.
Created by Kevin and Dan Hageman, Star Trek: Prodigy releases new episodes Thursdays on Paramount+.