Nice notes, other than the Berman comment, which was tacky and unnecessary.

I love Prodigy, but I've seen people struggle to get past the first episode. If someone's coming in reluctantly it's not where I'd start.

I've shown this as a first episode (or at least first 2-3 episodes) and it hasn't been an issue. If you're sitting with them you can explain significant items, but generally they get enough without much help.

Great episode, but I'd argue it doesn't really give a new viewer much of a feel of what Star Trek is. Probably works better when you have a few episodes of TNG already under your belt.

To clarify, Melumad does the incidental music in Prodigy, but the theme is by Michael Giacchino. He also scored, among many other things, the three Kelvin Timeline films, so he probably brings that "cinematic" feel you're describing.

Melumad does occasionally integrate part of Giacchino's Kelvin Timeline themes. For example, I want to say it appears toward the beginning of Prodigy 1x11.

I agree it's overused for the average episode of Trek, but if we accept that they're doing a Section 31 movie, what's the point of a low-stakes feature film (even a streaming film), especially one centered around Section 31?

Also worth noting that the article describes it as "Big stakes emotionally, big stakes for the characters in our story", so the "stakes" are referring at least in part to character stakes, not necessarily universe-ending stakes. (Though I admit in practice it will probably be both.)

Grain of salt since I can’t remember where I heard this, but my understanding is that TOS-ENT and the first ten movies is generally a single combined license, but all of the new shows need to be licensed individually, I’m not sure if the Abrams films are licensed as a package or individually, but they’re separate from the other films.