That the drive seems to take up most of the volume of the ship, would support the idea that the ship is a solely built to be test platform for an experimental drive.

When I saw the protostar engine glow, I was thinking the same thing: warp doesn't produce thrust, it warps the area between the nacelles to create propulsion. at first I thought it was opening up a containment door to allow the heat/gravity/funneled energy of the protostar inside the vessel out so it would augment the warp field, but that seemed too...convoluted. Then I started wondering-what if the protostar engine is glowing because it's powering up what essentially is a warp bubble modifier not by exposing the protostar to the warp field directly, but by powering up a special device that alters its shape via some kind of weaker warp field-basically forcing the warp bubble into a specific, potentially more functional shape to allow the ship to enhance its speed via the augmentation of the warp field? kind of like putting a finger on something soft and pushing on it so it bends around your finger, except in this case it's a gravimentric field or a secondary warp field that compresses the main warp bubble into maybe more of an arrowhead, thus pushing the ship faster. The movement of the nacelles could be realligning the warp bubble to give the protostar engine greater contact with the warp field while also shifting the struts out of the way of its moving parts (which I imagine are meant to hide the protostar engine as much as they are to protect it from damage). It sounds kind of messy, but that's kind of what I was thinking, anyway.

KITT: Remember Michael I can only use my turboboost once per episode

I feel like experimental super-fast propulsion systems is becoming a hallmark of Federation tech.

That was a great discussion on the Protostar's drive. I agree that it felt more 'grounded' because it stayed in the regular warp tunnel. Also liked the comparison to Galaxy Quest's Turbo Button.

My theory is the Protostar is actually a 32nd century ship. The Discovery episode that dropped the same day mentioned that the (32nd century) Starfleet was developing alternative warp drives to conserve dilithium supplies. Another big clue are the ST Voyager references in both shows (Hologram Janeway in Prodigy and the Voyager-J in Discovery).

Gene Roddenberry: I don't want my ships to look like rockets Kurtzman: Who is this Roddenberry person and why does he think he knows Star Trek better than me?

Im wondering if its a prototype space terraformer, it builds planets and stars, which would explain how it was buried at the centre of a proto-planet.

I'm thinking that since its prjecting the protostar's magnetic and angular momentum fields to alter the existing warp field to become far more stable allowing the ship to transcend the known 9.99 starfleet higher level. since we know even maintaining that factor of warp speed also burns through deuterium and the standard warp cores will overheat the protostar core must also have the power output to maintain the energy requirement to hold and reach higher warp speeds. If anything it may be an attempt for starfleets to reconfigure the existing warp scale with new drive tech. Standard Warp Drive = 1 to 9.99 ProtoWarp fields = new scaling, so maybe warp factors of 10+ where 10 is 9.991, 11 is 9.992, and so forth

About the problem with containing a protostar (since they are friggin huge), I think the ship does not really contain an actual star inside because it’d make much less sense than a singularity core I think the ship actually creates and charges up a very small protostar which act as a battery that can release a huge burst of power at once thatll otherwise overload a conventional warp core in one go, that’ll explain why the drive drains so much power from the ship and why it need 2 warp core

It sounds like the exact opposite of how Romulan ships work.

To link it back to Discovery, these new warp field speeds here are causing the gravimetric fields there.

If the engine uses an actual proto star not an artificial one then that might explain why the technology wasn't put into production, would have thought there quite rare.

The only question I have is in episode one/two when the power down everything the only thing that was sucking power was the ship replicator. Then Janeway ask to take everything off line but could not due protostar system.

The Diviner ship looked a bit like the Narada, but I don't think that makes him "possibly" from the Kelvinverse. The Narada was a Romulan Mining ship from THIS timeline, modified by Borg tech from THIS universe.

Having a ship with such tech allows an Empire or some star system with ability to get to other places quickly as well as use for military applications like responding to enemy or attacking and escape quickly.

Its definitely a test platform of some sort. I don't think theres some super secret function ( I could be wrong). Its designed to move quick through warp. Like surfing a wave and then turning on a propeller for that much more speed.

Good afternoon Gentlemen, I think it is a great look as it transforms the Nacelles lower is cool and opposite of Voyagers Now as for the Protostar in the ship WELL that is great NOT A GOOD AS HAVING A SUN on your ship like in Andromada Trance Gemini ( Laura Bertram ) WOW

This sounds a lot like the power plant from an imperial star destroyer. They use a solar ionization reactor which basically contains a mini sun. Also consumes a lot of power

There could be a time dilation aspect to the protostar that could overwrite the warp 10 barrier and thus is able to be used with some modification as a time machine to return to the past and fix some event that destroyed The Diviner's people. The protostar drive may be a first step to the temporal displacement drive. The series is set in 2383, five years after Voyager returns but the ship itself has been buried for some time so that would put a strain on developing and building and losing the ship in just five years, maybe the ship is actually from the future and it has been there for decades or even a century. Or the ship uses layered warp bubbles to get around the warp 10 barrier.

The Diviner might be after the actual protostar itself. Not the ship.

It rather seems like that Janeway is a generic training AI rather than for the Protostar specifically, that would explain why she doesn't know about non standard features.

Vtec just kicked in yooo!

It's a cool lil thing that works well for a Trek cartoon imo. I like that they are using an alternate power source like romulans do in their ships

at least we now know what is in this "big" engineering hull... mostly the protostar core and its machinery. Meaning that the only livable space is the saucer.

Maybe they need the extra nacelle to even out the power the protostar pushes into the system. Maybe there was a prototype before with only the two normal ones and its warpcoils melted every time they punched the extra power in.

This is not too different from my head cannon ship idea. Where instead of having one warp core set vertical. My ship has 4 warp cores that are linked in a horizontal helix configuration that works in a tandem pattern with each other. The cores cylinder is connected to the deflector dish and through the middle of the lower engineering section of the ship. By doing this ship can elongate the warp bubble, stretching it to a fine arrow tip. I see warp drives as a sailing ship goes through the water. Applying hydrodynamics to space warp. As really long and narrow ships can move through the water faster than wider ones. I apply the same concept to warp bubbles. The ship also has 4 nessells that can pivot slightly to the edge of the super narrow warp bubble. Use the warp friction of the ship to recharge the ship warp cells and slow down the power draw greatly. So the ship can say in warp 10 times longer and archive the fable warp 10. Since this ship has such an overpowered energy recovery rate. This ship's firepower is in another league of its own. It has phaser strips on the top and bottom of the sauser, on top of the sauser it has 3 triple long lance phaser cannon turrets. 2 turrets facing forward and 1 turret facing back all with 360 degrees rotation 92-degree elevation and -50 depression. Plus each phase cannon can move independently on the turret for 100% beam convergence. Because of this, The firing range for these phase cannon turrets is 5 to10 times longer, more powerful, and damage effectively at range than normal phaser array strips. The bridge is recessed in the center of the saucer section for maximum protection with a 300-degree bridge screen. My concept behind this ship is taking a hardened armored brick of a spoon, strapping the most powerful energy recovery system while mid/maxing energy compacity then converting any energy waisted overflow to weapons and back into energy storage in a continuous cycle. Because of this, this ship can be piloted by 2 or 3 people but the max crew is about 2000. No space is wasted the ship is compressed so every space is armor, engineering craw spaces. This is a full upscaled that of the defiant class. This ship can ram through other ships twice its size. Theoretically. lol

i like the idea of the drive, but depends on what happens next, its made it more interesting to me

The design looks great. As for the tech, feels like there's too much unnecessary new tech in Star Trek these days. We already have the sales spore drive, and the quantum slipstream from Star Trek online; did they really need to come up with yet another drive for which they don't have a pseudoscientific explanation? Maybe I'm becoming a grumpy old Trekie. LOL

Don't know if anyone else has picked up on the designs that Prodigy has pretty much plagiarized from other sci-fi franchises. The diviner in his mechanical form is a direct copy of a Ceph Mastermind from the Crysis games and his little robotic minions that accompanied him while in this form are also another form of Ceph from Crysis. The design of the the orb thingy the kids encountered in the hedge maze in the Hirogan system is lifted from Destiny and Zero is incredibly similar to your Ghost in Destiny both with the English voice (which in and of itself sound incredibly similar) and that Ghost doubles as your flashlight, something Zero also does in episode 5 of Prodigy.

I just really want to tell the writers "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." A protostar is either a gas giant or small star. Neither of which will fit inside a ship, and even if you could, congrats, you have a fusion reactor like every other ship in Starfleet!

I think they did because it was cool. 2nd not clear lore said they couldn't. Though only problem is that just really big fusion reactor. Basic fusion power wrap drives are slow. Only way to get more speed is put more pressure on the proto star to get fusion of more heavier elements and more energy density

They went to plaid when the protostar drive was activated.

Does this tech is more faster than Quantum Warp drive or slipstream?

I don't understand it. Protostars are not tiny, they're gigantic. There has to be more to it than what was said.

Prepare for...ludicrous speed. Then Ludacris appears and goes, say what?

The only problem I have with this is... Why they still have power problems... When you have a star you can use to power up your ship... You need power to contain the protostar... But you can use the star itself to give you power

Maybe, IMO, the ship is what it is actually a name. It has the experimental technology that harnesses the energy from a theoretical formation of a protostar. This technology may offer high field compression which allows this tiny ship to achieve such speeds as a much larger vessel can or could. This may be a step beyond Romulan singularity technology. The engines though, seemingly from the JJ universe may not be a cross-over as many may think, IMO. But what if the team that was prominent in the alternate timeline finally came to the forefront in this timeline and went beyond culminating in the Protostar drive system. "Young minds, fresh ideas." -JK

Why move? Because it's cool! And armor protects the drive nacelle.

So it uses magnetic containment to create a "mini star" to draw power from. So it runs on a fusion reactor. By Starfleet stanadards that's absurdly primitive. It might as well have a steam engine!

WARP is not a tunnel !

Why not just use a singularity, like the Romulans?

i think prototype drive so i think its ok

There is an warp technologies that never return warp pulse was a method whereby a starship could attain faster-than-light velocities by field-saturating the nacelles, firing the engines at maximum intensity and then disengaging them, allowing the ship to "coast" at warp speeds without actively employing the warp engines with if you compression Warp plasma with to field-saturating warp coils with the glow be an turbocharger for each Warp coil look at the hook-up must be compression warp plasma injectors!

maybe starfleet found the tech and cant fully reproduce it so there is only this ship yet

Cap says, like a Romulan singularity drive....wouldn't a protostar be the exact opposite of the Romulan singularity drive?

“Augment your warp drive with a booster” Star Trek Online Anyone

Does this link to the new warp drive on discovery season 4? Also protostars are fucking huge, and that tiny tritanium magnetic confinement chamber isn’t going to contain, the technology to hold a protostar alone exceeds the technology that is used to make use of it. Think of it as us discovering how to use warp drive but can’t build it. Also it reminds me of the Terran empire flagship from season 3 of discovery. They are centuries ahead of the federation. So unless this ships technology was stolen from another timeline or universe I don’t see where it came from, unless this series is not cannon, if so I understand if not then the protostar warp drive should still be in use in the year 3189… I don’t see anything better just comon nacelles.

On a darker note that prob would never happen, the protostar isn't a protostar, its the Diviners wife and they're harnessing her energy to power the proto-warp...very hush-hush tech that Starfleet never sanctioned.

All this talk of comparing warp 9.xxxx ... why not just turn it to 11? :)

🙂👍🏽🖖🏽📽

Hyperactive hyperdrive

To many questions, not enough answers, and most of the answers are "plot"...

So, trek rips off more ideas from other sci-fi. Wow...so shocked...