USS Protostar

The USS Protostar (NX-76884) was a Federation starship launched in 2382. The Protostar was a prototype, which was approved for production into a full ship class after the ship's destruction in 2384.
==Service history==
===Original voyage===
The Protostar was launched from the San Francisco Fleet Yards on Stardate 59749.1 under the command of Captain Chakotay for a return mission to the Delta Quadrant undertaken in the years after the return of the . () It was equipped with a holographic training advisor known as Hologram Janeway, modeled after Chakotay's former commanding officer, Captain Kathryn Janeway, and holographic projectors in multiple areas of the ship. (, et al.) 
During the mission, Chakotay sent out a mayday reporting that the Protostar had encountered a temporal anomaly that sent the ship into the future and deposited over the planet Solum after it had already been decimated by the native Vau N'Akat, a species that blamed the Federation for a catastrophic civil war which devastated their homeworld fifty years after the Federation made first contact with them. Chakotay attempted to send a distress call, but the damaged ship was then stormed by Drednoks and Chakotay was captured alongside his first officer Commander Adreek-Hu on the bridge. () The crew was held captive for months during which time Chakotay used a tricorder that Adreek had hidden away to send distress calls into the anomaly in the hopes of rescue. Eventually, the entire crew died aside from the captain and the first officer. ()
The Vau N'Akat now had control of the Protostar and placed blocks in the ship's main computer to conceal information about its original crew and purpose, partially using the Vau N'Akat language as a passcode encryption. One Drednok also gained access to Chakotay's command authorization codes. () They also placed a weapon called the living construct onboard the ship and hid it in a subdeck under the bridge. The weapon was capable of hijacking Federation ship systems and causing them to "turn on themselves... and tear themselves apart." The Vau N'Akat planned to send the Protostar back through the anomaly and use it as a Trojan horse to deploy the weapon in Federation space and destroy Starfleet before they could make first contact with them. However, this plan went awry when Chakotay and Adreek-Hu escaped on the eve of the launch. Unable to disarm the construct or board the ship to escape, Chakotay remotely sent the crewless Protostar back through the anomaly before the plan could be enacted, and the Protostar was lost in the past. Desperate to find the ship so they could utilize the weapon, a Vau N'Akat organization called "The Order" was founded and launched the last of their fleet consisting of one hundred agents each with their own Drednok through the anomaly in search of the Protostar. ()
By 2366, the lost Protostar was located deep inside of Tars Lamora. One agent known as The Diviner spent many years searching for it, establishing the Tars Lamora prison colony to conduct and finance his efforts. ()
===Altered timeline===
Due to the interference of Dal R'El, Jankom Pog, Zero, and Maj'el, the timeline was accidentally altered at the time of the Protostars launch into the wormhole in the future. In this altered version of events, Chakotay and Adreek-Hu managed to escape with the ship rather than sending it through the wormhole alone on autopilot, resulting in the destination changing. ()
After arriving in 2374, Chakotay and Adreek ejected the ship's proto-core and antimatter, and marooned themselves on an island on the Class P planet Ysida in order to ensure that the living construct would never reach the Federation. The ship was left with only emergency power cells recharged by degrading solar collectors, although Adreek had a theory that they could refuel the ship using the antimatter in the lightning storms and the deuterium gas in a large maelstrom on the other side of the ocean. When Chakotay refused, broken over the loss of his crew and unwilling to risk the living construct reaching the Federation, Adreek set out to test his theory alone and never returned, leaving Chakotay alone with and a nearly powerless ship. ()
With the help of Wesley Crusher, Dal, Jankom, Zero, Rok-Tahk, Gwyndala, Murf, and Maj'el found the ship and Chakotay in 2384. Shocked to find the state of the ship and its captain, the crew learned of what had transpired from Hologram Janeway and attempted to convince Chakotay to leave with them without success. After Dal went missing in an ion maelstrom, the crew found Adreek's body and the antimatter that he'd successfully collected from the storms, reigniting Chakotay's spirit. With the assurance that Starfleet would be able to deal with the living construct should the Protostar be sent back to Tars Lamora to fix the universe, Chakotay agreed to use Adreek's plan to get the ship off of the planet. ()
In order to reach the maelstrom with the deuterium needed to refuel the ship, the crew converted the Protostar into a sailing ship that Chakotay dubbed the HMS Protostar. The crew were able to sail the Protostar into the maelstrom and use the Bussard collectors to gather the needed deuterium, restoring both the impulse engines and the warp drive and allowing the Protostar to finally escape from Ysida. However, the was 3,000 light years away, meaning that they needed to build a new proto-core for the ship in order to reach it. ()
The crew sought out a Class M planet with bosonite ore which could be used to create a new protostar to power the ship. After an encounter with a Klingon scientist and mutated tribbles, the crew was able to get the bosonite and create a new proto-core, restoring the protostar drive. ()
The Protostar was able to make a proto-jump to Voyagers position, but it ruptured the already weakened fabric of the universe, creating an anomaly that caught Voyager in its grasp and fractured the vessel into a number of alternate realities. After repairing the anomaly in the mirror universe, the Protostars crew arrived on the correct Voyager where Chakotay was finally reunited with Janeway. ()
Although Janeway agreed to help send the Protostar back in time, Admiral Edward Jellico ordered both ships back to Earth where Voyagers crew would be reassigned and the Department of Temporal Investigations would handle sending the Protostar to the past. ()
The return to Earth was interrupted when Asencia sent the Rev-1 to destroy Voyager. Needing the Protostar to remain intact to repair the timeline, Janeway allowed Chakotay to return to his ship to protect it with Chakotay calling upon Dal, Rok, Jankom, Gwyn, Murf, and Zero to return as its crew. However, Zero stayed behind to help an injured Grom to sickbay while Dal took Grom's place flying into battle with Maj'el and Nova Squadron. Gwyn took up the role of acting first officer during the battle, but the two ships proved to be no match for the Rev-1. However, Dal and Nova Squadron eventually managed to destroy the enemy ship using the Boothby Supernova, saving both Voyager and the Protostar. ()
Following the battle, Starfleet Command sent Voyager and the Protostar to Solum to find the source of Asencia's temporal weaponry. As the Protostar crew were not technically Starfleet and thus their presence wouldn't risk sparking a war between the Federation and the Vau N'Akat, they went behind enemy lines on Solum, joined by Maj'el who resigned from Nova Squadron in order to be able to join them. Although the crew succeeded in rescuing Ilthuran and Wesley Crusher and beaming them to Voyager, the crew were captured themselves by Asencia's forces. ()
Janeway used the Protostars vehicle replicator to replicate a Vau N'Akat ship using Ilthuran's specifications for a successful rescue mission for the Protostars young crew. ()
During the Battle of Solum, the Voyager and Protostar crews worked together to send the ship back in time through a wormhole to Tars Lamora in order to close the temporal causality loop and stop the universe from being destroyed by the paradox. Although they succeeded in opening the wormhole, the Loom swarmed out of it, threatening the plan. Voyager escorted the Protostar into the wormhole, providing covering fire and allowing the crew to repair the timeline. Chakotay had The Doctor copy Hologram Janeway's program to an EMH backup module so that she would survive the ship's destruction before her program was reset so that Hologram Janeway would lose her memories. Dal left a combadge on the floor of the bridge where his and Rok's younger selves would find it and Voyager beamed the crew out. On autopilot, the Protostar completed its journey, landing on Tars Lamora at an unknown point in the past to wait for Dal and his crew to find it. ()
===Under the command of Dal R'El and his crew===
In 2383, it was accidentally discovered by Dal R'El and Rok-Tahk buried in the Northwest Crevasse within the prison colony. ()
After escaping Tars Lamora along with Zero, Jankom Pog, Murf and The Diviner's daughter Gwyndala, the ship encountered a binary star system and was almost destroyed after being pulled into the gravity well of an orbiting white dwarf that was in the final moments of tearing apart its red giant companion. () Under Janeway's advisement, the crew continued on to investigate a Class M planet located in the Hirogen system, where the ship was nearly consumed by the cilium-like vegetation that inhabited the planet-like superorganism before nearly being captured by The Diviner. ()
They succeed at escaping the REV-12 when the ship's protostar drive was engaged, and the ship was hurled nearly 4,000 light years to the Gamma Quadrant in a matter of minutes. Around this time, Murf discovered the ship's holodeck, which included such holoprograms as Andoria IV, Ceti Alpha V skydiving, kal-if-fee gladiator match, Count Dracula, 1885 Deadwood South Dakota, Paxau Resort, Janeway Lambda One, and the . ()
The Protostar visited the Cymari homeworld and made first contact with the Cymari. ()
The Protostar then flew through a tachyon storm, which fractured the ship into several parallel realities moving at variable speeds and nearly caused a warp core breach. The crew was forced work together across these fractured realities, guided by Hologram Janeway, to make the repairs to restore it to normal time and prevent the ship's destruction. ()
Eventually, the crew of the Protostar were given an ultimatum by The Diviner that forced them to return to Tars Lamora and surrender the ship in order to save the Unwanted. With only enough power left for one proto-jump, the crew decided to launch a rescue mission to Tars Lamora despite it potentially meaning that they would never be able to reach Federation space. The Diviner double crossed the crew and stranded them on Tars Lamora to die. However, they removed the exotic matter dilithium matrix, preventing the ship from going to proto-warp and allowing the crew to rescue the miners and reclaim the Protostar. Now aware of how to recharge the proto-drive, the crew set course for Federation space. ()
When the Protostar left from Tars Lamora, its proto-warp signature was detected by the for the third time. The Dauntless commander, Vice Admiral Kathryn Janeway used the signals to track the ship, on a rescue mission to find its former captain, Chakotay. ()
==== Being chased by the USS Dauntless ====
Weeks after leaving Tars Lamora, the crew reached the remote Starfleet communication relay station CR-721 where they attempted to seek asylum. Unfortunately, thanks to the living construct weapon, which was onboard the ship, as soon as Lieutenant jg Barniss Frex attempted to upload the Protostars logs into the station's computer, the computer systems on the station suddenly went haywire and turn its phasers on itself and destroying the station. () Soon after, Gwyn remembered her father telling her that the weapon's purpose was to destroy Starfleet from within. Though the crew found the weapon hidden in a subdeck on the bridge, they were unable to remove it or deactivate it. ()
Next, the crew traveled to the Denaxi Depot, hoping to bury the Protostar and seek transport to the Federation. Unfortunately, realizing that Vice Admiral Kathryn Janeway considered them criminals for stealing the Protostar and destroying the relay station, they unearthed the buried Protostar and fled into the Romulan Neutral Zone, with the Dauntless unable to pursue since entry into the Zone was forbidden. ()
Later, the Dauntless resumed its pursuit and was able to merge its warp field with the Protostars. The Dauntless shot several phaser shots at the Protostar but were unable to penetrate its shield. However, it caused Zero to inadvertently switch consciousness between Admiral Janeway and R'El when he tried to establish a telepathic link. Janeway and Dal were able to switch back to their bodies before they were stopped by a Starfleet armada in the heart of Federation space. During this time, Ensign Asencia, of the Dauntless revealed herself to be a Vau N'Akat known as "The Vindicator" and boarded the Protostar along with the Diviner. After subduing the crew, Ascencia contacted the Dauntless and activated the living construct. The construct was able to infect the Dauntless and the armada forcing all ships to fire at each other. The Dauntless universal translators were also taken offline by the construct as it spread to the rest of the armada. Fortunately, the Dauntless and other ships were freed from the construct's corruption when Hologram Janeway destroyed the Protostar by detonating the proto-core while at proto-warp. ()
==Legacy==
Having escaped from the ship in a shuttle, the crew managed to make it to Earth a month later. Starfleet discovered that had replicated the parameters logged in the wormhole that the Protostars original crew had been lost in, thus creating a new wormhole to roughly the same space-time coordinates. Through the wormhole, Starfleet received a second distress call from Chakotay that revealed that he and half of the ship's original crew were still alive, trapped 52 years in the future. In addition, while the Protostar itself was only a prototype, Starfleet approved full production of the . () It was later discovered that Chakotay's distress call was sent before the Protostars launch into the past. ()
Starfleet later found the Protostars black box and salvaged security footage of the ship's launch by Chakotay and Adreek-Hu from it as well as a message from Chakotay to Janway. ()
Because Rok-Tahk found it easier to think on the Protostar bridge, she created a holoprogram recreation of it to work on the crew's holo-duplicates. ()
In 2385, the new Protostar-class was scheduled for decommissioning following the Attack on Mars as the attack caused Starfleet to focus only on defense and the Protostar-class was only good for exploration. However, Vice Admiral Kathryn Janeway was able to get the new assigned as a Starfleet training ship with the Protostars young crew and Maj'el with Hologram Janeway as the new Emergency Command Hologram. ()
==List of first contacts==
*Cymari (2383)
==Command crew ==
* Commanding officer
**Chakotay (2382–2385)
**Dal R'El (2383–2384) 
* First officer
**Adreek-Hu (2382–)
**Dal R'El (2384) 
**Gwyndala (2384–2385) 
*Second officer
**Dal R'El (2384–2385) 
* Training advisor
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* Communications officer
**Gwyndala (2383–2385)
* Security officer
** Rok-Tahk (2383)
**Murf (2384–2385)
* Chief engineer
**Jankom Pog (2383–2385)
* Science officer
**Rok-Tahk (2383–2385)
**Maj'el (2384–2385) 
* Flight control officer/Medical officer
**Zero (2383–2385)
* Tactical officer
** Murf (2384) 
See also: USS Protostar personnel
==Appendices==
===See also===
*USS Protostar dedication plaque
===Appearances===
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===Background information===
According to Star Trek: Prodigy producer and screenwriter Aaron Waltke, the ship's NX registry is derived from his birthday of . 
===External links=== 
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Category:Federation starships
de:USS Protostar