- Created by Akiva Goldsman, Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet
- May 5, 2022 to Present
- Paramount+
Main Cast
- Captain Christopher Pike-Anson Mount
- Spock-Ethan Peck
- Nurse Christine Chapel-Jess Bush
- Chief of Security La’an Noonien-Singh-Christina Chong
- Cadet Nyota Uhura-Celia Rose Gooding
- Helmsman Erica Ortegas-Melissa Navia
- Chief Medical Officer Joseph M’Benga-Babs Olusanmokun
- Chief Engineer Hemmer-Bruce Horak
- First Officer Una Chin-Riley/Number One-Rebecca Romijn
“Space. The final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.”
The crew of the USS Enterprise under Capt. Christopher Pike explore new worlds and new civilizations while boldly going where no one has gone before.
I went into this show with rock bottom expectations. Between Akiva Goldsman and Alex Kurtzman I thought it would be a variation on Discovery. That show’s Second Season was essentially a pilot for this and it was awful. While not perfect Strange New Worlds is a vast improvement over that as well as Seasons One and Two of Picard.
They make changes in SNW to the execution of legacy characters with no addressing of those changes. We are in a different era and some things done would clearly not fly today. But you should not simply sweep them aside as it is a disservice to long-term fans as well as those that put the original efforts into creating the character.
Anson Mount takes over for the late Jeffrey Hunter in the role of Capt. Christopher Pike. He’s a very personable and charming man and very evolved in comparison to the Hunter version of the character. In the original pilot he was not keen on women on the bridge. Here he is okay with it. I would’ve enjoyed it they addressed the sexism that Captain Pike displayed in the original Star Trek pilot.
Pike is a rather charming leader. You like him. You want him to be in charge. But given how the character was before he is a rather enlightened soul here in comparison to Jeffrey Hunter’s version. I’m not saying a whole episode needed to be dedicated to it. It just needed addressing on some level.
Nurse Chapelle (Jenna Bush) doesn’t even seem to really acknowledge her missing fiancé. Admittedly Dr. Roger Korby in What Are Little Girls Made Of? was a one-off character but maybe expand upon that. Explore why she felt the need to join Starfleet to locate her love. Delve into her background a little bit. Despite originally being played by the wife of Gene Roddenberry, we never got too much on Chapel.
Here she is a horndog character finding anything for her port in a storm. Rather than a woman that joined Starfleet in the hopes of coming across her love who, unbeknownst to her, is on a frozen planet making sex robots. Serious. That is basically what they find him doing in that episode. Weird.
Chief Medical Officer Joseph M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) was a fine expansion upon a character only seen in two episodes in which he was not chief medical officer which left me confused. I just cannot see a logical way he would get demoted or stepdown unless they plan on having him hand things over to McCoy which forgets the apparent intermediary of Dr. Mark Piper. These are not people strongly familiar with the lore behind this show but I see that as happening.
He had a good storyline with keeping his ill daughter in the medical transporter buffer but they tried to string it out over multiple episodes and it wore very thin. And that was where they failed the character. Not only was it stretched unnecessarily over multiple episodes but in a stroke of lazy writing it was wiped away with space magic and she was sent off with an all-powerful alien for adventures. And she came back a few seconds later as an adult having had cool adventures to show letting his small daughter run off was okay. M’Benga just let her run off with a total stranger! Really?!
Celia Rose Gooding as Nyota Uhura does a good job of channeling Nichelle Nichols and creating a presentation that’s in line with original Uhura while still doing enough to make the character her own. While nothings says the character wasn’t on the Enterprise as a cadet, her presence felt like an attempt to let doubters know that this was indeed Star Trek. The Federation and Starfleet are huge and these characters regularly connecting is a bit hard to believe like they do currently.
Ethan Peck is adequate at Spock. He lacks the ability to carry a strong authority in what he says like Leonard Nimoy did or even that guy from the reboot films. Not that he was as good as Nimoy, but Nimoy certainly had more authority in what he said in comparison to Ethan Peck.
Spock for his part is a lot more like Tuvok from Voyager than TOS Spock or even post Star Trek IV Spock. Here he is a logical Vulcan trying to function in an illogical world and is repeatedly flummoxed at emotional elements like Tuvok was with Neelix. In TOS Spock had a very firm handle on how to function, and based on his interactions with McCoy could give as good as he got and even turned the tables. There’s no indication of that here.
Rebecca Romijn takes over the role of Una Chin-Riley/Number One. I really wish they had avoided naming her. In part because I hate the name and..well, I hate the name. I know it has appeared elsewhere, but it is just terrible sounding to me. She is revealed to be genetically modified. As a character in my opinion she gets little definition beyond her only TOS appearance.
Hemmer (Bruce Horak)-an Aenar from Andoria-was a great new character and it has been stated he was always planned to be killed off in order to raise the stakes of the series. He was probably the most complex of the characters and one who I eagerly anticipated seeing.
Hemmer quickly grew on me as a character. He was interesting and dynamic and multi layered. But more importantly, he provided an outsider’s perspective on stories as well as a continuing commentary on those with disabilities. He was funny and thoughtful and a lot more real despite being an alien than many of the others portrayed here yet they offed him in a way that felt almost meaningless.
Why not off Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia) or La’an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong)? Ortegas was generic and La’an was there to provide exposition on the all-new, all-different Gorn.
I think the biggest strike against this show is that it is so strongly tied to something that existed before. I have heard the argument issued that canon doesn’t matter but that’s an excuse to cover bad storytelling. Good storytelling involves a cohesive and logical fictional reality. If you say or do something in a fictional universe, then people are going to be thinking of what was done before and if it poorly connects to what was done before that’s going to affect the suspension of disbelief.
A show needs to stand on its own while being consistent with what came before. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is a good example of a show that took what came before and made its own mythology that connected to what came before. It wasn’t dependent upon referencing TNG or TOS. And direct references to such were few and far between. They fit logically with the set-up scenario of the episode and came off more as a treat than as a desperate display to let the audience know you were watching Star Trek.
The season finale of SNW was a well-crafted episode that not only advanced the narrative but put a bit of a cap on something that started in Discovery. In Discovery Pike learned about his future and in much of the first season of Strange New Worlds he was trying to figure out how to get out of that or if he should follow it. The season finale was not only an alt version of Balance of Terror but also wrapped up his issues in a way that they did not need to be regularly addressed. I do find the inclusion of Captain Kirk a bit forced, but it was overall a fine bit of work and far exceeded my expectations from the current Star Trek creative team. I give credit when due.
One thing that jumps out at me in this show is rather than use cosmetic surgery to alter the physical appearance of an away team before they head to planet surface they engage in genetic engineering. They temporarily mess with the DNA of people going down. That would seem to run contrary to attitudes previously displayed that were brought about in Star Trek by the events of the Eugenics Wars and a plotpoint they use in this show. And the way it’s done borders on space magic. They inject people with a potion and they change automatically and then they change back.
The technology as shown here though is a little more consistent with what we saw in TOS and generally doesn’t seem to exceed the abilities in TNG like Discovery did in the first two seasons. I personally hate the excuse that we can do more now than they could think of back then. While that may be true, that thinking doesn’t take into account the diversion of the Star Trek timeline from our own which began in the 60s (there were orbital weapons platforms being launched by NASA in TOS).
The sets are absolutely stunning though they do not look like a strong connection to TOS. The bridge is much bigger and the officer’s quarters border on luxury apartment. And engineering is waaaaaay off.
Most importantly though there seems to be the return of a sense of hope for the future in this show. And despite our troubles humanity will come out better on the other side. The characters are generally decent people. Maybe not ideal examples of humanity but they are more evolved. Better than those on Discovery.
There is more to each episode than what can be gleaned from a surface glance. That’s part of what makes Star Trek good. It’s not just about chasing mysterious signals. Or figuring out who or what the Red Angel is. Those things should just be an excuse for what the story is really about. The villains are less two-dimensional. Often there was a touch of complexity rather than doing bad because they are bad.
I do draw issue with the changes they made to the Gorn lifecycle. It is less to do with the change itself (to the best of my recollection they just simply laid eggs) but rather that they ripped off the Magog from Andromeda. Andromeda was a low budget 90s science-fiction show inspired by unproduced works of Gene Roddenberry. They laid eggs in people and were generally ferocious similar to the Gorn do now. Ripping off other universes is common in Trek now rather than digging deep into their own. And the Gorn lay eggs by spitting a venom like substance. They spray their seed and if you think about it just a bit it becomes gross.
Strange New Worlds is certainly more character driven than much of what I have experienced in current Star Trek. Special effects play a part but it’s not about the spectacle or about cool scenes. There’s a stronger focus on character and story and maybe that’s because this is episodic in nature and not a season long story arc.
As a general rule, the scripts are well written and well-acted. Not perfectly acted. There are flaws and there are issues. Occasionally they beat you over the head with a message, but not as much as other of the new Star Trek shows have done. But those instances are few in comparison to wrapping whatever message they need to convey in a good story.
Overall, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds appears to be crafted by people who actually care about the material. They put a good effort forward and give a generally good story with good performances in a show that’s visually stunning. While newer Star Trek certainly deserves much of the derision it has garnered this is a high point that, if given a chance, fans will enjoy. Its major flaw is that is a prequel show and we know how it ends. Or should end.
Warren Watched A Movie 