Familiar yet fresh, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds goes back to its roots with a contemporary sheen and offers up a near solid first season of compelling stories and fun adventures but doesn’t necessarily break new ground even when chipping at the topsoil.
Strange New Worlds is set just before The Original Series (but after the original rejected pilot, “The Cage“), with Captain Christopher Pike in command of the USS Enterprise as it continues to explore the final frontier.
As I’ve said elsewhere, I’m a fan of recent Star Trek for the most part and still defend the first seasons of Discovery and Picard for being highly enjoyable in their own right but also necessary to shake up the franchise and test its limits. But there is something about the season-long story arcs that are not always so successful in various Paramount productions and just diminishing returns in many other cases of long-form story telling (it’s often a case of having too little story to stretch out into too many episodes). The return to the familiar, weekly, episodic format was not only a welcome change but, in my opinion, a really successful one as it let the writers focus on telling (mostly) self-contained stories.
The episodic format allows for not-so-good episodes to not tarnish other episodes yet this first season very much succeeded in telling enjoyable, compelling, and thoughtful stories that Star Trek is known for but also with incredibly likeable characters. Any episode that didn’t quite work may only be a matter of taste rather than actual quality and apart from a few nit-picks, I reckon all 10 episodes were perhaps some of the best Star Trek we’ve seen in forever.
POTENITAL MINOR SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT…
As I said, all the characters are very likeable and definitely a crew you’d want to serve with (which is a stark contrast to how Discovery portrayed its original cast in order to create internal conflict, which was just fine for the story they were telling). Most of the main characters are from previous incarnations. Of course Spock (Ethan Peck) and Number One (Rebecca Romijn as Lt. Commander Una Chin Riley) reprise their roles from season 2 of Discovery and have really settled in their incarnations, giving their own spin instead of impersonations.
Similar with the other legacy characters too. We get a wonderfully naïve rookie in Cadet Nyota Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) who isn’t quite the confident Communications Officer we’re familiar with but is quite the overachiever. We’ve only ever seen Doctor Joseph M’Benga in one TOS episode, but here played by Babs Olusanmokun he gets quite a bit of development as the soulful Chief Medical officer. And I joked previously about Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush) finally having a personality (women were not written well in 60s television) but aside from that she’s the bright spark of the cast.
It’s interesting to find out that “Ortega” was the original name for the Enterprise’s navigator in the original script of the original pilot before they anglicised it. Erica Ortega (Melissa Navia) is a bit of a rascal without getting out of line. La’an Noonien-Singh (Christine Chong) is the appropriately hard-ass Chief of Security with perhaps the darkest backstory of anyone on the show. And I find Hemmer (Bruce Horak – who is legally blind) particularly amusing as the Chief Engineer who is rather gruff and grumpy for someone living in a Utopian society.
My personal standout is the walking personification of charisma that is Captain Pike (Anson Mount). If this is how women reacted to William Shatner back in the day then I totally get it. Speaking of which, Mount’s version of Pike is different to that of Jeffrey Hunter’s somewhat humourless portrayal back in 1965. If anything this sort of resembles elements we’re familiar with in Captain Kirk: he’s charming and sometimes cheeky like TOS Kirk but also more and down-to-earth like Movie Kirk. He combines these with his own gravitas and Pike is now my next favourite Trek Captain after Picard.
With only 10 episodes for season 1 (such is the way of streaming shows) some characters don’t get as much development as others but there’s at least a definite characterisation we can latch onto. They all have wonderfully great interactions together too. The mentor relationship between Hemmer and Uhura was very sweet, similar with Number One and La’an and their backstory. The only one that doesn’t work for me at the moment is the unrequited feelings Chapel has for Spock (which is pretty much coming from TOS) primarily because it feels like a forced reference rather than a natural plot point but that’s a minor nit-pick (I actually do enjoy the way she teases Spock as a way to flirt though).
Even with a shorter than we’re used to season, Strange New Worlds has already run the gamut of familiar types of Star Trek stories that deal with political, moral, and personal allegories. There are dark dramatic stories, as well as fun and goofy ones. The show doesn’t just stick to familiar Trek tropes but it also tries its hand at “borrowing” inspiration for other science fiction too. Again, the episodic structure helps in keeping focus on the specific story, some feel a tad rushed but also that may be the nature of pacing we’ve become accustomed to. And some episodes are better than others yet I always wanted to come back for more.
It’s also a great looking show too. While I don’t begrudge Discovery for updating their designs for the contemporary television era and have defended this choice many times, there are elements that I wish were done differently… and here they are in Strange New Worlds. It’s not a re-imagining or even a reinterpretation of the sets and props. It’s almost as if The Original Series was a cheap community theatre version of this show. Everything feels familiar but new, throwback but also convincingly futuristic. In fact, I kind of want their version of iconic props like the phasers and tricorders in my collection.
Unless visual effects are really bad or mind-blowingly good, there’s not really much point in talking about them. Most productions have access to decent quality CG these days and while Star Trek has never been the innovator of such (usually latching onto innovations Star Wars almost always brings with each production) Strange New Worlds does take advantage of the current tech, such as the LED wall, to make the show feel bigger and more expansive than it would likely be.
In the era of reference heavy pop culture, it could be argued that Strange New Worlds is a giant reference in of itself but honestly, they writers and showrunners keep things at an appreciative level when it comes to easter eggs or throwaway mentions. Anything more substantive and it’s important to the story (Spock’s nightmare is basically the iconic fight from the TOS episode “Amok Time”, we meet Captain Kirk in the finale – albeit a possible future version). These references and callbacks work as they’re not jarring or up-end the story for the sake of reference.
With a season 2 already wrapped up at time of publishing this, the feeling that there were too few episodes this season may be moot. However, it would have been better to get more build up (or even more screen time) for a certain main character death to have a greater impact on the audience. Even though some of the lesser episodes are still good, in them are certain plot points that don’t often make for a satisfactory story or resolution because they’re an attempt at drama. Not everything has to be neat and tidy but a 7 could easily have been an 8 with different choices.
Apart from that, the biggest criticism I have with season 1, if you could even call it that, is that it doesn’t take enough risks. One might argue that a main character death is a big dramatic swing or leaving an episode without a resolution of “crew saves the day” is pushing the envelope but these things are pretty much trite tropes by now. However, that familiar feeling, that comfort, playing it safe, is sort of the reason this season has succeeded the way it has. It has plenty of time to swing for the fences.
One might also argue that knowing full well that certain characters will make it because we’ve seen them in “later” incarnations is not the fault of the show but a problem with the entire premise of “prequels” and that can’t be helped. It does allow us to go back and expand upon elements that were previously abandoned or done poorly though (the Gorn fascinate me at the moment).
In the same way season 1 of Discovery re-energised my love of Star Trek, Strange New Worlds has done same for nu-Trek. This is a vibrant, thought-provoking series that not only honours what came before but expands on what we love about the final frontier and gives something new and fresh to look forward to every week.
Cannot wait for season 2 to get here!
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