The debut season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is based on the years Captain Christopher Pike manned the helm of the U.S.S. Enterprise. The series features fan favorites from season two of Star Trek: Discovery, Anson Mount as Captain Christopher Pike, Rebecca Romijn as Number One and Ethan Peck as Science Officer Spock. The series follows Captain Pike, Science Officer Spock and Number One in the years before Captain Kirk boarded the U.S.S. Enterprise, as they explore new worlds around the galaxy.
The Season One collection offers every thrilling episode from the Paramount+ original series with over 90 minutes of special features, including exclusive cast and crew interviews, gag reel, deleted scenes and more.
What We Thought:
The last few new Star Trek series have been hit or miss for me. They have some stuff I like, but overall I just watch them because I have to review them. Because of that I was hesitant about Star Trek: Strange New Worlds despite knowing a few people who had watched it and liked it. After burning through the 10 episodes in a day and a half, I have to say, it’s the only new Star Trek show I can see myself looking forward to from now on.
A spinoff from Star Trek: Discovery (specifically Season 2), the series is pretty much a direct prequel to Star Trek: The Original Series. You will see younger versions of ST: TOS characters like Spock, Uhura, a few side characters and eventually someone else I won’t spoil if you don’t know already. If you know your Star Trek lore, you know Captain Christopher Pike beyond his appearance in Discovery and this series sees him as the captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise years before James T. Kirk. Uhura is a StarFleet cadet with Spock not quite yet the Number One. Rebecca Romijn, also from Discovery, is the Number One here.
To me Strange New Worlds feels the closest to a Star Trek series than other recent shows. It has plenty of adventure which other shows do have, but its vibe and tone feel more like ST:TOS than others. There is an episode in this where the crew becomes characters from a children’s book and if you know Star Trek, all good shows have at least one goofy type episode per season. Pike has love interests. Spock also has a woman. There are aliens and Romulans and Vulcans and everything you want in a Star Trek show.
What also stood out was the production value. All new shows look like the Star Trek reboot films in terms of modern appearance and that’s not always a good thing to me. ST:TOS was campy because of its time period and I always liked that. I’m not a huge fan of today’s CGI based science fiction, but there is one episode where they are fighting the Gorn that looks like it’s from the Alien franchise. The Gorn look much different than the ones Kirk fought, but the episode is pretty awesome.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds was a nice surprise. I liked it so much I’m considering rewatching Discovery and Picard to give them another try. If you haven’t seen Season One yet I highly recommend picking up the home video release. I was pleasantly surprised and I think others who haven’t loved the newer shows might be surprised by this as well.
The Nerds Templar 