Spoilers for “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” to follow.
“What if we just did ‘Star Trek’?” That was the pitch for “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,” according to series co-showrunner Henry Alonso Myers. The show’s parent series, “Star Trek: Discovery,” had instead tried to update “Trek” for the prestige TV era. That meant serialized storytelling, a darker tone including more violence and morally compromised protagonists, etc.
Compare that to “Strange New Worlds.” The series has episodic stories, an optimistic tone, and an Enterprise crew who are paragons of the “Star Trek” utopian future. That crew also includes many faces from “Star Trek: The Original Series,” such as Spock (Ethan Peck), Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding), Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush), Scotty (Martin Quinn), and the future Captain Kirk (Paul Wesley).
Seeing old favorites in new (but chronologically earlier) adventures has made “Strange New World” into a satisfying comfort watch for Trekkies. /Film Lead Editor Jacob Hall has praised “Strange New Worlds” season 3 for its confidence, earnestness, and tonal variance, and all that praise is warranted. Yet, having watched the just-wrapped third season of “Strange New Worlds,” I can’t help but feel the low ceiling of the show’s ambitions is holding it back.
Part of the “Strange New Worlds” classicism is reusing “Star Trek” stock plots and sometimes directly remaking old episodes. The season 1 finale “A Quality of Mercy” literally dropped Captain Pike into the plot of the classic “Star Trek” episode “Balance of Terror.” Then, the season 2 finale and season 3 premiere “Hegemony” riffed on the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” episode “The Best of Both Worlds,” just with the Gorn instead of the Borg.
Almost every episode of “Strange New Worlds” season 3 has made me think, “Hey, this is like [insert other ‘Star Trek’ episode here],” and you can tell the episodes are all inviting you to make those comparisons. But if all the series is doing is making me think of other “Star Trek” episodes, then can I call it a great show on its own merits?
Is Strange New Worlds too Star Trek for its own good?
It’s important to remember that “Strange New Worlds” was implicitly designed to rescue the “Star Trek” franchise from a rough era. The J.J. Abrams reboot films died on the vine, while “Discovery” earned a decidedly mixed response from beginning to end.
All the homaging in “Strange New Worlds” is code for the Trekkies watching that the show sees them; that this is a series made by and for “Star Trek” fans. You can also track this shift with “Star Trek: Picard,” which went from something close to “Discovery” in its first season to the “Next Generation” reunion all the Trekkies had wanted by season 3.
“Star Trek” has been around for more than 60 years; it’s coming up on 1,000 episodes total across all series. At that point, you can only tell so many “new” stories. Yet, I can’t help but think of the previous dark era for “Star Trek” television: the early 2000s.
Back then, “Star Trek: Voyager” and “Enterprise” were running on autopilot, recycling “Next Generation” and “Deep Space Nine” scripts and staying inside a formulaic box to diminishing returns. “Strange New Worlds” is doing something similar with its flurry of pseudo-remakes, looking backwards to older “Star Trek” episodes to remix or remake them.
The one advantage of “Strange New Worlds” is that I wouldn’t say it’s listlessly going through the motions as it does this. Every episode, even the dark ones, is exuberant. It’s clear the cast and crew love that they’re making a “Star Trek” show, and they want to make it as “true” to “Star Trek” as it can be. The series has occasionally explored new territory too. I’d point to the season 2 musical episode, “Subspace Rhapsody,” as “Strange New Worlds” doing something “Star Trek” has never done before. But is all this enough to make “Strange New Worlds” a classic in its own right?
The most meta moment in “Strange New Worlds” season 3’s holodeck episode, “A Space Adventure Hour,” discussed how the original “Star Trek” series pushed social progress forward and built a community of inspired fans. Is “Strange New Worlds” sustaining that community and building it out? Or just covering the old hits for a shrinking fandom? Only time will tell.
“Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” is streaming on Paramount+, with season 4 scheduled to premiere in 2026.
