Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has finished its first season on Paramount+ and has been a hit with critics and fans alike. While Paramount+ is full of Star Trek series, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds brought the franchise back to the roots of the 1960s original series with bright candy-colored costumes, a hopeful optimism, and a return to stand-alone episodic television in contrast with the wider franchise’s move to serialization.
Set after the events of season two of Star Trek: Discovery and roughly a decade before Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds follows the adventures of the USS Enterprise under the command of Captain Pike (Anson Mount) and his reliable crew, including science officer Spock (Ethan Peck), first officer Una Chin-Riley aka Number One (Rebecca Romijn), Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding), chief security officer La’an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong), Dr. Joseph M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun), Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush), helmsman Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia), and engineer Hemmer (Bruce Horak).
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
Through the course of just one season, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has introduced and fleshed out its core cast, setting up long-term series arcs for many of the characters while adding new dimensions to classic Star Trek icons. The series has also had fun over its ten-episode first season, paying homage to classic Star Trek episodes and playing around with the formula of the various series that have come before it, mixing and matching their different thematic approaches for one all its own, all while being a perfect entry point into the Star Trek franchise for more fans. Season two is already filming with a projected 2023 premiere date, so during the long wait, let’s look back at the best moments from season one of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
Credit To Your Species
Paramount+
While the first two episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds make for an incredible introduction, it is the third episode where the series truly has its first great moment. In episode three, “The Ghost of Illyria,” it is revealed that Number One is secretly Illyrian, a species of alien who are banned from the federation due to genetically engineering themselves. It is due to her genetic enhancement that she is able to save the entire crew from a rare disease, and she opens up to Captain Pike, who accepts her and tells her that he will keep it a secret from Starfleet. Yet it’s the next moment that is far more revealing.
“You defy every stereotype the Federation has about Illyrians,” Pike tells her, meaning it to be a compliment. However, it’s more of a backhanded compliment, one that informs not only Pike’s own biases but also ones reflective of many members of the United Federation of Planets and the Star Trek franchise as well. The series has always grappled with genetic modifications, from how the villain Khan informs the internalized self-hatred of his descendant La’an Noonien-Singh, to later entries in the franchise with the villainous Borg. The idea of genetic modification is rooted in the Federation’s history, but also one they need to grow beyond, as not everyone enhances their genetics for domination but instead to simply survive. They want a better tomorrow but still refuse to invite everyone to the table based on their own prejudice.
When Number One is by herself in her room, she asks herself, “What would he do if I wasn’t a hero, one of the good ones? When will it be enough to just be an Illyrian?” It’s an incredibly powerful moving moment, one that is reflective of many minority groups who feel like they have to be the best version that represents everyone who looks like them, instead of being allowed to just exist as a person. Star Trek as a franchise has always been political, and one that touches on real-world biases, prejudices, and fears in a high-concept way, and this episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds showed the series was committed to examining its franchise history and how it still needs to improve.
Nurse Chapel Reimagined
Less a single moment in the series and more like two episodes, particularly episode five (“Spock Amock”) and episode seven (“The Serene Squall”), Star Trek: Strange New Worlds finds a way to drastically reimagine Nurse Chapel into a far more interesting character than she ever was in the original Star Trek series. While part of the original series, Chapel was in many ways an afterthought, and she was reduced to a cameo role in Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and has been completely absent from the Kelvin timeline films. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds uses this to their advantage, with actor Jess Bush reinventing Chapel from the ground up and redefining her character as a more outspoken, forward-thinking, compassionate, sexually liberated individual. In many ways, she feels like the most accurate human as depicted by the rules and history that the Star Trek franchise has laid out.
What is most interesting is the dynamic at play between Chapel and Spock throughout the series. Chapel serves as a great foil for Spock, as he is someone who attempts to shut down his emotions, but she is more of a free spirit. What starts out as a friendship in episode five where she helps him with his relationship problems has grown more flirtatious as the series has gone on, culminating in episode seven where the two must perform a fake kiss to sell a deception, but it appears to have sparked something between the two.
However, by the time of the original series, these two are not in a relationship, so that means this chemistry between them, one that hints at a deep shared connection, cannot last. This gives their story both a sense of tragedy, but also makes it a hopeful one that indicates, while they may not end up together like some fans may want, they will still find a mutually beneficial future together.
Aspen Is Angel
Episode seven, “The Serene Squall,” begins with the introduction of a new character, Dr. Aspen (Jesse James Keitel), a Starfleet Counselor who is working with the crew of the Enterprise on a mission to stop a group of space pirates from attacking a space colony.
At the episode’s halfway point, it is revealed Dr. Aspen is in fact the villainous space pirate Angel who assumed the identity of Dr. Aspen and left them stranded on an uninhabited planet. The reveal is a great twist, given how the character has helped Spock grow in his own binary viewpoint of needing to be human or Vulcan instead of both.
Keitel gives a great performative shift when the shoe is dropped, switching to a far more scenery-chewing villain role with a swagger and menace not often found in the new Star Trek series. The best villains are the ones that force the protagonist to grow through opposition, and in this episode, Spock is faced with an enemy who makes him question his own sense of identity, giving the character a rewarding existential crisis. This, combined with the reveal that Angel’s lover, the person she is trying to free from a Vulcan prison, is none other than Spock’s brother Sabak (the main villain from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier), makes them a villain that the series desperately needs to revisit.
A Story Redefined
Episode eight, “The Elysian Kingdom,” very much plays around with the Star Trek formula, reimagining the set of the Enterprise as a fantasy story and dressing the cast in over-the-top period costumes that feels akin to the days when, in an attempt to save money, the Star Trek series would borrow costumes from one another. There are a lot of great moments here, particularly allowing the cast and crew to act outside their normal roles, with Anson Mount’s Pike cast in the role of a treacherous coward while the tough-as-nails security chief La’an Noonien-Singh is cast in the role of a princess.
While playing around with genre is always a fun exercise, and seeing Star Trek through the fantasy layer is always entertaining, the best moment in the episode comes near the end, when the central character of the episode, Dr. Joseph M’Benga, must let go of the daughter he has been trying to save throughout the season. M’Benga has been trying to cure his daughter Rukiya of a rare disease and has been keeping her in stasis thanks to a Transporter buffer on the Enterprise. The same lifeform that is causing the fantasy also can keep Rukiya alive but only in the nebula, and the Doctor is given the difficult choice: hold onto his daughter in hopes of one day finding a cure, or let her go and let her live a life apart from him, but one where she is happy.
He lets her go, after which Rukiya appeared to her father as an adult, having experienced time rapidly, and is able to get a proper goodbye. M’Benga is given a difficult choice for any parent, but while he is not able to save her he is able to watch her grow up and make sure she is safe and happy. It is a bittersweet but touching ending for this story arc.
The Gorn Get An Upgrade
The Gorn are one of Star Trek’s classic alien foes, made famous in Star Trek: The Original Series season one, episode 18 (“The Arena”), where Kirk must do battle with the Gorn. The cheap effects on the series’ limited budget are often a source of unintentional comedy, but it has made the Gorn one of Star Trek’s most famous alien species. The Gorn have been referenced several times and was realized in live-action once more in Star Trek: Enterprise. However, in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds the species is given a new threatening presence, first in episode four (“Memento Mori”) where they are spoken of but never shown, making the species seem more dangerous.
Finally, episode nine (“All Those Who Wander”) shows the Gorn realized in a new way, now a much quicker and deadlier species, heavily inspired by the Xenomorphs from the Alien film series. The Gorn are shown as a true threat to the characters, as they are not only instrumental in the backstory of La’an Noonien-Singh but also end up causing the death of chief engineer Hemmer, one of the series’ main characters, showcasing that the series is not afraid to kill off one of the key crew members. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds was visually and textually able to realize the Gorn as the threat the original series wanted to showcase, but did not have the budget to accomplish.
Enter Captain Kirk
All throughout season one of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the inevitable future of Christopher Pike hangs over the story. This is where the character will end up, and even with knowledge of the future, it is known he cannot change his fate given how Star Trek will eventually play out. The season one finale has fun with this concept, where Pike almost changes history and is shown what his actions will lead to. Pike is transported seven years into the future and finds himself in the middle of a conflict with Romulans, but not just any conflict; what’s depicted is a reimagining of the classic Star Trek episode “Balance of Terror.” With Pike as Captain of the Enterprise, he receives help from the Captain of the USS Farragut, captained by the one and only Captain Kirk, played by Paul Wesley.
While Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has played around with reimagining classic Star Trek episodes before this, the season one finale (“A Quality of Mercy”) instead opts for essentially remaking a classic episode with a new captain to see how the story plays out. While this could be simple fan service, the series uses it to look at a classic episode in a new light and showcases the various styles between Captain Pike and his eventual successor, Captain Kirk.
In many ways, the episode is a metatextual conversation about the real-life Star Trek pilot process, with the more stoic and thoughtful Captain Pike essentially replaced by the more swashbuckling man of action Kirk. The series shows that while Pike is a great captain, the galaxy (and the series) will eventually need Kirk and also Spock, whose larger arc in the franchise ties in with the revelation of the Romulans. Pike’s fate might be predetermined, both because of fate and the rigid rules of canon. Yet Star Trek: Strange New Worlds shows that Pike can still do some good with the time he has left, and knowing he has limited time means he needs to work hard to make a difference and protect those he cares about.
