'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' Is the Best 'Trek' in Years

[Celerity]

A return to form that feels both familiar and brand-new.

https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-review



Since Star Trek: Discovery premiered in the fall of 2017, Paramount has treated us to a veritable wealth of Star Trek stories on our small screens, from Disco's epic that took us through the Klingon war and beyond, to the hilarious animated comedy Star Trek: Lower Decks, to catching up with a fan-favorite retired captain in Star Trek: Picard. There's something for everyone in all of these, but despite all the love the fans seem to agree that there's something missing from the format, particularly in the live-action shows. It's a fatigue we're all feeling now that so much streaming television plays as if a season is more like an 8- or 10- or 13-hour movie meant to be binged over a weekend: What happened to episodes? Part of the joy of a Star Trek show, from the very beginning, was the anticipation of seeing something completely new every week as the USS Enterprise bounced around the universe meeting alien races and soaking up the rays from distant suns. We're aboard an exploration vessel, after all. As the title of Paramount+'s fantastic new Star Trek: Strange New Worlds suggests, we're finally going back to basics.

First, a little bit of background. Strange New Worlds is set directly after the events of Discovery Season 2, which first introduced the new iterations of Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount), Vulcan science officer Spock (Ethan Peck), and Number One (Rebecca Romijn), and ended up being so popular that they were granted their own spinoff show. It also takes place a few years before Star Trek: The Original Series, and chronicles Pike's captainship of the Enterprisebefore the show that started it all turned the job over to one Captain James T. Kirk.

If you know who Captain Pike is, you already know why this is a particularly fun concept for a Star Trek show, but in case you don't, here's a fun fact: Pike is actually the first captain at the helm of Enterprise in the very first Star Trek episode ever, the pilot titled "The Cage" that NBC originally rejected, which wasn't broadcast on television until 1988 (though bits and pieces were used for the follow-up two-part episode "The Menagerie" later in the first season). Pike has shown up in various Star Trek properties since then, but has never gotten his own show until now. In a way, Strange New Worlds is Star Trek finally making the show they had planned from the beginning.



That's not the only way in which the show feels cozily retro: Strange New Worlds is, at last, a return to the episodic self-contained storytelling that made this franchise so much fun in the first place. The crew of the Enterprise disguise themselves as pre-Warp aliens to explore a new planet, they communicate with religious zealots protecting a deadly comet, they hide from a classic Trek villain and turn the ship into a haunted house, there's a hilarious shore leave episode and an episode where the crew has to fight a viral outbreak. The possibilities for this show are, quite simply, endless.

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[exboyfil]

1. Agreed but it was a pretty low bar to start with

I am not comforable with the canon busting especially Spock-T'Pring. The scene really doesn't line up well with Amok Time or the later movie canon.

Also again technology introduced that was not present in TOS. McCoy must be a really bad doctor.

[dchill]

4. Yeah, well, McCoy. He's no Ronny Jackson!

[NewDayOranges]

2. I like character Capt Christopher Pike and will

Follow the first episodes to see where this show takes me...

[hlthe2b]

3. Well, I am an enormous fan of Anson Mount, a very casual & quite intermittent fan of all things

Trek, but out of curiosity I did watch the first episode. While I really just want Mount in another western (Hell on Wheels was extremely well done), I liked that there was a little familiarity with early rendition characters from the original Star Trek. I guess my short term Paramount plus subscription will end before too many new episodes "drop," but I will try to watch at least the next one. I'm glad this version is seemingly getting good reviews, which doesn't seem the norm for some of the others.

[llashram]

5. as having been

a trek aficionado since 66, you're right. I love this one... And that first depiction of WWIII just gave me a feeling of dread...oh well hope I'm at or close to ground zero. Pike is good, Spock is good. Kirk will have to grow on me, Uhuru also. Yet overall delicious... Please excuse the bragging about 66, just love this franchise.

[Tikki]

6. The episode was exactly what I hoped for.

La’an may turn out to be a favorite.

Tikki