Captain Pike and the crew continue to prove there’s life in the old sci-fi warhorse yet.
Picking up after Season 2’s cliffhanger ending, the first episode of Star Trek: Strange New World‘s third season plunges us back into a desperate space battle to fend off an invasion from the expansionist, violently aggressive Gorn, an alien species of lizard men first seen in the original series back in 1967, now reimagined as an infective threat ala the xenomorphs in Alien. Then we’re off on another Vulcan rom-com(a tradition in this series now), as lovelorn Spock (Ethan Peck) contends with Chapel (Jess Bush) having a new love interest in the form of archaeologist Roger Korby (Cillian O’Sullivan) – and one of those impish, all-powerful entities that crop up from time to time in Trek, in this instance played by Rhys Darby. Next up? A tense thriller as Dr. M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) dealing with the consequences of having straight-up assassinated a Klingon war criminal last season.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds makes the most of its episodic format, offering up a wide variety of stories, tones, and ideas. It’s a throwback in the best possible way, embracing the derring-do spirit of the original series, along with its determination to explore a broad range of ideas and scenarios.
If you’re unfamiliar, this is a prequel series of sorts that spun out of Star Trek: Discovery, following the adventures of the starship Enterprise under the command of Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount, soulful and perfectly coiffed) in the pre-Kirk era. This kind of prequel business can be a straitjacket, tying any given work to a predetermined narrative path. But, as Andor has proved, knowing the final destination doesn’t mean we can’t explore some interesting territory along the way.
The other common trap is getting mired in continuity and callbacks to the point where a new viewer is quickly and hopelessly lost, and Strange New Worlds neatly sidesteps that, too. To be clear, it’s packed with references to please old fans, but never to the detriment of new ones – you don’t have to know what a Gorn is to enjoy a Gorn episode, or recognise Chapel’s new arm candy from his brief appearance in the original show.
No, when I say Strange New Worlds is a throwback, I mean it embraces Gene Roddenberry’s hopeful, progressive, nigh-utopian vision with gusto. At its absolute best, Star Trek has always embodied a staunchly optimistic view of the future. It was woke before woke was woke, even when delving into darker and more ethically murky themes (hello, Deep Space Nine). Superman’s box office success makes me suspect that hope may be back in vogue.
If there’s an issue with this season so far (the first five episodes were made available for review) it’s that so far it’s felt a touch light – even with the first episode’s pitched space battles and horror-flavoured action sequences. It may be leaning into its semi-anthology structure a little too heavily, but that really is a minor quibble. Strange New Worlds is old school Trek for our current moment, and easily the best iteration of the franchise since… well, you can argue about that among yourselves.
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