Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 1


The first season of the American television series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds follows Captain Christopher Pike and the crew of the starship Enterprise in the 23rd century as they explore new worlds and carry out missions during the decade before Star Trek: The Original Series. The season was produced by CBS Studios in association with Secret Hideout, Weed Road Pictures, H M R X Productions, and Roddenberry Entertainment, with Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers as showrunners.
Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, and Rebecca Romijn respectively star as Pike, Spock, and Number One, along with Jess Bush, Christina Chong, Celia Rose Gooding, Melissa Navia, Babs Olusanmokun, and Bruce Horak. Many of the regular actors and several guest stars portray younger versions of characters from The Original Series. A spin-off from the series Star Trek: Discovery focused on Mount, Peck, and Romijn was discussed by January 2020 and officially ordered as Strange New Worlds in May. The showrunners chose to return to the episodic storytelling of The Original Series rather than Discovery more serialized approach. The writers and directors focused on giving each episode a different genre and tone. Filming took place at CBS Stages Canada in Mississauga, Ontario, from February to July 2021, with additional filming in New Mexico for the visual effects.
The season premiered on the streaming service Paramount+ on May 5, 2022, and ran for 10 episodes until July 7. It was estimated to have high viewership and audience demand, becoming the most watched Paramount+ original Star Trek series. It also received positive reviews from critics for its episodic storytelling and cast. The season received several accolades, including a Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Award nomination and a Saturn Award win. A second season was announced in January 2022.

Episodes

Cast and characters

Main

Development

In June 2018, after becoming sole showrunner of Star Trek: Discovery, Alex Kurtzman signed a five-year overall deal with CBS Television Studios to expand the Star Trek franchise beyond Discovery to several new series, miniseries, and animated series. After Anson Mount left Discovery with its second season finale, fans began calling—including through online petitions—for him to reprise the role of Christopher Pike in a spin-off series set on the, alongside Rebecca Romijn as Number One and Ethan Peck as Spock. In January 2020, Kurtzman said active discussions regarding a spin-off series featuring the actors had begun with executive producer Akiva Goldsman. Paramount+ officially ordered Star Trek: Strange New Worlds to series in May 2020, with Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers set as showrunners.

Writing

Myers began work on the series in March 2020, working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Co-creators Goldsman, Kurtzman, and Jenny Lumet had written the first episode by the series' announcement that May, and a writers' room for the first season was underway by July. Stories for all 10 episodes were broken by the end of that month. Other writers for the season included Sarah Tarkoff, Akela Cooper, Bill Wolkoff, Davy Perez, Beau DeMayo, Robin Wasserman, and Onitra Johnson. In August, Kurtzman said they had been able to get "quite ahead in scripts" compared to previous Star Trek seasons due to the pandemic postponing the start of production. Goldsman said the series was more episodic than Discovery and Star Trek: Picard, though it still has recurring character arcs. He took particular inspiration from Star Trek: The Original Series while Myers was more of a Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fan. The writers wanted to show the full potential of the series by giving each episode a dramatically different genre and tone.
One of Goldsman's first ideas was to feature the Gorn, a lizard-like alien species introduced in the Original Series episode "Arena", as a recurring adversary for the season. Kurtzman was excited to use modern visual effects and puppetry to make the species feel "vivid and scary" compared to the "guy in a rubber suit" from the original episode. The writers discussed ways to incorporate the Gorn without contradicting the fact that the characters in "Arena", which is set around seven years after this season, have not seen the species before. Perez explained that their goal was to not "undo people's experience with The Original Series, but if we can manage it, perhaps to give us an interesting perspective to consider that lines up with the original stories". Specifically discussing the line "I face the creature the Metrons called a Gorn" spoken by William Shatner's James T. Kirk in "Arena", Perez explained that "maybe Kirk has never seen them, he could even be one of those people who still doubts the stories, or maybe even he has seen them and they don't look the same". Some of the ways that the series attempts to maintain continuity include featuring the Gorn in the backstory of La'An Noonien-Singh, a character who does not appear in The Original Series; not actually showing them in "Memento Mori" when Gorn starships are seen; and only showing baby Gorn in "All Those Who Wander". For "Memento Mori", Perez researched submarine films in an effort to replicate the feeling of the Original Series episode "Balance of Terror", while "All Those Who Wander" is a horror-themed episode inspired by the films Alien, The Thing, Gremlins, and Predator. Perez said Alien was an especial influence because it was "hard not to draw the comparison when writing a 'horror story in space'", and this is primarily seen in the way that baby Gorn grow inside host bodies and burst out of them like the Xenomorphs from that franchise.
Another change to established Star Trek canon was the inclusion of Spock's fiancée T'Pring from the Original Series episode "Amok Time". Myers acknowledged that the writers were interpreting that episode differently than fans had previously done in order to expand on T'Pring's role in Spock's life, but he felt this was necessary to explore a younger Spock. It allowed the writers to ask questions like "What are the pressures of being Vulcan? What are the pressures of coming from his family? What are the intricacies of Vulcan courtship that maybe we don't know about?" It also allowed T'Pring to be expanded on in interesting ways. In an effort to overcome the difficulties of their long-distance relationship, Spock and T'Pring accidentally switch bodies in "Spock Amok", which Star Trek: Lower Decks showrunner Mike McMahan did uncredited writing for. "Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach" is a philosophical and allegorical episode, introducing a society that thrives due to the sacrifice of children. Pike is forced to consider how children also suffer in the United Federation of Planets, which is a controversial idea due to the Star Trek franchise's usual depiction as a utopia. Wolkoff acknowledged that "most Federation worlds are post-scarcity and not focused on the accumulation of wealth, but is every Federation world perfect in this way? Has all hunger and poverty been eliminated? I don't think we know that for certain. We've seen Federation colonies and worlds in need of supplies and resources. And I don't think it's an enormous stretch to imagine certain Federation member worlds straying from the ideals they're supposed to uphold." Star Trek actor Wil Wheaton noted that the Federation evolves from 21st century America, which does have such problems, and the series previously highlighted similar issues in "Strange New Worlds" when footage from the 2021 United States Capitol attack was used in a montage showing the events that lead to Earth's World War III.
In addition to the comedy hijinks of "Spock Amok" and the horror of "All Those Who Wander", other genres explored in the season include storybook escapism in "The Elysian Kingdom" and the pirate-themed "The Serene Squall". The latter emphasizes the idea that there are uncharted areas of space where the Enterprise cannot contact Starfleet. Myers explained that one of their main goals was to remind audiences that this period of the franchise's timeline is "the age of exploration" compared to later series such as The Next Generation in which communications with Starfleet are often instantaneous. "Children of the Comet" introduces a tragic backstory for cadet Nyota Uhura, who the writers felt had not been explored much despite the character's important role throughout the franchise. Taking inspiration from the military experience of some of the writers, they felt it would be interesting if Uhura was unsure about being a member of Starfleet. This informs her character arc for the season, tying into the character Hemmer who becomes a mentor for Uhura. Pike's arc for the season sees him struggling with the knowledge that he will suffer a horrible accident in the future, which he saw in a vision during the second season of Discovery. This storyline culminates in the season finale, "A Quality of Mercy", when Pike sees a future where he avoids the accident but Spock is injured instead. The episode combined three big ideas from the writers' room: it retells the events of an Original Series episode, "Balance of Terror", with the series' cast and modern effects; it tells a "The Ghost of Christmas Future"-inspired story where Pike is visited by an older version of himself; and it explores why Spock is "willing to go to unbelievable lengths" for Pike in the Original Series episode "The Menagerie". Goldsman said the episode was about changing Pike's fate from a curse to a choice, and Mount said Pike was more resolute and free after deciding not to try to change his future.