Anson Mount, Christina Chong, and Babs Olusanmokun, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Jan Thijs/Paramount+The uniquely effective storytelling dynamic established by Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is, to borrow a familiar phrase from Mr. Spock, fascinating as the series warps into its fourth and penultimate season.
After three seasons on Paramount+, the throwback Strange New Worlds has carved out a distinctive identity within the astonishingly venerable TV franchise — which turns six decades old in September — demonstrating a knack for exploring Trek‘s core tenets through various distinct genre lenses. This makes it not unlike the 1960s-era episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series, which ping-ponged between a multitude of frameworks — murder-mystery, courtroom drama, espionage thriller, wartime combat, light comedy, Western morality plays, and more — all layered with high-tech, whiz-bang concepts and subtle-to-overt allegories inherent in science fiction storytelling.
But at the same time, as Strange New Worlds adheres to the classic standalone episode framework while often taking very big swings — like Season 2’s unexpectedly effective musical episode or the unlikely crossover with the animated Trek series Star Trek: Lower Decks — the series also takes a modern tack by layering in gradually unfolding subplots and character-evolving arcs that span across seasons. These include Captain Pike (Anson Mount) coming to terms with not only his own looming mortality but that of those he loves, or Spock (Ethan Peck) indulging heretofore denied aspects of his half-human heritage by dabbling in romantic relationships.
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The fourth season, which launches July 23, continues in that vein, perhaps going even more boldly than ever before: There’s the opening episode “Valles Marineris,” which balances a fresh take on classic Trek-ian sci-fi conundrums with Pike’s restless inability to stop pushing himself, and his crew, in the wake of last season’s loss of his beloved Marie Batel; “The Griffin Incident,” which marries a ghostly Gothic tale of an abandoned, but perfectly preserved, vessel to the personal issues that have quietly haunted Kirk (Paul Wesley), Spock, and La’an (Christina Chong); and “Human Best Friend,” which layers mismatched-buddy comedy on top of a McGuffin search on top of a lighthearted shore leave (the latter an enduring Trek subgenre itself), testing the chemistry, and lack thereof, between various crewmates.
There’s also “A Case of Chiaroscuro,” which borrows from Hollywood’s Golden Age of Casablanca-esque wartime intrigue and film noir, even sciencing out a reason to be lavishly filmed in black and white to boot, all while plumbing new depths of the ship’s Number One, Una (Rebecca Romijn); and “Level Five Transporter Accident,” the much-teased and highly anticipated episode that finds the bulk of the crew turned into puppets (created by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, no less), testing the famous placidity of one very straight-faced, still flesh-and-green-blooded straight man.
Beaming between novel, high-concept standalones and bigger-picture payoffs has become an integral part of the show’s Prime Directive. “As the show is structured, there is always an emotional throughline that kind of carries through the entire season,” says executive producer Henry Alonso Myers. “So we give [the characters] a journey that takes us over the course of the season,” he adds, “but each individual episode has its own story to tell, and we try to lean on that as much as we can. Where the one-off episode idea comes from is if you happen to be watching Star Trek, you watch an episode, you feel like you’ve gone and watched an entire story. But if you watch the whole season, you really see that you’ve gone on a journey.”
“We’re not the anthology series,” asserts executive producer Akiva Goldsman. “But we are trying to do something in Strange New Worlds that isn’t typical, which is to use genre as a way of driving emotional storytelling. And so in that sense, we are probably closer [to an anthology series], and I’m delighted that [viewers] see that, because we’re a little secretive about it — and it’s vaguely subversive.”
Myers says the creative team particularly seeks out curveballs that will challenge the Strange New Worlds acting ensemble. “Part of our job is to hand [the cast] something to explore,” he says. “It makes their job better and more interesting, and it makes our job better and more interesting if everyone has something to reach for.”
“I definitely received challenges on this show that I’ve never received before,” agrees Mount, who’s previously been called on to take on unexpected iterations of his role, including a Vulcan-ized version of Pike and a holodeck-conjured TV writer inspired loosely by Trek creator Gene Roddenberry; this season sees him trying on even more disparate spins, from a deliriously loopy Pike flying high on an intoxicant to a more menacing horror-film take on the captain to a foam-and-felt Pike in puppet form.
“I really like what I call ‘Oh sh–!’ roles or ‘Oh sh–!’ episodes,” says Mount. “It’s where you read the script and you go, ‘Oh sh– — how am I gonna do this?’ And these guys are really good at writing those.”
Ethan Peck, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Jan Thijs/Paramount+“We get so many different sort of genres that we work in and they all require a rethink,” says Peck, with Spock front and center in most of the higher-concept episodes. “I don’t know that it’s a fundamental rethink, but more of just like ‘This is going to be really challenging and how do I keep this performance connected to Spock as we know him, to Spock as established by Leonard Nimoy in The Original Series, to Spock as established by us in Strange New Worlds?’ And yeah, we’re taking some big swings this season that I’m really excited about.”
“I was really intimidated by the possibility of performing with puppets and playing it as depth-fully and as truthfully as I could, and not really knowing what to expect on set,” Peck adds. “And there definitely was some adjustment, and it was just totally insane. I can’t believe we did it!”
“Our series is such a genre-bending series — it’s what we always do,” adds Romijn. “And to get to do this gorgeous, highly stylized black-and-white noir episode, the art direction was just… they knocked it out of the park. Just the styling of it, we were really feeling ourselves. Celia [Celia Rose Gooding] and Babs [Babs Olusanmokun] and myself, we just walked onto that set, took it all in, wearing these gorgeous costumes, and it all felt awesome. It was a really special episode to work on”.
But even filming in lush monochrome wasn’t what pushed Romijn most out of her comfort zone. “The biggest challenge of Season 4 personally was spending a lot of time learning Klingon lyrics to ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart,'” she teases. “A challenge I never knew I wanted, but I really embraced it, and because there are roughly at least 20 people in the world who speak Klingon perfectly, I wanted to make sure I nailed it. I worked very hard on that.”
Strange New Worlds previously forayed into Lovecraftian horror in the third season, and this time around Goldsman said the creative team were eager to lean into a Gothic ghost story in “The Griffin Incident,” as crafted by episode writer Robbie Thompson, a variation of the enduring trope of the one populated but mysteriously abandoned locale.
“History is full of these versions of ‘And where did they all go?’ [stories],” offers Goldsman. “I think we’re always obsessed with the room that you walk into that’s empty — the coffee cup is still there and the cigarette is half-burnt. There’s something very beguiling and inviting about that when it comes to storytelling. And our show is called Strange New Worlds because we try to visit different worlds emotionally — we use genre as a lens on storytelling, and something that is as endemically optimistic as Star Trek sometimes has a really interesting marriage when it comes to true horror. And so that was what we were doing with Episode 2: We were trying to scare you in a way that should evoke every ghost story that you’ve heard.”
Ultimately, Star Trek‘s enduring optimism is part of its perennial, 60-year appeal, whether it’s the Space Age “let’s see what’s out there” ambition of The Original Series, adding new flavors, colors, and understanding to the galactic community in Star Trek: The Next Generation, the redemptive arcs of characters tinged with darkness in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, navigating the cosmic weirdness of Strange New Worlds, or any of the similarly distinctive textures of all the series and films in the franchise.
Rebecca Romijn, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Jan Thijs/Paramount+“I was introduced to Star Trek: The Original Series in reruns when I was about seven or eight by my mom,” remembers Romijn. “And for us, it was a jumping-off point for a lot of conversation about the universe and exploration and whether or not we’re alone in this universe — and as my mom would say, ‘Of course we’re not!'”
Romijn has firsthand experience with Trek‘s enduring allure. “I have just made a new Star Trek fan out of my five-year-old niece, who just watched two episodes with me and she is a brand-new Trekkie — she is enthralled!” she says. “The reason Star Trek goes on and on and on in a generational way is it keeps showing a version of the future that’s not scary for younger generations, that’s not aggressive, that opens their mind to greeting the unknown with curiosity in a hopeful way.”
“Science fiction is a carnival mirror,” says Goldsman. “It lets us see parts of ourselves, our culture, our character, in ways that feel too unsafe when we do it in straight drama.”
“When we look at the world around us today, there’s a tremendous amount of pain and suffering,” he continues. “And I think that was true when Star Trek began in the ’60s. And what Star Trek can do in a very particular, unique, and beautiful way is to show us ourselves and challenge us without becoming so overwhelming that we turn away. And central to its core is the idea that empathy solves many of our problems and saves the day. And I think that is a hopeful vision of the future and one that we yearn for, and one that is ultimately true. We just have to choose it.”
Season 4 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds premieres Thursday, July 23 on Paramount+. New episodes air Thursdays.