Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is one of the most entertaining series on television, and when it returns for its fourth season on July 23, it’ll continue that streak with a puppet episode. So when Celia Rose Gooding stopped by TV Insider to discuss Season 3, we had to talk about that major event — just the latest “wacky” episode of the series.
“We do some of the most insane things I think Trek has ever done in seasons that I cannot talk about,” Gooding noted at the time, reflecting on the first out-of-the-box episode, Season 1’s “The Elysian Kingdom.” (The series has already been renewed for a fifth and final season as well.) “I mean, we did a musical episode. I think a musical episode is a bit wackier than a fairytale medieval type of story because we’ve seen that in Trek before. I know we’ve never seen a musical episode before. I think we’ve done a lot of wacky stuff.”
It was at the 2025 San Diego Comic-Con panel that Paramount+ announced the aforementioned puppet episode, with a look at the puppet version of Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount).
The iconic Jim Henson‘s Creature Shop created the puppet versions of the U.S.S. Enterprise crew members, and the episode was directed by Jordan Canning (Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock).
“When I heard that there was going to be a pike puppet, that was probably a 10 out of 5” on the wacky scale, Gooding admitted. “I cannot believe we got away with the puppet episode. I think that I was so shocked, but we’d already done so many different types of insane genre flips that when I heard that we were doing a puppet episode, I was like, ‘Oh, of course. Where are we going to go next? Underwater? What are we doing? What’s the next crazy thing?’ And so yeah, I was really excited by the idea of puppets, but it was definitely something that knocked the wind out of me for a second. And then I was like, ‘This is Strange New Worlds. Of course we’re going to do something completely out of the ordinary.”
Watch the full video above for more with Celia Rose Gooding taking a look back on the partly animated Lower Decks crossover, musical, and other Strange New Worlds episodes.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Season 4 Premiere, Thursday, July 23, Paramount+
TV Guide Magazine’s Star Trek: The Captains Special Issue is available for order online now at StarTrek.TVGM2026.com, and for purchase on newsstands nationwide.