If you're not a giant nerd, you might not know that, in the original pilot for Star Trek, Kirk was not the captain. Instead, it was Captain Pike, and his first officer was simply "Number One," played by Majel Barret (who would later play Nurse Chapel, voice the ship's computer, and also Lwaxana Troy - oh, and she was married to Gene Roddenberry). Spock was there, but simply as a science officer.
The original pilot was somewhat re-cut for a later episode in which Kirk's predecessor is a scarred and catatonic wreck. Over 50 years later, with Star Trek Discovery as a kind of prequel series (but not as much of a prequel as Enterprise. I guess more of an interquel?) the pre-Kirk crew of the Enterprise appeared as recurring supporting characters (I have not watched much of Discovery, so I don't know all the details).
As such, Strange New Worlds comes as a weird mix of prequel, spinoff, and re-make. We follow Pike and his people on their five-year voyage.
In contrast with Discovery and Picard, Strange New Worlds brings back the largely episodic formula of the older shows in the franchise. So far at least, each episode has presented its own science fiction crisis to be dealt with.
And thus, in a lot of ways it really feels like the Star Trek we once knew.
We're only four episodes in, and in one of these ensemble-based shows, it can take a while to give everyone a turn in the spotlight.
Christopher Pike's inner conflict is arguably the most metafictional - we know that he's fated to have a horrific injury that will transform his life (if I recall correctly, some aliens essentially send him to some kind of paradise afterward, but he doesn't know that). And, evidently because of events of Discovery, Pike is also aware of that - having been dosed with some kind of temporal-warping mineral that gave him precognitive visions. His dealing with the knowledge that ten years from now, he's going to be a mute burned victim in a weird cyber-coffin introduces ideas of fate and free will that I wonder how they'll choose to explore. Changing his fate would not only break this prophecy, but also the continuity of a show that, in contrast to the recent movies, is meant to exist within the same canon.
Number One is given a name, finally, and it's Una Chin-Riley, which I find hilarious - her name literally means "One." Honestly, getting into her backstory is a bit of a spoiler for one of the early episodes, so suffice it to say she is the tough but empathetic XO who also takes on way too much responsibility for herself.
Spock, of course, is the most well-known character in the series. I don't really feel like I need to go into detail here because he's literally one of the most beloved science fiction characters of all time. We haven't had an episode really focus in on him yet, so I don't have a super clear sense of the angle they're taking with this familiar character.
Uhura is also a regular on the show. In this case, she's still a cadet who is exploring what she wants to make of her career and life on board. Here, we have another sort of interesting case where, of course, we know that Uhura is going to be an exemplary officer and Starfleet legend, but this version is still figuring herself out and even questioning whether she wants to be in Starfleet in the first place.
La'an Noonien-Singh is, I believe, one of the few brand-new characters on Strange New Worlds, though of course that last name has a pretty complex legacy. Interestingly, so far, La'an's story is less about her (unknown to this crew, one imagines, cryogenically frozen) ancestor and more about the fact that she survived a horrific trauma when her family was killed by the Gorn (for those of us whose first association with that particular alien species is the funny guy in a lizard suit fighting William Shatner, this show seems determined to rehabilitate the Gorn into a near-Borg-level menace). As seems to be the case for security officers, La'an is far less patient and philosophical than your typical Starfleet officer.
Characters we've had a little less time to get to know include Nurse Chapel (no, she's not also played by Rebecca Romijn, though I'd have to admire the chutzpah if they did that,) Doctor M'benga, Erica Ortegas (the helms person,) and Hemmer, the ship's engineer, who is an Aenar (which I believe were introduced in Enterprise as a subspecies of Andorian).
The show has a lot of fun being a sort of upgraded version of the original series. The ship has plenty of physical controls like buttons and levers, but they all look slick and up to modern production design standards. TV budgets have gotten a lot bigger, and visual effects have gotten a lot more advanced. One thing I find amusing and kind of great is that the opening titles, which include the classic "These are the Voyages" narration by Captain Pike, has the essential melody of the original Star Trek opening theme, but where that original has that kinda cheesey 1960s jazziness, this one sounds a bit like those YouTube videos you might see of an "EPIC VERSION" of some pop culture theme music. It works, and feels modern, while you can still hear that same original theme underneath it all.
I think, frankly, that we could use some of Star Trek's old optimism. The past few years have been rough, and I find that a lot of people, myself included, are finding it hard to imagine a brighter future. To be fair, Star Trek does have, as part of its fictional history, a period of extreme turmoil that happens, oh, well, around now - and that dark age is even referred to in the first episode, with some rather disturbing images of nuclear bombs exploding over major cities. What rises from that dark age, though, is the utopian future that Star Trek imagines. Here's hoping we can get to some approximation of that future without going through such a massive trauma.
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