I hate using this specific terminology, but it is time to get to some “proper” Star Trek. Specifically, a series about adults being adults instead of whatever you’ll call Lower Decks. That said, the era of Captain Snogs-A-Lot and his pointy-eared boyfriend isn’t what I think most people care about these days. I’m also kind of cheating because Strange New Worlds is built off the back of STD, particularly in season 2 when it calmed down quite a bit. Nonetheless, we’ll be starting with the sequel to a prequel that I really can’t get along with, something about children becoming Star Trek doesn’t interest me.

We have a very classic story to get us off the ground, so to speak. Akiva Goldsman, Alex Kurtzman, and Jenny Lumet bring us “Strange New Worlds.” On a technical level, Discovery season 2 isn’t required for catch-up. The endpoint for Chris Pike has been established for nearly 60 years at this stage. That said, it does help to get to grips with this version of Pike, the sexy version. You can be as straight as an arrow, but that doesn’t mean you can’t rank captains by their attractiveness. In ascending order, it goes Archer, Sisko, then Pike at the top.

Following on from his time serving on a ship with more children than Prodigy, Pike has reservations about continuing active duty but gets called into action when Una/Number One is captured during a first contact mission that goes all sorts of Pete Tong. Assembling the crew a week before the scheduled departure, the Enterprise that started it all on-screen heads out on a savior mission to Kiley 279. This is not a complicated setup, and if I’m honest the rest of the episode isn’t much more complicated either. The world of Kiley 279 hasn’t made a warp engine, it is a warp bomb.

The way it is explained is quite interesting: Spock goes into a bit about how we’ve only seen the atom bomb created before the discovery of particle physics but in reality the theory of atoms and atomic theory dates quite far back. The problem with being a nerd that has had lots of X-rays is I know about Crookes Tube, which is a 19th-century tool that uses subatomic physics to do the magic medical stuff. Nonetheless, it is used as an example of how, despite knowing one thing to be true (such as the big bomb), something becomes a whole study of science. The opposite could happen in an extreme example.

Of course, I’ve skipped over a lot to get to the nitpicking early, but if I didn’t nitpick it would just be a dull plot summary you’re reading. As a new show and an expansion on the canon that we know, Strange New Worlds does a lot of juggling and sometimes re-writing the canon to fit. That is basically the nice way of saying that the Eugenics War/World War III has been delayed or shifted about so many times so we can have new footage of whatever America did this time. I was certainly surprised when I saw the hastily assembled noose for a former vice president outside the Capital.

Showrunners Goldsman and Myers have taken a much more classic-Trek approach with Strange New Worlds with hints of 90s Trek too. Being episodic, we’re not stuck in the mud of one boring story that the writers don’t know how to get to the end of akin to Picard’s first two seasons. It can be argued for days which is better, but I’ll put my foot down right now and say that this decision (and the writing) lets the series be more enjoyably consumable from a viewing standpoint. I’ve watched “Strange New Worlds” and several other episodes of this season several times since it aired a year ago.

Part of that credit has to go to casting and actors too. I instantly fell in love with Jess Bush’s Nurse Chapel, Celia Rose Gooding’s Uhura beautifully captures a Black sci-fi icon, Ortegas is the most human, La’an is the most honest, and both M’Benga and Hemmer are going to make me cry again. I didn’t mention Pike or Una at all there because I’d already fallen in love with Anson Mount after seeing that hair and I fell in love with Rebecca Romijn in the 2000s. It isn’t because I have an attraction to blue people, I’ve just watched Ugly Betty too much.

Maybe without that second season of Discovery, I’d be saying otherwise. For this first episode I’d be drawing comparisons with “Rose” and maybe “Smith and Jones” too. If you only had a vague hint of Star Trek knowledge, there is enough there to get you up-to-speed and that’s where I think “Strange New Worlds” succeeds the most. Honestly, I don’t like the Kirk era, no less the JJ-Trek Kirk era. Visually and stylistically, there was an uphill battle to tackle for the creative team. How well this first episode takes on the setup bridges the gap between TOS, the TNG-era, and Discovery for the better part.

I love that speech from Pike as we see footage of modern-day America and its problems as a parable for the conflict between the peoples of Kiley 279. It feels more baldy than the captain shouts about these young people and their understanding of the Utopian dream Gene had. Very much an adult being an adult in the situation of drama, which is more than I can say for Michael Burnham and the rest of them. It is hope, it is a desire for a better future, and exactly what Star Trek and even Doctor Who is all about: an excitement for life, exploration, and connection to others.

I could bang on all day about the connections to Discovery, the happiness of seeing this crew doing something good, and the general positivity for Strange New Worlds that it has already gotten by the bucket load. That said, for the life of me I don’t entirely understand the fascination with S’chn T’Gai and his relationships. As I said in a now-dead draft of this review, I understand the reason Spock was particularly popular in the original series is that to women he was a man who would listen. However, are male characters overall still lacking in deference to listen to a woman when she talks?

This isn’t to take away from Ethan Peck, I think he does a decent job to capture Leonard Nimoy’s original than Quinto ever did. Nonetheless, I don’t altogether understand why I am supposed to care that much between what we’ve seen of Discovery up to this point and in this episode so far. I care more about T’pring because I know that Spock is going to go off and have a secret gay relationship with Samuel’s brother, and this is the problem with a prequel series. Some things are practically set in stone.

Akiva Goldsman as showrunner, director, and person behind the teleplay and story (the latter also being done by Alex Kurtzman and Jenn Lumet) brought a fantastic episode and new beginning to life. “Strange New Worlds” does bring in some strangers in a strange new land, though the day Kiley 279 stood still felt familiar in all the ways it needed to. This is a fantastic episode with little to pick apart, and a whole lot of joy to be had for a series that might (spoiler) turn out great.

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Strange New Worlds "Strange New Worlds"

9

Score

9.0/10

Pros

• A back to basic story to give us something fantastic.
• Look at that magnificent hair captaining the Enterprise!
• Absolutely brilliant casting.

Cons

• The people of Kiley 279 look as basic as early Klingons in the dark.