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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Brings Us Back to The Basics: Review

Published Fri, 06 May 2022 07:59:12 -0500

by Tom Chang

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Since the return of the Star Trek franchise on television for Paramount+, fans dubbed the era of Discovery and Picard Nu Trek, which was met with largely positive reviews but with discourse from a very vocal minority longing for the more "traditional" non-serial storytelling from The Original Series and Next Generation eras. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds promised to bring that back. The premiere episode (also called "Strange New Worlds") catches up with the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise since the events of season two of Discovery. This is your minor spoilers warning.

Pike (Anson Mount) is on shore leave in Montana, but dealing with his long-term PTSD from knowing his horrific future (as fans are well familiar with his TOS fate in the episode "The Menagerie"). But learning that his first officer Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn) aka "Number One" went missing during her mission on a first-contact mission gets him back into action. We meet the new crew with the primary focus on Spock (Ethan Peck) and La'an (Christina Chong). In time, I suspect we'll definitely get to know everyone else with each cast member getting proper introductions, including Ortegas (Melissa Navia), Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding), Dr. M'Benga (Babs Olusanmokun), and Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush). It's a smart route to go, as opposed to trying to jam in introductions to everyone in one episode.

Directed by Akiva Goldsman and co-written by Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet, the creative team delivers on their initial promises about the series and then some. These self-contained adventures will give the audience the opportunity to know the individual characters organically rather than defining them by the crisis they're involved in at the time. The episode certainly has me curious to see how Chong's La'an develops, whose last name shares the lineage of the franchise's most infamous Big Bad while tip-toeing around potential future continuity errors. Right out of the gate, Mount shines every which way, already earning his rightful place in the pantheon of previous franchise captains.

After seeing the premiere episode, in hindsight, I realize how complacent some in the Trek fan base have become- and I'm one of them. I take for granted what SNW brings because I was just happy Star Trek was back when Discovery premiered, but I realize some part of me forgot what made the franchise special all along, from TOS and TNG. Sometimes "old concepts" can feel refreshingly new. There are certain advantages to telling single-episode stories and resolving those conflicts within the time frame of each respective episode than always taking a single, over-arching narrative down a depressing, galactic-wide rabbit hole.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Brings Us Back to The Basics: Review — Christina Chong as La'an, Rong Fu as Mitchell, and Melissa Navia as Ortegas of the Paramount+ original series – Photo Cr: Marni Grossman/Paramount+

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S01E01 "Strange New Worlds"

Review by Tom Chang

9.5/10

After seeing the premiere episode, in hindsight, I realize how complacent some in the Trek fan base have become- and I'm one of them. I take for granted what "Strange New Worlds" brings because I was just happy Star Trek was back when Discovery premiered, but I realize some part of me forgot what made the franchise special all along, from TOS and TNG. Sometimes "old concepts" can feel refreshingly new. There are certain advantages to telling single-episode stories and resolving those conflicts within the time frame of each respective episode than always taking a single, over-arching narrative down a depressing, galactic-wide rabbit hole.

Credits

Director

Akiva Goldsman

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