“Space…The Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its 5-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before!”
Since the relaunch of Star Trek on television via the Paramount + streaming service, I must admit to being a little underwhelmed. It’s truly bad when Alex Kurtzman makes me pine for the days of Rick Berman. There have been some pretty good moments in the various new Trek shows. Picard has shown promise and has improved with a third season that looks very exciting. Lower Decks is just too campy for my tastes, and Discovery has so many ups and downs I feel like I’m on a rollercoaster. So along comes Strange New Worlds, and this is the Star Trek I’ve been waiting for these last decades.
This is a series that has been teased for over 50 years. It all started before Star Trek: The Original Series and a pilot that was rejected. That first Star Trek featured Jefferey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike of the USS Enterprise. His first officer was a woman known only as Number One and played by Majel Barrett. Then there was a funny-looking alien named Mr. Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy. The network rejected the pilot but did something rarely done in television. Gene Roddenberry was given a second shot to do another pilot for the show. Among the notes he received was that a woman couldn’t be the executive officer, and he was to get rid of the guy with the ears. Roddenberry would later explain that he kept Mr. Spock and married the executive officer. Of course, Majel Barrett would show up often in Trek as Nurse Chapel, the voice of the Next Generation computer, and the irritating mother of Deanna Troi. But that rejected pilot had cost money, and we don’t waste money, so the footage was reused in the only 2-part Original Trek episode, The Menagerie. Spock would hijack the Enterprise to take his badly burned former captain to a planet where he could live the rest of his life without suffering the damage he incurred. Along the route there’s a court martial where Spock tells us the story of the first encounter with the aliens he hopes to reunite with Captain Pike. His testimony is delivered through the first pilot’s footage. We are introduced to Captain Christopher Pike, and that’s where his story began and ended.
Flash forward to Star Trek: Discovery, and we are teased once more. Captain Pike and his Enterprise crew end up joining the crew of Discovery for several episodes starting with the second season and ending with Discovery’s jump to the far future. From the moment I first saw that crew, I wanted to see so much more of them, and not as second fiddle to Discovery. I wasn’t the only one who saw the great potential of the series, and it’s finally here. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is now out on Blu-ray, and for the most part it’s the best Trek in 20 years.
As the series opens we find Christopher Pike has been pretty much chilling and riding horses. There’s something about horses and Starfleet captains. He’s not really in a hurry to return to duty until he’s contacted that his first officer, Number One, is missing. It’s the one thing that gets him back in shape, and we are off to the races, starting with a Gorn ambush that plays a little footloose and fancy free with the continuity. The episode turns into a homage to Alien including chest-bursters. The season’s episodes are pretty much all over the place. The worse is a fantasy land that takes over the ship thanks to M’Benga’s daughter, and it’s a complete snooze-fest. The same can be said for an episode that has the crew trying to save a planet from colliding with a comet that apparently needs you to sing certain notes. Can anyone say Close Encounters Of The Third Kind? I knew you could.
But there are some very special episodes, and they saved the best for last. Throughout the season we learn that Pike has been to a Klingon moon where crystals allow you to see glimpses of your future. He sees the accident that burns and disfigures him, mistakenly believing that it’s his death. He’s been trying to avoid that fate where cadets are also killed until he’s visited by his future self who needs to warn him of the dangers of changing the future. He’s thrust into a future where he avoided the tragedy and remained longer as captain on the Enterprise so that it is Pike and not Kirk who commands the ship during the Romulan confrontation of the original episode Balance Of Terror. And while we get to meet young James T. Kirk, he’s in command of another ship that is destroyed in the encounter. Now he’s a bit of a thorn in Pike’s side, but it’s Pike making the calls that lead to far more devastating results. Turns out Pike needs to have his accident so Kirk can be on the ship at the correct time. It’s really a wonderful episode and easily the best episode of this era of Star Trek. By the way, Kirk is played by The Vampire Diaries lead vampire Paul Wesley. It’s an interesting choice. The character will be returning next season.
Spock’s betrothed, T’Pring, is a pretty heavy force here, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. In the original episode Amok Time, Spock doesn’t talk about the betrothal until Pon Farr sets in, and we are under the impression they hadn’t met since they were children. Here they are quite an active couple. It leads to an amusing episode where a ritual goes awry and they switch bodies. There’s also a dream Spock has of fighting himself on Vulcan for T’Pring. The props are really spot-on from the original episode, and even that fight music is reused. So there’s some good stuff here, so I’m still on the fence about this change. T’Pring is played by Gia Sandhu.
Captain Christopher Pike is played by Anson Mount. I’ve loved this guy since I saw him star in Hell On Wheels, where he was often paired with another Star Trek legend, Colm Meany, who played Chief Miles O’Brien on both The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. Mount is pretty much perfect for the part. He has the kind of charisma that the character demands, and he actually bears a slight resemblance to the late Jefferey Hunter. Spock is played by Ethan Peck, who doesn’t quite nail it as well as Zachery Quinto has on the reboot films, but he’s pretty comfortable in the role, and it doesn’t take too long to accept him as the character. There are two roles here that were both originally played by Majel Barrett. She played the original Number One, who is now played by Rebecca Romijn, who is perhaps best known for her run as the blue-bodied Mystique from the X-Men films. In this series she has a secret that could cost her her career in Starfleet, and that’s the setup for next season as this first season closes. The second Barrett role is the introduction of Nurse Christine Chapel, played by Jess Bush here. She’s one of three characters brought over from the original series that were not in the rejected pilot. Chapel is a young and flirty nurse who is more self-confident than the mousy woman we know from the original show.
Also brought aboard is Dr. M’Benga, who is played by Babs Olusanmokun. He appeared only as a recurring character in the first show and was the medical expert on Vulcans. He is the Chief Medical Officer here but must get a demotion somewhere, because he works under Dr. “Bones” McCoy later. He has a daughter suffering from a fatal disease without a cure. He keeps her suspended in the transporter buffer until he can find a cure. He’s a powerful character here and also very unlike the version played by Booker Bradshaw in a couple of the show’s episodes. The biggest character brought over is Cadet Uhura, who was played by the iconic Nichelle Nichols and here played by Celia Rose Gooding. She’s having her cadet rotation on the ship and trying out various jobs from engineering to her famous spot at communications. It’s a really nice addition as we get to fill out the character’s history, something we didn’t get too much of from the first show or film series. We get a security officer with an infamous family tree. She’s La’an Noonien Singh, played by Christina Chong. As her name suggests, she’s descended from Khan himself. She’s a tough character who feels she has to prove herself more than others. Finally, the navigation is done by Erica Ortega, played by Melissa Navia. She’s cocky and has the piloting skills to back it up.
Video
Each episode is presented in its original broadcast aspect ratio of 2.39:1. The 1080p image is arrived at with an AVC MPEG-4 codec at an average 20-25 mbps. The high-definition image presentation is very impressive. This is going to look a lot brighter with more vivid colors and a more stable image than you’re going to get through streaming. The added bitrate and a dedicated machine really delivers, and it looks like the production team kept that in mind. In fact, this will also be available in 4K, and I really would have liked to see how that looked.
Audio
The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 delivers on the important stuff. Dialog comes through just fine, and everything is well-placed. The surrounds give you some added range with background sounds like ship’s engines and wind on an ice-cold planet. The music here is also a notch above the other current shows, and the expanded surrounds allow for you to appreciate it. The subs aren’t going to thrill you much. It’s still going to be that step above streaming.
Special Features
Deleted Scenes on select episodes
Pike’s Peek: (17:26) This is a video journal that Anson Mount kept and starts in COVID quarantine before the season started shooting and then takes us to several key dates in production. It’s often tongue-in-cheek, and you can really tell he’s having a blast being a part of the show.
World Building: (11:56) One of the best new innovations to come along has been the AR wall. Instead of a green screen, the sets are extended by a wall of LCD screens that actually show the computer-generated environments so the actors are reacting to real images. They can be 360 degrees and even take up the ceiling. The production crew calls it a holodeck, and in many ways that’s exactly what it is. You’ll love this behind-the-scenes look at the technology.
Exploring New Worlds: (53:57) This is a feature-length behind-the-scenes look at the season. The actors each offer tons of insight into the characters and their relationships. The seasons episodes all get a little behind-the-scenes attention, and it’s one of the better features on these Trek season releases.
Gag Reel: (2:47)
Final Thoughts:
Computer-generated f/x have come a long way from the models and shaky f/x of 1966. The production values here are truly top-notch. Trek certainly never looked so good, and a lot of the credit for that and much more on this show is due Akiva Goldsmith, who pretty much has guided this show from the beginning. He’s a voice who obviously loves the source material and is doing his best to keep Kurtzman in check. This series shows a lot of love and care for those early days, and I hope that continues going forward. “The mission has just begun.”
