The third season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has arrived, inviting viewers to question the show’s purpose within the vast Star Trek universe. As the flagship series of Paramount’s multimedia universe, Strange New Worlds aims for a lighter tone compared to its predecessors. While generally more enjoyable than Discovery, its adherence to safety and familiarity raises comparisons to the franchise’s golden age. This review dives into whether the new season offers genuine exploration or merely retreads familiar ground.
This season, the series grapples with existential queries, specifically, why does this show exist? Beginning as both a spinoff and bouncier counterpart to the sometimes grimdark melodrama of Discovery, Strange New Worlds now sets the primary tone of Paramount’s multimedia universe. The series brings us back to the original show’s monochrome uniforms, and while it’s undoubtedly a much more even and more enjoyable series than Discovery, it manages to be so mostly because it’s markedly safer. This has been an issue since the beginning, but by now the show’s refusal to grow invites increasingly unfavorable comparisons to Star Trek’s heyday.
Romance and Reality in “Wedding Bell Blues”
In “Wedding Bell Blues,” the second episode of the season, Spock (Ethan Peck) finds himself in a fantasy scenario where he’s about to marry Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush). However, he soon realizes that this reality is a sham, a plaything of a demigod. While Spock confronts the temptation of living in this fantasy, he ultimately accepts the truth of his breakup with Chapel. Though the episode explores Spock’s character, it doesn’t challenge any established conventions.
One can imagine the scenarios here playing out similarly in prior Star Trek shows, but along the way, the emphasis on allegory would likely have pointed us toward questioning our world, lives, and morals. Star Trek: The Next Generation used romance tropes to play with the bounds of heterosexuality—like having one character fall in love with a member of a species that has no concept of gender or another character contemplate whether she could live with the fact that her symbiote boyfriend now had a woman’s body—in an era when it was the insistently enforced norm. It would be difficult to make the case that Strange New Worlds pulls off—or even aims at—using its outer-space setting to make us think. On the contrary, it’s more than content to simply deck standard TV-drama morals out with pulp-genre window dressing.
Endearing Characters Amidst Familiar Plots
Despite the familiar storylines, the portrayals of Spock and Captain Pike (Anson Mount) continue to be endearing. While Pike takes a backseat in the reviewed episodes, Mount remains a charismatic anchor, highlighting the series’ ensemble focus. The season’s central conflict revolves around the battle with the Gorn, which has lasting effects on the crew, including psychological trauma and genetic manipulation. These struggles surface in contrived scenarios, such as the crew’s fight on a zombie planet in “Shuttle to Kenfori.”
Still, the show’s versions of Spock and Captain Pike (Anson Mount) are ever more endearing as the series goes on. Pike takes a bit of a backseat in the five episodes available for review, but Mount continues to be the steady, charismatic anchor of a series that’s much more ensemble-focused than Discovery, and as character-driven as anything in the entire franchise. The thread running through the season is the battle with the lizard-like Gorn that capped last season and the effects the conflict has had on various crew and their loved ones, from psychological trauma to genetic manipulation—secret and repressed struggles forced to the surface in contrived scenarios like the crew fighting their way off a zombie planet in “Shuttle to Kenfori.”
Self-Irony and Parody in “A Space Adventure Hour”
The episode “A Space Adventure Hour” showcases the series’ self-awareness, parodying the low-budget costumes and on-set tensions of the original Star Trek. The episode also satirizes male sci-fi gurus like Gene Roddenberry. Crew members enter a holographic simulation room to solve a murder mystery set in a cheesy ’60s sci-fi show called The Last Frontier. The simulator uses other crew members as models, resulting in caricatures of past Star Trek figures.
In “Adventure Hour,” enterprise crew members enter the holographic simulation room within the USS Enterprise to solve a murder mystery set among the cast of a cheesy mid-’60s sci-fi show called The Last Frontier. The simulator’s computer has used other crew members as models for the characters, so that we see the cast of Strange New Worlds playing caricatures of figures from past Star Trek shows. Paul Wesley, this show’s James Kirk, delivers a broad Shatner impersonation, for example, and Mount, normally the suave Captain Pike, plays the socially inept, wild-haired creator of The Last Frontier, who’s more an amalgam of Isaac Asimov and L. Ron Hubbard than a direct caricature of Roddenberry.
Treading Familiar Ground
While the actors seem to enjoy themselves in “A Space Adventure Hour,” the episode treads familiar ground previously explored in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The producers acknowledge this, relying on the audience’s awareness of the show’s tendency to revisit familiar themes. This approach of making the old new is central to the series, aiming to revive the greatness of Star Trek through callbacks and superficial pleasures.
These are fair targets, for sure, and the actors look like they’re having fun, but is it even worth pointing out that Star Trek: Deep Space Nine already did the same “boy, the old show was corny but fun” schtick much more lovingly, and the deconstruction of ’60s sci-fi creators much more incisively? Of course it’s not, as the producers know that we know that they’re treading familiar ground. In fact, they count on us to know that they are. Making the old new is the show’s core trait, as if that by itself will make Star Trek great again.
A “Star Trek” Smoothie
Like its predecessors, the third season of Strange New Worlds is tightly written with watchable simplicity and enjoyable character beats. However, it ultimately offers a “Star Trek” smoothie, blending pleasing elements without breaking new ground. While sweet and enjoyable, it may leave viewers with a desire for something more substantial.
As with the first two seasons of Strange New Worlds, a tendency toward easy callbacks and superficial pleasures doesn’t make the series bad per se. It’s at least a tightly written pastiche, structuring its hour-long stories with watchable simplicity and enjoyable character beats.
In the end, though, what Strange New Worlds continues to offer is less a new type of Star Trek and more a kind of Star Trek smoothie. It’s got all the most pleasing parts of whatever’s been thrown in there, and boy is it sweet. But it may also leave you with the sneaking suspicion that it’d be better for you to just eat the banana it was made from.
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