Strange New Worlds

Production

Development

In June 2018, after becoming sole showrunner of Star Trek: Discovery (2017–2024), Alex Kurtzman signed a five-year overall deal with CBS Television Studios to expand the Star Trek franchise beyond Discovery to several new series, miniseries, and animated series. After Anson Mount left Discovery with its second season finale (2019), fans began calling—including through online petitions—for him to reprise the role of Christopher Pike in a spin-off series set on the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701), alongside Rebecca Romijn as Number One and Ethan Peck as Spock. In January 2020, Kurtzman said active discussions regarding a spin-off series featuring the actors had begun with executive producer Akiva Goldsman. Paramount+ officially ordered Star Trek: Strange New Worlds to series in May 2020, with Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers set as showrunners.

Writing

Myers began work on the series in March 2020, working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Co-creators Goldsman, Kurtzman, and Jenny Lumet had written the first episode by the series' announcement that May, and a writers' room for the first season was underway by July. Stories for all 10 episodes were broken by the end of that month. Other writers for the season included Sarah Tarkoff, Akela Cooper, Bill Wolkoff, Davy Perez, Beau DeMayo, Robin Wasserman, and Onitra Johnson. In August, Kurtzman said they had been able to get "quite ahead in scripts" compared to previous Star Trek seasons due to the pandemic postponing the start of production. Goldsman said the series was more episodic than Discovery and Star Trek: Picard (2020–2023), though it still has recurring character arcs. He took particular inspiration from Star Trek: The Original Series (1966–1969) while Myers was more of a Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–1994) and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993–1999) fan. The writers wanted to show the full potential of the series by giving each episode a dramatically different genre and tone.

One of Goldsman's first ideas was to feature the Gorn, a lizard-like alien species introduced in the Original Series episode "Arena" (1967), as a recurring adversary for the season. Kurtzman was excited to use modern visual effects and puppetry to make the species feel "vivid and scary" compared to the "guy in a rubber suit" from the original episode. The writers discussed ways to incorporate the Gorn without contradicting the fact that the characters in "Arena", which is set around seven years after this season, have not seen the species before. Perez explained that their goal was to not "undo people's experience with The Original Series, but if we can manage it, perhaps to give us an interesting perspective to consider that lines up with the original stories". Specifically discussing the line "I face the creature the Metrons called a Gorn" spoken by William Shatner's James T. Kirk in "Arena", Perez explained that "maybe Kirk has never seen them, he could even be one of those people who still doubts the stories, or maybe even he has seen them and they don't look the same". Some of the ways that the series attempts to maintain continuity include featuring the Gorn in the backstory of La'An Noonien-Singh, a character who does not appear in The Original Series; not actually showing them in "Memento Mori" when Gorn starships are seen; and only showing baby Gorn in "All Those Who Wander". For "Memento Mori", Perez researched submarine films in an effort to replicate the feeling of the Original Series episode "Balance of Terror" (1966), while "All Those Who Wander" is a horror-themed episode inspired by the films Alien (1979), The Thing (1982), Gremlins (1984), and Predator (1987). Perez said Alien was an especial influence because it was "hard not to draw the comparison when writing a 'horror story in space'", and this is primarily seen in the way that baby Gorn grow inside host bodies and burst out of them like the Xenomorphs from that franchise.

Casting

Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, and Rebecca Romijn star in the series, reprising their respective roles of Captain Christopher Pike, science officer Spock, and first officer Una Chin-Riley / Number One from Discovery. Also starring are Jess Bush as nurse Christine Chapel, Christina Chong as chief security officer La'An Noonien-Singh, Celia Rose Gooding as cadet Nyota Uhura, Melissa Navia as helmsman Erica Ortegas, Babs Olusanmokun as Dr. Joseph M'Benga, and Bruce Horak as chief engineer Hemmer. In "The Elysian Kingdom", the main cast portray characters from a fantasy book: Olusanmokun is King Ridley, Mount is the sniveling chamberlain Sir Amand Rauth, Horak is Caster the Wizard, Chong is the dramatic Princess Thalia, Gooding is the villainous Queen Neve, Bush is Lady Audrey, Peck is Pollux the Wizard, Navia is Sir Adya, and Romijn is Z'ymira the Huntress. Princess Thalia has a dog, named Princess Runa, that was portrayed by Chong's own dog Runa Ewok. Hemmer dies in "All Those Who Wander", but Horak said this would not be the end of his involvement in the series.

The season premiere introduces two characters from The Original Series who have recurring roles in the season: Gia Sandhu plays Spock's fiancée T'Pring and Dan Jeannotte plays George Samuel "Sam" Kirk—the brother to future Enterprise captain James T. Kirk. Sandhu replaced Arlene Martel, who portrayed T'Pring in the Original Series episode "Amok Time", and Sandhu said she was mostly able to develop T'Pring herself due to the character's limited prior screen time. Sam Kirk briefly appeared as a dead body in the Original Series episode "Operation -- Annihilate!" (1967), portrayed by William Shatner with a fake mustache; Jeannotte's version retains the mustache. Another recurring guest introduced in the premiere is Adrian Holmes as Robert April, the first Enterprise captain. April first appeared in the Star Trek: The Animated Series episode "The Counter-Clock Incident" (1974), which depicted him as an older white man voiced by white actor James Doohan who also played Montgomery Scott in The Original Series and The Animated Series. Additionally, the likeness of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, also white, was used by Michael Okuda to create a photograph of April in The Star Trek Encyclopedia (1994). Explaining why Holmes, a black man, was cast in the role for Strange New Worlds, Myers said he and the other producers liked Holmes's performance and felt he had the gravitas to fill the character's "mythic" role. Myers also did not think that casting a black man would be a controversial change or take away from the character's appearance in The Animated Series, and felt that Roddenberry may have himself gone with more progressive casting if he was making the original series in the 21st century rather than the 1960s. Okuda and "The Counter-Clock Incident" writer Fred Bronson both praised the casting of Holmes.

Design

Design work began by August 2020, with production designer Jonathan Lee leading a team of 60 people, including set decorator Justin Craig. The Enterprise sets were updated from the Discovery ones, to more closely align them with The Original Series and to reflect the Enterprise's in-universe rebuild following damage it sustained in Discovery. The sets were designed to function like a practical starship, including moving components and pre-programmed monitor graphics that reacted to the actors. Ten Enterprise sets were built for the season, including the transporter room, two corridors, crew quarters, the mess hall, and the cargo bay. A shuttlecraft interior was also built. The engineering, mess hall, and cargo bay sets were partially built and then augmented with virtual production technology. The sets were required to be bigger than The Original Series to better fit the cameras and crew, which Lee took advantage of to create expansive sets like Pike's large quarters. The sets were dressed with furniture designed in the 1960s or inspired by that era, such as Eero Saarinen's Tulip chairs; The Original Series used similar Tulip chairs by Maurice Burke that were considered to be "rip-offs" of Saarinen's design. The cutlery in Pike's quarters was designed by Arne Jacobsen and previously appeared in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) as well as episodes of Star Trek: Voyager (1995–2001) and Star Trek: Enterprise (2001–2005). Other designers who inspired Lee include Oscar Niemeyer, Carlo Scarpa, and Pier Luigi Nervi.

Bernadette Croft was set as the costume designer after working as an assistant for Discovery costume designer Gersha Phillips; Croft and Phillips co-designed the costumes for the season's first episode. The Starfleet uniforms were updated from the ones seen in Discovery, keeping the same silhouette but moving towards a more casual Original Series style. The uniforms retained the primary colors from The Original Series: gold for command, blue for science, and red for operations. They have the insignia for each division as a pattern on the shoulders and sleeves. In "Spock Amok", Pike wears a green wrap tunic during diplomatic negotiations which Goldsman requested as a refence to the green tunics sometimes worn by James T. Kirk in The Original Series. The Strange New Worlds version has a similar cut and silhouette to the series' main uniforms and leather accents on the shoulders and sleeves. The future version of Pike in "A Quality of Mercy" wears a version of the red uniforms from the Original Series films, but with the same fabric as the series' other uniforms and added Starfleet delta patterns on the shoulders and sleeves. Croft and her team had access to one of the costumes worn by Shatner in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) for reference. The series' miniskirt-style uniform was updated for the episode's future version of Uhura to include the "swoop neckline" from The Original Series. The designers were unable to access any of Nichelle Nichols's Uhura costumes from that series, but were able to reference a replica costume that was created for the Deep Space Nine episode "Trials and Tribble-ations" (1996). They created green hoop earrings for Gooding to wear in the episode based on ones worn by Nichols in The Original Series.

Filming

With the series' announcement in May 2020, Goldsman said he was unsure when production would begin due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Kurtzman stated on August 12 that filming would take place in 2021, and pre-production began on August 24. Kurtzman said in October that filming would be a "systematised, militarised operation" due to the pandemic, which the crew first experienced while working on Discovery. He elaborated that filming would function in "pods" to minimize the potential spread of the virus, and added that, due to the pandemic delays, the series would begin filming with more completed scripts than is usual for Star Trek. Paramount+ constructed a video wall to allow for virtual production on the series as well as the fourth season of Discovery (2021–22), based on the StageCraft technology used on the Disney+ series The Mandalorian (2019–2023). The new virtual set was built in Toronto by visual effects company Pixomondo and features a 270-degree, 70 feet (21 m) by 30 feet (9.1 m) horseshoe-shaped LED volume with additional LED panels in the ceiling to aid with lighting. The technology uses the game engine software Unreal Engine to display computer-generated backgrounds on the LED screens in real-time; additional filming for these visual effects took place in New Mexico.

Principal photography began on February 18, 2021, at CBS Stages Canada in Mississauga, Ontario, under the working title Lily and Isaac. Despite feeling that he was not a visual director, Goldsman wanted to direct the first episode and establish the series' tone because he had been thinking about it since he started working on Discovery. Goldsman worked with cinematographer Glen Keenan, who was the lead director of photography for the season after serving the same role on the second and third seasons of Discovery (2020–21). Keenan worked on five episodes and Magdalena Górka was cinematographer for the other five. Keenan brought back Cooke Optics' Anamorphic/i Special Flare lenses from Discovery, and also used Anamorphic/i Full Frame Plus SF lenses that were custom built by Cooke for the series. Coincidentally, cinematographer Philip Lanyon also chose to use full frame format lenses on the fourth season of Discovery around the same time. Keenan was excited to help establish the look of the series and took inspiration from the tools and techniques that were used on The Original Series. His aim was to make Strange New Worlds, which is mostly filmed on sets, feel organic by using on-set lighting where possible. Compared to Discovery, which has a filming style of always moving the camera and "being aggressive with cameras spinning in every episode", Keenan said the spin-off had a more reserved approach where they tried not to get in the way of sets, actors, and story. This style allowed the series to use larger cameras than Discovery, specifically Arri Alexa LF cameras. Górka consulted on virtual production with cinematographer Greig Fraser, who helped develop the StageCraft technology for The Mandalorian.

Visual effects

In addition to working on the virtual production technology during pre-production and filming, Pixomondo also provided "post-shoot touchup work" to remove the seams between the video wall and ceiling, and traditional visual effects such as set extensions. Other visual effects vendors for the series included Crafty Apes, Ghost VFX, FX3X, Vineyard VFX, Boxel Studio, Barnstorm VFX, and Storm Studios. Visual effects supervisor Jason Zimmerman said there was a clear direction from Kurtzman, Goldsman, and Myers for how the series' effects should look, aligning with the "retro tech" style of Lee's designs. This approach meant the series had less visual effects shots than Discovery, and less complex work that focused more on cinematic establishing shots. Zimmerman took inspiration from the way The Original Series approached shots of starships and environments, something that he had wanted to do since fans had complained about the shorter, complicated starship shots in Discovery. Crafty Apes developed the transporter effects for the series, and were asked to create a classic style that was also modern and fun. The company researched how the effect was created for The Original Series as well as how it was updated for the remastered version of The Original Series on Paramount+.

Music

Composer Nami Melumad wanted the score to match the feeling of The Original Series, which she said had "a more active style, a more dynamic style", and she approached each episode as if it was a feature film. The first music she wrote for the series was for "Children of the Comet", because Gooding—who has a musical theatre background—and Peck had to sing along to the comet's music during filming. Melumad wrote a melody for the comet that she arranged in different variations. She was able to develop recurring motifs for the main characters, including Pike, Spock, Number One, Uhura, and M'Benga. She also wrote a love theme for Spock and T'Pring, which she found unusual to write because of the lack of emotion shown by the two characters. Melumad included the theremin in music for their scenes. Myers and Goldsman asked for the opening of the first episode to have cold music that was unlike other Star Trek projects, to highlight Pike's state of mind. Melumad used piano for this, and contrasted it with Pike's theme at the end of the episode which "embodies hope and acceptance".

Melumad reprised Gerald Fried's original fighting music from "Amok Time" during Spock's dream sequence in "Spock Amok", and Fred Steiner's theme for the Romulans from "Balance of Terror" in the finale. Jeff Russo, who composed the series' main theme, provided reference material from The Original Series. Melumad had been recording her music for several months at the Eastwood Scoring Stage at Warner Bros. Studios in California by February 2022. A 36 or 37 person orchestra, closer to the one used for The Next Generation than the larger ones for Discovery and Picard, was recorded under COVID-19 safety protocols. A soundtrack album featuring selections from Melumad's score as well as Russo's main theme and end credits track was released digitally by Lakeshore Records on April 28, 2023. All music by Nami Melumad except where noted:

Marketing

Kurtzman promoted the series during a virtual "Star Trek Universe" panel for the Comic-Con@Home convention in July 2020, where Mount, Romijn, and Peck participated in a table read of Discovery's second-season finale and teased details about Strange New Worlds. On September 8, 2020, CBS All Access streamed a free 24-hour event to celebrate the 54th anniversary of The Original Series's premiere. It included a marathon of episodes from across the Star Trek franchise, and a break during the day for panels about different Star Trek series. These included the first official Strange New Worlds panel, with Mount, Romijn, Peck, Goldsman, Myers, Cooper, and Perez discussing the new series and their approach to developing it. In February 2021, Mount and Peck appeared in a marketing campaign for Super Bowl LV, advertising the rebranded streaming service Paramount+. A video introducing each of the series' main cast members and their characters was released during the Star Trek Day 2021 virtual event, celebrating the 55th anniversary of The Original Series's premiere.

Cast and crew promoted the series at the Television Critics Association February 2022 event, where the first poster was revealed. Later that month, as fan anticipation was "building towards the release of the official trailer", a teaser was revealed during a Paramount investors call. The company did not want footage from the call to be made widely available, and had several social media posts and fan accounts taken down for circulating screenshots of the footage. In March, the first teaser was officially released online. Amanda Kooser of CNET said it was "pretty different" from the one that was shown during the investor call, taking a more "atmospheric approach" than that version. She compared its footage of Pike riding a horse in snow to the series Yellowstone (2018–2024). Other commentators also noted the focus on atmosphere, especially highlighting Romijn's narration. James Whitbrook at Gizmodo speculated about the status of Pike at the beginning in the series and the impact that the second season of Discovery has had on him. /Film's Witney Seibold opined that, despite the series' title, the teaser indicated it was "not about being strange and new. It is about being traditional and comforting. After some of the more recent Star Trek shows... perhaps this retreat to the familiar is a wise move."

Character promos for the main cast were released during the week of March 28, 2022: teasers for Uhura and La'An were released on March 29, for Ortegas and Hemmer on March 30, for M'Benga and Chapel on March 31, for Spock and Number One on April 1, and for Pike on April 2. These led to the release of the official trailer and key art on April 3. A version of the trailer was also shown during the 64th Annual Grammy Awards on that day. The release of the trailer began a week of celebrations for "First Contact Day", marking the fictional holiday of April 5 when first contact between humans and aliens was made in the Star Trek universe. Ryan Parker of The Hollywood Reporter said the trailer had "eye-popping sci-fi action and dashes of nostalgia", while Maggie Lovitt of Collider said it had "the best of both worlds, combining beloved characters from The Original Series with the awe-inspiring and engaging stories that has made Star Trek: Discovery a fan favorite". Writing for Inverse, Ryan Britt felt the series was being presented as the most "mainstream" franchise iteration since the 2009 reboot film with a "zippy, old-school, swashbuckling space adventure" tone that matched The Original Series combined with a modern approach to sets and effects similar to the reboot films. Britt felt some "hardcore fans" would take issue with this due to wanting the series to "actually look like it was filmed in the 1960s. But, the overall goal of Strange New Worlds feels too populist to care. Like the reboots, this series is going for a big audience."

Release

Streaming and broadcast

The season premiered on the streaming service Paramount+ in the United States, Latin America, Australia, and the Nordics on May 5, 2022, and ran for 10 episodes until July 7. It was released in Canada by Bell Media (broadcast on CTV Sci-Fi Channel before streaming on Crave), in New Zealand on TVNZ, and in India on Voot. The season was released in other countries as Paramount+ or SkyShowtime (a combination of Paramount+ and Peacock for some of Europe) became available there. Paramount+ temporarily released the entire season for free on its YouTube channel in May 2023, ahead of the release of the second season later that year. In August 2023, Star Trek content was removed from Crave and the season began streaming on Paramount+ in Canada. It would continue to be broadcast on CTV Sci-Fi and be available on CTV.ca and the CTV app.

The first two episodes of the season were broadcast in the US on CBS on September 8, 2023, as part of a Star Trek Day celebration. This gave broadcast audiences without Paramount+ a chance to preview the series. Ahead of the third season's release, the entire first season was again made available for free in the US from June 30 to July 31, 2025, on Pluto TV, Apple TV, Roku, and Paramount+'s free content hub and YouTube channel.

Home media

The season was released on DVD, Blu-Ray, and Limited Edition Steelbook formats in the US on March 21, 2023. The release includes over 90 minutes of bonus features, including deleted scenes, a gag reel, audio commentary for the season premiere by Mount and Goldsman, and featurettes on the making of the season, the production design and use of virtual production technology, and Mount's portrayal of Pike. As a surprise that was not announced in advance, the home media release also includes the Original Series episode "Balance of Terror" which the season finale is related to.

Reception

Viewership

According to Whip Media, which tracks viewership data for the 19 million worldwide users of its TV Time app, Strange New Worlds was the second-most anticipated new series of May 2022 behind Disney+'s Obi-Wan Kenobi. Variety also named it one of the 40 most anticipated series of 2022. Whip Media ranked Strange New Worlds in the top 10 original streaming series for US viewership each week it was released except for the week of the premiere. Parrot Analytics determines audience "demand expressions" based on various data sources, and the company calculated that Strange New Worlds was the 26th-most in demand US streaming series for the week ending on May 6 (after the series premiered on May 5). It then saw a 92.4 percent rise in demand expression for the series, which moved up to third-most in demand the next week behind Netflix's Stranger Things and Disney+'s The Mandalorian. Parrot said the series was 35.1 times more in demand than the average US streaming series. It remained on Parrot's weekly top 10 list until the week after the finale's release, and debuted at fifth place on the company's monthly list, for May 2022, at 30.9 times more in demand than the average series. The only other Paramount+ series on the list for that month was the 9th-ranked second season of Picard. In August, Paramount+ said Strange New Worlds was the most-watched original Star Trek series on the service over its first 90 days, and the second-most watched original series in general for the service in the United Kingdom.

Critical response

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 98% of 84 critics reviews were positive and the average of rated reviews was 8.1 out of 10. The critics consensus reads, "Strange New Worlds treks across familiar territory to refreshing effect, its episodic structure and soulful cast recapturing the sense of boundless discovery that defined the franchise's roots." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 76 out of 100 based on 14 reviews, indicating a "generally favorable" response. Critics commonly praised the cast, particularly Mount, as well as the throwback production design and episodic format.

Accolades

The season was awarded the Ruderman Seal of Authentic Representation by the Ruderman Family Foundation for the casting of Horak. Mount was named as an honorable mention for TVLine's "Performer of the Week" for his performance in "A Quality of Mercy", which the site said he "went above and beyond" in. Mount was later included on Vulture's list of standout television performances for 2022.

In July 2022, Alan Sepinwall of Rolling Stone named Strange New Worlds one of the 15 best series of 2022 so far, and Gizmodo included it on a list of the best "genre television" of the year so far. The next month, Zosha Millman included it on a list of the best series so far in 2022 for Polygon, as did Justin Kirkland and Adrienne Westenfeld who put it sixth on a list of twenty-five for Esquire. At the end of the year, the series was named on multiple best or top television series lists for 2022, including by the Houston Chronicle (4th), The Salt Lake Tribune (4th), Kathryn VanArendonk at Vulture (4th), Newsday (6th), Esquire (7th), Film School Rejects (7th), Superhero Hype! (8th), Rolling Stone (11th), and Paste (16th), as well as by Gizmodo, the Los Angeles Times, and Nerdist on unranked lists.