Star Trek: Strange New Worlds to be more optimistic and episodic

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

My favourite addition to the second season of Star Trek: Discovery was Anson Mount as Captain Christopher Pike, the man who commanded the U.S.S. Enterprise prior to the arrival James T. Kirk, and I certainly wasn't alone; legions of fans made their voices heard in requesting that CBS develop a series centered around Captain Pike, Spock (Ethan Peck), and Number One (Rebecca Romjin), and last week, that wish was granted.

CBS announced Star Trek: Strange New Worlds on Friday, a new series which would follow the adventures of Pike onboard the Enterprise, and during an interview with Variety, Strange New Worlds co-creator Akiva Goldsman said that the spin-off will have much more in common with classic Trek shows in comparison to Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard. "We’re going to try to harken back to some classical ‘Trek’ values, to be optimistic, and to be more episodic," Goldsman said. "Obviously, we will take advantage of the serialized nature of character and story building. But I think our plots will be more closed-ended than you’ve seen in either ‘Discovery’ or ‘Picard.'" While I'm definitely not opposed to serialized story-telling in the Trek franchise, I've definitely been hoping to see a few more stand-alone episodes, so this news is very welcome.

I imagine it to be closer to the original series than even Deep Space Nine. We can really tell closed-ended stories. We can find ourselves in episodes that are tonally of a piece.

Akiva Goldsman added that, "It's hard to do a shore-leave episode in the middle of a long, serialized arc," but that's not to say that characters and events will reset at the end of every episode. Goldsman brought up the classic Original Series episode "The City on the Edge of Forever" as an example. "I think one thing that we always struggled with [as fans] was that Kirk is heartbroken at the loss of Edith Keeler in ‘The City on the Edge of Forever’ and has to be just fine the next week," Goldsman said. "I think what we would want to do is keep the characters having moved through and recognizing the experiences they’ve had in previous episodes, but to be able to tell contained, episodic stories."

Given that COVID-19 has largely shut-down Hollywood, there's no indication on when production might begin on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, but I'm certainly excited by the potential of the series.