Star Trek fans have been through a trying few years, with JJ Abrams’s multiplex remixes of the franchise sputtering out and various small-screen reboots doing the opposite of living long and prospering.
But now, finally, the saga has achieved warp factor 10 with the enjoyable Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. It’s a linchpin of the freshly launched Paramount+ streaming service, alongside an agreeable adaptation of the Halo video game (a little talky for Halo — but gets the Covenant aliens just right).
Strange New Worlds is both a new chapter for Trek and a blast from the past. It’s set a decade before the original Trek, when the Enterprise was commanded by Captain Kirk’s predecessor Christopher Pike.
As veteran Trekkies will know, Pike — as portrayed by Jeffrey Hunter — appeared in the never-aired original Star Trek pilot. And that footage was reused in the classic two-parter The Menagerie, in which Pike returns scarred and able to communicate only through a yes/no device operated by his brainwaves (a bit like the rest of us felt having watched Abrams’s Star Trek: Into Darkness).
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The new series takes this backstory and has fun with it. Pike, played by Anson Mount with a William Shatneresque whiff of ironic camp, is hale and hearty — though haunted with flash-forwards to the terrible fate that will eventually befall him.
That, though, is in the future. In the shorter term he is occupied with the Enterprise’s five-year mission — to explore strange new worlds and… well, you know the rest. (If not, why are you even watching?)
The show is a departure from recent Trek reboots in that it seems determined to give fans exactly what they want. That is in contrast to Star Trek Discovery — which came off as aggressively lukewarm towards Trek lore — and Amazon’s Star Trek: Picard, an autumnal valentine to Patrick Stewart’s Next Generation captain.
Strange New Worlds, by contrast, feels designed to trigger the pleasure centres of long-suffering Trekkies. Alexander Courage’s iconic opening theme is reprised — along with that voiceover: “These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise.”
Some things have changed, it is true. The Enterprise now has a more egalitarian gender and racial mix (though the original Trek was, lest we forget, hugely progressive for the mid-1960s). And there are some familiarish faces, with new actors portraying young versions of Spock, Lieutenant Uluru and Nurse Chapel. (Distractingly, the actor cast as Chapel is a dead ringer for the pop star Phoebe Bridgers.)
Star Trek has been around a long time and, in the aftermath of the simultaneously underwhelming and bonkers Discovery, it seemed an open question whether it could regain its relevance. But, if Strange New Worlds isn’t enough to justify subscribing to Paramount+, it brims with interstellar derring-do. And so is sure to warm the cockles of fans pining for the good old days of warp core breaches and Klingons on the starboard bow.
