"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds," Season 1: review

Anson Mount as Captain Pike (center); Rebecca Romijn as Una/Number One (L); Ethan Peck as Spock (R)

I liked "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" enough to buy Season 1. At least somewhat following established Trek canon, the show focuses on the adventures of Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) of the USS Enterprise, James T. Kirk's predecessor in the center seat. The show often feels like a modernized throwback to the old 60s-era TV series; its style is mostly episodic, with very few long plot arcs spanning multiple episodes. The tone of each episode can vary wildly, from lightly comedic and campy to darkly tense and horrific. The main cast includes Ethan Peck as Mr. Spock; Rebecca Romijn (the first Mystique in the early X-Men films) as Una Chin-Riley, a.k.a. Number One (first officer to Pike); Melissa Navia as Erica Ortegas, helmsman; Celia Rose Gooding as Nyota Uhura, a rotating cadet who eventually settles on communications as her role; Christina Chong as security chief La'an Noonien-Singh, a descendant of the infamous Khan Noonien-Singh; Babs Olusanmokun as ship's doctor Joseph M'Benga; Jess Bush as M'Benga's nurse assistant Christine Chapel; and Bruce Horak as blind-but-capable chief engineer Hemmer. Plenty of guest stars rotate in and out; some have recurring roles, such as Gia Sandhu as Spock's betrothed T'Pring.

The few subplots that stretch across episodes primarily involve Spock and M'Benga. In M'Benga's case, we discover he has a daughter with an incurable, terminal disease. To slow the disease's progress, M'Benga essentially stores his daughter inside a transporter pattern buffer, allowing her to materialize on occasion so she can both listen as her father reads her stories and explore, in a limited way, parts of the Enterprise. Spock's complicated relationship with T'Pring is also examined over the course of the first season: T'Pring is logical but prickly, and she sometimes evinces the typical Vulcan racism toward humans. With Spock constantly struggling with his half-human heritage, he is never quite sure where he stands with T'Pring. Another Spock-related subplot has to do with his relationship with Nurse Chapel (carried over from the 60s-era TV show). Nurse Chapel is fascinated by and plainly infatuated with Mr. Spock, telling him she likes Vulcans because of their brutal honesty. At the same time, Chapel's social life consists of meaningless flings with human men (and the occasional woman) because she is afraid of deep commitment. Despite that, we get the impression that Chapel might let down her guard and commit herself to Spock were he ever to show deep interest in her, but I don't think the series has yet given us a reason for why Christine is so attracted to Spock in particular. There is one more important subplot involving Chris Pike himself: Pike has been to a Klingon monastery and has learned through a "time crystal" about his fate in ten years. (In the 60s TV series, Pike is severely disfigured and injured to the point of incapacity.)

Over the course of ten episodes, the Enterprise crew settles diplomatic disputes, encounters mysterious cometary life forms, contends with pirates, deals with a child-sacrificing civilization, and runs into a vicious species called the Gorn. We old folks will remember the clunky, rubber-suited Gorn that William Shatner's Kirk fought in a lamely choreographed battle back in the original series (now, there's a battle that deserves an AI Deepfake remake!). The new Gorn, all CGI now, are a combination of the alien from "Alien" and the predator from "Predator." They have infrared vision and lay body-bursting eggs in hosts by spitting ova-filled, acidic mucus at them; they've evolved to be invisible to most forms of detection; litters will kill each other off in a Darwinian struggle to arrive at an alpha, and a single Gorn is a match for even a large group of humans. The Gorn have no dialogue, but they are arguably the Big Bad of Season 1—perhaps this series's answer to the Borg from "The Next Generation." Despite their seeming primitivity, the Gorn are a spacefaring civilization, with twisted-looking ships that fly in bizarre, uncanny ways.

Chris Pike generally proves to be up to the challenges thrown at him in every episode. He's a team player (as anyone on a starship has to be), but he's got his own brains and talent. Like James T. Kirk, he's also a bit of a ladies' man. Interestingly, the series makes it a point to show that Pike loves to cook: we get several mealtime scenes with Pike looking bizarre wearing an apron while in uniform. Pike has confidants in Number One and Spock, on whom he relies heavily. He also has meaningful talks with security chief La'an and Cadet Uhura, who doesn't firmly decide to remain with the Enterprise until the season's final episode.

The show does what it can to provide us with plenty of crew moments. Babs Olusanmokun (Jamis in "Dune") as Dr. M'Benga is great in his role—compassionate and technically competent, but mightily stressed because of his dying daughter (the issue with her resolves a bit too suddenly in a late-season episode). I'm not quite as impressed with Melissa Navia as Erica Ortegas and Celia Rose Gooding as Uhura. Ortegas comes off—and other critics have already complained about this—as way too insubordinate. She mutters under her breath when given an order, and at another point, she even yells at Captain Pike. Gooding's Uhura may be suffering from poor writing: Uhura sometimes appears diffident and hesitant, but at other times, she can be eye-rollingly snotty and overconfident. Here's hoping she's a bit more smoothed out in Season 2. Still, Uhura's moments with Hemmer are usually filled with significance. Ethan Peck, grandson of Gregory Peck and bearer of Gregory's deep voice, makes for a fine, generally stoic Spock. I think I like this version of Spock better than the Zachary Quinto version from the JJ Abrams films, although no one will ever top Leonard Nimoy.

There are problems with the "science" of this iteration of Trek. You've got crew members stranded on a mysterious asteroid, and when they encounter an alien object on that asteroid, their first urge is to reach out and touch it. A problem of alien communication somehow resolves itself through the use of music, but we never learn how either group came to understand the other. As usual, most of the worlds in "Strange New Worlds" aren't really that strange at all: they all have breathable atmospheres, Earth-like gravity (even the aforementioned asteroid had Earth-like gravity), and civilizations that are all decidedly human-looking. This could be, in part, a simple continuation of the awkward "science" of the 60s show: start a tradition and stick with it, even if the resultant science makes no sense.

Another problem—and this involves a major spoiler—is the killing off of characters who have become fan favorites. I'm talking specifically about Hemmer the engineer, an Aenar who is related to the classic Andorians. Hemmer is thoughtful and philosophical, and he becomes Uhura's mentor when she rotates into a stint in engineering. Hemmer's character receives an unusual amount of development for someone who is not part of the bridge crew, but around Episode 8 or 9, he gets attacked and sprayed by the Gorn. With a litter of Gorn gestating in his neck while he's stranded on a frozen planet, Hemmer elects to throw himself off a cliff to save his fellow Enterprise crew members and kill the developing Gorn. I doubt I'm alone in thinking that Hemmer's death was a massive waste of a character who had some fantastic potential, whether as a mentor for Uhura or as a foil for Mr. Spock. The show's writers claim they knew from the beginning that Hemmer was going to die. In fact, they told the actor playing Hemmer, Bruce Horak, that his character would die. Horak apparently decided to make it his mission to turn Hemmer into a fan favorite, perhaps to make the character's death more poignant. It was poignant, yes, but it was also mightily disappointing.

Another script-related annoyance included a problem with grammar. At one point, Mr. Spock, of all people, uttered the decidedly ungrammatical "between you and I" (it should be between you and me). This was, frankly, embarrassing, especially since Vulcans are supposed to be grammatically fastidious and linguistically precise. I suppose you could counterargue that English might have evolved; it's often the case that mistakes can become entrenched in a language, turning into the new orthodoxy. But if "Strange New Worlds" were to showcase 23rd-century English in a radically evolved state, then we'd encounter way more than foreign locutions like "between you and I." There'd be different slang expressions and different grammar patterns. Think of how English evolved between 1823 and 2023. Sure, we'd likely understand 19th-century English, but it would sound decidedly foreign and stilted to our modern ears. Now extend that problem centuries forward into the future, with language evolving ever faster alongside culture. Back to the point, though: "between you and I" isn't the show's only instance of bad grammar. Suffice it to say that, even though I generally enjoyed Season 1, there were moments of dialogue that made me squirm.

Before I forget, I should talk about one inadvertently funny aspect of this show: the casting of a young James T. Kirk, who figures in the latter half of the season. Actor Paul Wesley plays the brash, impetuous Kirk, whose command style and philosophy of life are very different from those of Christopher Pike. The problem is this: someone online cracked that Paul Wesley, who is very lanky, looks like Jim Carrey's parody of James Kirk from Carrey's "In Living Color" days. And once you read a remark like that, you can't unsee the resemblance. From that moment on, every time I saw Paul Wesley, I couldn't take his Kirk seriously. This isn't Wesley's fault at all, but damn if he doesn't look like Jim Carrey!

Season 1 ends with a cliffhanger as Number One is arrested because she is secretly Illyrian—a race that spent a long time modifying its own genetic structure to create enhancements. The Federation of Pike's time has forbidden genetic alteration and experimentation as a consequence of the Genetic Wars (during which Khan Noonien-Singh rose to prominence). Pike is on record professing not to care who or what Number One is, but the matter is out of his hands, and Una gets taken into custody. In the season finale, Pike also gets a visit from his future self. This alternate-future Pike explains that, as much as Pike might want to evade his fate, doing so will prove bad for the people around him. For "our" Pike, then, the question is whether to be resigned to his fate or to continue to find a clever way to avoid it.

One of the most impressive aspects of "Strange New Worlds" has to be Anson Mount's prominent hair. That distinguished coif, which looks as if it might be bulletproof, sits atop Pike's head like a cranial Cliffs of Dover. Many critics have waxed rhapsodic about that 'do, so I will say nothing to add to the chirping and squawking except to note that, should the Enterprise ever self-destruct, Captain Pike's hair would survive and continue to seek out strange new worlds.

All in all, the new series is a bit of a mixed bag. It varies in quality and contains awkward implausibilities like a shouty helmsman and a black hole that doesn't seem to cause any time dilation and a pirate crew that easily tricks and overpowers the strangely unarmed Enterprise crew. But it's also filled with amazing special effects, interesting (if not always well-written) characters, and a potential for much, much more. 

Plenty of retrospective videos have talked about how "Star Trek: The Next Generation" had a clunky beginning: its Season 1 was still feeling out how best to portray its characters. Captain Picard now seems far too stiff and stern; Data hasn't yet settled into the character we know and love from the later seasons. So maybe we should give this show a chance. I've also heard complaints that "Strange New Worlds" is a bunch of woke trash, but I think the character of security chief La'an Noonien-Singh probably comes closest to a Mary Sue girl boss (with helmsman Ortegas a close second). The actress who portrays La'an, ethnically half-Chinese Christina Chong, strikes me as too petite to be taken seriously as a security officer, but her presence, while occasionally annoying, doesn't come with any overt whiff of wokeness. I think "Strange New Worlds" has its heart in the right place, and while I didn't like this show as much as I liked Season 3 of "Picard," I'll be looking forward to where the story goes from here.