The latest ‘Star Trek’ spinoff resurrects the Buck Rogers vigor of the original
With “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,” premiering Thursday on Paramount+, the franchise goes once again into the past, with a series you can consider, in quantum fashion, both as a spinoff from “Star Trek: Discovery” and a belated order for the original series’ rejected pre-Shatner pilot, “The Cage,” which starred Jeffrey Hunter as starship Enterprise Captain Christopher Pike and Leonard Nimoy as Spock. When “Star Trek” repurposed that footage into the two-part “The Menagerie,” it made Pike canon, and established that he and Spock were crewmates before James T. Kirk ever entered the picture.
Before it jumped 1,000 years into the future, “Discovery” brought back Pike, played by Anson Mount, as an interim captain in its second season, along with Ethan Peck as a younger Spock and Rebecca Romijn as Una ChinRiley, a.k.a. Number One (a character from “The Cage,” played by Majel Barrett, not picked up for the series). And here they are, back home on the Enterprise, with some other familiar, less familiar and unfamiliar shipmates.
Characters with roots in the old show include Nyota Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding), still a cadet, not yet a lieutenant, but a “prodigy” who speaks 37 languages (like Nichelle Nichols’ Uhura, she sings, and does that thing where she puts her hand to her ear when she’s at her post); nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush), originally played by Barrett, a recurring “Star Trek” character; and Dr. M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun), a guest character now getting a regular gig. New are Christina Chong as tough-cookie security officer La’an Noonien-Singh (as in top villain Khan NoonienSingh, a relation); Melissa Navia as pilot Erica Ortegas; and Bruce Horak as Hemmer, an Aenar Andorian and the new chief engineer. He has antennae. A “Kirk” is also mentioned, about a quarter of the way through the pilot, creating an expectation.
As our story opens, Pike is hanging out — almost hiding out — on Earth. We meet him thickly bearded, hair beautifully unkempt, snow all around his plush Montana lodge while the Enterprise is in dry dock, avoiding answering his communicator, and watching the thematically resonant 1950s science fiction classic “The Day The Earth Stood Still” on his 23rd century flat-screen television. (Much like our own!) Something is eating him: Viewers familiar with “The Menagerie” will recognize that the strange reflections Pike sees of himself represent a vision of his future, and it’s not one he likes to contemplate. It’s the opposite of a tragic backstory — a tragic forestory.
Nevertheless! Number One has gone missing on a firstcontact mission, so Pike loses the beard, puts some product in his hair and gets back into his swivel chair. Spock is fetched back from Vulcan and a deadpan rendezvous with T’Pring (Gia Sandhu), his very long-term fiancée, but not before they get a hot scene to add to the very short list of Spock Hot Scenes.
What “Strange New Worlds” brings back is some of the Buck Rogers brio of the original series, on whose opening theme it plays a minor-key variation. Like all prestreaming “Star Trek” series, it’s episodic in nature, rather than serial, with problems that can be solved in an hour.