Star Trek Strange New Worlds Season One Episode 1: Strange New Worlds

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Star Trek Strange New Worlds Season One
Episode 1: Strange New Worlds


Strange New Worlds

Cool intro with Number One's voiceover.  The episode also introduced Captain Batel, Pike's love interest.  Pike riding on the horse is a great callback to The Cage (Pike said to Dr. Boyce that he had two horses).  Understandable to see Pike struggling with the events of Discovery season 2 (the vision of his future, the accident 7 years from now, bein radiation burned, paralyzed in the wheelchair that can only beep once for yes and two for no), and the fact that he can't talk about it with anyone except Spock because it's all classified.  The title sequence is cool.  Prior to the series coming out Paramount released a preview of the intro sequence and theme music (with out the text or voiceover).  When the pilot released and I saw it for the first time, I was blown away by Anson Mount as Pike doing the "Space the Final Frontier" speech.  Not expecting to but glad to see it.  We get a little bit of Spock and T'Pring which is cool.  The transporter chief's name is Kyle, assuming it's not the Same as Lt. John Kyle from Kirks time (later the USS Reliant).  Justifying this, the Ops/navigation officer is an Asian female named Lt. Jenna Mitchell, obviously not the same as Lt. Gary Mitchell from Where No Man Has Gone Before.  Lt. La'An Noonien-Singh.  Never was too sure about this character.  It's seems like giving the character that surname and the associated backstory takes dangerous risks with established canon.  We shall see.  Uhura as a cadet.  Ok, cool.  So her career started on the Enterprise.  Ok.  Pike's announcement about the mission to the entire crew is clearly the "intercraft system" from The Cage and Where No Man Has Gone Before.  Also nice little lore tie-in with Una's ship being the USS Archer.  I like the quarters scene with Spock and Pike discussing Pike's foreknowledge-very Star Trek.  Seems a bit unrealistic that the USS Archer would only be carrying 3 crewmembers. Nit to pick: Pike has a ready room, something the TOS (and movies Enterprise) did not.  Dr. M'Benga.  Another neat lore tie-in and cool legacy character to explore.  The character (played by Booker Bradshaw) was seen twice in TOS (A Private Little War and That Which Survives).  Sickbay is huge compared to TOS.  Nurse Chapel, the character originated by Majel Barrett in TOS.  Seeing more of this character will be interesting.  The crowd/protest scenes on the planet are especially surprising to see as this episode was filmed during the COVID pandemic era.  The Planet's internal conflict paralleling things from Earth and Spock and Pike commenting on that are also very TOS.  Spock's reference to the United States "both their civil wars" is sadly day by day becoming more and more prophetic.  I'm really liking Rebecca Romijn as "Number One" Commander Una Chin-Riley.  She was a good choice in Discovery when she first appeared (and to which she references here).  The away team fighting the natives to incapacitate them and get out is also very TOS.  Dancing around and interpreting the prime directive in the moment is a time honored Trek trope, this episode does it in the best Star Trek tradition.  Theis episode also establishes La'An's backstory with the Gorn, something we'll see a lot of going forward.  I like the Pike speech on the planet, both being very Kirk or Picard-like and establishing a little more lore about WWIII.  I actually like Adrian Holmes as Admiral April, Pikes superior.  This also canonizes April as the Enterprise's first captain.  Nice little bit at the end establishing recurring character of Lt. Samuel Kirk, bother of Jim Kirk (first seen in TOS Operation Annihilate).  Overall a really good episode and a great pilot for a promising series.  As much as the episode is about the planet and the prime directive, it is also about Pike.

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