In 2022, a fan campaign to bring back Anson Mount as Captain Pike finally paid off – and it did so in style! Strange New Worlds is the series that I consider to be the high-water mark of modern Star Trek. It has an episodic style and a focus on exploration that takes the franchise back to its roots, all the while retaining the production values of Discovery and Picard.
Although Strange New Worlds has been cancelled, and will conclude with a truncated fifth season, there are still new episodes to come. It took me a while to push through my Star Trek burnout and review all of Season 2, but I hope to write up episode reviews for Seasons 3, 4, and 5 before the series comes to an end. You can find all of my Strange New Worlds reviews and commentary below.
Season 3 Episode Reviews:
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode Review – Season 3, Episode 10: New Life and New Civilizations
“The weakest of the three season finales that we’ve seen so far…”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode Review – Season 3, Episode 9: Terrarium
“Absolutely fantastic. No notes…”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode Review – Season 3, Episode 8: Four-and-a-Half Vulcans
“Four-and-a-Half Vulcans was funnier than I expected, and a better episode all around than I feared it would be…”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode Review – Season 3, Episode 7: What Is Starfleet?
“There are some flaws that keep ‘What Is Starfleet?’ from really soaring…”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode Review – Season 3, Episode 6: The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail
“The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail was a solidly entertaining Star Trek episode…”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode Review – Season 3, Episode 5: Through the Lens of Time
“The best episode of the season so far, and one of the highlights of the entire series…”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode Review – Season 3, Episode 4: A Space Adventure Hour
“While I wasn’t wild about the story at first… it grew on me over its runtime.”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode Review – Season 3, Episode 3: Shuttle To Kenfori
“A tense, gruesome, and occasionally frightening episode – but it was a lot of fun!”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode Review – Season 3, Episode 2: Wedding Bell Blues
“I liked some of what Wedding Bell Blues had to offer – but I was less keen on its Hallmark movie plot…”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode Review – Season 3, Episode 1: Hegemony, Part II
“Hegemony, Part II wrapped up its key storylines… but perhaps didn’t have quite enough time to do so flawlessly.”
Season 2 Episode Reviews:
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode Review – Season 2, Episode 10: Hegemony
“Hegemony was a fantastic way to end the season…”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode Review – Season 2, Episode 9: Subspace Rhapsody
“I would rather hammer a rusty nail into my scrotum than watch this episode again…”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode Review – Season 2, Episode 8: Under the Cloak of War
“One of the most gritty, realistic, and brutal depictions of war that the Star Trek franchise has ever brought to screen…”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode Review – Season 2, Episode 7: Those Old Scientists
“The stage was set for a truly outstanding episode…”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode Review – Season 2, Episode 6: Lost In Translation
“I hope you’ll excuse the lateness of this review…”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode Review – Season 2, Episode 5: Charades
“Charades is unlikely to be an episode I’ll choose to revisit very often in future…”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode Review – Season 2, Episode 4: Among the Lotus Eaters
“Strange New Worlds has managed to thread the needle: expanding our knowledge and updating a classic story but without treading on its toes…”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode Review – Season 2, Episode 3: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
“Fun and lighthearted in places, dense and heavy in others…”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode Review – Season 2, Episode 2: Ad Astra Per Aspera
“Ad Astra Per Aspera will stand alongside other great courtroom drama episodes in the Star Trek franchise…”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode Review – Season 2, Episode 1: The Broken Circle
“The Broken Circle was an action-packed episode that started the season with a bang…”
Season 1 Episode Reviews:
In 2022, Paramount made the catastrophic, idiotic decision not to broadcast Strange New Worlds here in the UK – and in many other countries and territories around the world. As a result, I chose not to write individual episode reviews during Season 1. However, I plan to eventually get around to doing so. You can see my thoughts on Season 1 as a whole below.
Commentary/Previews:
Star Trek at Comic-Con: A Teaser and a Trailer
“An interesting glimpse at both Starfleet Academy and Strange New Worlds…”
Strange New Worlds: Taking Stock
“I wanted to talk about the show more broadly now that Season 3 has ended…”
Strange New Worlds Theory: Talos IV
“It pertains to Captain Marie Batel…”
Star Trek: Year One – Thoughts on the Pitch
“A successor to what is arguably the best and most successful live-action Star Trek show of this modern era is not, in theory, a bad idea…”
Bad News For Strange New Worlds…
“Strange New Worlds – the show spawned by a fan campaign and which quickly became the best thing Star Trek has done in years – is cancelled…”
Strange New Worlds Season 3: The Trailers and Teasers
“As soon as I published my Strange New Worlds Season 3 wishlist last week, Paramount decided to drop a brand-new trailer!”
Strange New Worlds: Season 3 Wishlist
“The most important thing for me is that Strange New Worlds remains a largely episodic series…”
Strange New Worlds Episode Pitch: “Cardassia Prime”
“I’d love to see an episode like my imagined Cardassia Prime as part of Star Trek’s sixtieth anniversary celebrations…”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 – the trailers
“No pressure… but Season 2 has a lot to live up to!”
Strange New Worlds Season 2 theory: Una Chin-Riley
“Today I thought it could be fun to speculate about Una Chin-Riley…”
Ten Star Trek episodes to watch before Strange New Worlds Season 1
“If it’s been a while since you last saw some of these episodes, watching them will provide some additional background and backstory heading into Strange New Worlds…”
Strange New Worlds: Season 1 Spoiler-free thoughts
“Strange New Worlds hit ten for ten in its first season – ten genuinely great episodes that I thoroughly enjoyed…”
Paramount wants YOU to pirate Strange New Worlds
“I held off writing this for a while…”
Strange New Worlds: I just can’t get excited…
“I wanted to be spending this time talking with you about the minute details that I noticed in the trailer, or speculating about what role [spoiler] might play. But I can’t…”
A whole host of Star Trek updates and renewals… but trust in ViacomCBS is still hard to come by
“While these announcements are exciting, I can’t bring myself to fully board the hype train, not until we have more information about how and when these shows are going to be made available…”
What will the Discovery decision mean for Picard, Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks, and the rest of Star Trek?
“Will Trekkies around the world be able to enjoy any new Star Trek in the months ahead? Or will we see repeat after repeat of the Discovery mess?”
Strange New Worlds: Thoughts on Captain Pike’s crew
“Each of the new characters look genuinely exciting and interesting, and the series seems to be doing a good job at walking the line between staying true to Star Trek’s past and carving out its own niche…”
Star Trek Day roundup!
“Star Trek Day shone with passion and positivity, and that’s just what the franchise needed as it marked its fifty-fifth birthday…”
Star Trek Day 2021 predictions
“I’ve got a few ideas for what might be coming our way when Star Trek Day kicks off…”
Star Trek news roundup!
“In the last few weeks there have been several of these smaller news stories…”
Factions of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
“I thought it could be fun to look ahead to Strange New Worlds’ premiere, and this time we’re going to consider some of the factions present in the Star Trek galaxy that Pike and his crew could encounter…”
Star Trek: Discovery + Star Trek: Strange New Worlds crossover theory – the big mistake
“Ever since I watched Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2, something has stuck in my mind…”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1 theory – Saving Captain Lorca
“It’s far too early to speculate, especially because we don’t even know who most of the main characters will be. But that won’t stop me!”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds – Five new cast members join the series!
“By sheer coincidence this announcement came a few hours after I published my preliminary Season 1 predictions, which is kind of amusing…”
Preliminary Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1 predictions
“Just as I did for Discovery Season 4 and Picard Season 2 I’m going to make a few guesses – which I’m officially terming ‘preliminary predictions’ – for Strange New Worlds Season 1…”
Some Star Trek updates for 2021-22
“These announcements were interesting, and I feel reasonably confident now that we’ll see three Star Trek shows this year instead of the two I had been expecting, so that’s fantastic!”
Some characters it could be fun to see in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
“The producers sometimes like to be unpredictable, and we could see any one of a hundred or more characters make some kind of return – or have no returning characters at all!”
A few ideas for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
“After I’d watched the announcement video and read the official release on Star Trek’s website, I got thinking about some of the different directions that Strange New Worlds could go in its first season…”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has been officially announced!
“Wouldn’t you know it, they’re only making the Captain Pike show that everyone’s been asking for since Season 2 of Discovery aired last year!”
Trekking with Dennis 