Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. The video referenced in this article can be found below.
No sooner had I published my article making a few preliminary predictions (alright, guesses) for Strange New Worlds – my first piece on the upcoming series since July last year – than ViacomCBS dropped the biggest news so far about the latest Star Trek show! What an odd coincidence, eh?
The short video confirmed the rumour that the series has officially started production in Toronto, which is fantastic news. There had been speculation that filming had started, but there were also competing rumours that production hadn’t yet begun, so getting confirmation on that is great. It also firmly debunks the lie spread through some anti-Star Trek groups that the series (and other upcoming Star Trek productions) were cancelled or not going ahead!
In addition to the news that the series was officially in production, we also got to meet five new members of the Strange New Worlds cast. We’ll very briefly look at each in a moment, but first let’s assess the group as a whole.
Firstly, those of you who are good at maths will have worked out that the addition of five new cast members brings the total for Strange New Worlds’ main cast to eight. Discovery had seven during Season 3, and Picard also had seven during its first season, so eight characters is not completely out of the ballpark for a modern Star Trek production! In a series that will almost certainly run somewhere from 10-15 episodes, eight major characters is probably about the maximum number that Strange New Worlds could get away with, though.
Picard Season 1 dedicated several of its episodes and large portions of its runtime to its new characters, and while that was great and generally done very well, it meant that when we got to the season finale and rushed through a huge amount of story (leaving a number of things unresolved) some of that felt wasted. In short, what I’m trying to say is that today’s Star Trek shows have fewer episodes per season than they used to in decades past, and a shorter runtime naturally means you can fit in fewer stories – and arguably fewer major characters. Eight feels like a comfortable fit – but I would be wary of trying to cram in too many more!
Notable by her absence was Amrit Kaur, who played Cadet Sidhu in the 2019 Short Treks episode Ask Not. At the end of that short story, Cadet Sidhu was assigned to a role in engineering aboard the Enterprise, and while it was presented as a standalone story, by introducing a character in that manner, with Strange New Worlds clearly in mind at the time the episode was made, it felt like a deliberate move. Ever since the series was announced last year I felt relatively certain that Sidhu would be back, and while it’s possible she will be included in a future announcement, or reappear as a guest star, I admit I was a little surprised not to see her included here.
The cast members who we briefly met continue Star Trek’s longstanding tradition of diversity in its main characters. Babs Olusanmokun was born in Nigeria. Christina Chong is of mixed Chinese-English ancestry. Celia Rose Gooding is African-American. Melissa Navia is Colombian-American. And Jess Bush is Australian. Quite the mix!
The cast will have more women than men for the first time in the franchise’s history, which is certainly very interesting. On-screen representation continues to improve, and Star Trek has had a long and proud tradition of these big, diverse casts. Strange New Worlds continues that tradition, and the cast looks to be shaping up very well.
I’m afraid that I’m completely unfamiliar with all five of the new faces, though several of them have had roles in films and shows that I’ve heard of or seen parts of, so that’s good. The new cast members will have the opportunity to grow into their roles without bringing too much baggage with them, which is one benefit to bringing on board new faces.
We don’t yet know what roles any of the five will play. Surely we can expect to find at least one non-human in there, but which of them will take on that role and in what capacity is something we still don’t know. Every Star Trek series to date has introduced us to new alien races, as well as brought at least one new alien race into its main cast, and I see no reason why Strange New Worlds won’t do the same.
The final point of note is that, of the characters from The Cage, who were officers aboard the Enterprise under Pike’s command, none of them seem to fit with the new cast. Perhaps Yeoman Colt could be the character one of the new female leads is taking over, but none of the new cast fit with characters like José Tyler, Dr Boyce, or other officers present in that episode. I’ve said several times that I was sure Strange New Worlds was not simply going to recast everyone present in The Cage, and that the creative team would surely want to add in their own new characters, but it’s still worth noting that it doesn’t seem at this stage that any of those original characters are returning in a major way.
So that’s about all I have to say, really. By sheer coincidence this announcement came a few hours after I published my preliminary Season 1 predictions, which is kind of amusing! Hopefully we’ll learn soon what roles these folks are going to play. It looks like a fun group, and unless there’s some shocking announcement to come – like a returning cast member from a previous Star Trek series, or the inclusion of a Hollywood superstar – it feels like this announcement has rounded out the main cast. Eight major characters is more than enough for a series like this, though hopefully we’ll see a few secondary characters given screen time and development as well.
Strange New Worlds is off to a decent start, and I’m looking forward to the moment when I’ll be able to sit down and watch it! Stay tuned, because if we get any more information about the show, the characters, or anything else of note, I’ll be sure to take a look.
Hit it!
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will be broadcast on Paramount+ in areas where the service is available. Further international distribution has not yet been announced. The Star Trek franchise – including Strange New Worlds – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Here’s the full video:
Trekking with Dennis 