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‘star trek: strange new worlds’ star ethan peck discusses initial “nearly unbearable” weight of playing spock and profound fan appreciation.

His journey to become the iconic sci-fi character first brought to life by the legendary Leonard Nimoy has been intense, but thoroughly enjoyable and fulfilling, he tells THR.

By Ryan Parker

Ryan Parker

Former Senior Reporter

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[Warning: This story contains spoilers for the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode “Ghosts of Illyria.”] 

For Ethan Peck, each episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is a journey into a character whom he has come to know well — and yet remains a mystery. The actor, who debuted as Spock on Star Trek: Discovery , finds great beauty in that notion.

His journey to becoming the iconic sci-fi character first brought to life by the legendary Leonard Nimoy has been intense, but thoroughly enjoyable and fulfilling, he tells The Hollywood Reporter .

And while it was his guest work on Discovery that led throngs of fans to demand he, along with Anson Mount and Rebecca Romijn , be given a spinoff, it is the format and writing of Strange New Worlds that has allowed Peck to truly embody and understand the half-Vulcan, half-human character.

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The new series on Paramount+ is only three episodes in, and yet, no time was wasted in exploring Spock’s internal trials and tribulations, including his love life struggles with T’Pring (Gia Sandhu), who was bonded to Spock as a child. Peck is reveling in the exploration of his character’s dueling identities, crediting the writers for Spock’s nuance and complexities.

The Original Series nostalgia comes through so well. How does it feel to make this series compared to your time on Discovery ? 

It’s obvious we are in an episodic format, so each episode is its own adventure, its own world, its own conflict to be overcome by the bridge crew of the Enterprise. The challenges are new every single time, and that’s exciting for me as an actor because I don’t know what’s coming up. Oftentimes, at the beginning of the season of a serialized show, you kind of get an idea of what your character will be going through. And in this case, it’s kind of a surprise where Spock is going. That’s really thrilling.

You, Anson and Rebecca struck such a chord with fans in these characters, they demanded via petitions there be a spinoff. Has the level of that love, respect and trust set in yet? 

It’s still crazy to wrap my head around that. Fans are such a big part of why we’re here now, and I’m so grateful to the fans. It’s also been really inspiring for us because we’ve just poured our hearts and souls into this series, and I think it shows. You can feel it. But yes, I’m still kind of grasping the reality of my situation — that I’m playing this character and on this show. It fills me with wonder and honor.

I so appreciate that, right off the bat, the series deals with Spock’s exploration of his inner turmoil and conflict — trying to find his true self, as opposed to who he thinks others want him to be. You’re really pulling double duty at times in that battle.

Absolutely. I’ve been really fortunate with the level of nuance they’ve given to me in the writing. It’s also been very scary. This is such a precious character, not just to the fans, but to me. And like I said, one of the gifts of the episodic format is that every episode’s a new adventure, not knowing what Spock is going to be doing. So I feel like I’m constantly kind of searching for the character and understanding the inner details, which again is a gift.

Spock wants to be accepted by Vulcan, by his people whom he’s grown up with, but he has never been accepted because he’s half human. This is a struggle that exists on our planet, and I may not be the best representative of that, but we have amazing writers who do experience that today. I know that they contribute quite heavily to Spock’s life in that way. His human side is undeniable. He must explore it. And I think eventually his understanding of his humanness is what makes him who he will become later in the Original Series . His emotional side draws in valuable information that he can use in his problem-solving. He’s a beautiful person to be portraying and to be discovered.

I am also enjoying the exploration of his love life with T’Pring, which was only briefly touched on in the Original Series . Can you talk about that additional, mostly unexplored layer of Spock? 

It’s really complicated, and we really handle it with a lot of thought and caution because we don’t want to put anything down that doesn’t ring true for these characters and for these cultures. It’s so interesting playing against Gia because she is expressive in an even more quiet way, in my opinion, than Spock can be. And when I’m working with her on-camera, I feel he needs to be more Vulcan to be accepted because I want her to like me. I want to be accepted by her. So that’s always kind of on the back burner of Spock’s mind, that he just doesn’t belong there, he belongs with Starfleet. So it’s interesting to explore those moments with her.

There is a wild away mission for Capt. Pike and Spock in “Ghosts of Illyria.” Safe to assume away missions are more fun to shoot, especially when it is just you and Anson getting to play in the sandbox? 

Away missions can be more fun. Oftentimes, though, they’re logistically more complicated, so we might have to wake up even earlier to travel someplace to film. This particular episode we actually filmed in Ontario Place in Toronto. So in that way, they can be a little more complicated. There are more unknowns, but it’s always really fun to be in a new environment with these characters because our team just does such an amazing job with set design and decoration, and it really brings life to my work. But this specific episode is such a classic Spock and captain episode.

And Anson and I get along great. We share a lot of science fiction books with each other, both being big sci-fi fans. So, we’re often both reading on-set. I think we both approach our work with the same amount of intensity and consistency, and that’s just really special. Everyone on our show works hard, and I think Anson really sets the bar for the level of work that exists in our show, and that is something I’ve admired.

How did you build that bond between you two? Did you spend extra time paling around when the cameras weren’t rolling? 

When I was doing Discovery , I saw Pike as an uncle figure to Spock or an older brother. On Discovery , Spock became close with his adopted sister Michael Burnham ( Sonequa Martin-Green ), but I think Pike was the human role model for him. And so with that in mind, we went into our off time between Discovery and Strange New Worlds and did as many conventions together as we could. We just had a blast and got to know each other better, discovered that we just have great chemistry on- and off-camera. And of course, working together now on Strange New Worlds , you become family. You see each other in your highs and your lows, and you learn to accept each person for who they are in every moment. And that’s a rare opportunity because we must be united and be coordinated with one another and work together. So that’s really special.

You and Celia Rose Gooding as Nyota Uhura are doing an extraordinary job with your incarnations of these beloved classic characters. I assume there was extra pressure initially. Do you still feel it now? 

That’s a question that I can answer in so many different ways as time goes on because it changes. In the beginning, yes, the weight was nearly unbearable, and I wondered if I would be kind of broken by, “I’m not sure that I quite feel worthy.” I’m still growing into Spock in many ways. And you know, now the pressure isn’t quite as great as it was during Discovery .

I’m trying to have an experience as Spock. I’m not thinking of what the final product will be or how it will look. But I definitely did a bunch of research, and I’m constantly checking in with the voice of Spock in my head. Leonard Nimoy made such an impression on me and that’s with me always. I’m constantly checking in with that.

Celia and I maybe have added pressure because of the characters we’re playing, but at the same time, I think Star Trek is such a beautiful burden for all of us and a heavy one, too. It represents something so special to so many people. It’s hopeful and aspirational and inspiring and curious and accepting. And I think it’s always anecdotal to all of the important things that are happening in the world.

Interview edited for length and clarity. 

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is streaming now on Paramount+.

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Ethan Peck is Ready to Beam Up

Star Trek 's newest Spock has been on a journey to become "worthy" of the iconic role. Now, he's a changed man.

Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. We may earn a commission from these links.

When Ethan Peck was cast as Spock, Star Trek ’s legendary science officer, two extraordinary things happened. First, he nearly blacked out. Then, he embarked on a journey of “profound evolution” to become someone worthy of wearing those iconic pointy ears. The pursuit of living up to Spock changed him—made him more confident, more deliberate, more considered. Four years after his fateful debut, the imposter syndrome has worn off, but the journey of becoming remains ongoing. “I’m still trying to grab the Vulcanism in myself,” he tells Esquire .

Peck is the third actor to shave his eyebrows and suit up as everyone’s favorite Vulcan; the late Leonard Nimoy originated the role in Star Trek: The Original Series , then passed the baton to Zachary Quinto for J.J. Abrams’ three Star Trek films. Peck joined Paramount’s ever-expanding Star Trek universe in 2018, when Spock figured into season two of Star Trek: Discovery as the estranged brother of protagonist Michael Burnham. Spock and his reimagined Enterprise colleagues made such a splash on Discovery that fans clamored for a spin-off—and got their way, luckily for the rest of us. This spring, that long-awaited series arrived in the form of Strange New Worlds , a back-to-basics return to the episodic storytelling of The Original Series , set during the captaincy of Christopher Pike (Captain Kirk’s predecessor). Strange New Worlds is the best Trek outing in years: uplifting, optimistic, and gloriously retro, it’s a character-driven series where each episode pairs a top notch sociocultural story with some good, clean, spacefaring fun.

Part of the secret sauce behind Strange New Worlds is, of course, Spock. Peck has nailed everything fans know and love about this legendary character, from his arch formality to his bone-dry humor, while also boldly going where no one has gone before. For the first time ever, viewers get a peek into Spock’s sex life; in one standout episode, a soul-sharing ritual gone wrong sees Spock and his fiancée swap bodies, leading them to profound insights about duty and sacrifice (and, of course, some funny hijinks). But Peck doesn’t want too much credit for his rendition of the role. “I don’t feel like I have any ownership over Spock,” he tells Esquire. “I’m just a custodian.”

A lifelong science fiction fan and a deep, scholarly thinker, Peck has been thrown into the deep end of a multi-decade phenomenon—and come out the other side grateful and changed. He Zoomed with Esquire to discuss all things Star Trek , from what it’s like wearing the Vulcan eyebrows to how he ended up on an ocean cruise full of Trek fans. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Esquire: What was your relationship to Star Trek before you joined the franchise?

Ethan Peck: I'm a big science fiction fan, but in my younger years, I somehow avoided or overlooked Star Trek . Then I became a big fan of J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek movies. I remember the very first time I saw the posters. Each character looked so developed and thrilling. I thought, “I wish I could do something like that.” Now I'm on Star Trek. It's crazy, but it’s exactly where I want to be in terms of genre.

ESQ: What are some other meaningful science fiction touchpoints for you?

EP: It started with Golden Age science fiction books. I recall reading Isaac Asimov’s The End of Eternity when I was around twelve years old—that was really seminal in terms of how I perceive the universe, and the bigger philosophical quest it sent me on. From a young age, Akira was huge for me, too. It asks so many big questions. It’s an allegory for the threat of nuclear war and the mass destruction we can wreak on ourselves, but it also asks: what is consciousness? That was the first time I'd been exposed to those ideas in a way that I could begin to understand. Of course, 2001: A Space Odyssey made a huge impact, too. Oftentimes a book comes out before a movie, but with 2001: A Space Odyssey , Kubrick reached out to Arthur C. Clarke and said, "I want to create the quintessential science fiction film. Will you help me?" The script was actually completed before the book. I remember reading the book and thinking, “I wish hadn't seen the movie so I could create my own imagery for this,” only to discover that it came out after. I love that book.

ESQ: When you first auditioned for Discovery , how did you feel about stepping into the iconic role of Spock?

EP: When I first auditioned, I didn’t even know what I was auditioning for. The project had a code name, so I was blissfully unaware. We knew that it was code for Star Trek , but I had no idea what the role was. I assumed it was something small. By the time I learned what the role was after two auditions, I was quite frankly terrified. I was terrified of the audition, but also of the need to live up to this mythical icon, as Spock has become. I blacked out the very last audition—I barely remember what I did. After getting the part, I was still terrified. I felt unworthy of it. I felt I had so much personal growth to undergo in order to fulfill the needs of this character. Spock is such a vast-minded person—he’s otherworldly, hyper-intelligent, and has great integrity. I’m constantly working to live up to him.

ESQ: What’s been your experience of joining and navigating this robust fandom?

EP: The conventions are surreal. You have a big group of people who love the concepts, the ideals, and the openness that Star Trek is a vessel for. They’re sometimes marginalized for different reasons, and they find a lot of commonality among one another. That’s a beautiful and incredible thing. I've been plugged into something much bigger than me. I don't feel like I have any ownership over Spock; I'm just a custodian. People come to me at these conventions, and it's almost like they want confirmation of some sort—to be seen by this character and this universe. They're not there to see Ethan. They're there to see Spock, and I just happen to be a representative of this character at this one point in time. These people are so thrilled and excited and moved by the world that we are a part of as actors, and they come with such vulnerability—that’s very special and unique. In the year after Discovery ’s second season, I did thirteen conventions that culminated in Star Trek: The Cruise , which was wild. I kept thinking, “Wow, I get to have this experience. I get to see these people in this light and in under these circumstances.”

ESQ: I need to hear more about Star Trek: The Cruise .

EP: It's everything I've just described, but hyper-condensed and intensified, because you're on this floating skyscraper. I think there were around 2500 to 3000 guests on the ship, with about 30 "talents," as they refer to us. I would walk out of my little suite, which is basically a room with two double beds, and people would say, "Ethan Peck?" You're there with everybody. It’s mostly a celebration of the community that Star Trek has created, which is infused with the show's ideals and vision and optimism.

ESQ: Now that you've played Spock across multiple television shows, what keeps you coming back to him?

EP: I'm still trying to grab the Vulcanism in myself. I felt that I was called to undergo profound evolution to serve the needs of this character, because he’s just so extraordinary. I've been pushed to develop in ways that maybe I wouldn't have if I hadn't been cast in this role. I was cast in 2018, but I'm only just starting to feel like, “I’m here, and I’m doing this, and I'm capable of it.” I still have doubts about that sometimes because there's so much nuance to the character. That challenge is what brings me back. I don't see that it ever would get old or stale or known to me, because the writers keep presenting me with new challenges for this character, and I'm on my toes constantly.

ESQ: What are some of these ways that Spock has driven you to develop?

EP: He challenges me to be more confident. To have more useful thoughts. I found that I spent a lot of time thinking about ways in which I wasn't worthy or good enough, and that wasn’t useful. Spock would never have these thoughts—he would never think about something that doesn't have great utility. That rubbed off on me in the best way, though I’m still on that journey of weeding out toxic and circuitous thinking. I see Spock as a monument in motion, because he’s so pure and pristine in his decision-making, his actions, and his philosophy. As an artist and a person, that feels like a very worthy pursuit, to be in search of Spock.

ESQ: I feel like there’s a book here: The Spock Guide to Self-Help .

EP: It would be a bestseller. CBS should probably think about that.

ESQ: How did you approach making your Spock distinct from the previous iterations of the character?

.css-f6drgc:before{margin:-0.99rem auto 0 -1.33rem;left:50%;width:2.1875rem;border:0.3125rem solid #FF3A30;height:2.1875rem;content:'';display:block;position:absolute;border-radius:100%;} .css-1aglugu{font-family:Lausanne,Lausanne-fallback,Lausanne-roboto,Lausanne-local,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:1.625rem;line-height:1.2;margin:0rem;}@media(max-width: 48rem){.css-1aglugu{font-size:1.75rem;line-height:1.2;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-1aglugu{font-size:2.375rem;line-height:1.2;}}.css-1aglugu b,.css-1aglugu strong{font-family:inherit;font-weight:bold;}.css-1aglugu em,.css-1aglugu i{font-style:italic;font-family:inherit;}.css-1aglugu:before{content:'＂';display:block;padding:0.3125rem 0.875rem 0 0;font-size:3.5rem;line-height:0.8;font-style:italic;font-family:Lausanne,Lausanne-fallback,Lausanne-styleitalic-roboto,Lausanne-styleitalic-local,Arial,sans-serif;} I'm still trying to grab the Vulcanism in myself.

EP: I’m still figuring that out. I'm so fundamentally different from Leonard Nimoy and Zachary Quinto, so I don't think I have to do too much work to differentiate myself, because I’m inseparable from my work. Another one of the reasons I knew I had to develop personally was because I needed to become greater and more myself to distinguish the character. Leonard Nimoy is inimitable; he brought certain qualities that I can observe and attempt to internalize, but I can't impersonate him, because that would be such a misstep. I had to understand the character and what he meant to me personally. What I bring to Spock is the impression that I have of him, which is unique to me, I think. I hope, anyway.

ESQ: Strange New Worlds finds a lot of new shades in Spock. Within the first fifteen minutes of Episode One, he's falling into bed his fiancée, T’Pring. Spock has had romances, but now, for the first time ever, he has a sex life. What was that like, to be the actor who gets to take him there?

EP: It was really scary, because there's no blueprint for that. Unfortunately, Leonard Nimoy is not alive to offer me any guidance or advice. Those moments are quite terrifying, because I'm treading into the unknown, and I'm captaining whatever ship is taking me there—albeit with a huge amount of support from the people that I work with. During my preparation for that scene, I thought, “What's too human? What's too sexual? What's too Vulcan? What's weird enough? What's so weird that it doesn't feel relatable to viewers?” That discussion was ongoing with Akiva Goldsman, who directed the episode, and Gia Sandhu, who plays T'Pring. It was a very careful and cautious process.

ESQ: Another shade you bring out in Spock is his capacity for humor. How do you make this guy who has no sense of irony or sarcasm so funny?

EP: A lot of that has to do with the writing. It’s always funny to see Spock in a situation where you think, “Oh no, this is going to be bad for Spock. He's going to do something awkward and goofy and strange.” When he comes into conflict with his own social constructs, that presents a lot of possibilities. For example, there’s a moment where Captain Pike smacks Spock on the shoulder, and he's mystified by the idea of someone touching him. The writers do such a great job of putting him in humorous situations and allowing him to be jocular.

ESQ: How has your grandfather Gregory Peck's legacy figured into how you approach your own work as an actor?

EP: I didn’t know him very well. Ten or fifteen years ago, I wanted to reject the part of me that comes from him, because I felt so undeserving of that pedigree. There’s nothing I did to earn a position in my family tree—I could have been born anywhere. That’s something I ruminate on quite a lot, and now, I feel extremely lucky to be a part of this family, because it does come with perquisites. I think the greatest gift from my grandfather is the possibility of huge success. A lot of people are born into families that don't have this level of recognition, so to attain that seems like an impossible, otherworldly thing. For me, that level of respect and public appreciation felt achievable. In terms of success, it’s given me an openness to the strange or the weird. I’m so proud of being on this show. I can't believe it. I feel so lucky to be a part of Star Trek and to be Spock; that feels like a really big achievement. I can trace that sensation of success back to being born into this family.

ESQ: In the series premiere of Strange New Worlds , we learn about World War III on Earth. Humanity tore itself apart in its own hubris, with thousands of species and hundreds of thousands of lives lost. Star Trek has provided half a century’s worth of commentary on human society, but what does Strange New Worlds have to say about our current moment?

EP: There's a useful scientific analogy called the Great Filter. I'm probably not going to speak very knowledgeably about it because I'm not a scientist. Essentially, civilization will obtain a level of technological development that enables us to destroy ourselves, and that point in time becomes a filter. Will we destroy ourselves, or will we evolve beyond that primal warring state? I think that’s where we’re at. When you look at the news, it's just people killing people because of ideas. People are so afraid of other people's ideas. Strange New Worlds reminds us, “Be careful about your fear, and about the violence that your fear inspires.” That’s a message we can never hear often enough.

One of my buddies always says, "We're just monkeys, man." There's a hopelessness about where we're at, because the behavior of destroying ourselves and killing one another has become so redundant. Strange New Worlds is trying to highlight the tragedy of that, and it's begging us to move beyond it—to move forward, to unite and combine our energies, to be curious about what more is out there.

ESQ: I’ve got just one last question for you—the question every actor playing Spock has to answer. What’s it like walking around with these eyebrows?

EP: I honestly don't even think about it. My friends will say, "Oh man, your eyebrows are so fucked up.” I'm sure other people are thinking, "What's going on with your face?" But I don’t even care. It’s all so worth it.

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Ethan Peck on 'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,' Spock's Relationship With T'Pring, and Meeting Uhura

He also discusses which 'Strange New Worlds' character he'd switch roles with.

Paramount+ is gearing up again to boldly go where no one has gone before with the premiere of the highly anticipated Star Trek: Discovery spin-off series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds . Set in the years prior to Star Trek: The Original Series , the show will explore the adventures of the U.S.S. Enterprise under the leadership of Captain Christopher Pike ( Anson Mount ). Pike was first introduced in The Original Series , along with Number One ( Rebecca Romijn ), Spock ( Ethan Peck ), Uhura ( Celia Rose Gooding ), Doctor M’Benga ( Babs Olusanmokun ), and Nurse Chapel ( Jess Bush ), though the roles were originated by different actors. Strange New Worlds is set to introduce new characters as well, including La'an Noonien-Singh ( Christina Chong ) and Erica Ortegas ( Melissa Navia ).

During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, Ethan Peck discussed navigating Spock’s romance with T’Pring ( Gia Sandhu ), which character he’d love to switch roles with, and which episode he’s most excited about fans seeing. As with most of our interviews, you can choose to either read the interview below or watch it in the video player above!

COLLIDER: The last time we saw Spock, he was reeling from the loss of his sister. So where is he mentally when we reunite with him in Strange New Worlds ?

ETHAN PECK: I think that Spock at the beginning of Strange New Worlds is in a very sort of fragile place. He's just had this huge trauma in his life, this sort of unraveling that's occurred with his contact with the Red Angel, with the loss of his sister to time. And really nobody that he's allowed to speak with it about. I suppose there are a select few that are around him, but there's so much that he has to attend to day-to-day. I don't think that he can dedicate much of his energy to consideration of that part of his life. So I think he's uncertain. I think he's seeking of himself and of the right perspective in the universe. He's betwixt these two worlds, right? He's born and raised on Vulcan, but he's also half-human, and these are in such conflicts with each other, which is what I hope and think makes him such a compelling character. So he's in this place of experimentation.

RELATED: Most Essential Star Trek Episodes to Watch Before ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’

In the trailers, we get to see his relationship with T'Pring. What is it like playing a character in a romantic fashion who's such a reserved character?

PECK: It's really wild and a bit frightening, because there's not much of a blueprint for it. So for instance, with that scene, we all, in front of and behind the camera approached that scene with such caution and trepidation, and with respect to what's been done and to what we interpret to be is the right thing. And there was a lot of discussion. So on that level, it was like this really difficult and complex problem to solve, and also kind of thrilling to be laying that ground.

We get to meet Uhura in Strange New Worlds .

PECK: Yeah.

So what was it like getting to play out that first introduction between these two characters?

PECK: Well now in retrospect, absolutely wonderful. In the moment I really try not to think too much about how things will be perceived. So I do as much to be in the center and in the perspective of this character, who's just having an experience. So for me, it's quite different than probably how it appears to be from the outside, which even now I'm not sure I have that perspective yet. Maybe in some years, I'll better be able to answer that question.

Excellent. What episode are you most excited for fans to see?

PECK: Oh. Oh, that's a great question. Well, personally, I really enjoyed making Episode 7.

PECK: And I think that's all I can say about that.

Good to know. And then for a fun question, if you could switch roles with any other character in Strange New Worlds , who would it be and why?

PECK: Oh, really interesting question. Maybe... Oh God, I'm going to offend other characters if I don't want to switch places with them. I spend so much time with Christina Chong and her sort of development of her character La'an, and that character has such a rich emotional history that maybe I would switch places with her. Because it just seemed like so fun and so challenging to sort of uncover and explore that character.

That's an excellent answer. And that is such a great character. I mean, so many of these characters are fascinating. She's got a rich history.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds begins May 5 on Paramount+.

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Ethan Peck on the 'beautiful burden' of playing Spock in 'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds'

The Strange New Worlds star still feels pressure, but it's different pressure now.

There's a legacy within  Star Trek  that everyone who works on it now has to carry, a sense of weight that comes from the beloved sci-fi series being part of American pop culture for nearly 60 years now. That weight gets heavier, though, if you're tasked with playing one of the iconic characters who debuted along with the franchise back in 1966. Just ask Ethan Peck , who's taking on whole new dimensions of Spock as part of the new series  Strange New Worlds . 

Peck first began playing Spock as a guest star on  Star Trek: Discovery  back in 2019, embodying a prequel version of the character that Leonard Nimoy first introduced in The Original Series  and becoming the third actor to play the half-Vulcan science officer in live action. From the beginning, there was pressure to get it right, but speaking to  The Hollywood Reporter about his time on  Strange New Worlds , Peck explained that the pressure has shifted somewhat now that he's had more time to settle into the character. 

"In the beginning, yes, the weight was nearly unbearable, and I wondered if I would be kind of broken by, 'I’m not sure that I quite feel worthy.' I’m still growing into Spock in many ways. And you know, now the pressure isn’t quite as great as it was during  Discovery ," Peck said.

"I’m trying to have an experience as Spock. I’m not thinking of what the final product will be or how it will look. But I definitely did a bunch of research, and I’m constantly checking in with the voice of Spock in my head. Leonard Nimoy made such an impression on me and that’s with me always. I’m constantly checking in with that."

Peck continued: "Celia [Rose Gooding, who plays Uhura ] and I maybe have added pressure because of the characters we’re playing, but at the same time, I think  Star Trek  is such a beautiful burden for all of us and a heavy one, too. It represents something so special to so many people. It’s hopeful and aspirational and inspiring and curious and accepting. And I think it’s always anecdotal to all of the important things that are happening in the world."

Peck's ability to spend more time with Spock — and with co-stars Anson Mount and Rebecca Romijn — has obviously changed his experience with the character, but the format of  Strange New Worlds  also lends itself to a new way of doing things. Like  The Original Series,  Strange New Worlds  takes a very episodic format, offering new planets and new adventures for the crew every single week. That means Peck never knows exactly what he's going to get, which keeps him, and Spock, on his toes.

"It’s obvious we are in an episodic format, so each episode is its own adventure, its own world, its own conflict to be overcome by the bridge crew of the Enterprise," Peck said. "The challenges are new every single time, and that’s exciting for me as an actor because I don’t know what’s coming up. Oftentimes, at the beginning of the season of a serialized show, you kind of get an idea of what your character will be going through. And in this case, it’s kind of a surprise where Spock is going. That’s really thrilling."

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds  airs Thursdays on Paramount+. 

Looking for more sci-fi TV? Check out shows like Resident Alien, Brave New World, Project Blue Book, Eureka, Heroes, Intergalactic, and more streaming now on Peacock . Looking ahead, SYFY has new series The Ark in the works from original Stargate film writer/producer Dean Devlin, as well as Stargate SG-1 producer Jonathan Glassner.

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Star Trek star says Strange New Worlds changes Spock in one major way

Does the most fun Star Trek in years contain the funniest Spock?

Spock is not the comic relief in the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds , but somehow, he’s hilarious. This isn’t a break with canon, to be clear. From Leonard Nimoy in The Original Series to Zachary Quinto in the reboot films, and now Ethan Peck, Spock has often brought the laughs, even if by accident.

But why is Spock — the Sherlockian paragon of logic and emotional control — so hilarious? Ahead of the May 5 launch of Strange New Worlds on Paramount+, Inverse caught up with Ethan Peck to figure out why Spock and humor are a totally logical combination.

When asked why Spock seems funny so often, Ethan Peck tells Inverse , “I mean, he’s such a weirdo. Like such a strange guy. And earnest. He doesn’t understand — or seems not to understand, comedic timing. But, as the actor, I hope that I do understand comedic timing and can maneuver him in these situations in ways that are amusing.”

“He’s such a weirdo .”

Although Peck is the third actor to take over the role of Spock full time, he’s also been playing the character since 2019 in Star Trek: Discovery Season 2, during which time Spock was emotionally disturbed, arguing with his human stepsister Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and rocking an angsty beard.

In Strange New Worlds , Spock has ditched the beard but not the repressed Vulcan emotional baggage. For Peck, time has given him a chance to become more familiar than he was a few years back.

“This thing that is being Spock, and Star Trek being in my life, the onus of that has become less uncomfortable,” Peck says. “And that just gives me more freedom to explore and experiment. While we're filming, I just feel much more license to try things out. I think I have a much greater familiarity with what I believe the character to be.”

Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) and Spock (Ethan Peck) in the transporter room of the Enterprise .

But who is Spock at this point in the Star Trek timeline? Somewhat infamously, Spock’s behavior in the first pilot for The Original Series , “The Cage,” included him shouting and even smiling. In the rest of The Original Series , Spock was much more stoic, constantly repressing his emotions.

“We’re finding out more and more about him.”

Because Strange New Worlds is set before The Original Series , but after “The Cage” and Discovery Season 2, fans should expect to see a new side of Spock in a time of his life we’ve never glimpsed before. If you think you know the whole story of Spock, think again.

“I think that we're finding out more and more about him, which is so essential,” Peck explains, while also noting there’s a lot of humor and fun in that expanding story.

“We can put him in these scenarios and make him say something that he shouldn't be saying or something that he doesn't want to be saying, or doing something he doesn't want to be doing. And it can be pretty hilarious,” Peck says. “Just because he's this very serious, rational, focused person doesn't mean that we can have a lot of fun with him.”

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds hits Paramount+ on May 5, 2022.

Ryan Britt's new book on the history of Star Trek's biggest changes. From the '60s show to the movies to 'TNG,' to 'Discovery,' 'Picard,' Strange New Worlds,' and beyond!

This article was originally published on April 26, 2022

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Star Trek is finally treating Spock like a human being

How the Vulcan became the most important person in Star Trek, emphasis on ‘person’

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Debate is a time-honored tradition for Star Trek fans. Was Janeway right about Tuvix ? (Yes.) Is Star Trek: Discovery ruining the franchise with all that crying ? (No, it’s great; get in touch with your feelings.) Who’s the best captain in Starfleet? (The greatest captain is Picard . But the best captain is Sisko .)

What’s not debatable is that Spock is the most important person in the history of the Federation. A mixed-species science officer turned diplomat turned timeline traveler, Spock’s impact boasts an unrivaled longevity within the Star Trek franchise, born from a combination of dramatic necessity and fan appeasement.

And it’s a good thing he’s stuck around, because Star Trek is finally ready for him. Beleaguered as Star Trek: Discovery ’s journey has been from first season to final , it has shepherded the franchise into a new stage of Star Trek’s endless stumble toward utopia . And Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has shown that Star Trek can at long last allow its most famous alien crewmember to be just as relatable as his human colleagues.

The Great Spock

“The Great Spock” is how Spock is known within the Federation just a decade after his death, and for good reason. He was a foster brother to Captain Michael Burnham, who would reunite the Federation in the far future. He was second-in-command to the legendary Kirk, and instrumental to ending the cold war between the Federation and the Klingon Empire and reunifying Vulcan and Romulus. And then, in the Kelvin timeline, he ensured the success of Kirk’s enterprise in a whole ’nother universe .

And while this extravagant series of canon events is the fault of decades of Star Trek writers and directors working in tandem, you can’t really blame them. For one thing, Leonard Nimoy inarguably had the range, in a way that set him apart from most of the original cast of the original Star Trek .

This is not a slam on the rest of the TOS cast. The world of midcentury cinematic sci-fi was by necessity one of broad emotion, wide eyes, and huge physical gestures. An earnest dramatic bombast that filled the gap between plywood sets, body paint, acres of lamé, trick camera work, and crude latex masks and the audience’s immersion.

But starting almost immediately upon TOS ’ cancellation in 1969, the tone of sci-fi cinema and television evolved like Tom Paris at warp 10 (that is, it quickly became almost unrecognizable ). Boundary-pushing films like 2001: A Space Odyssey , along with adventures like Star Wars and full-blown dramatic horror like Alien , conditioned audiences to expect more subtlety and immersion from the genre (William Shatner and Ricardo Montalbán’s scenery chewing in Wrath of Khan notwithstanding).

By the time Star Trek returned to television with 1987’s The Next Generation , it was an arena for a different kind of actor entirely, one fitted to the quieter, more humanistic emoting expected from modern dramatic television. It’s a testament to Nimoy’s range, not an insult to his peers, to say that he was one of the only members of The Original Series who could hold up their own end in scenes with, say, Patrick Stewart, in a Next Generation episode where Spock mind melds with Picard to experience his late father’s hidden feelings of love for his son. If there’s another actor with Nimoy’s range in TOS , it’d be DeForest Kelley (who even guest starred in the pilot of The Next Generation ). But Bones is… I mean, there’s no such thing as a “Doctor’s Salute.” Spock is the mascot of Star Trek. And if you doubt it, you just have to look at every time since The Next Generation that the franchise has taken a big risk.

When 2009’s Star Trek needed someone to hold down a new cast playing old characters in a significant departure from The Original Series ’ story and tone, it turned to Nimoy and Spock. And when Star Trek: Discovery placed itself in an era nearly contemporary with Kirk’s Enterprise, it was with a tantalizing reveal of Spock’s secret foster sister, and, after a rocky first season, a recast Spock himself, proving that the character’s effect now stands independent of Nimoy’s contributions: Tossing Spock into a story has become Star Trek’s go-to way to say, “Hey… don’t worry… we’re still Star Trek!”

But something else happened in this long process of Star Trek reinventing itself. It grew from a metaphor about embracing the other to a metaphor about being the other. Spock was the most important person in Starfleet, and Star Trek finally figured out that his personhood is important.

The original alien

Spock’s struggle with his combined human and Vulcan heritage has been the central tension of his character since Trek’s inception. But The Original Series placed the emphasis firmly on the alien. TOS Spock’s most iconic moments are things like the calm, utterly Vulcan way in which he sacrifices his life in Wrath of Khan , the unexpected brilliance of his smile when he realizes Kirk is alive at the end of “Amok Time,” and a whole episode where we find out that he must have sex with a specific person in the next week or he will literally die.

That he was more alien than human was the whole point. Spock provided a fictional culture clash to contrast against Star Trek’s transgressive lack of real culture clash — an American television series made in the mid-1960s in which men and women, white, Black, Japanese, and Russian people cheerfully cohabitated and co-worked. Spock is Star Trek’s original embraced (or tolerated) alien other.

No matter what kind of eyes you think Kirk is giving his lanky, loyal first officer, Spock was shown through an outside point of view. This continued as Spock was refitted as a legitimizing force, as main characters like Jean-Luc Picard, Zachary Quinto’s younger Kelvinverse Spock, and Michael Burnham had to prove themselves worthy to stand in his shadow. It didn’t stop him from becoming a point of identification for generations of fans — from the moment he showed his pointy ears, Jewish fans, female fans, queer fans, biracial fans, neurodivergent fans, and many more besides have identified with Spock in spite of his positioning as the strange alien on a crew full of humans. But with Strange New Worlds , Star Trek has finally shown that it’s ready to remove “in spite of” from the equation.

From Spock’s first scene in the show — set in a Vulcan restaurant full of Vulcans on the planet Vulcan — Strange New Worlds has been committed to presenting even his alien aspects from within rather than without. The show’s first Spock feature episode, “Spock Amok,” dips directly into his internal insecurities about his most intimate relationship; next, in “The Serene Squall,” it points out that his struggle with his seemingly binary identity is emphatically not singular. The show as a whole has offered tremendous and repeated insight into Spock’s loving but doomed betrothal to T’Pring, a character TOS introduced as an aggrieved ex who forces him to take part in a traditional alien death match against his best friend.

And in just this season alone, we’ve seen Spock sweat through a meeting with his intolerant in-laws while turning to his understanding human crewmates for help. In “Subspace Rhapsody,” Spock basically says the whole point out loud, when Uhura attempts to console him after Nurse Chapel pretty much broke up with him via an elaborate musical dance number.

“Relationships can be difficult, Spock. And you’re Vulcan —” she begins, clearly about to say “ she’s human.” An implication that their relationship was destined to be even more difficult than usual.

Spock cuts her off. “But I am also human,” he says bluntly. Left unsaid: I am human, just like Chapel . And just like you. Spock and Chapel — and the rest of the crew — are more alike than they are different.

Even in a scene as momentous as his first meeting with James Kirk, Strange New Worlds roots Spock in his own environment, among his own crew. Kirk is the odd one out on this Enterprise. Star Trek has come full circle on a journey of small steps, taken with Spock, and Worf and Data, and the Doctor and Seven of Nine, and Odo and Quark, and Saru, the first nonhuman character to captain a Star Trek series’ crew. Each step brought the franchise to a place where it could more perfectly voice the message of tolerance at its heart.

Star Trek has an old habit, only recently and finally discarded by the modern franchise, of playing light humor out of its crew’s diversity. Did you know that Betazed weddings are performed in the nude? Ho ho ho, better hit the gym, Captain . Did you know Klingons eat live worms? And Commander Riker actually likes it? Yech! Just like everything else about Star Trek’s aliens, it dates back to the original one, the franchise’s mascot. Peel the latex and lamé away from Dr. McCoy’s undying quest to catch Mr. Spock in a moment of open emotion, anathema to his way of life, and you might start wondering where Starfleet’s HR department is. That kind of thing is relatable when you’ve been the odd one out, but not from McCoy’s side.

Generation after generation, Trek fans have pointed at alien characters that were created to represent a clashing perspective with the human majority around them and said, “Their othered experience is like my human one.” The whole point of the franchise is that outsiders should be embraced, and Star Trek has finally evolved enough to stop framing them from the view of the inside. To let us see ourselves in aliens not in spite of original intention, but because of it.

In 1966, Leonard Nimoy was Spock. Sixty years later, Star Trek has finally put the audience in his shoes on purpose — today, Spock is all of us.

Star Trek: Discovery is cracking open a box Next Gen closed on purpose

Star trek: discovery is finally free to do whatever it wants, the 10 horniest episodes of star trek, ranked by cultural impact, loading comments....

• Cast & crew
• User reviews
• Episode aired Jun 2, 2022

A personal visit causes a comedy of errors during Spock & Pike's crucial negotiations with an unusual alien species. A personal visit causes a comedy of errors during Spock & Pike's crucial negotiations with an unusual alien species. A personal visit causes a comedy of errors during Spock & Pike's crucial negotiations with an unusual alien species.

• Rachel Leiterman
• Gene Roddenberry
• Akiva Goldsman
• Alex Kurtzman
• Anson Mount
• 75 User reviews
• 7 Critic reviews

• Captain Christopher Pike

• Nurse Christine Chapel

• La'an Noonien-Singh

• Nyota Uhura

• Dr. M'Benga

• Erica Ortegas

• Una Chin-Riley

• Admiral Robert April

• T'Pring

• Barjan T'Or

• Ensign Christina

• USS Enterprise Computer

• K'Tyll

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• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Did you know

• Trivia In Spock's dream of a kal-if-fee fight with himself, the music is the same as in Amok Time (1967) when Spock fights with Kirk. The striking music, by composer Gerald Fried , is frequently cited as not only one of the best Star Trek (1966) scores, but one of the most outstanding television music scores ever.
• Goofs The Scorch cannot exist since it was part of the saucer section that was obliterated in Star Trek: Discovery (2017) Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2 (2019) when a photon torpedo that got jammed into the hull exploded.

Spock : Thank you for your advice. If I can ever return the favor, please do not hesitate to ask.

Nurse Christine Chapel : What are friends for?

Spock : [whispers to himself] What are friends for?

Nurse Christine Chapel : It was rhetorical, Spock.

Spock : Oh, I know. Humans are almost as easy to tease as Vulcans.

• Connections References Star Trek: Amok Time (1967)
• Soundtracks Looking for Love Music by Riaan Vosloo , Benedic Lamdin Courtesy of Sonoton Music GmbH & Co. KG

User reviews 75

• papery-sifters-l
• Jun 7, 2022
• June 2, 2022 (United States)
• United States
• Official Site
• Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• CBS Television Studios
• Roddenberry Entertainment
• Secret Hideout
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

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• Runtime 52 minutes
• Dolby Atmos

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Star trek: strange new worlds' ethan peck discusses how playing spock has changed him.

Of all the classic Star Trek characters portrayed in Paramount+'s newest Star Trek series, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Spock is the indisputable heavyweight.

Portrayed by the legendary Leonard Nimoy in every episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, all six of the Original Series films, and two of the Kelvin Timeline films, any new actor would be understandably daunted by the enormous responsibility of taking on the character.

Ethan Peck has faced and triumphed over that exact challenge, stepping into the role in 2019 on Star Trek: Discovery Season 2 when Anson Mount's Captain Christopher Pike enlists Sonequa Martin-Green's Michael Burnham to help find Spock, her adopted brother.

Now, with the launch of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds on May 5, Peck is our full-time Spock with all the history and canon the role encompasses.

Speaking virtually with TV Fanatic and other outlets on a recent press junket day, Peck is quite honest about the overwhelming sensation of being a part of this highly anticipated series.

"It’s been crazy. I, a) can’t believe I’ve been cast in this role. It’s still something very strange to me. And b) that there was such a hunger for a Pike Enterprise show -- which, of course, Spock would be a part of -- is absolutely thrilling.

"This has been really one of the greatest journeys of my life thus far and may remain that way. Who knows? I feel so incredibly fortunate and lucky and grateful to be a part of this. It’s insane to me still."

As his castmate, Rebecca Romijn, mentioned at her roundtable press interview , bringing Star Trek: Strange New Worlds to the screen was a long process, made more so by the pandemic and the challenges that posed to filming and production.

Did the extra time allow Peck to become more comfortable with the idea of being Spock?

"Yes, I would say absolutely, in an indirect kind of way. When I was cast in this role, once I learned what it was, which was towards the end of the casting process, I was faced with this challenge and opportunity to grow, not just as an actor but as a person.

"I believed I was barely worthy of it at that time. That’s my own personal thing and my own journey that I’ve been on since. It’s not every day or even every life that you must become more than you are. The needs of this role require that of me; for me to grow as a person as well as an actor.

"The pandemic really gave me a lot of time to flush out myself. Things that were not working for me as a person, as a human being, on this planet. I hope that I have been able to rid myself of that, and that [process], in turn, has informed my work. So, absolutely, that time was utilized."

In growing into the role, what challenges has Peck faced?

"That’s a complicated question to answer. I would say that I’m still challenged every single day.

"I’m more comfortable at this point in time with the onus of the character, being the custodian of this character, but I still read things in scripts that I get, and I’m like, 'I have no idea how I’m going to do this,' or how I’ll be true to Spock because what’s fun about him is he does sort of live within these boundaries.

"Then to place him in a scenario that he shouldn’t be in or is really uncomfortable in, that’s when I think really cool things start to happen with the character and in my performance of the character.

"I’m revisiting, sort of crazily, Leonard Nimoy’s voice in my head when I’m doing a lot of these scenes. 'Does this sound right? Does it feel right?' I'm constantly checking in with the spirit of his Spock and am channeling it as well.

"Then there are things that are written for my iteration of Spock that have not been written before. That is my privilege as an actor and as this Spock."

From guest-starring on Star Trek: Discovery to being one of the Big Three on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds must be an intense leap for Peck.

"Oh, yeah, I’m filled with terror all the time. I hope not to be as informed by it as much as maybe I was in the beginning.

"I want to be loved and accepted and celebrated on some level, or my ego does. I understand from an intellectual perspective that that will not occur in totality. Some people will like it; some people will not. And that’s just a part of what we do.

"I get new scripts and, like I said, I don’t know how the heck I’m going to do it. That’s informed my process in a really important way. I’ve done a lot of research, and I’ve now had a lot of experience as the character on set, on camera.

"And then I’ve got to allow a lot of space for the unknown, which is really uncomfortable. I think as creatures on this earth, we want to be in control of things in order to feel safe emotionally.

"I’ve had to do a lot of undoing of that impulse, to welcome chaos and live in a place of the unknown. That’s important to my work."

With the looming specter of Nimoy's past (but actually future) Spock, how is Peck calibrating the journey from his Spock to that known future iteration?

"I have no idea. I’m just doing my best. I mean, there’s definitely an eye out for that.

"It’s a very collaborative effort between myself and the writers and the producers and the other creative forces behind our show because that’s a huge task that I don’t think I can shoulder by myself.

"Also, there’s a lot of opportunity in Strange New Worlds to explore and see parts of Spock’s inner world that we’ve not seen before. There’s no roadmap for that that’s already been laid out.

"There is license in our exploration of the character in that regard which I’m grateful for and something that excites me about this show.

"I think there are certain touchstones, qualitatively, about the character that I probably couldn’t articulate to you very well that just feel right and, I hope, appear in the way that looks accurate in our final product, but that’s a very collaborative effort, the calibration."

In calibrating that journey, how has Peck managed to deconstruct Nimoy's Spock?

"It’s been a very delicate and thoughtful process. I don’t think I was able to be the Spock that you see in the original series a couple of years ago when I first got the role.

"Even now, I might [only] be touching on the more full spirit of that version of Spock, but I myself am in a place of development in my own life that I think lends itself to this iteration of Spock.

"I’m just really lucky to be in the right place at the right time for this role. And to have been auditioning at that time. There are so many things that worked in my favor to put me in these shoes. I’m just trying to capitalize on those aptitudes that I seem to have."

Having played Spock on both Discovery and Strange New Worlds, can Peck quantify the difference in experiences on the two shows?

"Firstly, the shows are just so different in so many ways.

"I think the DNA’s the same – Gene Roddenberry’s vision is very much a part of both shows, which is one of inclusion, of celebration of diversity, of curiosity, of a harmonious existence between vastly different peoples and ideas – but just by its look, the shows are very different. The tones are different. The colors are different. Of the sets, of the ships.

"Our show is episodic, which is something we’re all really excited about. Akiva Goldsman put it wonderfully. He said that there’s serialized emotion, but each episode is its own standalone adventure which I think is great.

"I love to watch film because it’s a contained experience. You can have it in ninety minutes to two, two and a half hours. And it does something wonderful for you. Hopefully. If it’s done properly, right?

"I hope that our episodes can be like that for people and that we’ll convert fans to our show and to the Star Trek universe because there are so many great iterations of it that have already been made and exist and are ready to be seen.

In one of the early episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Peck's Spock and Celia Rose Gooding's Uhura must sing together as part of a mission. Was that a challenging experience?

"[Celia]’s an incredibly impressive and talented person, but she’s an incredibly talented singer as well, so I just did my best to sneak in behind her beautiful singing.

"I myself was a trained classical musician. I played cello growing up, so I’m not totally tone-deaf, I hope. But in terms of singing, I was quite nervous about that, and we practiced quite a lot.

With Spock being a character who has come to embody a way of thinking and being for generations of Trek fans, has playing the role affected Peck personally?

"Spock’s influenced me so much. It’s weird. I had to really look at myself when I was first cast in this role because I didn’t know what I was auditioning for from the very beginning, and something I brought to it lent itself to this iteration of the character.

"I needed to better understand that, to become more self-aware so that I could better control what I’m inputting into this performance.

"In doing so, I learned so much about myself. In my opinion, I had to grow in a profound way on a personal level and, therefore, as an actor.

"With art, your life is so informing of your work, and I had to become more than I was. I had to become more clear-headed, better focused. To not be such a hypocrite.

"We can all be hypocrites in our own ways, and I feel like Spock has so much integrity. I was in awe of that and wanted to become more like that in my own life.

"We wake up in the morning, and we have the opportunity to have whatever thoughts we want. We can do things, but most importantly, we can think; we’re free in our minds. That’s a goal that we should all have. Spock is so good and sharp with his mind.

"I would say that I learned most from him is to be more optimal with my thinking, to put it in a very Spockian way."

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds premieres on Paramount+ on May 5.

Be sure to check back for more press day interviews with the fantastic cast of this spectacular new show!

As always, we'll have episode reviews up every week. Prepare to be transported!

Diana Keng was a staff writer for TV Fanatic. She is a lifelong fan of smart sci-fi and fantasy media, an upstanding citizen of the United Federation of Planets, and a supporter of AFC Richmond 'til she dies. Her guilty pleasures include female-led procedurals, old-school sitcoms, and Bluey. She teaches, knits, and dreams big. Follow her on X .

Pike: Send someone else. You don't want me in command of that ship. April: You're getting us confused. You don't want you in command. Permalink: You're getting us confused. You don't want you in command. Added: May 04, 2022

No matter how many stars there are in the sky. No matter how many galaxies swirl beyond our own. No matter the mathematical probabilities or the number of times we say, 'We are not alone in the universe,' our first visit from the stars is always the province of children's stories and science fiction. First contact with aliens always lives squarely in the impossible. First contact is just a dream until one day, it isn't. Una Permalink: No matter how many stars there are in the sky. No matter how many galaxies swirl beyond our... Added: May 04, 2022

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Why Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' Spock Is Different From TOS

Ethan Peck's Spock in Strange New Worlds is younger than Leonard Nimoy's in the original Star Trek. It makes for small yet telling differences.

• Ethan Peck's portrayal of Spock in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds establishes a unique version of the character.
• Peck's Spock addresses specific elements from The Original Series while adding new depth to the character.
• Peck's Spock showcases his struggles among other Vulcans and his tendency towards interpersonal mistakes.

The following article contains spoilers for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2, now streaming on Paramount+.

More than any other character, Mr. Spock has been the poster child for the Star Trek franchise , starting the first pilot and continuing all the way up to the ongoing Star Trek: Strange New Worlds series. Leonard Nimoy brought him to life so marvelously, that for a long time the idea of another actor playing the role was inconceivable. Even the Kelvinverse movies brought Nimoy in for a cameo when Zachary Quinto took over the role, giving the new actor his blessing while establishing firmly that they are two distinct variants of the character.

Actor Ethan Peck -- who plays Spock on Strange New Worlds after first taking up the role in Star Trek: Discovery -- doesn't have that option. He plays a younger version of Nimoy's take on the character, in keeping with Strange New Worlds' status as a prequel. That means everything he does must feed into what Spock becomes on The Original Series : necessitating the need to emulate Nimoy. Yet, Peck has very quickly established his own unique version of the character, which differs from his predecessor in key ways. It allows the actor to find fresh wrinkles in a figure that Star Trek fans thought they knew by heart.

RELATED: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Cast and Character Guide

Leonard Nimoy's Spock Sets Boundaries for Strange New Worlds

Quinto's take on Spock benefits from his variant status. The Kelvinverse gives him new details to play off of, most notably the destruction of Vulcan and his love affair with Nyota Uhura . The differences are easily explained as the creation of an alternate universe, letting Quinto find his take on Spock without having to emulate Nimoy. Peck faces the same challenge, but without the benefit of being a variant.

Peck's version of Spock can't stray too far from the contours of Nimoy's performance without risking continuity errors -- a danger both Strange New Worlds and Discovery work overtime to avoid. Instead, he looks at the experiences that helped shape Spock into his "older" self on The Original Series . This gives Peck a destination to work towards, allowing Strange New Worlds to select an intriguing starting point and evolve from there. Thankfully, Nimoy's performance in the Star Trek pilot "The Cage" (set before Strange New Worlds ) is short on details and leaves a lot of room for interpretation.

RELATED: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Cast Gets High Praise From Paul Wesley

Ethan Peck's Spock Addresses Elements from The Original Series

Many of Spock's challenges in Discovery and Strange New Worlds address specifics about his status in The Original Series . For example, Nimoy's Spock shares a mysterious bond with Christine Chapel, who clearly cares deeply for him and even makes romantic overtures on occasion. The series never gives any strong reasons for her behavior, only that he's important to her. Similarly, Spock's betrothal to the Vulcan T'Pring plays a key role in The Original Series Season 2, Episode 5, "Amok Time," in which he's forced to return to Vulcan to set his affairs in order and almost kills Captain Kirk in the process.

Strange New Worlds uses both elements to create a love triangle. The series opens with T'Pring and Spock engaged , and struggling to make a long-distance relationship work. That becomes doubly complicated when Spock and Chapel develop feelings for each other. Their pairing ultimately terminates the engagement, and remains very much in question as of the end of Season 2. All of this feeds into their open but unresolved feelings on The Original Series , as well as T'Pring's antagonism in "Amok Time."

Such subplots work by providing new details about Spock's behavior and relationships in The Original Series. In the process it paints Peck's Spock as more impulsive that Nimoy's, as well as struggling to fit in among his fellow Vulcans. T'Pring's insufferable parents from Season 2, Episode 5, "Charades" are object proof of this. It also shows Spock as being more prone to interpersonal mistakes, especially with his human crewmates, which is a far cry from the certainty and detachment that Nimoy's Spock displays. That in turn, better explains some of Spock's behavior in The Original Series, such as his coldness towards Chapel and his unwillingness to discuss T'Pring with Kirk. The differences in Peck's Spock deliberately reflect the man that he becomes.

RELATED: Strange New Worlds: One Vulcan Can Help Spock on His Emotional Journey

Ethan Peck's Spock Is More Troubled and More Human Than Leonard Nimoy's

Peck's Spock also has a carefully chosen introduction, which gives the character a starting point from which to grow. It pulls less from The Original Series than from Star Trek: The Animated Series . Season 1, Episode 2, "Yesteryear" reveals the details of Spock's upbringing. His peers often bully him over his human half, and his father is cold and distant, even for a Vulcan. Similarly, Season 1, Episode 9, "Once Upon a Planet" reveals that Spock's mother read Alice in Wonderland to him as a child. This forms a key connection to his adopted sister Michael Burnham, who herself has fond memories of Amanda reading the story to her.

All of that serves to set up Peck's Spock as perhaps his furthest from who he becomes in The Original Series . The actor debuts in the role in Discovery Season 2, Episode 1, "Brother," as Spock is pursuing the visions of the Red Angel. Michael finds him utterly lost and close to insanity, then slowly brings him back from the brink. He and Christopher Pike's Enterprise help the Discovery defeat Control and launch it on its journey centuries into the future. That leaves Spock mourning his sister's absence, which in turn confronts him with his human half. This, too, makes for a big break from Nimoy's performance.

By the time The Original Series events take place, he has all but subsumed his human side: identifying as Vulcan and even encountering prejudice from his human crewmates over it. (Ironically, Spock was envisioned as the only alien aboard the Enterprise in The Original Series , though that has since been retconned.) Strange New Worlds contrasts that with a Spock who struggles to keep his emotions in check at times. In addition, Spock himself experiences humanity in "Charades" when aliens accidentally remove his Vulcan DNA. That helps further define Peck's Spock as distinctive, while opening the door for further development as Strange New Worlds continues .

All episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds are now streaming on Paramount+.

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Published Sep 3, 2023

How Spock's Human Side in Strange New Worlds Fully Explains The Original Series

We love Spock because of his feelings, not in spite of them.

StarTrek.com

We need to talk about Spock . He’s smiling. He’s making jokes. He’s eating bacon in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds .

As Captain Kirk once put it, Spock has recently shown “a regrettable tendency you've been showing lately toward flagrant emotionalism.” But here’s the thing. Kirk made that comment in The Original Series , at the end of the classic episode “ The Menagerie .” So, Spock’s emotional outbursts are hardly new. And as counterintuitive as it sounds, the rational, cold hero of the final frontier is often most interesting when he seems to be losing it.

From “ Amok Time ” in The Original Series to “ Charades ” in Strange New Worlds Season 2, Spock’s emotionalism is central to our shared love of this supposedly unemotional character. And thanks to Strange New Worlds , the story of Star Trek is offering a new, utterly revelatory way of understanding the inner struggle of Spock, which, in the final analysis, is perfectly logical.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - Spock the Human

Way back when Leonard Nimoy filmed “The Cage,” in 1964, the character of Spock hadn’t been fully formed. At that point, Star Trek series creator Gene Roddenberry actually conceived of Number One as the more guarded, stoic unemotional one.

In 2019, with the Star Trek: Short Treks episode “ Q&A ,” writer Michael Chabon attempted to reconcile this, by making it clear that Number One had a big influence on Spock’s overall development. But, that was Spock’s first day on the Enterprise and only the beginning of a bigger process. Starting with Star Trek: Discovery Season 2, and throughout Strange New Worlds , Spock is on an emotional journey, one that has an end point with how we find Spock in The Original Series. As SNW co-creator Akiva Goldsman said in 2023 , “Something happened between ‘The Cage’ and ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before.’”

Goldsman is right. But, putting Spock on an emotional rollercoaster isn’t something SNW randomly invented. Spock has gone on several emotional journeys prior to SNW . In the Star Trek: Lower Decks crossover, “ Those Old Scientists ,” Chapel says Spock is “going through a thing.” But, when, if we’re being honest, has Spock not been going through a thing?

"Amok Time"

Throughout The Original Series, the classic films, and even The Next Generation , Spock, as played by Leonard Nimoy, changed his emotional presentation quite a bit. In the classic series, he was openly frustrated by human emotions, but after the events of The Motion Picture , and his failure to purge his emotions via the Kolinahr, Spock eventually loosened up, and became comfortable with his illogical human allies. The level of comfort Spock has with Kirk and Bones in The Wrath of Khan is drastically different from the guy we met in “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” So, in order for classic Spock to mature, and grow, there had to be a baseline, a specific foundational personality to build upon. This is where Strange New Worlds comes in. Because it’s here that we’re finally seeing how and why Spock’s emotional cocktail was mixed.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - Hot Spock

In “Those Old Scientists,” Boimler and Mariner — time travelers from the 24th Century — are borderline horrified by Spock smiling and attempting to make bad jokes. Cleverly, Strange New Worlds uses what seems like canon inconsistencies to actually make a point about how people change. Boimler believes that a smiling Spock is not really the character. Just like fans being jarred by Spock smiling in “The Cage” or flashbacks from “The Menagerie,” emotional Spock can read as a mistake, rather than a nuance. Boilmer, as a cipher for a confused fan says, “This is just like what a phase and he’ll get over and get back to like his serious, real self soon?”

In some ways, Boimler is right. What we’re seeing in Strange New Worlds is new, but, it’s also a fallacy for us to believe that “serious” Spock is also “real” Spock. In 1966, “ The Naked Time ,” was only the fourth episode of Star Trek ever aired, and the seventh episode ever filmed. This means that extremely early in Star Trek canon, we got an episode in which Spock was openly crying like a baby. Within the canon of Trek , it seems pretty likely that Kirk didn’t put all of that into his logs, out of respect for Spock, which is also probably doubly true of Spock yelling at people at the beginning of “Amok Time.”

"The Naked Time"

Relative to their perception of “smiling Spock,” Boimler and Mariner lack something we have as fans. We have an overall idea of “serious” Spock in our minds, but once we start looking at individual Spock stories, all from the classic era, Spock “acting out of character” becomes the basis of his character.

As Ethan Peck put it earlier in 2023 , “It’s possible that ‘normal’ Spock doesn’t exist.” But for Mariner and Boimler, they’re really only going off of history books, which were almost certainly influenced by Pike, Kirk, and others, just selectively leaving information out. Although Mariner and Boimler are somewhat obviously very aware of Pike’s tragic fate at the start of “The Menagerie,” it’s possible that they’re not aware of how that story ended for Pike. “The Menagerie” concludes with Pike living out, happily on Talos IV. But who put him there?

"Those Old Scientists"

If Spock hadn’t acted out of compassion, and stolen the U.S.S. Enterprise to get Pike to Talos, that happy ending couldn’t have happened. At the very end of that episode, that’s when Kirk confronts Spock and drops that “flagrant emotionalism” line. Spock cuts him off saying, “I see no reason to insult me, sir; I believe I've been completely logical about the whole affair.” When Boimler and Spock discuss Spock’s more stoic future reputation, Spock says, “I have no choice but to stay true to the path I have chosen in this time. If you sway me, then my future will have been altered, is that not logical?”

It’s a mic-drop moment that Boimler can’t deny, and represents one of many times this season that Spock has stood up for his human heritage a bit more than he did in The Original Series. Because even if Boimler did sway Spock a tiny bit, what this journey of self-discovery proves is that only Spock knows what’s right for Spock, and our shared definition of his character doesn’t just come from our projections or perceptions — of which there are many! Instead, the defining feature of Spock’s character isn’t coldness or emotionalism, but rather his struggle between the two. And the choices he makes aren’t about canon or the timeline. Spock’s choices to become himself in Strange New Worlds reaffirm what Kirk said in The Wrath of Khan . Of all the souls we have known in Star Trek , Spock’s is perhaps the most…human…of them all.

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Ryan Britt (he/him) is the author of several nonfiction books, most relevantly, Phasers on Stun! How the Making and Remaking of Star Trek Changed the World. He writes for a variety of publications, including Inverse, Den of Geek!, and Esquire. Ryan is a proud WGA member and a senior editor at Fatherly .

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds streams exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S., U.K., Australia, Latin America, Brazil, South Korea, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. In addition, the series airs on Bell Media’s CTV Sci-Fi Channel and streams on Crave in Canada and on SkyShowtime in the Nordics, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and Central and Eastern Europe. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1 through 4 are streaming exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S., the UK, Switzerland, South Korea, Latin America, Germany, France, Italy, Australia and Austria. Seasons 2 and 3 also are available on the Pluto TV “Star Trek” channel in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. The series streams on Super Drama in Japan, TVNZ in New Zealand, and SkyShowtime in Spain, Portugal, Poland, The Nordics, The Netherlands, and Central and Eastern Europe. In Canada, the series airs on Bell Media’s CTV Sci-Fi Channel. Star Trek: Discovery is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 First Image Reveals Spock In New Costume & Science Lab

• Lieutenant Spock debuts new space suit and Science Lab in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, leaving fans thrilled for season 3.
• Production of next 10 episodes set to finish in May; Paramount+ likely to premiere season 3 in 2025.
• Creator Bill Wolkoff reveals Spock's location in new Science Lab, with unique set design and futuristic technology.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds reveals a first look at Lieutenant Spock (Ethan Peck) in a new Starfleet space suit inside the Starship Enterprise's new Science Lab. Strange New Worlds season 3 is currently filming in Toronto , and is scheduled to complete production of its next 10 episodes in May. Fans eagerly anticipate Strange New Worlds season 3, which is likely to premiere on Paramount+ in 2025.

Variety' s cover story about the Star Trek franchise includes a first-look image of Spock wearing an updated version of the space suits from Star Trek: The Original Series. The photo also reveals the USS Enterprise's new Science Lab, a brand-new set that "boasts a transparent floor atop a four-foot pool of water that swirls underneath the central workbench, and the surrounding walls sport a half dozen viewscreens with live schematics custom designed by a six-person team." Check out the image below:

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds writer and producer Bill Wolkoff also confirms Spock wears a "hazmat suit" inside the new Science Lab in an X post:

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 - Everything We Know

New reveals about star trek: strange new worlds season 3, jonathan frakes returns to direct a hollywood murder mystery.

Along with the Starship Enterprise's new Science Lab and Spock's colorful new hazmat suit, Variety 's Star Trek cover story has some tantalizing new information about Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3 . Jonathan Frakes will direct a Strange New Worlds season 3 episode described as a " Hollywood murder mystery." Frakes, who is one of Star Trek' s most beloved and prolific directors, calls it "the best episode of television I've ever done" - a remarkable statement considering Frakes directed Strange New Worlds season 2's comedic crossover with Star Trek: Lower Decks.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds ' big swings have paid off handsomely, and season 3 ought to be no different.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds co-showrunner Akiva Goldsman teased Variety about his show's versatility with genre: "Could it do Muppets? Sure. Could it do black and white, silent, slapstick? Maybe!” Indeed, Melissa Navia, who plays Lt. Erica Ortegas, told the audience at ST-SF: Trek to San Francisco that "incredible things" are coming in Strange New Worlds season 3 . Anson Mount also hinted that Strange New Worlds season 3, episode 7 is, "Something different, something I've never done before." Star Trek: Strange New Worlds ' big swings have paid off handsomely, and season 3 ought to be no different.

Source: Variety, Twitter/X

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is available to stream on Paramount+

Cast Bruce Horak, Celia Rose Gooding, Jess Bush, Melissa Navia, Ethan Peck, Babs Olusanmokun, Rebecca Romijn, Paul Wesley, Christina Chong, Anson Mount

Streaming Service(s)

Franchise(s)

Writers Bill Wolkoff, Akiva Goldsman, Henry Alonso Myers

Directors Amanda Row, Valerie Weiss, Jonathan Frakes, Chris Fisher

Where To Watch Paramount+

• April 7, 2024 | Star Trek Coffees Launching In May With Several Blends
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• April 5, 2024 | Podcast: All Access Reviews The First Two Episodes Of ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Season 5
• April 4, 2024 | Recap/Review: ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Embraces Second Chances In “Under The Twin Moons”

Recap/Review: ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Tests Spock’s Identity In “The Serene Squall”

| June 16, 2022 | By: Anthony Pascale 276 comments so far

“The Serene Squall”

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1, Episode 7 – Debuted Thursday, June 16, 2022 Written by: Beau DeMayo & Sarah Tarkoff Directed by Sydney Freeland

Strange New Worlds brings back another classic storyline in order to do some fascinating character exploration.

Jesse James Keitel as Dr. Aspen, Anson Mount as Pike, Ethan Peck as Spock

WARNING: Spoilers below!

“This sector is the quadrant’s version of the Wild West.”

The Enterprise is on a humanitarian mission on the frontier of Federation space. A kindly Dr. Aspen convinced Starfleet to send Captain Pike in search of three lost colony ships and warns him about the dangers of a dangerous pirate ship named the Serene Squall (episode title!) that has been harassing colonists in the sector. After finding the debris from two colony ships, the crew assumes the third has been taken by the pirates with the goal of using the colonists as their booty and selling them into slavery. Pike is not having it—and isn’t going to wait for Starfleet to give him the OK to leave Federation space to save them. A distress call leads them to an asteroid field, which turns out to be a trap made of lasers that will impede any move they make–as delicately noted by Ortegas–resulting in “kaboom.” Spock sorts out the solution of how to destroy the asteroid powering the net, although he struggles with Pike’s insistence to go with his “gut” to decide between two equally possible choices.

Dr. Aspen seeks Spock out to offer counsel; they have taken a keen interest in him since coming on board and show a deep understanding of Vulcan culture. Spock was already out of sorts, starting off the episode with an awkward remote sex chat with T’Pring that sent him to his buddy Christine Chapel for more advice, this time on how to deal with his girlfriend’s strange new interest in human sexuality. Aspen urges Spock to find a new balance between his halves, but he isn’t ready for that, asking “If I am not Human or Vulcan, what am I?” Before this profound question of identity can be addressed, the third colony ship is found. Pike leads an armed landing party to free the hostages but finds an empty cargo hold. It’s a trap! While Pike and team are captured, other pirates board the Enterprise with firefights and Number One quickly locks out the ship’s controls. Spock embraces his Vulcan side to take out a few bad guys before escaping the bridge with Dr. Aspen.

Ethan Peck as Spock and Jesse James Keitel as Dr. Aspen

“We’re starting a mutiny!”

Pike meets the pirates, led by Remy, who informs him the supposed colony ship is actually the Serene Squall itself, now home to Number One and the rest of the caged Enterprise crew. After some small talk and complimenting his handsomeness, Remy starts torturing Pike for the command codes, but even with a bloody lip and his signature coif mangled, Chris holds his ground, suggesting he instead cook the pirates a decent meal. That’s one ballsy Boy Scout. Using a bit of clever social engineering, Pike manipulates Remy into a plan to sell the crew to the Klingons—which sounds bad but it’s all part of his plan to drive a wedge between Remy and his pirate crew.

On the Enterprise, Spock and Aspen sneak through the Enterprise, and separately, Nurse Chapel does the same, showing off her bedside manner by taking out some pirates with a hypospray. Dr. Aspen recommends they leave the ship, revealing a personal connection by telling Spock the pirates killed their Vulcan husband, which is why they left Starfleet for humanitarian work. Spock isn’t leaving, and instead arms them as they head to engineering to find Christine trying to get past that lockout to send a distress call. Spock uses his codes to take control of the ship, but it turns out to be another trap: Dr. Aspen is actually the dread pirate Captain Angel. On the bridge, Angel gets comfortable in the captain’s chair and informs Spock that their whole colonist sob story plan to capture the ship was actually all about him, and it isn’t just because they think he’s cute.

Anson Mount as Pike, Lawrence Libor as Weapons Pirate, and Michael Hough as Remy

“The logical move is to surrender.”

Captain Angel’s true motivation is revealed in a call to T’Pring, who happens to work at a Vulcan rehabilitation center (don’t call it a prison, it’s nice). They want an exchange of loves: Spock for a Vulcan named Xaverius. Angel knows T’Pring’s bond with Spock will get her to agree, and they’re proven right as T’Pring shows up at the agreed exchange spot, but now it’s time for Spock to spring a trap of his own. He apologizes to T’Pring for giving in to his human desires, and his pal Christine catches on and “reveals” they’ve been having an affair. They sell it with a very convincing kiss, and even if jaded Angel isn’t buying, it’s enough for T’Pring to sever the marriage bond and therefore any obligation. That’s right, Angel got Spockblocked. Before they can take out the Vulcan ship, the Serene Squall shows up and starts firing on the Enterprise, locking out the pirates once again. The mutiny plan worked and Pike is now in command of the pirate ship. Angel knows how to read a room and transports away to their secret hidden shuttle, leaving the rest of the pirates at the mercy of Starfleet.

With Captain Pike and his hair back in place, Spock faces T’Pring, who says she saw right through the “gambit” with Chapel, dismissing any notion that he could really have feelings for her. Apparently, denial is also not a river on Vulcan. Inspired by his human passion roleplaying, T’Pring suggests a “rebonding”… wink, wink. Christine later tells Spock she knows the score: He is with T’Pring, and therefore as an honorable man, she is firmly in the friend zone.  But she is curious about Xaverius, noting that Spock had indicated he knew him. He reveals that it is an assumed name for another son of Sarek, one who has rejected logic, someone he was told to avoid “at all costs.” That’s right. Say it with me… Sybok!

Ethan Peck as Spock and Jesse James Keitel as Captain Angel

Finding an identity

Another solid Strange New Worlds episode provides an interesting spin on the old ship-gets-taken-over scenario, with added focus on developing the character of Spock. Strong themes of things not appearing to be what they seem and identity tie it together, but some abrupt tonal changes hold the episode back.

Ethan Peck carried much of the weight of the episode, with guest star Jesse James Keitel’s inspired casting to help explore Spock’s big issue of finding the right balance between his Human and Vulcan halves. This is an issue he won’t resolve fully until the TOS movie era when he rejects the Kolinahr , a ritual he is still very much looking forward to here. We can also see how his relationship with T’Pring wraps into him seeing himself as Vulcan, dashing any hope for exploring the clear connection he has with Chapel. Keitel showed range as both the syrupy Dr. Aspen and the ruthless Captain Angel, both of whom had the same message for Spock to reject trying to fit himself into boxes so he can find his own identity. Spock has always been a character who appealed to those who feel like outsiders, including many in the LGBTQ+ community, and so Keitel (as a nonbinary trans actress playing a nonbinary character) delivering this message to Spock was particularly on point.

Jesse James Keitel as Dr. Aspen as Ethan Peck as Spock

Shortcuts to the long game

The big twist—Angel’s reveal as the pirate captain—was unnecessarily given away early on when Remy revealed the colony ship was actually the Serene Squall, indicating that Aspen was at least working with the pirates. Captain Pike’s little story of fomenting mutiny on the Serene Squall was a lot of fun, allowing Anson Mount and other members of the cast to play some broad humor, and the snappy chemistry between Pike and Ortegas continues to be one of the highlights of the series; Melissa Navia has great timing, too. Having Pike beat the pirates with his wits was classic Star Trek; however, the almost sitcom-y tone of this subplot didn’t fit well with the main story.  Pike’s hilarious cliché pirate talk at the end almost made it all worth it, but this comedic tone undercut the stakes of the episode, with apparently no casualties after supposedly ruthless pirates took the Enterprise and the crew fought to reclaim their ship. There’s also is a lot of handwaving needed to buy how easy it was for Angel to lure the exact ship they needed into this trap, with either some elaborate offscreen detailing or an unforgivable lack of due diligence back at Starfleet.

Some of the plot shortcuts are due to the episodic nature of the series and the need to begin and wrap up a story efficiently, but we can see the where Strange New Worlds is also effective with serialization when it comes to the characters. The show has been playing the long game here, setting up many elements that paid off like elements of the Spock/T’Pring relationship, Spock’s growing chemistry with Chapel, and even the setup of T’Pring as a rehabilitation officer to loop her into a story that will bring in Sybok. That also appears to be leading somewhere, although no actor was yet credited as Spock’s half-brother initially introduced in Star Trek V . It’s still a good bet the series will return to him, and there is plenty of room in canon to explore this unusual, yet potentially fascinating Vulcan. And speaking of long games, the episode also subtly introduced the character of Stonn as a rehabilitation colleague of T’Pring’s, setting up that she eventually will choose him over Spock in “Amok Time.” This episode also showed how even though Jess Bush’s Chapel is very much different from the demure Chapel of TOS, there’s some strong connective tissue to the TOS character. Underneath the bravado of SNW’s Chapel, there’s tremendous vulnerability as she accepts her fate to be friend-zoned by the man she’s falling for, smitten by his integrity as well as his confidence… and that passionate kiss.

Jess Bush as Nurse Chapel

Final thoughts

A fun pirate story mixed together with a thoughtful exploration of Spock’s identity adds up to yet another win for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds .

Lawerence Libor as Weapons Pirate

Random bits

• This is the second Strange New Worlds writing credit for both co-producer Sarah Tarkoff and supervising producer Beau DeMayo.
• This is the first Star Trek credit for director Sydney Freeland.
• Stardate 1997.9.
• Once again, Bruce Horak’s Hemmer does not appear.
• Angel (as Dr. Aspen) called Pike “Starfleet’s Boy Scout,” and Number One said it was in his file. In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan David Marcus calls Captain Kirk an “overgrown Boy Scout.” Captain Archer of the NX-01 was a Boy Scout and an Eagle Scout.
• Using remote codes to take over a Starfleet ship is a move that Kirk will use on Khan Noonien-Singh when he takes over the USS Reliant in Star Trek II .
• The laser trap used by the pirates resembled the web-like tractor field used by Tholians first seen in TOS’ “The Tholian Web.”
• Pike’s “Alpha Braga IV” plan to foment mutiny with the pirates could be named for longtime Star Trek writer/producer Brannon Braga .
• Sybok was described as a V’tosh ka’tur , or a Vulcan without logic, first referenced in the Enterprise episode “Fusion.”
• The location of the Ankeshtan K’Til Vuclan Criminal Rehabilitation Center was on the 3rd moon of Omicron Lyrae, which is a reference to a recurring location in the X universe of videogames .
• Dr. Aspen was a counselor on Starbase 12 , which has been mentioned in multiple Trek series starting with TOS’ “Space Seed.”
• Remy’s plan to sell the Enterprise crew to the Klingons was to start at Qu’Vat Colony , which was a Klingon outpost in the 22nd century seen in Star Trek: Enterprise .
• Like a good pirate ship, the Serene Squall had a functional ship’s wheel.
• On the Serene Squall, Remy sat at (presumably Captain Angel’s) desk, which had what looked like a Vulcan Kal-toh game .
• Did anyone go back to look for the real stranded Dr. Aspen? Hope so!

Michael Hough as Remy

More to come

Every Friday, the TrekMovie.com All Access Star Trek Podcast  covers the latest news in the Star Trek Universe and discusses the latest episode. The podcast is available on Apple Podcasts ,  Spotify ,  Pocket Casts ,  Stitcher and is part of the TrekMovie Podcast Network.

New episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds debut on Thursdays exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S., Latin America, Australia and the Nordics. The series airs on Bell Media’s CTV Sci-Fi Channel and streams on Crave in Canada. In New Zealand, it is available on TVNZ , and in India on  Voot Select .  Strange New Worlds  will arrive via Paramount+ in select countries in Europe when the service launches later this year, starting with the UK and Ireland in June.

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It’s like I’m 10 again. Thanks, SNW!

I love this because it’s true.

Amen to that!

It is a damn good time to be a Trekkie. Wowowowow.

Painfully bad! Excruciating. Laughable.

Oh, so you were ten during the first season of Enterprise. Wild time, Scott Bakula, 9/11, those Don Rumsfeld riddles…

Today, Strange New Worlds dives into a very common Trek trope, weirdly weak aliens somehow implausibly capturing the Starfleet Flagship for nefarious purposes! We’ve seen this many times, perhaps most memorably in the TNG episode Rascals. SNW hasn’t been afraid to make extensive use of Trek tropes in its freshman season, but in this episode for the first time it’s not amazing.  Don’t get me wrong, even though I liked this episode the least, it’s a quite good and perfectly serviceable story with good character development. Let’s go through this episode piece by piece:

The episode opens up with T’Pring hilariously telling Spock she’s reading smutty human books with the intention of exploring Spock’s uh… human side of his sexuality. Watching Spock choke on his drink when he hears this was hilarious. Spock then immediately goes to Nurse Chapel for help, who offers some good relationship advice, although it’s very obvious she has feelings for him. 

Next up, we have a Dr. Aspen telling Pike and the crew over dinner about colonial ships in trouble, and Pike immediately has the Enterprise leave Federation space to rescue them. From the start it’s incredibly obvious that Dr. Aspen is up to no good, which makes Pike’s actions less believable. Enterprise wanders into a Tholian-style trap, which Spock unravels. Dr. Aspen clearly is taken with Spock. Chapel, T’Pring, Aspen, everyone’s into Spock!

Dr. Aspen, or Captain Angel, makes her incredibly predictable double-cross and captures the ship and crew. The crew is imprisoned on the Serene Squall, and what Pike does is exactly why he’s one of the greatest captains of the franchise. He offers to make the pirate crew a proper meal, exposes the interim pirate captain’s plan to sell them to the Klingons, and wins over the pirate crew by simply showing he cares about their well-being. 

Meanwhile on the Enterprise, Angel tries to blackmail T’Pring into handing over her mysterious lover in exchange for Spock. To stop this, Spock proclaims that he and Chapel are having an affair, giving T’Pring a reason to “end” their relationship on the spot and defeat Angel’s plan. Pike comes in to save the day, Angel escapes, and Spock is in a tough position. T’Pring and Chapel both say Spock is too Vulcan to love anyone but T’Pring, and both are in love with him. 

Even though this was a very predictable and not thrilling episode, it’s still good. First episode of the season that’s not great. But if this is the worst SNW has to offer, then this is the best Trek show in decades. Also, seeing Pike do a pirate impression at the end was worth everything and then some. That was hilarious. How is Pike so incredibly charming??? And Spock too tbh. 

I’m a little embarrassed to admit I did not pick up on Angel’s double cross. When it happened to me it came out of left field. Essentially one eyebrow raised.

The writing of Pike trying to start a mutiny was a little too obvious and the acting as unusually over the top, continuing to remind the audience of what they are doing. That could have been a lot more subtle. But Secret Hideout had a hard time with subtlety.

Yep I didn’t see it coming either. I thought that might have been the twist they were setting up before the episode started. But once I watched it, it never dawned on me that she would be the villain. But I loved it!

My husband expected it all along, but luckily he kept that to himself, because I was surprised when Aspen/Angel turned on Spock and Chapel.

That was a huge step down from last Weeks outing. Not terrible but nothing special either. And using the “Tholian” Web in the preview was a bit clickbait…y in my opinion.

The guest actress was okay but got too much and too little screentime at the same time. Her immediate connection with Spock just comes out of nowhere and should have been developed more and after the “twist” her overacting and scenery chewing is wayyyy too over the top. But that might actually be more the directors fault.

And then there’s SNWs general problem with the episodes being somewhat empty in calories. What is this even supposed to be about? At the start it felt like they were using Spocks Human and Vulcan sides as a Trans-Metaphor. Not the most original idea but not a bad one either. But it went absolutely nowhere and didn’t really make sense in universe either since the character of the scientist/pirate wasn’t trans, only the actor.

In lots of Documentaries about TNG you hear the story that Roddenberry had the habit of asking authors what the story is actually about and refusing to use the script until he got an answer that makes sense to him. For all his failings, that’s something that’s sorely missing from this show. Even though it doesn’t make it a bad show.

Also: I don’t know where the Sybock thing is going but I don’t really want to know. Make up your own characters and stories god damn it! 🙄

I was with the episode until the Big Twist. After that, it just seemed like a series of cliched villain lines and other bits of ham, and it never quite recovered for me. The Sybok reveal didn’t help. Are we supposed to be excited about seeing him?

Yeah, that was so weird. The stuff between Spock and the “counsellor” really worked. I was actually interested to see, where they’re taking this. Turns out: nowhere.

Ir reminds me a little of the first discovery Season, where they had this really interesting PTSD Storyline with Ash. But instead of it going somewhere, they did a twist, that he’s actually a Klingon. Same with the Captain being an evil Mirror Universe Space Nazi, which killed every interesting aspect about his character.

There should really be a giant sign in the Writers Room for all these Star Trek shows, that just says: “No Twists! And People can be interesting without trauma in their past! Oh and for the love of god, no more Space Tentacles, Alex!” 😁

Yes, I’ve grown to dislike the surprise villain twist. It’s old and tiresome. Like something out of a dime novel from 1880.

Dr. Aspen was far more interesting than Angel. Her scenes with Spock seemed like they were building to something interesting. Maybe the non-binary discussion was less-than-subtle but it wasn’t terrible. Then, like you said, it went nowhere.

Yes, it looked like the writers were on work-experience at Discovery’s writing room.

You know you could just not take cheap shots at Discovery? It’s become a tired trope at this point. The way people will go out of their way to trash a show they don’t like is as bizarre as it was disturbing.

It’s really getting out of hand, and it’s frankly just plain juvenile and rude.

It’s a show by the same producers falling into the terrrible habits of one of their other shows. How exactly is it unfair to compare the two?

Not sure it was a twist….I just completely forgot about Sybok.

We already knew Sybok was someone who rejected Vulcan logic and the implications were there in this episode (ie Spock saying about not being sure as to what he is).

It all came together although again, not everyone can be pleased.

It was presented, formally, as a twist by withholding the reveal of the true identity of the prisoner until the end and then giving his appearance a very dramatic introductory shot.

Not Sybok, the twist of Aspen being a villain. Like I said, that was the twist, then it became a series of cliched villainy. Then we got the Sybok reveal.

Sorry if I didn’t make that clear in my earlier comment, I was typing fast.

Ah ok, sorry. Aspen was a very predictible twist without question. I think most of us called it a quarter way through the episode!

I’ll give them this much… Just this little bit they revealed makes a semblance of sense given what we know of Sybok from TFF. I actually expected them to bring in Sybok and make him… Well… Something else.

But we don’t really know what they are going to do with him yet. This is episode 7 so there isn’t much time if they are.

Well, there’s always next season to bring back Sybok again. Personally, I’d rather not have to deal again with Sybok, if it means more time with his over-the-top mustache-twirling spouse, Captain Angel! Hope they do something more interesting with the final three episodes.

Being in a TOS movie, Sybok is inarguably canon, yet I’ve seen many people throughout the years half-humorously refer to the events in Final Frontier as apocryphal — wishful thinking, I guess! But today’s episode firmly shoves Sybok back into canon territory; can’t ignore it now…

Because no one has ever argued that the secret hideout shows aren’t canon ;-)

“Canon and canon, what is canon?”

I think it was an interesting character mirroring Spock’s human/vulcan side with the actor, which could be seen as both binary (Vulcan and Human or non-binary (neither Vulcan nor Human, simply Spock). The twist was odd but made the episode “spicy”. So Angel was basically Hans Gruber from Die Hard?!? When Chapel fled through the Jeffries Tube I really had the impression this would gonna be “Starship Mine” which again is the TNG version of Die hard. An odd, but funny episode. SWN turns out to be funnier as the new season of The Orville! I suppose season 1 is testing various styles to see what fans like and don’t like.

Yeah, that is the weird thing to me. The Actress is trans and might see herself as non-binary (I honestly don’t know) but the character isn’t. So her “insights” from a character standpoint were weird. Especially since I don’t think most current trans issues would still be a thing in Roddenberrys vision of the future.

But I could have forgiven that, if they just went anywhere with it. As it stands its that one set up scene and a short villain speech at the end. There’s no real point.

But yeah. Maybe they’re trying out stuff. As a first Season of a Trek show there sure have been worse (though I do not know if that would hold true, if you just took the ten best episodes from each Post TOS shows First Season 🤔)

The character is non-binary in-universe, using they/them pronouns. As far as “trans issues,” there weren’t any within the show. No one batted an eye at using the pronouns, because Dr. Aspen already disclosed them to the people who would need to know.

Regarding the one scene in which a character did have an issue declaring pronouns, Adira’s NB status was new to them, and they were a teenager. It will always be difficult for someone to come to terms with their identity, even if that identity is cishet, for no other reason than because puberty is difficult for everyone.

Did I miss something? The character was never addressed as “them” by anyone 🤨

Christine literally refers to Aspen using the “they” pronoun in her the scene with her and Spock in the corridor.

That is something I didn’t notice because English is not my native language and I sometimes miss details That also went totally down in the german dub when mentioned in Discovery. I was clueless when I followed the discussion about that.

Was sagen sie denn in der deutschen Discovery Version? :-D

Pike said “their” or “them” right at the very end, but that was it as far as I recall. I’m not sure if we meant to infer it from either familiarity or what could possibly be construed as androgynous clothing. In the run up to this ep, there were posts on here and elsewhere about there being a non-binary actor/character, but I didn’t know if it would just be like “hey, cool, representation” or if it would be used for some kind of message. I much prefer subtlety over the heavy-handedness of DIS, but maybe it was *too* subtle here. The whole metaphor didn’t quite land.

There was a “they” from Chapel at the beginning and one from Pike at the end.

Of course, the person she were referring to at the beginning turned out *not* to be the same one he was referring to at the end. So…how did that work? Is she a member of some species who are all “they”? Did she pause in the hijacking at some point and say, “Angel, the pirate taking over your ship, pronouns they/them/their”? Please.

Back in the 60’s, liberated women wore miniskirts, so the producers of TOS thought it completely sensible that female officers on a starship three centuries hence would do so. We look back on those passing fashions and chuckle. If we’re very lucky, we’ll look back on this in the not-too-distant future and…well, miniskirts is one thing. Chuckling over some things won’t be possible.

I hope I am not giving too many spoilers, but I disagree. That was straight up in-your-face identity politics. It was almost cringeworthy. The moment the character turned up in the rubber catsuit, you know she was the baddie. The fact the actor is trans is just a sledgehammer, and all the marketing on her being non-binary is just ridiculous. It really is the problem with modern storytelling; the lack of nuance. She even has some really divisive dialogue over identity. I’m sorry, I can’t quote, because that is not an episode I wish to see again, it will only make me nervous of what is to come. Every season has those really bad eps you wish you hadn’t seen, this is one of those.

Now, can someone clarify who exactly the big green scot was, please, and the black human woman who as Pike says, I believe, the brains of the operation? I don’t understand, it was all so muddled.

Marketing has nothing to do with the story. This obsession some fans have with how the show is marketed is just bizarre. If you don’t like the marketing department touting the diversity of a show, then just ignore that and watch the show. It’s not like the show itself has ads saying as much in-universe.

This whole rants reeks of transphobia and it’s incredibly offensive.

Agreed. Just pathetic.

Nice outrage. It was just a matter of time before someone had to use the word ‘transphobia’.

It applies here.

That the very existence of a non-binary character is political to the person reeks of fear.

Angel/Aspen existing and being comfortable with that is the “propaganda” this sad little poster is referring to.

And yes, it is an apt simile since the character settled with they, between IDs, non-binary. Just as Spock is struggling with two IDs human/Vulcan.

Fun fact: a biracial fan wrote Nimoy back in the day about connecting with Spock’s specifically because of him being both Vulcan and human and Nimoy’s response was supportive.

That’s pretty mich my problem wirth it. Using Spocks struggle with his identity to say something about gender identity and in the proces exploring gender identity in the Trek-Future isn’t a bad idea. But they did nothing with it. It’s one short scene, that doesn’t even make sense in-universe and that’s it.

The Orville tried a similar thing in it’s first season. And while you can argue, that that episode also didn’t achive it’s goal, it was at least about the thing they were trying to say something about.

To me that’s where most of the criticism percieved as x-phobic or x-ist comes from. It’s not that “woke” topics don’t merit great stories (there’s plenty of examples) it’s just that nowadays they’re just soooo badly written. (which doesn’t mean, that some people are just A-holes … that’s how it is)

Anyone who was bi-racial or raised by parents of different faiths could relate to Spock back in the 1960’s and in the decades that followed. The character continues to have an impact on people today.

It was total justified. Also nice of you to openly show yourself as a bigot with your comment, Chris. Dismissing flagrant uses of transphobia is transphobic- so congratulations on showing yourself up.

You don’t know me, I could be anything, so stick your judgement.

I don’t think the marketing was an issue. For certain communities, it’s a big deal, and of course a marketing team is going to make noise about it. However, within the story, I just don’t think it worked because the character’s non-binary status didn’t feature in the plot, so the comparison with Spock’s own situation wasn’t there to be made. Maybe the writers were worried after some fans’ responses to DIS’ handling of non-binary.

As for the big green bloke, I assumed he was Angel’s second in command, who was posing as the captain as part of the ruse. The woman was just a member of the crew. She was singled out by Pike because she was visibly unhappy with what the green (Orion?) guy was doing (maybe he wasn’t quite following Angel’s plan to the letter and letting power go to his head).

I don’t think the episode was quite as bad as you say. It certainly had some good moments in it, even if it wasn’t perfect. Though yes, Angel was clearly the baddie from the beginning. The identity politics bit was only part of it – is that what you’re basing your view of the whole episode on?

To be sure, it didn’t work for you . Just because you didn’t get it, doesn’t mean it wasn’t there to get.

Stop gaslighting people! Just because someone doesn’t like a plot-element or thinks it was badly executed, does not mean, he doesn’t “get it” …

I totally got it, but that was mostly due to having the advance knowledge of the casting of the actor and the marketing around them. My point is that within the context of the episode, in-universe, there was nothing in the story to suggest that this character was non-binary, to suggest that these words had any specific meaning and weighting. I can only recall one reference to the character’s pronouns at the very end of the episode. We didn’t have any moments with the character where they related their own experiences to Spock’s. The context was completely missing. The character wasn’t obviously non-binary presenting (I’m not even sure what non-binary presenting would look like and I don’t think we should be so proscriptive anyway). It would have been possible to watch that episode assuming that the character was a woman, possibly with the knowledge that the actor is non-binary (because after all, it is acting, I have no issues with a non-binary person playing a binary person), or possibly without. In that case, if an audience member is watching what they presume to be a woman character giving this speech, is the intended meaning not then totally lost? I just think this could have been handled better.

Just to be clear: I want as much representation on Star Trek as possible. Represent all of humanity. Every part of the spectrum/rainbow/diverse tapestry that makes up our species and society. I just want it to be better executed.

Identity politics, the politics of being. Some people are for some people “being,” while other people are against some people “being.” What a juvenile conflict and it’s offensive to think that bigotry has to be offered a seat at the table of discussion.

Well said, Mudd.

Exactly! When one person’s mere right to openly exist the same as everyone else is someone’s else flagrant “identity politics”, then the latter should begin asking themselves some important questions. You’d think that mindset would come a bit more naturally to Trekkies, but there’ll always be fans who miss the point I guess. But anyway, you’re right on target with what you said.

Shame on you!

Jesus, that’s a lot to unpack at once there. Can you try saying one problematic thing at a time?

I didn’t know she was trans so I guess that was all lost on me, huh?

As for the rest…Huh?

It was actually Michael Piller who asked what the story was actually about, and how did it relate to and change one or more of the characters. Roddenberry just rejected scripts if they didn’t follow that day’s arbitrary rules that he had decided was and wasn’t Star Trek and then re-wrote them to insert his ego into the franchise. It’s telling that none of his re-writes are ever in an article with the title: “Great TNG Episodes”.

Oh well … there goes one of the few positive things I had to say about Roddenberry 😅

Anyways … RIP Michael Piller. You’re missed.

Piller is definitely missed!

No, you were right. Piller credited Roddenberry for teaching him that.

You’re mistaken. Piller himself said it was Roddenberry who taught him the “what’s it about?” way to approach a story.

I’m not sure if they’ll let me post a link here, just look up “michael piller roddenberry” on Youtube. The first video is him talking about this.

In lots of Documentaries about TNG you hear the story that Roddenberry had the habit of asking authors what the story is actually about and refusing to use the script until he got an answer that makes sense to him

And yet when he had that level of control in S1 and S2, we got some of the blandest, piss-poor quality Trek eps in the history of the franchise.

Be careful what you wish for. :-)

Believe me. Im the last person to praise Roddenberry for anything. But a show is always a creative process and if there’s some weird limitations you have to work around, it can be incredibly enriching.

I don’t know how it is on P+ but at least in the early days of Netflix originals they gave the creatives an incredible amount of freedom. Which led to some really good shows but also bloated Episodes and really slow moving plots that were barely enough to fill two episodes let alone a season of a show. Sometimes the Network Execs aren’t a bad thing. And other times they want a new boyband playing in the mess hall of every other Enterprise Episode 😅

Good points!

The quality of early TNG aside, it’s still good advice for writers.

Did anybody notice during the bridge scene when they were trapped in the asteroid field, that Captain Pike was looking the wrong way when the Enterprise fired it’s phasers and destroyed the asteroid.

I did not! Nice catch!

So this weeks episode was really good i enjoyed it alot.

The best thing i liked about this episode was Dr.Aspen/Captain Angel i loved the character and yes i know the character was actually the baddie but i still loved the character. I’m happy that SNW brought in a trans character. Discovery has done the LGBTQIA+ community justice and it’s great seeing SNW getting into it too and i hope we get more characters from the LGBTQIA+ community in the future and i really hope in S2 the writers add a trans character to the man cast.

I liked seeing Sybok at the end even if it was mostly the back of his head lol. Though i hope we see more back story to the character in later episodes and i would love more flashbacks to Spock’s childhood with Micheal Burnham too as we need more of their story.

Overall a really good episode and so far this season of SNW has been good though it wouldn’t be in my top 10 of best seasons of Trek.

She wasn’t a trans character, was she? Was that states anywhere in the episode? 🤔

I think we could speculate about that, but since it isn’t stated, it is exactly how Star Trek Universe should be: it isn’t a thing.

The character uses they/them pronouns. I think Angel is non-binary, but not necessarily trans.

Regardless of all that, a very attractive individual and a very good actor.

Seriously, they are a terrible actor? Completely cringe-worthy, over the top scenery chewing performance, channeling Drag Race to boot. It was a weak episode let down by a poor guest performance.

That was my question from some of these posts. Was she a trans character? I thought she was some new alien. Either way, does it matter? Knowing that doesn’t change the episode or her role one teeny tiny bit.

I don’t think the character herself is trans, just the actor.

But I thought she was a new alien too. Is she suppose to be human?

She/They is a trans acress portraying a non-binary character. What we old folks back in the day would call androgenous (i.e. Bowie, Prince). Instead of just dressing the part they are between the genders.

Seven episodes into the season and not a weak episode yet. That hasn’t happened since TOS. SNW is knocking it out of the park.

Was not a fan of TOS but this has been superb!

Easily the best first season of a Trek show since TOS.

Incredible that there are only 3 episodes left! I wanna have a full season with 24 episodes!

I don’t think ANYBODY does 24 episodes anymore.

Law and Order still does it baby! That show will outlive Star Trek and much of the planet once the ice caps melt.

16 – 24 episodes is still a thing on broadcast and cable but Paramount+ can’t afford to churn out three 24 episode live action Star Trek series. You’re basically looking at a budget for the total number of live-action Star Trek episodes combined to be produced each year and what you’re getting is essentially a single season’s worth of shows spread over three series.

It didn’t even happen in TOS lol. I can’t think of watching seven episodes straight without any stinkers in its first season. I always hated Charlie X and Mudd’s Women. And don’t get me started on Miri. One of the creepiest episodes I will never watch again after rewatching it first season.

I will say the difference between TOS and SNW first season is that a lot of TOS has a very horror/dour vibe at times. I mean I can’t imagine an episode where Pike kills his best friend who turns into a demigod lol.

I always hated Charlie X and Mudd’s Women. And don’t get me started on Miri. One of the creepiest episodes I will never watch again after rewatching it first season .

LOL, agreed, although Charlie X I disliked mainly because I wanted to step in and give that super annoying kid a can of whoop-ass.

You rattled off three of the worst episodes from the first season! It didn’t start of great. The bulk of the first season stinkers were aired up front. But when you look at the production order the good ones and worse ones are fairly even…

Yeah I know. I’m only saying it wasn’t a perfect first season in the way SNW is turning out for me so far. But of course SNW will only have a third of the episodes TOS did in its first season. So I try not to compare the new shows like the old ones because the old ones have so many more.

The vast majority of the first season episodes had strong horror elements, just as the third season was mostly ghost stories.

Oh how can you hate Charlie X? Those uncomfortable father-son scenes between Kirk and Charlie were great. And the look on Janice’s face when Charlie swats her on the butt is classic!

Progressive: casting a trans person to play a nonbinary character. Not progressive: falling into the 100-year old “queer villain” writers trope

Also, for the second straight week, they give the antagonist the last word, which formally suggests that’s the writers point, and for the second straight week, the writers are saying “Everybody thinks the good stuff in Star Trek is good, but what if… it’s actually bad?” Captain Angel’s line (paraphrasing) “Your human side versus your Vulcan side was always a false choice” is bizarre and doesn’t feel like an idea fully considered, merely thrown out there as a way of rebelling against the ideas from the sixties.

Anyway, I know we’re not allowed to take issue with the show breaking, bending, discarding, or insulting canon, so at the end of the day, whatever to this point about the “false choice” concept offered at the end.

But, this was the first week of the show where I learned that we must also not take issue with breaking, bending, discarding, or insulting science or even the internal logic of the storytelling. We are told that the Enterprise is too far away from Fed space to have live communication, and yet we see Angel talking to T’Pring. And then a ship from inside Federation space warps into the system in no time at all. I understand that Star Trek is not and has never been science fiction (it has always been science fantasy), but I guess I didn’t realize how much I need to turn my brain off to even make sense of this show half the time.

Finally, this show is so desperate to be cool. “Pro tip,” EDM blasting from the cool guest star’s quarters, and I don’t have a third thing off the top of my head to complete this thought, but it’s very sweaty. Very “here’s what a middle aged dude thinks the kids think is cool.” Because they very much want to make Star Trek cool for the first time ever. (They will not succeed — Star Trek at its best is far, far away from what’s considered present day cool. That has always been the case.)

But as dumb as this one was, it was still not as bad as that Gorn episode. I liked all the Aspen/Angel-Spock stuff. I just don’t agree they should’ve had the last word.

My main problem with that EDM blasting scene was that we haven’t managed to soundproof a room 200 years in the Future 😁

Hah, I thought of that, too, but it bothered me far less than the purpose of that entire (pointless) beat: to show that Aspen is “hella cool yo.”

Make that over 350 years on the future. After all, everyone on Voyager deck 9, section 8 knew when Tom and B’Elanna were having intimate relations!

Just can’t please everyone….

You’re right on with that. 100%. And I confess I’m hard to please where Star Trek is concerned. I’m definitely biased by a few of the older shows (TOS, TNG, DS9), which featured some of the best television writing of their eras. And I’d like to feel like my subscription dollars aren’t going towards product that feels like “Baby’s First TV Show” half the time.

Well put, kudos.

“Everybody thinks the good stuff in Star Trek is good, but what if… it’s actually bad?” From the description this episode doesn’t sound like my cup of tea at all, but in principle, I have no problems with that at all. DS9 in fact did it all the time, and went to much darker places in terms of calling into question just how utopian the Trek future was than anything SNW has even attempted.

Yeah, and then DS9 dramatized the conflict, usually as a problem our heroes had to solve, either because they stumbled across it or their prior actions led them to a certain point of conflict. They just didn’t leave it to some gotcha! last line type of situation. We ought to be predisposed to take what the antagonist says with a grain of salt. If Spock had done something to the effect of take Angel’s thought to heart, then that should’ve been dramatized in the closing scene with T’Pring. Instead we get makeup sex and all is well.

I don’t have a problem with challenging Trek’s ideology, either, but this SH crew only ever seems to be able to offer surface-level criticism and hacky drama as the tools for said challenge. I’m annoyed by the bad drama and the writers room’s churlishness towards aspects of the IP they’re paid to manage.

But we know where things eventually end up between Spock and T’Pring. Episodes like this are part of the journey to that outcome. In the short term all might be well between the two of them but that’s not going to last.

That’s an interesting point because it raises the question, “Who is this show for?” because the answer tells us a great deal about what we should or shouldn’t know.

Long-time Star Trek viewers know what happens in the Spock-T’Pring relationship AND they know that Spock’s long-time biological conflict lasts all the way until he mind melds with V’Ger.

Are Strange New Worlds viewers expected to have done the reading or is this new show made for everyone but especiall y new viewers? In either case, it shouldn’t let the writers off the hook for crafting good drama.

Even in shows with serialized character arcs, the good ones have a catharsis or payoff in an episode ostensibly about a character’s particular journey. In this case, the episode is pretty jumbled in terms of Spock’s storyline so that Angel’s ending note doesn’t really bring it into focus. T’Pring brings up human sexuality, Chapel says Vulcans are always honest. Then Spock lies to save the ship (human side!) and has sex with T’Pring in the Vulcan way (haha reversal of human sexuality!) So, he’s kinda already proved Angel’s point through action, but the writers were insistent on making the point that YOU THE VIEWER does not have to be what somebody tells you to be. Just be who you are.

Which, again, is didactic and not dramatic. And it’s coming from a liar, so why should this person get the closing thought?

I just rewatched the Spock-T’Pring makeup scene and it’s all T’Pring talking *at Spock* including that whopper of a line about how she knows he could never have feelings for Chapel. That’s sort of high school-level melodrama that discards their own setup: she wants to have makeup sex, she talked about human sexuality in the beginning, here’s a chance for Spock to tie in Angel’s remarks by, like, stopping her with a line like, “I am interested in rebonding with you, T’Pring. However, you must know… and perhaps in time understand, that I am also interested in… making love to you.” Again, I’m just pitching slop off the top of my head, but that last scene was so limp (just like last week’s sad gaze out a window) that it just didn’t payoff a moment that had been setup.

(sorry for long answers, everybody. will try to do better.)

<i>They just didn’t leave it to some gotcha! last line type of situation. </i>

This was a veritable deus ex machina if I every saw one. Pike got an entire crew to mutiny by cooking dinner. He announced his plan within earshot of the Orion guy.

Star Trek Continues, on its low budget and amateur actors, got an Orion slaver (played by Lou Ferrigno) right, unlike this one.

“The Serene Squall” was a cool ship name, though, I’ll give them that.

I think the episode is being over-analyzed a bit (hard to believe for these parts, I know). You could read all sorts of stuff into what Aspen/Angel was saying or you could just chalk it up to their playing mind games to stay one step ahead of their adversary. When viewing it, I just went along with the main story and focused on it as a somewhat lightweight adventure with an antagonist who nudges Spock into maybe beginning to view his place in the universe in a slightly different light. I may try to mine more from it on a future viewing but for now I found the Sybok connection at the end and the very strong suggestion that we’ll be seeing more of him more interesting.

True representation comes from saturation, thereby ensuring that no one person of a particular identity bears the burden of representing that identity. Remember when Una asked “What if I wasn’t one of the good ones?” This is what that’s about. Representation means the whole range of human experiences within an identity are shown. It means every identity should get to have villains. It means debunking the model minority myth as the dogma of assimilation.

Regarding Angel’s point to Spock, they’re right. Spock needn’t choose between the two options within a binary. Spock needn’t fit into a box.

And the reason Pike didn’t answer the question last week is because no system is completely foolproof. He knew Alora was wrong in spirit, but couldn’t definitively say she was technically wrong, because the UFP has trillions of citizens. It’s impossible to know whether or not every single one managed not to fall through the cracks. The episode wasn’t saying Alora was right. It was saying that Pike was unwilling to lie by saying he could honestly guarantee no one was in poverty within the Federation.

There’s a difference between contacting UFP space from the edge of the frontier and contacting a nearby rehabilitation facility. Range matters.

And I’m saying all that is fine conceptually and in a discussion like this, but it wasn’t earned dramatically — what we see and hear. Last week, Alara gets the last word when she didn’t have to. It’s not whether she’s right or wrong, it’s that the show decides to leave it there. Pike just sadboy gazes out a window. That’s the perfect opportunity for him to spell out the conflict you suggest in your comment to some other character. UNA: Chris, what the hell happened down there? We’re cool with killing kids now? PIKE: “She’s not right, but she’s not wrong, either. I saw an injustice and I couldn’t do anything about it.”

Instead, Sad Pikey Boy. ::FART::

This week, to Aspen/Angel’s point: that is fine conceptually and in a writers’ room discussion, but it’s all very one sided. Spock has agency, they’re just choosing to ignore it. He hasn’t undergone Kohlinar. He seems to lean on his human half to pull off the affair ruse. And as much as I enjoyed the Spock-Aspen scenes, they were more didactic than dramatic, and again, coming from the antagonist of the piece, can be more easily dismissed if they’re not more imperative to the drama. That last scene with T’Pring really sort of undermines the dramatic import of whatever point they (both the character and the writers) were trying to make.

Yeah, the “no one person of a particular identity bears the burden of representing that identity” is a decent point conceptually and in a discussion like this, it’s just that in reality, it only ever seems to be used to justify a trope that burdens particular identities with a particular type of representation.

You’re quite right that every identity should have villains and to insist otherwise is actually phony progressivism. Ignore the harangue artiste who keep trying to dominate the comments section.

As a queer person, I found Keitel’s casting as the villain superb simply because their villainy wasn’t tied to her being trans. I find it more regressive than not to have queer people just as neutral or savior roles. Queer people can be evil without having anything to do with the fact that they are, in fact, queer or trans. And the actor was having a blast with the role.

That seems like a distinction without a difference. Whether they’re queer because they’re evil or they’re evil because they’re queer is irrelevant, at least as I recall the trope, which is just that it has always been a shortcut (for the hackiest of hacks) to showing how someone is “the bad guy” by making them queer in some way.

I think the performance was pretty great and I enjoyed the scenes (even after the heel turn I was still okay with the acting even if the writing fell down after that), but at the end of the day, felt weird to me that a progressive show touted the casting but then had the role be a liar whose game was literally switching identity. Too clever by half. A disservice to the actor and the story.

Does it need to be a matter of “X because Y”? Can it not be “X and Y”? I fully appreciate the need for diverse representation in media and I celebrate it. It’s something that Star Trek has been doing, with varying levels of success, for decades. Is it not limiting to say that we cannot have a queer villain? Or can we have a queer villain, but do they have to have a whole range of other attributes that at least make them more complex? This won’t be the last we see of Angel, I imagine, so I assume we’ll learn more about them, and maybe they’ll develop the character to be more sympathetic or at least we could understand their motives? Or maybe they even have a redemption?

Then maybe it would’ve been more fair of me to have simply said instead, “Wow, what a cool actor and great performance. It’s a little bit of a bummer that the writers then did a heel turn on the character and made a rare (in Trek history anyway) gender non-conforming character (as per their own publicity) into the 100-year old ‘queer villain’ trope. Hopefully, their next LGBTQIA+ character is a protagonist or has really interesting motivations that rise above mustache twirling antagonism. They could start by giving Ortegas (who may be a lesbian? Unclear!) more to do than the one-liners (as good as a decent percentage of them are).”

No it’s actually regressive to insist there shouldn’t be queer villains, which you’re doing and then also claiming you’re not doing with endless word salad. Rather on-point that you type out “FART” in your comments, with ramblings such as “Pikey Pikey sadboy” that have zero significance to anyone but yourself. Carry on.

As a queer person, I found Keitel’s casting as the villain superb simply because their villainy wasn’t tied to her being trans. I find it more regressive than not to have queer people just as neutral or savior roles. Queer people can be evil without having anything to do with the fact that they are, in fact, queer or trans. And the actor was having a blast with the role.

Exactly. Viewers need to start leaving their old preconceptions at the door before they watch these eps that have a diversity component. I am getting so sick and tired of all of these comments that are claiming these elements are artificial or not handled right. COMPLETE BS!

K. I think he is articulating himself rather well, and the trope he’s concerned about is very real and one LGBT artists have both enjoyed playing and watching for decades but also something we’ve been wary of. That speaks again to my consistent point of expecting fleshed out characterizations so no one can ever easily be dismissed as a “diversity hire.”

In this case I don’t really have an issue with how Keitel was used, she’s one of the very few trans artists the shows have featured, but is not the first. Having Angel revealed as a double-crossing villain doesn’t alarm my representation bells, as a result. I’m a little tired of double-crossing villains in general, that I will say.

Nope, it was superb. Perhaps you are too hung-up on what you think you should be seeing? They let the story run, and it so happens that was a side character thing. I have zero issues in that regard.

And it was cool as well. The character is cool. What’s the problem with that?

We are told that the Enterprise is too far away from Fed space to have live communication, and yet we see Angel talking to T’Pring. And then a ship from inside Federation space warps into the system in no time at all.

Ha! You’re absolutely right, and I had totally missed that! Good catch! But you know, to be honest, Trek episodes were always full of holes and inconsistencies like that, which upon original broadcast my Trekker friends and I would dissect and rag about in our post-show post-mortems. Remember the Nitpicker’s Guide to Star Trek books, published some years ago? But it’s part of the fun to spot errors, it just adds to general camaraderie among fandom… doesn’t detract from my enjoyment at all.

Yeah I didn’t think about that either until now but it is a common thing.

But man this is pretty bad though lol. They made it clear it would take two days just to get a response in Federation space. I even smiled at that part because you don’t really here that type of thing expressed or done in these new shows like the classic shows. So that was a thumbs up…until now lol.

Because they made such a big deal about it but apparently the writers forgot they wrote that when thirty minutes later they are talking to T’Pring as quickly as we are talking to each other. Why even mention it if you’re going to totally ignore it?

My head canon is that Captain Angel and their ship has already laid down their own sub space buoys as a relay network.

This would have been a necessary part of the plan, and their crew would have had the codes to use them to reach T’Pring.

What’s less fathomable is how T’Pring’s small warp capable ship could have arrived so quickly.

I can live with that too. The getting there fast. That DID enter my head. But again, that sort of thing generally doesn’t bother me. And there is an old rule that time does not exist on screen.

I did not catch it either but it is a good call. However I wouldn’t allow such a thing to ruin my enjoyment of something. It’s a small conceit to make the story work. I can deal with that. It’s the huge universe wide things that bug me.

I’m sure every Trek show has inconsistencies, especially episode-to-episode. The issue here is that the inconsistency (Enterprise being too far away and magic travel time) is in the same episode.

Took me right out of the episode. They could have just left out the line about being too far away for live communication to rectify the rest. That they didn’t shows a lack in either a solid continuity person or technical consultant that would have caught such a discrepancy in the script.

Finally, this show is so desperate to be cool. “Pro tip,” EDM blasting from the cool guest star’s quarters […] Because they very much want to make  Star Trek  cool for the first time ever

We already had that with Beastie Boys in the Kelvin movies. It was funny in the movies but overall I’m not into that. It might appear ” modern and cool” but can get dated very quickly and might be ridiculous when watched in the future. Remember Space-hippies in TOS? That has aged poorly and very quickly and is somewhat embarassing to watch. In German there exists the term “fremdschämen” for that. Why not have some klingon opera or so?

I wanted to like this episode, and did for most of it, but then it lost me in the last twenty minutes or so. Surprise villains, yeah, not a fan of that twist. Particularly when they strut around and mock the good guys. Really cliched stuff.

And Sybok? Good grief.

I’ll give it a 3 out of 10, for the beauty shots of the Enterprise and Chapel sneaking around and being awesome. That was fun, while it lasted.

Sybok! It’s about damn time.

I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I never thought Sybok’s name would be uttered since it hasn’t been in 33 years lol. To have him back is pretty surreal but I always liked Sybok even if TFF is really bad. Yes the mistake was making him Spock’s brother but what is done is done now.

I wasn’t a huge fan when they brought Sybok into the fold in that film. But it is what it is. I wish it wasn’t done but the fact that it was done has never caused me to hate on TFF. It’s not a very good movie but it still has its moments.

I gasped and cpthered my mouth in SHOCK when Sybok was was shown! It gave me goosebumps!!

I’m surprised nobody hasn’t mentioned Stonn yet!

Oh, yes, it was Stonn, wasn’t it…

Great episode. Great connections to canon. Very glad we finally reference Sybok.

Absolutely. A great, enjoyable ep. Loved the dynamic between Spock/Chapel, and Spock/TPring, and the exchanges between Pike and the various officers on the planet. The Ston and Sybok references were an outright sit-up-in-your seat jolt!

Keep up the good work, SNW cast and crew!

Except for Chapel knowing everything about T’Pring yes, this was an unusually decent attempt to comply with canon,

I’ve wanted to see Sybok revisited since the 2009 movie. I thought it would be a great story in the Kelvinverse to see Sybok lead a revolution on New Vulcan.

Now, with this Prime Universe timeline, I think it’s still a great opportunity to add to the mythology. I trust this team to do a great job.

But what can they add with Sybok, I’m wondering. He’s already a zealot. He’s looking for God, hasn’t found Him yet, can’t find Him yet in the timeline. What else is there?

Doing it their way, which is newer and, therefore, automatically better

But maybe he’s not a zealot yet. There could be any number of events included in this show which lead him on that path and involve Spock. Could we also see James Frain back as Sarek? I would assume the reason Sybok is under a false name is to spare Sarek’s reputation.

Is the juice worth the squeeze, though? Does anybody really care about Sybok and does that character have something interesting to add to Spock’s journey that’s not already there with T’Pring, Chapel, and the Enterprise’s weekly adventures, or do the writers just want to plumb the depths of Spock lore because they love Spock and want to do their own Spock show?

Sure there can be plenty. Unlike Burnham, he is actually his freaking brother for starters. And we can see how the two went such different paths in terms of displaying emotions. Why did the half human one decide to eradicate his emotions completely while the full Vulcan expressed them?

And Tiberius Mudd, maybe I’m confused on some on your thoughts with this show because aren’t you the one that said it’s good that they reboot the show and direct it towards new viewers? That they shouldn’t follow old canon too much because new viewers won’t care? And if they are rebooting the show then obviously they wouldn’t be. And yet you complain about them not following canon lol.

Maybe I have you confused with someone else but it’s really confusing if you are the same poster. I thought this is the stuff you were expecting?

You might have me confused with somebody else. I’m glad they’re rebooting TOS because I think that would give them a chance to do their own thing with familiar characters. I try to curb any thoughts related to canon “violations,” but I definitely slip up. In the case of Sybok, if this is a reboot, then why bother with him? It’s weird to keep it in there if you’re really trying to do something new with the character. I mean, I guess I’ll just have to wait and see, but like I said, I’m not sure what plundering existing Spock lore IN ADDITION TO creating new lore (T’Pring, Christine) nets them in the end besides options for their short attention spans.

I’ve been more vocal when they’ve done stuff like mock or diss Star Trek concepts without doing anything interesting with their own thoughts about why those concepts suck, like last week’s Alara bit about how killing kids is fine because the Federation sucks and this week’s binaries are dumb, so the lying slaver pirate has a point. In neither case do our heroes do anything with those big ideas. They just take the hit and we’re left to be like, “Oh yeah, that liar has a point!” To me, if they’re going to deconstruct the format, it had better be both done well and for a good reason, and not just 21st century sophomoric deconstructionism for modernity’s sake. It’s annoying that because people can’t have their own ideas they have to tear down others.

Does Alara’s “winning argument” change anything about Pike? We don’t know, because the show doesn’t tell us, and if it’s episodic, that’s just a mistake on their part to make that clear…

Are we going to have to rely on a “previously on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” to remind us of Angel’s binaries are dumb speech to Spock to setup the emotional dilemma Spock faces in that episode, buttressed by him saying in a line of dialogue, “If you will recall when the Enterprise crew was taken hostage by the pirate Captain Angel, they remarked that my predicament was a false choice. Now that I have had time to consider it, I believe they were right, and this is what I’m going to do with this realization”? That’s dumb. If it actually means anything besides being graffiti on a core Trek concept (the nature of the Spock character), then they ought to deal with that in the episode. It doesn’t have to be the only time he deals with Angel’s challenge, but from a dramatic structure perspective, it’s what the story demanded.

There also comes a point where this is just zombie Star Trek, where they’re pumping the IP and the same section of the IP’s history for the most cynical, boring, and lazy purposes. If they’re going to sit there and say, “The core of the Spock character that the world has known about for 60 years is stupid and wrong,” then I’d hope they’d make him interesting for some other reason. His evil half brother is not a promising start.

ETA: And here I was saying I was going to try to keep my responses shorter. Sorry. Thanks for engaging with my comment(s), though.

Well to get this out of the way, you ask why they include Sybok if it’s a reboot…well that’s because its not a reboot! As I always said the show is designed to appeal to hardcore Trek fans first (although using the word ‘Sybok’ and ‘appeals’ certainly is questionable lol). But Sybok has always been the 800 pound elephant in the room.

Even if you don’t want to use him again, it’s odd he was just wiped from canon completely. So it’s nice he’s at least acknowledged IMO. I know a lot of people hate him but as I always say canon is canon. Once they make something part of the story it’s now officially there. You can certainly ignore it or even retcon it (which oddly how a lot of canon happens including Sybok himself lol) but you can’t pretend like it never existed either. But sure they could’ve just continued ignoring it…they been doing a great job of that for 30 years now. ;)

And while I agree with your points about Captain’s Angel speech to Spock, I don’t see that as a big deal. Spock’s entire journey is dealing with his two halves. She given him something else to think about but this is something he’s been wrestling with already. We don’t need to be reminded who gave him another path to consider.

But you’re talking to someone who NEVER cared about revisiting Spock, his ‘human side’ and all of that. When it was announced he was coming to Discovery and this would be a big part of his arc, I rolled my eyes…hard. We done this stuff, for 25 years already. I don’t really care why Spock smiled in an unaired pilot. What does that matter now??? The character already died in an alternate universe 100 years in the future, I don’t care.

Buuuuuuut, now that they have decided to go this path, I have to say it’s interesting. And I ALSO think that is because unlike Spock of old, we never really got to see him interact with other Vulcans much. They show up in an episode and that was it. But now we are seeing Spock in a new light because they are bringing in people like T’Pring and Chapel (yes in TOS but again, very limited). So it would be interesting to see the differences with him and Sybok. Isn’t this why you make a prequel? So I’m OK with that. Few years ago ALL of this would’ve been eye rolling to me lol.

And don’t feel bad at writing diatribes. We’ve allll been there, certainly me! Where else can you rant about completely unimportant stuff that 99% of the world doesn’t know or care one iota about except the internet lol.

Yeah, I’m with you on not really caring about how we get from “Cage” Spock to “The Corbomite Maneuver” Spock, and throwing in all these prior canon elements to try to track that change seems sweaty. I mean, look, it’s not because “this is how I would do it,” but if you’re really trying to explain Spock’s behavior in “The Cage,” then isn’t the most likely explanation that Spock was more human and emotional before Kirk became captain and some incident or series of incidents finally compelled him in that time prior to the Kirk 5-year mission to dig into Vulcan practices/his Vulcan beliefs some more?

That would at least justify the Chapel connection and, if you’re keeping the T’Pring part of it, then it would motivate his interactions to be more along the lines of them being polar opposites and yet both finding each other attractive (if not an unstable romance) because opposites attract. That might be what they believe they are doing, it’s just not how it’s coming off (to me). T’Pring talks about wanting to honor his human side or whatever, but we don’t really see Spock being human. He’s pretty straightforwardly Vulcan (again, at least to me he his).

And in terms of bringing in Sybok, I just don’t think they’re going to make that character interesting and worth the inclusion. He reads as a character more interesting on paper than in practice. But I guess we’ll see, right?

At this point I’m leaning to probably not. But it feels like the best time to use him in the Kurtzman-Verse was in Star Trek Discovery season 2.

Up to now they were solid 8’s and 9’s out of 10. This one was a 7. It was very good up until the reveal. After that it became a bit silly. Also I thought the maniacal Angel was a bit too over the top. Shame, because they were going for another 8 in the first half.

Over the top? Maybe. But it was fun.

Agree. I liked the counselor character. Then Captain Angel was so campy TOS would have said “let’s tone that down.”

That was really bad.

It is actually a pity after a really great season so far they come out with this…Eveything was bad in the ep; the set up, the bad writing and dialogue, the obvious plot points, the in-your-face identity politics (talk about sledgehammering in identity with a transgender actor?) The acting was pretty shoddy, too. I was honestly waiting for Anson or Ethan to wink at the camera, just to let us know this was some sort of 80s throwback spoof. That they were somehow playing with the audience and having a bash at all the is-this-canon-? folk with the jeffries tube, the tholianesque trap, Sybok, etc, but alas no.

However, I’m glad they have got this off their chest. With a bit of luck the remaining episodes will keep up the quality we’ve had up to now.

I thought I might actually scroll though all of the comments without seeing some nonsense and possibly homophobic comment about casting a trans actor. But alas, as I got to the bottom of the webpage, here we are.

“the in-your-face identity politics (talk about sledgehammering in identity with a transgender actor?)” Hmmm, so is it “in your face identity politics” when we see decades after decades of cisgendered, straight, male and white actors? Or is that just “normal” and not “in your face”? It amazes me that some people are so obtuse to the obvious hypocrisy of their trite unformed thoughts that are easily dismantled as just being boring, anachronistic and slow thinking. Ya basic. ;)

I wonder how this in a fictional universe with IDIC and various species can even be a thing.

I suppose viewers in the 60s complained about identity politics too, when they saw Uhura on the bridge, while they had no problems with a green painted actor.

I thought the identity politics stuff was *too* subtle. If it had not been a non-binary actor giving that speech, could it not have been interpreted differently? Simply as you don’t have to fit into a rigid mould/conform to expectations? My issue was that we knew nothing about this character and it was not even that clear in the episode that they were non-binary, beyond the casting (which shouldn’t necessarily be an indicator). Really, from the audience’s perspective, there wasn’t anything in the script up til that point that would have imbued that speech with any specific meaning. We knew nothing about Dr Anson.

Well… then don’t watch the teaser for Episode 8. I think it’s fun to have a self-deprecating, fun, even campy episode, but that should wait for the series to get it’s serious legs and credibility very well established. When you only have 10 episodes in a season, there’s only so much room for comedy in a show that is not being billed as Silly Trek. The cast is incredible and the characters they are creating are incredible too – but it’s the Where No One Has Gone Before stuff that makes this whole thing work.

Sybok!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) This show delivers.

Stonn is biding his time. Sybok is plotting his time. Solid episode…

Agreed. And what I find interesting is that they took EVERY Vulcan associated with Spock at some point and now they are all part of this show and will have their own development.

Yeah Sarek is different of course but canon makes that difficult. Of course I suspect an episode where he and Spock are stuck in a shuttle craft for an hour to work out their problems. ;)

It’s him. It’s Sybok. After all these years, we’ve finally caught up to him.

Now share your PAIN.

He shares his PAIN with Horta. 😉

Don’t forget to gain strength from the sharing!

I haven’t forgotten brother.

Also, hit like and subscribe, and don’t forget to click the bell to get updated as soon as there’s new pain to endure.

I liked Keitel’s performance pretty well right up until the heel turn, at which point I thought it became weak to the point of near-amateurishness. This was a pretty bad episode, to be honest. And yet, I got excited by Sybok showing up at the end. I can’t quite make sense of that reaction, but hey, so be it.

I had the same reaction to the episode as you Bryant.

I must say not in a million years did I think they would do Sybok. I think it’s quite cool and surprising. Let’s see we’re it goes(somewhere exciting hopefully)

We’ll see! I’m doing my best to just look at all of this as a TOS reboot and not worry about canon anymore. If I didn’t, all this jazz with T’Pring would be driving me nuts.

I wish I could just turn off the huge mistakes. The Gorn stuff still bugs the crap out of and at this point I see as an albatross on this series. I wish they would just drop the Gorn, essentially admitting it was a mistake and never ever mention them again.

Trust me, I get it. That was me with Discovery in its first three seasons, so I definitely get it.

And if I still access that part of my brain and apply it to SNW, it makes me ask: why could they not just call the species something other than “Gorn”? It’s what baseball folk call an unforced error. Just…why?

So far, though, my brain (for whatever reason [possibly sheer desperation]) is letting me just roll right past all of this stuff with this show. We’ll see if it can make it once James T. pops up.

I’m with you. She was great. I think the greatest tonal conflict in the SH shows has been between their desire to be campy and their desire to be taken seriously as artists.

Yep, and rarely has it been more pronounced than it was here.

Dude having Sybok back is the biggest ‘Whhaaaaaaaat??’ reaction I had since we learned Seven of Nine was in Picard. Just in the sense I never expected it (I assumed we could see Seven again at least). But Sybok? No, never!

But his appearance brought a smile to my face the way Riker and Troi showing up in Lower Decks, Admiral Janeway on Prodigy and the Guardian of Forever in Discovery. Just those key moments you NEVER saw coming until they did! :)

Once you bring Sybok back man, there are no limits anymore. You been hearing me say eventually everyone will come back at some point. I think I just been proven right! ;D

May be! Next thing you know, we’ll be getting a Lazarus prequel. (Please nooooo…..!)

I have seen quite a few commenters bemoaning how “hammy” the episode was. To that I say… have you seen, oh I don’t know, the entire rest of Star Trek lol.

And to the people groaning about the heavy-handed “identity politics”… you sound both out of touch and selectively not remembering all the other heavy-handed times Star Trek has tackled such things.

The trans/nonbinary character is never even mentioned as such during the duration of the episode and instead just a soundboard for Spock’s persistent quarrel with his two “halves.” How that is “sledgehammering” anything is far beyond me. You just sound like outdated curmudgeons who don’t like having the mold broken in ways you’ve yet to catch up with.

This week’s episode seemed a little weak to me – the humor seemed forced (as did some of the messaging), the villains not terribly threatening, the plot a bit flat. Most everyone seemed to be reacting very cavalier, what with the ship being taken over and even those captive. I was never the least bit concerned anyone was in real danger. However, the money shots of the E maneuvering through the asteroid field were a treat to watch, and watching these characters interact continues to be enjoyable, due to the high quality of acting and chemistry. I think Peck is doing a great job as a Vulcan, and this version of Spock is quite the ‘Ladies Man’ indeed. And as for Sybok, I could have gone through the rest of my life without hearing his name again, but either way it doesn’t matter to me much if they bring him in. Ok episode, but I just felt there were no…real stakes at hand. Maybe part of that has to do with the ‘prequel curse.’ Anyway, it was a fun 48 minutes. These are becoming very comfortable watches for me. SNW episodes are enjoyable to watch and they go down very easy, thus far. Kind of like…light beer.

This ep was okay. I’m surprised T’Pring was able to catch-up with the Enterprise again. It leaves me feeling that the Enterprise is sticking very close to Federation space, yet we are also lead to believe that the subspace signal to Fed hq will take 2 days for a response to be received. Is Pike really exploring the final frontier, or just the Federation backyard? I feel like we are seeing a bit too much of Chapel – I’m fine with her as a secondary.

I agree with a lot of your points, but the whole Federation space thing just never made a lot of sense even in TOS. One week they are exploring a totally new area of space, the next week they are on a Federation colony passing out blankets or something. It never really made any real sense how you claim to be in deep space no one ever traveled before but two-thirds of the stories actually happened in places other Starfleet ships have been to previously and a lot of their missions is really helping out Federation outposts. I guess you can argue they are suppose to be in the fringes of Federation territory, which I can buy. But it’s still in the Federation. Enterprise really felt that way because A. there was no Federation obviously and B. 80% of their missions actually involved new places, especially seasons 1-3. It started sticking closer to home in season 4.

But that’s why I don’t get hung up on the ‘final frontier’ bit because it’s never been truly a thing in TOS or TNG the way fans claim it is. Yes a lot of space is still very uncharted even in the 24th century but they don’t spend much time actually in uncharted space either.

And then of course the issue with SNW is the Enterprise is the flagship of Starfleet. To me, it suggests that would be the ship to stick around in Federation space because it’s its main representative of Starfleet, especially for diplomatic issues as we saw in Spock Amok.

Space often doesn’t make sense in so many Sci-Fi shows. Space isn’t 2D and there is no side which is up and down in space. And yet spaceships often manage to meet horizontally and on the “right side”. If they change direction, it is always forwards, backwards, sidewards, but never a 90 degree turned up or down. Maybe the federation territory is extended more in 2 dimensions and has lot of uncharted territory in the 3rd dimension.

Nice that the episode focused on Spock’s identity issues. Hopefully we’ll see Dr. Aspen/ Captain Angel again.

They were not kidding when they said T’ Pring will recur this season.

Kind of seems like SNW’s “Iron Chef” episode. Group 1, give us the setup with Spock and Aspen. I found this part was well done. Group 2, give us the action in this episode. I loved the phaser firefight on the bridge and the scenes with Chapel, using her hypospray as a weapon. Group 3, you set up the twist in this episode, which came across like a burnt grilled cheese sandwich. Group 4, give PIke and Una something to do. I know I keep saying this, but Season 1 was filmed during Covid restrictions. Cast and crew (especially) were put into separate pods. This presented huge challenges, logistically. This episode probably looked great on paper. It just didn’t come together as well as they’d hoped. As a Canadian, excuse me for using a hockey comparison. This episode had some great chances to score a goal or two. They just hit the goalpost and missed the net on a few too many shots. I try not to make it too hard to enjoy these episodes. I’ve been around since the ’70’s, when Trek found its legs in syndication. We made do with repeats and books until TMP came out. While some posters here found Trek during TNG, DS9 and VOY, where there was Trek on TV for 18 years straight? I remember the droughts, too. It was 10 years of false starts, okay, here’s a Saturday morning cartoon. Then Paramount couldn’t decide what to do with Trek. It’s a TV show, a mini-series, a movie and back again. I remember the last drought from 2005 until 2017, when DSC came out. TOS to TMP was a decade. ENT to DSC was a 12 year wait. While I’ve enjoyed the Trek films, I’ve always felt that Trek’s best home was on TV. When DSC season two ended? We, the fans, clamored for this Pike series. I’m over the moon that we got it. I’ve honestly enjoyed every episode, so far. Some, more than others. We’ve got 3 episodes remaining for the season. I’m looking forward to them.

I really liked this episode but I definitely agree with a lot of your points. I really laughed over the mutiny stuff. It was ridiculous but in the spirit of the show. Understand why others don’t though. I really liked Captain Angel though, she really worked for me. And Sybok seems very divided for people.

And agree with your last statement, TV is really where Star Trek belongs because that’s where it can be it’s most purest.

I’ll definitely watch the next Star Trek film when it comes out but for me I don’t really care if another one happens as much now that we have so much of it on TV and probably much better done as well. SNW versus the Kelvin movies is not even a contest which one just does a better job of being Star Trek IMO.

I’m wondering what was in that hypospray…. Was it poisonous? An anesthetic? They never said,

The episode was fine. If there is a problem it was the Chapel knows all about T’Pring stuff. But otherwise I like the episode.

So the Remy guy was Orion? I didn’t recognize him as such. But that’s not a big deal, I think.

But the episode obviously will be noted for…. Sybok. Funny. The obvious time to use him was season 2 of Star Trek Discovery. Now they bring him in here. But unfortunately at this point with all the other call backs Secret Hideout has done the Sybok reveal just didn’t have have the power or surprise it could have. For the record, there was another inconsistency… It’s awfully nit picky and wouldn’t bother me if all the inconsistencies were as minor as this one but here it is… In TFF Spock said Sarek was married before. In this episode they made it an illicit affair. Whatever….

Actually that bit can still make sense. In fact I bet they are going to have Sybok say, “My father married her…. later.” or “I caused an annulment.”

Marcia, Marcia, Marcia…

SYYYYYYYYYYYBOOOOOOOOOOK!!!!!

I got so excited when Spock said his name. I never saw that coming. Finally after 33 years, the guy is no longer regulated to Starbase 80 and part of Star Trek again. I can’t wait. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised over people’s mixed reaction to bringing him back but I actually wanted him back for a long time now.

As for the rest: The planned mutiny thing was super silly but I liked it. Captain Pike cooking dinner for his prisoners, this guy is boyscout to the end. Taking over the Enterprise. Remy the coolest Scottish Orion ever. The Spock-T’Pring-Chapel love triangle we all saw coming from warp 5 and finally Captain Angel. Man I love her and can’t wait to see her again. And dude. SYBOK!!!!!

I’m loving this show! Yes it’s a bit goofy at times but this is why I Lower Decks as well. It’s just nice to have fun Star Trek again and it doesn’t have to take itself sooooo seriously. That’s what the Lifetime show Discovery is for.

I have to say, I think this episode will be a classic! I think I’d have to give it a lot of thought to go back years before finding better Trek. I think this is what they were talking about the fans being excited about! SNW is the new Trek! There’s a lot that happened in this episode to unpack. I’ll have to rewatch and digest it all. I also feel like a kid again…but with the ability to appreciate so much more of what this episode brings.

I agree. It was just a lot of fun to me and a lot of great twists and turns.

And you’re talking to someone who didn’t even want a Pike show at the beginning. I wasn’t against it or anything, I just didn’t care if we didn’t get one either. But what they have done so far with this show is amazing to me. I am loving it in a way I didn’t suspect I would. It’s not my favorite show or anything but it’s only been 7 episodes lol.

But I can say it’s now my favorite show over TOS! Because it’s TOS in the modern day and done better in terms of acting and obviously production. I still love TOS of course but it’s been falling as a show for me over the years already because it has aged the worst for me.

Regarding Spock and Chapel’s ruse on the Enterprise bridge, I thought Vulcan’s don’t lie…But they do exaggerate. And how!

If Enterprise proved anything, Vulcans lie but they like perpetuating the idea that they don’t. It’s a myth like Canadians being all polite – I am one and can tell you that it’s not true.

Canadian, not Vulcan ;)

Americans who have believe stereotypes about Canadians can watch Letterkenny and Shorsey on Hulu to get a sense of how profane we can be.

But it’s still true that we say sorry, there are even federal and provincial acts to protect us from legal liability in saying sorry.

It would be interesting to understand how Vulcan legal protections would differ based on an assumption of adherence to logic, and the appropriateness of lying for the greater good.

Spock lies up a storm in “The Enterprise Incident.” Vulcans SAY they don’t lie, but it’s not true.

I suspect that they can’t lie IN A MIND MELD, and somehow people generalized from that to saying that they can’t lie in general.

He also lied when he and McCoy said they didn’t have time to watch Kirk’s farewell message in The Tholian Web .

Technically it was McCoy who actually said they didn’t see it. Spock merely implied. A technicality like when Quinto-Spock said “I’m Vulcan, sir. We embrace technicalities.”

You could definitely see them planting the seeds for T’Pring losing interest in pursuing actual marriage with Spock. Loved the shout out Qu’Vat colony and hope we see Augment Klingons eventually. Shouldn’t Shankar been named checked, not Braga, due to Gambit? Thought the Sybok connection was unnecessary…Everyone not knowing about Sybok was supposed to be proof Spock could keep a secret, hence why we never knew about Michael. Yet, with him blabbing to Nurse Chapel, I suspect Sybok will be a recurring threat like the Gorn before they should be.

I’m sorry I still don’t buy the Burnham thing. Sybok was an illegitimate child that they were even embarrassed (is that an emotion, ok closest non-emotional word then) to acknowledge his existence. He was never actually part of Spock’s life growing up and never lived together. They basically tried to pretend like he never existed in the first place.

That wasn’t close to the issue with Michael. And as I said multiple times the first two seasons, it’s pretty ridiculous no one wouldn’t know Spock had a sister when she was the only human to live on Vulcan at the time, is the daughter of Vulcan’s Earth ambassador and works in Starfleet with Spock.

And your last point is funny. Spock TOLD Chapel about Sybok lol. Not to mention he also told her Sarek was his father in that same exchange. He’s known her a few months at best at this point. He also told Pike about Burnham back in Disocovery, so he DIDN’T keep secret he had a sister. He told everyone about T’Pring! This Spock blabbers on about everyone who is related to him.

Which goes exactly against your point. Spock is an open book on this show. So it makes less sense, not more.

But man, it’s amazing we are talking about Sybok again in the present tense lol! I never thought this day would come. It was great when we started talking about the TNG era characters in the present tense again once Picard became a show after not for basically 17 years.

Oh I absolutely agree but that was a common justification for why we didn’t know about Michael. Then they did this ridiculous thing at the end of Season 2, was that Simpsons-esque solution to ‘line up with canon’…”Michael was the best sister ever…Discovery and the spore drive were great too…now let’s never speak of them…on penalty of death!”

Yes, instead of being the best secret keeper of them all, all his back story is the worst kept secret.

I really enjoy this show overall but they can’t help themselves…while Season 4 enterprise did a little bit better of playing within the confines of canon.

True, but that was mostly what FANS said as a way to justify Burnham. No one in the production itself or a writer ever suggested that’s why no one knew why Spock didn’t have a sister. And as you said, we saw their answer to that which is just eye rolling even now. They already made it a thing, trying to backtrack it in the most ridiculous way possible didn’t help it but they did create a reason I guess. And as far as reasons goes, it’s a reason! Again, I know people really like Discovery but these are the types of things why many still have issues with it.

As far as canon, both DIS and SNW really haven’t done it any favors. And if you don’t care, that’s obviously fine. But for fans that do, none of this makes a lot of sense when you line it up with TOS. Again people can certainly tell themselves it really lines up with canon if you just look at it from a certain angle, but no one knew who T’Pring was in TOS. It’s ludicrous to even try and pretend like they did. But here she has become such a big part of the show so quickly she’s just Spock’s girlfriend now who even knows his friends and colleagues too. And this was 5+ years before TOS.

True, it was mostly fan head canon explanations for why he had a sister…don’t get me started about their treatment of Section 31 or the Mirror Universe.

Yeah, I mean I love the Gorn and wanted to see more of them too for example…but it makes no sense pre-TOS. The only way I thought they could pull it off is if they pulled a “Silent Enemy” where the crew never knew the identity of their attackers..let alone have a crew member that knows who they are and has a personal history with them…oh and she is related to Khan.

Nods to canon can be great but it seems like they are going out of their way to break canon with promises of lining up with it in some convoluted way later.they could have let the audience in on it without the crew knowing…or change them to another species like rogue Xindi Reptilians ..maybe even mistaken for Gorn or something.

Speaking of Xindi, is it too early for them to have a Xindi Aquatic in Cetacean Ops? ;)…if so, they should do it on Lower Decks lol

Regarding your Gorn comments…. I agree. The only way they could do it is if they truly were like mythical stories where no one has ever seen one or even knew what they were called. It’s the one and only one way it might work. But even then if they interact with the Federation too much it still seems likely to me the UFP would investigate and actively try to find them and learn about them. So even that would be problematic to me. However, if that is how they used the Gorn at least they would get points for TRYING to stay within canon.

I keep going back to Manny Coto who desperately wanted to use the Gorn on ENT but knew he couldn’t and his “out” was the MU.

I love the Gorn and really wanted to see them on TNG and now Picard had an opportunity to use them. But only post TOS set shows can use them without screwing up Arena.

Yeah, I fall on the “don’t care” side of things. There were so many holes in TOS continuity, it would have been impossible to have a prequel without adjusting some part of canon – that I guess is why some don’t like the prequel idea so much to begin with.

Take Spock and his parents. The fact that Kirk and Bones had no idea that one of the Federation’s greatest ambassadors, Sarek, was Spock’s father seems rather implausible. To try and continue with that storyline would have been, well…. illogical.

I guess, we could say that Kirk and Bones did not know Spock until after he embraced his more Vulcan side, and that is why they did not really know much about him – but would that info not be in his service record?

The fact he did have a deep friend/relationship with Pike pre-Kirk and Bones, that we see developing in SNW does however explain Spock’s admirable willingness to throw away his career in an effort to get Pike to Talos IV in the Menagerie.

Yeah I agree with pretty much all of this. I have always said, especially in early Discovery, if fans really like a show, then the canon issues will actually be less of an issue because the stories and characters will just take precedent. That didn’t really happen for a lot of fans with Discovery but it does seem to be happening SNW. Now, I always have to make clear Discovery canon issues went far beyond did Spock and Sarek ever talk in a room together before TOS. People had an issue on how the entire show based the look and feel of Star Trek as a whole and it just added to its other problems.

With SNW, the canon issues are just how you look at it. For some, it’s really really minor. Others its bigger of course. For me for example, I don’t care about the Gorn thing at all. But for others its a HUGE deal lol. And that’s where the divide is mostly.

For me, I said in the first episode this show is going to break canon in all kind of ways and yeah it is now. But am I enjoying it any less, nope, I’m actually enjoying it more than I thought in spite of the canon issues.

But I don’t ignore that fact either. I do think there are some fans that think the writers are taking this fine delicate line with it and trying to balance it as much as they can. I don’t see that at all. T’Pring presence makes that very clear. In the first episode, I saw many posts saying it was OK for him and Spock to meet at this point, which I agreed with that part. But then others were suggesting T’Pring would never meet anyone on the Enterprise because that would open a can of worms. And that happened in her second appearance lol. And obviously the more we see of her, it will only get worse because naturally that relationship will get more complex and entangled with other stories. You can’t unring that bell now.

The way I see them taking to canon is the opposite, they only care about the broad strokes. Again using T’Pring, they know her and Spock won’t be together in the end and they obviously have to keep to that. But until then, they are just going to do whatever they want with the characters. That’s obvious. And that’s OK as long as it’s interesting.

Same with Spock and Nurse Chapel. Basically we know they never will have a relationship on TOS. But that won’t stop them from playing around with it and they probably will even have sex on this show. They already kissed lol. So they will probably never be officially a couple but it still won’t stop them from being together. Spock will just decide it won’t work when Chapel suddenly gets super boring and submissive. ;)

Or maybe the Korby thing will change that? Again not really canon since Spock never met Korby in TOS but on this show it will just matter that she ultimately falls for him even if he and Spock are best buds here.

But as you said, TOS was a different time. They never developed any of the characters beyond the main stars. They will throw in an important character to Spock or Kirk in one episode and we would never see or hear from them again. That was just how TV worked backed then.

Now they have the chance to bring them all back and give them real back stories and arcs. I can’t blame them for doing that and it probably would get tiring to remember what this character said in episode 37 and keeping it all in line. Personally I wish they just called it a reboot and did what they want but ironically they want it to matter to TOS and the bigger mythology so it’s a weird bind.

“Or maybe the Korby thing will change that? Again not really canon since Spock never met Korby in TOS but on this show it will just matter that she ultimately falls for him even if he and Spock are best buds here.

Plot twist: The nurse Chapel we saw earlier / will see later in TOS is an android just like Korby and doesn’t have all her memories :-P Problem solved. That might explain why nurse Chapelbot is so different later.

It’s really weird. They may really want it to matter and connect to TOS but it seems like they only do it in the small ways. The design on the front of the space suits for example. But they just chuck the really big things like what aliens are known and unknown at that time and change up characters to be what they want them to be. So how can you WANT to line up with TOS when you do all those things to sever that connection? I just don’t understand and I REALLY don’t understand why Paramount or Secret Hideout think “reboot” would kill the show.

But Enterprise managed to do it without screwing with canon on any kind of super major level. Their biggest mistake was possibly “minefield” showing them the Romulan cloak. But they never ever returned to it. So chalk that up as a mistake and they didn’t double down on it. Unlike SNW who make huge mistakes and make them a major part of their show. So I disagree that prequels can’t be done without adjusting the canon. It was done already well.

I also had little issue with who Spock’s father was. He would never volunteer it unless it became relevant plus there was that feud going on. And it’s unlikely family political connections would be spelled out in his Star Fleet records.

We didn’t need to see him working with Pike on SNW to accept that he had a deep connection with his former commander, either. It’s nice to get it but it’s not needed at all to make The Menagerie work.

Sybok , really? They went to the  worst  TOS movie for  inspiration?!

This wasn’t a terrible episode, but it wasn’t inspiring, the way some of the earlier ones have been, nor did it show us much about the new crew members. It didn’t do much of anything expect provide a little bit of fun and re-introduce a character I hoped we would NEVER see again. Overall, it seemed kinda formulaic, which wasn’t what I was expecting, given how wonderful most of the earlier episodes had been.

I sort of enjoyed it, but I think I’ll be re-watching “Children of the Comet” this week. :-)

I agree. 10 episodes ain’t that many. I wish they had spent this one on fleshing out Hemmer or Ortegas rather than a tired old pirate story.

And I couldn’t care less about Sybok, either. He’s already in prison, so he’s already some kind of dangerous zealot. So, what are he and Angel going to become, the Joker and Harley Quinn who menace our heroes every few episodes? I sure hope not.

I like Vulcans the way they are. They don’t need to give us a flagrantly emotional Vulcan to make them interesting; I find Vulcans plenty interesting when they’re being their lovably repressed selves. :-)

I don’t mind once in awhile seeing a breakaway cult from the mainstream. That’s just basic human, or Vulcan, nature — to disagree. But yes, I agree with you, the main interest in Vulcans how they’re different from us.

To be honest, pretty much every episode of SNW has felt pretty formulaic, but I have no issues with it as long as they still feel fresh and different which they also have.

And we’re definitely seeing Sybok again. You don’t present a character in such a fashion after not hearing his name for 30 years other than to tell people we’re going deep with this character. It may not be this season though but he will obviously show up again since the whole Captain Angel story line is setting up a new enemy in general.

No, it’s clear that they’re laying the groundwork for us to see Sybok again. I’m just protesting that decision. :-)

I like Vulcans the way they are. They don’t need to give us a flagrantly emotional Vulcan to make them interesting; I find Vulcans plenty interesting when they’re being their lovably repressed selves. :-) I hate it in general when they try to make Vulcans more human, like by giving them prejudices, since prejudice is wildly illogical. And I want to see Spock and T’Pring being appropriately Vulcan by stroking fingers and saying “Live long and prosper,” not acting like humans in kissing and saying “Good-bye.”

Do we have to make everybody just like us? Can’t Star Trek allow its aliens to be alien? *grumble* *whine* *sigh*

Fair enough! I understand your point.

How about they merge the Sybok story with the Kirk story in season 2? I can totally seem them doing that.

Looking at how they done things so far, my guess is Kirk appearance will just throw canon completely to the wind by that point. My guess by episode 5, Kirk, La’an, Spock and T’Pring will go out on a double date lol.

I don’t see them caring much about the Sybok issue either.

Would you rather prefer Krall, Shinzon, Ru’Afo?

Hey, don’t keep Nero and Khan 2.0 out in the cold!

Trek movies really do have some of the worst one note villains lol.

No! That’s why I said “worst TOS movie.” :-)

Well…. Picard went to the worst TOS movie for a quick gag, so….

Courageous episode. Making Sybok official history. I don’t mind them taking risks. This was a good episode.

Sybok was already official. He didn’t need to appear on this show to make that so.

I loved the episode. It was fun. Alex and Akiva need to admit that SNW is a soft reboot of the original series and the early days of the Prime Universe. They are redefining the original series. I’m cool with that. Chapel kept a lot of Spock’s secrets. How does Uhura fit into these canon conundrums?

Gene Roddenberry referred to the events of ST V as “apocryphal” I’m cool with revisiting Sybok and fleshing out his character. The Clone Wars redeemed Jar Jar Binks. Star Trek can redeem Sybok.I adore SNW .

“Alex and Akiva need to admit that SNW is a soft reboot of the original series and the early days of the Prime Universe.”

Agreed, Jack, and I’d be fine with that as well. It’s pretty clear that’s what’s happening anyway.

Not a “soft” reboot. A COMPLETE reboot is what it is. I, too, wish they would admit it. I might enjoy the show more.

So, help me understand; Captain Angel is the real pirate captain, not Remy. Is not the entire pirate crew aware of that? If they are aware, why would they lend any credence to Remy’s plan to negotiate with the Klingons? The crew would know that he didn’t have the authority, so why would they mutiny against the fake captain?

That was also a little confusing. The only thing I can think of is that they were hired goons she got to help her than anything because she had no problems leaving them at the drop of a hat.

After last week’s rather somber morality tale, we got a more lighthearted space pirate story, one I rather enjoyed.

No major comments, but to say I am sure both Sybok and Captain Angel will be back sometime in the future and I look forward to seeing more of that story.

Another comment, it was good to see Spock’s superior strength on full display in that bridge fight scene including his ability to literally ragdoll one of the pirates – good fun and I hope Ethan Peck enjoyed those stunts.

Btw, to parrot someone’s comments from a few weeks back, it is hard not to cheer for Spock and T’Pring – even though we know they are destined to fail.

Last comment – that’s seven good to very good episodes without laying an egg. I am impressed! Sadly, only three episodes left in S1!

I think this show is working so well is A. they, once again, listened to fans and B. make the stories light and fun. Star Trek can be very serious affair obviously but when we have stuff like PIC and DIS filling up the time with depressing and downbeat shit (I completely forgot Book lost his entire planet in fourth season until running into a Youtube clip about it today). So it’s nice to have a show that wants to do things fans have missed like exploration, science and team work but keep things more on the humorous side. That’s why Lower Decks became such a hit with fans. No, not with everyone obviously but the people who just want fun characters and stories. And I don’t think the humor is the problem, just how far they take it mostly. But if it played closer to what SNW is doing, it would be an even bigger hit IMO.

Captain Angel is the perfect example. She’s a ‘villain’ but a pretty light one in terms of how villains go. She is a level above Harry Mudd basically but like ten levels below Khan or Gul Dukat lol. She’s not a joke in the way the Plakleds are on LDS, but not to be taken too seriously either. Can’t wait to see her again.

That 7 episodes went by fast. Unlike… Unlike those of some other series were nothing happened in 10 episodes until the very end. Now bring on 24 episodes in S2!

I wouldn’t want 24 episodes. For one thing it would stretch the budget (and it already seems a bit cheaper than either Disco or Picard). And (Picard season two being an exception), it’s a lot easier to have consistently high quality with fewer episodes.

The bulk of the money seems to be spent on production. So if the show was better (in that it adhered to major canon issues correctly or was officially a reboot) I would be totally fine with dipping the budget down to get more episodes in a season. The sets and effects are nice but I’d rather have people know about about Trek and hold on to the lore than have lots of money spent on pretty SPFX.

Bit of a mixed bag, but still fun. Actors are still having a ball, Peck and Mount in particular are so watchable, but I’m warming to Jess Bush as well, and Chapel was a character I questioned the need for including at the outset. I liked Dr. Aspen, wasn’t quite so keen on Captain Angel. The campy villain aspect of the character seemed to test Jesse James Keitel’s instincts a bit too hard whereas the sensitive insightful but cagey counselor was working rather well. But I should have seen the double-cross (yes, it’s an overused device) coming around when I started thinking Dr. Aspen seemed a little too helpless.

Mutiny sub-plot was a little too broad, but cutting to the commandeered bridge and then the mutiny still being in progress was a nice touch.

Sybok… as much as I’m not really thrilled at the prospect of getting to know more about one of the worst movie villain’s past, his divisiveness does make him fodder for redemption in the right hands. But I don’t know how epic his next appearance can be if we’re to believe Kirk and McCoy are still in the dark about him decades later.

Being the villain of the worst movie doesn’t make him the worst villain.

But I don’t know how epic his next appearance can be if we’re to believe Kirk and McCoy are still in the dark about him decades later.

Maybe his experience with Sybok will become painful that he will decide not to talk about it. That could be seen as one way to surpress emotions. Therefore it might be logic not to talk about that. Just like he doesn’t mention to Kirk and McCoy that Sarek is his father due to their broken relationship. (And because he wants to stand on his own as Spock and not as the son of Vulcan’s most famous ambassador).

All plausible. The curse of being a prequel show shoved into a tight timeline is the need to connect so many little dots to make things fit well-enough.

As for Sybok, for the record I said “worst movie villain’s”, not that he was the villain in the worst movie, that’s not relevant. I still rate him with Ru’afo, Nero and Krall as the worst of the movie villains. Just never did a thing for me. But I’m still willing to see where they go with this, there’s absolutely potential.

Is the whole point of this episode that the Enterprise was captured by pirates who wanted to trade the Enterprise for… Sybok? Because the chief pirate Angel is Sybok’s lover ?

That’s my main question. Am I wrong?

And if so, how does this episode not blow up “canon” entirely on own? Because Pike was so confident and lighthearted that no one bothered to remember that… the Enterprise was captured to free Spock’s brother who is interred by his fiancé?

My enjoyment of the episode contradicts my feelings about how I think it fits cannon though I am 100% sure future audience will love this even more .

Because I think we are going to see a lot more Sybok.

Also: how does this not result in Sybok just “knowing” that T’Pring is not just interested in Spock and using that information for his own benefit?

Yep, correct. Angel and Sybok are a couple. Man, those two are probably more warped than Depp and Heard…but can’t wait for the craziness though!

But I am confused. How does Sybok’s appearance break canon? I assume it’s something said in TFF of course, but please don’t make me watch it!

You know, I don’t think I ever thought no matter how nuts the Star Trek universe can be that it would ever bring T’Pring and Sybok in the same story lol. It’s all pretty surreal for TOS fans. Two people I never thought we would see beyond what we got in Amok Time and TFF. And now here they both are, decades later, and part of a huge story arc involving Spock. And the fact Sybok looks to be a villain in the show is just nuts.

But at least they bring back already existing characters from TOS instead of inventing some relatives which were never mentioned before.

That’s true although coughLa’ancough!!!!!

So there are still some old (bad) tricks being pulled on this show too!

Maybe her right name got lost in translation and she is La’an Noonien SOONG. ;-) I just watched DataLore yesterday and noticed that connection which was brought in very early in TNG, but never resolved…although… now that I mention it, it was hinted in the finale of Picard.

I just want to say for the record I am sure there is going to be some kind of T’Pring threesome with Sybok and Angel and Stonn’s middle name is going to be “Stop!”

Isn’t T’Pring already gonna be involved with Spock and Chapel? :-P

Well, she name dropped Maggie Nelson, so she definitely is hip. No one is talking about that! (maybe on the podcast?!)

Sybok was called a different name and Spock only told Chapel about Sybok. Thus far, no one else knows. This was actually one of the better ways they have dealt with a canon issue. And again, frustrating because when they try it seems they can do it. So in a way this just makes the other things they did even bigger transgressions.

I don’t get the critics slamming SNW “as the best new Trek series” for bringing back Sybok as villain “from the worst Star Trek movie”. Indeed Sybok could have been portraied way better in ST V (we know Sean Connery was supposed to play his role”) but there is sooooo much potential. You can use that bit of canon of TOS/TOS-movies and connect it with ENT for example. And when it comes to bad written villains, Krull Krall for example was worse.

Just catching up on Discovery. What a pile of crap! Saru is the only interesting character. Give me SNW any day.

Regardless of all the tips of the hat to TOS’s hamminess in this latest episode of SNW, I loved the character work with Spock and Chapel. SO MUCH BETTER than Disco!

With great suffering (discovery), comes great reward (SNW)

Oh how I wish that were the case….

Truly amazing episode loved the inclusion of sybok snow has exceeded my expectations

I had to look up the transcript of Final Frontier to see if Sybok was, indeed, born “out of wedlock.” I thought he hadn’t been, or that the marriage had been annulled. Turns out the original is unclear, but it’s implied Sarek was married to her. Hence, not “out of wedlock.”

I think all Spock said Sybok’s mother was a Vulcan princess, and that’s it.

Pretty sure he said he was married to her. But I last say that movie about a year ago….

OK… help an old Trekker out here. Did I miss something?

So it would take 2 days for Enterprise to get a response back from Starfleet about going outside of Federation territory but they were able to get a direct line to T’Pring with no problem?

And T’Pring can just show up in a Vulcan ship in what, no time at all?

If I missed something here please let me know because these two issues just blew me out of the epsidoe.

I believe the rehab center is not on Vulcan but in the Omicron Braga system that may be a lot closer to their location…

It was just a bad, ‘jump the shark’ episode scripted by a poor writer. So don’t worry yourself about the particulars; hopefully SNW will be back on track next week.

Its called bad writing.

For me this is another great episode, although I had read some reviews before I saw it so the twist was spoiled for me. I saw many complain about the acting, but despite a few overplayed “notes” here and there, I loved the scenery chewing performance. I especially loved Angel’s bemusement at being outsmarted, it was perfectly played. Hell, I would love to see Angel again! This was a fantastic Spock episode, well written and thought provoking. They’ve done such an impeccable job building these characters and their relationships and it’s paying off in every episode. I love that we are seeing character arcs rather than plot arcs, it’s far less mechanical and more human. And this show is so damn fun with sharp banter that builds from scene to scene. Great stuff, love it all and I watch in amazement that this show is nailing it episode after episode. There is just so many “Calories” in this show, every scene has something new, interesting, funny, beautiful, to add to this universe and its characters. This contrasts sharply to the mostly empty Season 4 of Discovery, there is just a massive difference in how these shows are made.

This show hasn’t had a bad episode yet, although this was pretty run of the mill. Random thoughts:

• Is it just me, or is Uhura becoming less and less important with every episode? She’s not even in this one.
• For the first time this season La’an doesn’t have a major role.
• No Hemmer (again).
• I’m starting to think we’re seeing too much of T’Pring. The relationship stuff is really good, but it kind of strains credulity that she can just show up on the Enterprise whenever she wants.

It’s a rather big cast, tied for the biggest to date if Hemmer is considered a main character. I give them a little leeway there. We’re certainly due for an Ortegas episode, though, she’s not even owned a subplot yet.

I agree with Ortegas, though. Part of the problem is that she flies the ship, but that’s about it – she doesn’t deal with life or death stuff like the M’Benga or Chapel, she hasn’t developed any sort of personal relationship with one of the other characters and she’s not in a leadership position on the ship.

What really saved this episode was Jesse James Keitel’s performance as Dr. Aspen. Honestly, they are they best villain so far this season. I hope they come back for the season finale and future episodes. Sybok’s introduction in the end was pretty cool too, but I could have done without Pike and the crew trying to take over the pirate’s ship.

I thought she was OK until she started channeling Evil-Georgeau. She should have really just been the same person after the betrayal. There was no need to go over the top like that.

It’s incredible to see such a solid first season. Every episode is better than the last IMHO! Trek is alive and well!!!

This episode was a fun one with the space pirates even though I cringed hard when Pike started speaking like one on the bridge. I also laughed when Una said that it says Pike is a boy scout in his file. I’m also a little disappointed to know that Spock and T’Pring’s relationship is doomed, because I am really enjoying watching their relationship unfold. The Sybok reveal at the end was a surprise, but I hope he isn’t seen again in the series.

A couple random thoughts about the series…

The musical score for the series is outstanding. It really adds something to the episodes.

What happened to the DOT-7s? Does Enterprise not use them anymore?

I’m sorry but this doesn’t work for me. There’s supposed to be a crew of about 200 aboard the Enterprise during Pike’s time but all we ever see is M’Benga and the bridge crew. It’s ridiculous to think a handful of pirates could seize the ship.

Oh, that was painfully bad! Well, SNW is 6 for 7 so far; Not a bad percentage!

Aaaargh, matey.. What an atrocious, cliched episode. Easily the worst-of-series so far (and after “Amok Spock,” that’s saying something.)

Primitives with a ship’s complement of a couple dozen taking over the flagship? Check.

Every pirate cliche in the book? Check. (At least Una had the good sense to say, “please stop.”)

Bizarre love triangle between Spock and the oh-so-effervescent Nurse Chapel? Check. (At least they finally got the Vulcan two-finger erotic pose right.)

Sitcommy attempt to get the pirate crew to mutiny? Even Jack Sparrow himself didn’t try that.

Why, oh why, do they feel the need to show T’Pring in just about every damn episode of this series? The actress who plays her is a dead ringer for Arlene Martel *and* nails the part, but the character isn’t so wonderful that she needs to show up more often than the *chief engineer* of the ship.

The ship takeover was resolved far too easily. Any halfway decent privateer would be keeping a much sharper eye out for disloyalty among the mercenary crew than Dr. Aspen did. Compare her to the pirates in “The Gambit,” for instance — the TNG episode was a much, much more layered portrayal. The comparison between the two reveals that this episode is a textbook case of why episodic television isn’t always better; the two-part format of “Gambit” allowed for some real character development.

The only saving grace of the episode was Dr. Aspen — and by that I mean Dr. Aspen, not Angel. Her counseling of Spock was on point. Dr. Aspen was actually an intriguing character. (Unlike Adira, Dr. Aspen was also an example of a trans character *doing her job* instead of waxing eloquent about her trans status, which should be the point of a diverse cast.) As with Captain Lorca, they ruined that intriguing character with the Big Plot Twist.

Finally, Sybok. I like the idea of him showing up. It was wholly out of character for him to ally himself with a bunch of slave traders, though. His raison d’etre was to free minds, which is presumably inconsistent with enslaving bodies. Admittedly, he may not have known who he was dealing with.

“ The actress who plays her is a dead ringer for Arlene Martel *and* nails the part, but the character isn’t so wonderful that she needs to show up more often than the *chief engineer* of the ship.”

I agree. 1) The actress playing T’Pring really does a great job. I truly enjoy what she brings to the table. T’Pring is like Lilith (from Cheers/Fraiser), but more tolerable. While T’Pring is not played for comedy, the actress is skillfully able to deliver irony and comic timing as needed. She is fun to watch. 2) As much as I enjoy T’Pring and as much as I want to see more of her on SNW (despite the reality of her required exit based on canon), we really do need to see more Hemmer. And more of Una.

Oh : I totally agree about Dr. Aspen. I was so loving the therapy/analysis that Spok was getting. Loved it. It really felt like she was invested in digging into his grey matter to help him get to “I am a child of both worlds… able to be at peace in either, and able to compose a greater whole from the two…” That part of the story was going to wonderful places for me, until it stopped going there. The twist robbed me of a good thing in my opinion. To some degree, I fell out of the episode when the doctor – who telegraphed her twist very early – turned into a caricature villain. In truth, I somewhat fell out of the episode with “Let’s cook for our captors.”

But if ever there was a good need to have a ship’s counselor, it would be to help Spock overcome his internal conflicts (innate to his birth; trying ever so hard to be the pure-logic based Vulcan in a ship full of human emotional temptations; and those lingering issues from Big Sister Michael). It would be great in a season to spread out 2 or 3 scenes of about 5 minutes each given to counseling sessions that explore Spock’s inner Vulcan and Human to help him master the “Strange New World” that is his genetic heritage and how he learns to manage and embrace it.

Anyway, I must say, to me this entire season of SNW has been a Trekking delight. Not everything has been perfect but I have also found nothing to keep my lip poked out. Rather, I have found a lot to make me say wow, and a lot of that wow is directed to the character development. Way to go! Nice start!

Good sign for the series. Awful episode, like a bad Enterprise outing meets Disco , yet I was somewhat entertained on the ample strengths of Peck ‘n’ Bush. A solid cast goes a long ways in getting thru the crap episodes. One note- if you’re going to dress a random Canadian building to be a spaceship’s cargo hold, do try to cover up the brick walls and windows.

The real good sign for the series is that this episode isn’t relevant for the next one (Only the background story around Spock, T’Pring and Sybok). That’s a huge difference compared to DSC and PIC. A supposed bad episode doesn’t ruin the whole series. I’m sure the producers are experimenting different styles to see what viewers like and what not. And beside that we had real cringe-worthy episodes in the first two seasons of TNT/DS9/VOY which were waaaaay worse than this episode.

I enjoyed the episode, but honestly I laughed the whole way through. Especially during the kiss. It struck me as very funny. I even liked Ortega’s wisecracks this time.

Den of Geek

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds — What You Should Know About Pike, Spock, and Number One

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds might seem like a reboot, but it’s also a direct sequel to Star Trek: Discovery season 2. Here’s what to know if you’re just now catching up.

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This article contains spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery season 2.

If you’ve slept on new TV Star Trek for the past several years, there’s a good chance you’re thinking of beaming back in with the debut of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds . And, in terms of understanding the future of where the franchise is headed, this new series is a pretty perfect place for a casual viewer to create their own personal Star Trek reboot. In all meaningful ways, Strange New Worlds is an approachable and less canon-obsessed Star Trek than some more recent entries. Its aesthetic and flavor will also remind longtime viewers of both The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation . But if you missed Star Trek: Discovery season 2 or Short Treks , you may be a little confused by a few very specific details. 

So, here’s what to know about Pike, Spock, and Number One’s whole deal in Strange New Worlds . 

If you’re already watching all the new Star Trek shows, this article isn’t for you because you already know. But if you are one of the people cautiously dipping your toe back into the transporter beam, it may interest you to learn that Discovery season 2 was essentially the whole reason Strange New Worlds exists. Here’s how it shakes out.

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Pike’s vision in Discovery Season 2

In 2018, at the end of Star Trek Discovery season 1 , the USS Enterprise appeared in the final moments of the last episode, “Will You Take My Hand?” Then, in 2019, in  Discovery Season 2, starting with the episode “Brother,” Captain Pike (Anson Mount) beamed over from the Enterprise (which was conveniently broken) to temporarily take command of the USS Discovery . For the entirety of season 2, up until the two-part finale, “Such Sweet Sorrow,” Pike was the acting captain of Discovery while the Enterprise was repaired. During this time, Pike had a long-distance telepathic conversation with Vina (Melissa George) first introduced in original Star Trek pilot “The Cage.” But in the Discovery episode “Through the Valley of the Shadows,” Pike saw his own tragic future.

This detai about Pike’s futurel is essential . In The Original Series two-parter “The Menagerie,” we see Pike in a mechanized wheelchair, his mind essentially cut off from his body. In TOS , we’re told Pike rescued Starfleet cadets from an explosion on an old starship being used for training. In both Discovery and now, Strange New Worlds , this grim fate is still in Pike’s future, but the wrinkle Discovery created is that Pike is now aware it’s going to happen. 

Strange New Worlds doesn’t shy away from this Discovery twist at all. If anything, it doubles down. Pike’s knowledge of what’s going to happen to him is still a very big deal, and, as revealed in the trailers, Strange New Worlds even uses footage from Discovery to make this point. 

Spock and Michael Burnham

Discovery established that Spock’s human step-sister is Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), the main character of that series. Spock doesn’t mention Burnham much in Strange New Worlds (or at all in the rest of canon!) but there is one conversation in the pilot episode of the new series that connects to Burnham. Pike acknowledges this detail too, because, of course, he served with Burnham on Discovery . 

But, why can’t Pike and Spock talk more openly about Michael Burnham or the crew of the Discover y ? Well….

The Super-Classified Enterprise-Discovery mission 

At the end of Discovery Season 2, both the Enterprise and Discovery teamed up to fight a rogue AI called “Control” from destroying the future. Long story short: In order to completely get rid of Control, Discovery has to jump far enough into the future, to a point at which its special data can’t be used by Control to eradicate all sentient life. In the same season, Discovery itself merged with a super-advanced alien intelligence and gained its own nascent sentience, which, while cool, was also a liability. So, for many complicated reasons, Burnham and the crew had to take themselves into the far future, in order to prevent Control from ever gaining the “sphere data” and ruining everything. 

In order to do this, the Enterprise provided cover, while Burnham opened a wormhole to the future, and Discovery flew behind her. In the final moments of “Such Sweet Sorrow Part 2,” Spock encourages Starfleet to classify everything about this mission for several reasons. First, the time travel tech developed by Starfleet’s Section 31 was partially responsible for the problem. Second, Starfleet also created Control in the first place. And finally, if the general public was aware that a 23rd-century starship was now living in the 32nd century, because of an AI threat, it would be generally bad for everyone. 

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So, the crew of the Enterprise , including Pike, Spock, and Number One, are all sworn to secrecy, and the official “record” suggests that Discovery “exploded,” a lie that everyone is sticking to, except in private. Strange New Worlds takes place very shortly after these events.

Number One and Spock in Short Treks

In addition to Discovery Season 2, in 2019, Pike, Spock, and Number One appeared in three short episodes of the anthology series Short Treks . Two of those episodes, “The Trouble With Edward,” and “Ask Not,” mostly used Pike as a kind of framing device to tell a different story. But, in “Q&A” (written by Michael Chabon) we got to see Spock’s first day on the USS Enterprise and his first meeting with Number One (Rebecca Romijn). This was the first time we learned Number One’s real first name is “Una,” and it was the first (and only ) time that Star Trek canon has attempted to reconcile the similarities between Spock and Number One’s personalities and to explain why Spock in “The Cage” acted so different than the rest of The Original Series .

In many ways, “Q&A” is just as essential for understanding Strange New Worlds as Discovery . It creates a great introduction to Spock and Una’s relationship, which, in a sense, makes it a direct prequel to Strange New Worlds .  

For the most part, the nitty-gritty details of the rest of the Star Trek canon aren’t required to enjoy Strange New Worlds , but that doesn’t mean the show is shying away from those details either. Like all of Star Trek, small parts can inform the whole, and with this Enterprise , a little bit of knowledge about its step-siblings goes a long way.

Ryan Britt is a longtime contributor to Den of Geek! He is also the author of three non-fiction books: the Star Trek pop history book PHASERS…

Strange New Worlds' Futuristic VFX Tech Has A Delightful Star Trek Nickname

A  Variety cover story about the future of "Star Trek" includes plenty of exciting updates about the future of the series, but it's also just a trivia treasure trove for "Trek" fans — including the ones who work on the shows. "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" stars Anson Mount (who plays cool, calm, and collected Captain Pike in the series) and Ethan Peck (who plays a younger, slightly more emotive Spock) both noted how surreal their jobs are, while Mount also revealed that they get to go to work on a set named after part of a starship.

"Sometimes we call it The Holodeck," Mount told Variety when describing the massive augmented reality walls (similar to those used by Industrial Light & Magic's The Volume ) that turn the set into a virtual-physical hybrid space. Variety's Adam B. Vary observed that Mount "[couldn't] help but break into a boyish grin" when he talked about the AR walls they call The Holodeck, as if it's yet another childhood dream come true. In an interview with Entertainment Tonight back in 2019, Mount explained that he'd been a "Star Trek" fan since he was seven or eight, and said of his own casting, "It was almost like you had been sitting in the audience for a really long time and somehow you get sucked into the screen and then you're standing in the starship in front of a Klingon with a phaser in your hand."

The AR walls on set are nicknamed The Holodeck

The Holodeck title apparently isn't just a nickname among the actors; according to Variety, posters of the holodeck from "Star Trek: The Next Generation" adorn the walls along the path to the virtual set, along with the phrase "Enter Holodeck" written in a classic "Star Trek" font (though, sorry font geeks, there's no word on whether it's Galaxy or Horizon ). As with other virtual sets being used in Hollywood today, the AR walls known as The Holodeck utilize massive LED screens that display highly realistic, kinetic CGI backdrops. Mount says they're a bit dizzying.

"The images on the walls start to move in a way that makes no sense," the actor told Variety. "You end up having to focus on something that's right in front of you so you don't fall down." Peck, meanwhile, said he's not as bothered by the CGI walls, and wished he could take one of the Holodeck signs home. "I don't really get disoriented by it. Spock would not get ill, so I'm Method acting," he joked.

Virtual sets still need the human touch, and Trek's got it

While virtual sets were initially praised as a technology capable of revolutionizing film and television, it's become clear by now that not every production is made better by AR walls. "The Mandalorian" set the standard by coupling its realistic set graphics with great production design and cinematography, but movies like "Thor: Love and Thunder" (which didn't quite hit the background/prop ratio needed to look real) and shows like "Percy Jackson & The Olympians" (which, as the first production to use the Vancouver-based virtual set , has an uncanny valley shininess to it) prove it's not enough to let the sets do the work, no matter how magnificent — and disorienting — they are.

Luckily, though, "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" seems to be firing on all cylinders. The first two seasons look great, and everyone from the costume department to the director's chair delivers the goods again and again. As "Trek" star turned director Jonathan Frakes put it elsewhere in the article, "Every department has the resources to create." We can't wait to see what they'll create next.

"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" will return for season 3 on Paramount+ in 2025.

Screen Rant

Strange new worlds spock actor talks difficulty of taking iconic role.

Strange New Worlds Spock actor Ethan Peck says he wasn't sure he could pull off playing such an iconic character, saying he felt a lot of pressure.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds actor Ethan Peck says how worried he was taking on the role of Spock, saying he didn't think he was worthy of it.  Strange New Worlds is the latest installment from the  Star Trek  franchise and a direct spin-off of  Star Trek: Discovery , in which Peck first appeared as Spock in the show's second season. Along with Peck, the series stars Anson Mount, Rebecca Romijn, Jess Bush, and Celia Rose Gooding.

Strange New Worlds follows Captain Pike (Mount), head of the starship Enterprise as he and his crew explore the galaxy, ten years before the events of  Star Trek: The Original Series . Peck plays science officer Spock, a role originated by Leonard Nimoy in the original series, who went on to become an icon of science fiction.  Strange New Worlds has a more episodic structure  than the serialized  Discovery , harkening back to the storytelling of  The Original Series .

Related: Strange New Worlds Episode 3 Continues An Old Star Trek Tradition

When asked by  THR , Peck talks about how he initially thought he wasn't worthy of playing such a well-known part. He talks about doing extensive research for the role and studying Nimoy's performance to perfect Spock's voice and mannerisms. He goes on to say there's a lot less pressure now than when he was making  Discovery , having relaxed into the role over time. Read Peck's quote below:

In the beginning, yes, the weight was nearly unbearable, and I wondered if I would be kind of broken by, “I’m not sure that I quite feel worthy.” I’m still growing into Spock in many ways. And you know, now the pressure isn’t quite as great as it was during Discovery. I’m trying to have an experience as Spock. I’m not thinking of what the final product will be or how it will look. But I definitely did a bunch of research, and I’m constantly checking in with the voice of Spock in my head. Leonard Nimoy made such an impression on me and that’s with me always. I’m constantly checking in with that.

Peck also talks about the cultural impact of  Star Trek and that it's a tricky balancing act bringing new life to a franchise that means so much to so many. With  Strange New Worlds hinting at changes to canon , Peck and the other actors playing familiar characters like Bush and Gooding will likely face new challenges as previously unseen dimensions are added to the roles.  Strange New Worlds has already confirmed that other characters from  The Original Series will appear, including Paul Wesley as James T. Kirk.

Spock remains one of the most iconic and influential characters in science fiction and beyond, and it's understandable why Peck was initially reluctant to take on such a part. But as his performance in  Discovery and now  Strange New Worlds shows, he's more than up to the task of bringing new depth to such an important character. With the return to an episodic structure and a reverence for its source material ,  Strange New Worlds is a worthy addition to the  Star Trek canon and Peck fits into that addition greatly.

Next: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Isn't A TOS Throwback - It's The New TNG

Source: THR

Star Trek: 5 Actors Who Almost Played Spock Instead Of Leonard Nimoy

Even to the uninitiated, Leonard Nimoy's Spock has long served as the face of the "Star Trek" franchise. Reflecting on the iconic character while speaking with  Variety  about  "Strange New Worlds," the most recent Spock actor, Ethan Peck , recalled his own experience flashing the Vulcan's signature hand sign on his grade school playground as a kid. "When I thought of 'Star Trek,' I thought of Spock. And now I'm him," the actor mused. "It's crazy."

Like Zachary Quinto before him, Peck landed the gig in part because of his passable resemblance to Nimoy's O.G. Vulcan. Despite creator Gene Roddenberry's conviction that the actor would be perfect for the role, he was one of a handful of aspiring Vulcans in the running. According to William Shatner's account in the memoir "Star Trek Memories,"  NBC required Roddenberry to consider a handful of other actors for the role before landing on Nimoy. And judging by the lineup, Captain Kirk's favorite bromance could have looked a lot different.

Actors who were seriously considered for — or even offered — the role include character actor Rex Holman ("Escape to Witch Mountain"), Victor Lundin (Gene from "The Theory of Everything"), Michael Dunn ("The Wild, Wild West" TV series),  Martin Landau, whose many well-known roles include Bela Lugosi in "Ed Wood,"  and even DeForest Kelley, who ended up playing the ship's doctor, Leonard "Bones" McCoy. 

Roddenberry wanted Nimoy, but NBC wanted someone else

As recounted in  Marc Cushman's book, "These Are the Voyages: TOS, Season One," Spock had been on Gene Roddenberry's mind early in the "Star Trek" pilot creation process. For suggestions on casting the ship's first officer, he had turned to Gary Lockwood, who played the lead in Roddenberry's 1963 TV military drama series "The Lieutenant." When the actor recommended Roddenberry cast someone "who was really good, but ... had kind of a strange face," Majel Barrett — Roddenberry's wife and then-future Trek legend — immediately reminded him of Nimoy. 

But NBC had their own guy in mind to play the Vulcan — namely, Martin Landau. By the time he was offered the role of Spock, Landau had racked up a number of TV and film roles, including appearances on "The Twilight Zone," "Wagon Train," "Gunsmoke," and "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour." Around the same time the actor was offered the role of Spock, he had been up for a role in the spy series "Mission Impossible" as master of disguise Rollin Hand.

For Landau, turning down the space series was a no-brainer. In 1986, the actor told  Starlog,  "I can't play wooden. It's the antithesis of why I became an actor," adding that "newscasters are more emotional than Spock." Instead, he went for the spy gig — a role that earned him a Golden Globe in 1968.

DeForest Kelley turned down the role

Dishing in Allan Asherman's  "The Star Trek Interview Book,"  Roddenberry said Michael Dunn, a 3' 10" actor whose best-known role was as Dr. Miguelito Loveless on "The Wild, Wild West," was also considered for the part. "I wanted Spock to look different and be different, and yes, to make a statement about being an outsider looking in," Roddenberry explained. Ultimately, the franchise creator felt the role needed someone more conventionally attractive to a weekly TV audience, concluding, "It was the right choice for the time." Dunn did, however, end up making an appearance on "Star Trek" in one of the series' most notorious episodes, "Plato's Stepchildren."

Victor Lundin, who played one of the first Klingons in "Star Trek" in "Errand of Mercy," also auditioned for Spock. In 2001, he told the  Chicago Reader,  "If you look at my ears you can see why. I would've saved them millions in makeup." According to Lundin, he was just too much of a beefcake to play the Vulcan at the time, noting, "I was very buff in those days." Also considered for the role was Rex Holman, who would finally get his turn with the franchise in "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier."

But for many Trekkies, the most surprising Spock revelation is that DeForest Kelley read for the role as the Enterprise's Vulcan science officer. Kelley detailed his near-Spock experience in  "From Sawdust to Stardust: The Biography of DeForest Kelley, Star Trek's Dr. McCoy."  Recalling a lunch meeting with Roddenberry, Kelley recounted, "He described this character, this alien with the ears, and he asked me how I felt about playing it." However , the idea of playing a Vulcan didn't sit well with him. "No, Gene, really, I don't want to do it," he recalled, answering in a tone similar to that of his  sarcastic Enterprise doctor, Bones .

The Future of ‘Star Trek’: From ‘Starfleet Academy’ to New Movies and Michelle Yeoh, How the 58-Year-Old Franchise Is Planning for the Next Generation of Fans

“I can’t believe I get to play the captain of the Enterprise.”

“Strange New Worlds” is the 12th “Star Trek” TV show since the original series debuted on NBC in 1966, introducing Gene Roddenberry’s vision of a hopeful future for humanity. In the 58 years since, the “Star Trek” galaxy has logged 900 television episodes and 13 feature films, amounting to 668 hours — nearly 28 days — of content to date. Even compared with “Star Wars” and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, “Star Trek” stands as the only storytelling venture to deliver a single narrative experience for this long across TV and film.

In other words, “Star Trek” is not just a franchise. As Alex Kurtzman , who oversees all “Star Trek” TV production, puts it, “‘Star Trek’ is an institution.”

Without a steady infusion of new blood, though, institutions have a way of fading into oblivion (see soap operas, MySpace, Blockbuster Video). To keep “Star Trek” thriving has meant charting a precarious course to satisfy the fans who have fueled it for decades while also discovering innovative ways to get new audiences on board.

“Doing ‘Star Trek’ means that you have to deliver something that’s entirely familiar and entirely fresh at the same time,” Kurtzman says.

The franchise has certainly weathered its share of fallow periods, most recently after “Nemesis” bombed in theaters in 2002 and UPN canceled “Enterprise” in 2005. It took 12 years for “Star Trek” to return to television with the premiere of “Discovery” in 2017; since then, however, there has been more “Star Trek” on TV than ever: The adventure series “Strange New Worlds,” the animated comedy “Lower Decks” and the kids series “Prodigy” are all in various stages of production, and the serialized thriller “Picard” concluded last year, when it ranked, along with “Strange New Worlds,” among Nielsen’s 10 most-watched streaming original series for multiple weeks. Nearly one in five Paramount+ subscribers in the U.S. is watching at least one “Star Trek” series, according to the company, and more than 50% of fans watching one of the new “Trek” shows also watch at least two others. The new shows air in 200 international markets and are dubbed into 35 languages. As “Discovery” launches its fifth and final season in April, “Star Trek” is in many ways stronger than it’s ever been.

“’Star Trek’s fans have kept it alive more times than seems possible,” says Eugene Roddenberry, Jr., who executive produces the TV series through Roddenberry Entertainment. “While many shows rightfully thank their fans for supporting them, we literally wouldn’t be here without them.”

But the depth of fan devotion to “Star Trek” also belies a curious paradox about its enduring success: “It’s not the largest fan base,” says Akiva Goldsman, “Strange New Worlds” executive producer and co-showrunner. “It’s not ‘Star Wars.’ It’s certainly not Marvel.”

When J.J. Abrams rebooted “Star Trek” in 2009 — with Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and Zoe Saldaña playing Kirk, Spock and Uhura — the movie grossed more than any previous “Star Trek” film by a comfortable margin. But neither that film nor its two sequels broke $500 million in global grosses, a hurdle every other top-tier franchise can clear without breaking a sweat.

There’s also the fact that “Star Trek” fans are aging. I ask “The Next Generation” star Jonathan Frakes, who’s acted in or directed more versions of “Star Trek” than any other person alive, how often he meets fans for whom the new “Star Trek” shows are their first. “Of the fans who come to talk to me, I would say very, very few,” he says. “‘Star Trek’ fans, as we know, are very, very, very loyal — and not very young.”

As Stapf puts it: “There’s a tried and true ‘Trek’ fan that is probably going to come to every ‘Star Trek,’ no matter what it is — and we want to expand the universe.”

Every single person I spoke to for this story talked about “Star Trek” with a joyful earnestness as rare in the industry as (nerd alert) a Klingon pacifist.

“When I’m meeting fans, sometimes they’re coming to be confirmed, like I’m kind of a priest,” Ethan Peck says during a break in filming on the “Strange New Worlds” set. He’s in full Spock regalia — pointy ears, severe eyebrows, bowl haircut — and when asked about his earliest memories of “Star Trek,” he stares off into space in what looks like Vulcan contemplation. “I remember being on the playground in second or third grade and doing the Vulcan salute, not really knowing where it came from,” he says. “When I thought of ‘Star Trek,’ I thought of Spock. And now I’m him. It’s crazy.”

To love “Star Trek” is to love abstruse science and cowboy diplomacy, complex moral dilemmas and questions about the meaning of existence. “It’s ultimately a show with the most amazing vision of optimism, I think, ever put on-screen in science fiction,” says Kurtzman, who is 50. “All you need is two minutes on the news to feel hopeless now. ‘Star Trek’ is honestly the best balm you could ever hope for.”

I’m getting a tour of the USS Enterprise from Scotty — or, rather, “Strange New World” production designer Jonathan Lee, who is gushing in his native Scottish burr as we step into the starship’s transporter room. “I got such a buzzer from doing this, I can’t tell you,” he says. “I actually designed four versions of it.”

Lee is especially proud of the walkway he created to run behind the transporter pads — an innovation that allows the production to shoot the characters from a brand-new set of angles as they beam up from a far-flung planet. It’s one of the countless ways that this show has been engineered to be as cinematic as possible, part of Kurtzman’s overall vision to make “Star Trek” on TV feel like “a movie every week.”

Kurtzman’s tenure with “Star Trek” began with co-writing the screenplay for Abrams’ 2009 movie, which was suffused with a fast-paced visual style that was new to the franchise. When CBS Studios approached Kurtzman in the mid-2010s about bringing “Star Trek” back to TV, he knew instinctively that it needed to be just as exciting as that film.

“The scope was so much different than anything we had ever done on ‘Next Gen,’” says Frakes, who’s helmed two feature films with the “Next Generation” cast and directed episodes of almost every live-action “Trek” TV series, including “Discovery” and “Strange New Worlds.” “Every department has the resources to create.”

A new science lab set for Season 3, for example, boasts a transparent floor atop a four-foot pool of water that swirls underneath the central workbench, and the surrounding walls sport a half dozen viewscreens with live schematics custom designed by a six-person team. “I like being able to paint on a really big canvas,” Kurtzman says. “The biggest challenge is always making sure that no matter how big something gets, you’re never losing focus on that tiny little emotional story.”

At this point, is there a genre that “Strange New Worlds” can’t do? “As long as we’re in storytelling that is cogent and sure handed, I’m not sure there is,” Goldsman says with an impish smile. “Could it do Muppets? Sure. Could it do black and white, silent, slapstick? Maybe!”

This approach is also meant to appeal to people who might want to watch “Star Trek” but regard those 668 hours of backstory as an insurmountable burden. “You shouldn’t have to watch a ‘previously on’ to follow our show,” Myers says.

To achieve so many hairpin shifts in tone and setting while maintaining Kurtzman’s cinematic mandate, “Strange New Worlds” has embraced one of the newest innovations in visual effects: virtual production. First popularized on the “Star Wars” series “The Mandalorian,” the technology — called the AR wall — involves a towering circular partition of LED screens projecting a highly detailed, computer-generated backdrop. Rather than act against a greenscreen, the actors can see whatever fantastical surroundings their characters are inhabiting, lending a richer level of verisimilitude to the show.

But there is a catch. While the technology is calibrated to maintain a proper sense of three-dimensional perspective through the camera lens, it can be a bit dizzying for anyone standing on the set. “The images on the walls start to move in a way that makes no sense,” says Mount. “You end up having to focus on something that’s right in front of you so you don’t fall down.”

And yet, even as he’s talking about it, Mount can’t help but break into a boyish grin. “Sometimes we call it the holodeck,” he says. In fact, the pathway to the AR wall on the set is dotted with posters of the virtual reality room from “The Next Generation” and the words “Enter Holodeck” in a classic “Trek” font.

“I want to take one of those home with me,” Peck says. Does the AR wall also affect him? “I don’t really get disoriented by it. Spock would not get ill, so I’m Method acting.”

I’m on the set of the “Star Trek” TV movie “Section 31,” seated in an opulent nightclub with a view of a brilliant, swirling nebula, watching Yeoh rehearse with director Olatunde Osunsanmi and her castmates. Originally, the project was announced as a TV series centered on Philippa Georgiou, the semi-reformed tyrant Yeoh originated on “Discovery.” But between COVID delays and the phenomenon of “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” there wasn’t room in the veteran actress’s schedule to fit a season of television. Yeoh was undaunted.

“We’d never let go of her,” she says of her character. “I was just blown away by all the different things I could do with her. Honestly, it was like, ‘Let’s just get it done, because I believe in this.’”

If that means nothing to you, don’t worry: The enormity of the revelation that Garrett is being brought back is meant only for fans. If you don’t know who the character is, you’re not missing anything.

“It was always my goal to deliver an entertaining experience that is true to the universe but appeals to newcomers,” says screenwriter Craig Sweeny. “I wanted a low barrier of entry so that anybody could enjoy it.”

Nevertheless, including Garrett on the show is exactly the kind of gasp-worthy detail meant to flood “Star Trek” fans with geeky good feeling.

“You cannot create new fans to the exclusion of old fans,” Kurtzman says. “You must serve your primary fan base first and you must keep them happy. That is one of the most important steps to building new fans.”

On its face, that maxim would make “Section 31” a genuine risk. The titular black-ops organization has been controversial with “Star Trek” fans since it was introduced in the 1990s. “The concept is almost antagonistic to some of the values of ‘Star Trek,’” Sweeny says. But he still saw “Section 31” as an opportunity to broaden what a “Star Trek” project could be while embracing the radical inclusivity at the heart of the franchise’s appeal.

“Famously, there’s a spot for everybody in Roddenberry’s utopia, so I was like, ‘Well, who would be the people who don’t quite fit in?’” he says. “I didn’t want to make the John le Carré version, where you’re in the headquarters and it’s backbiting and shades of gray. I wanted to do the people who were at the edges, out in the field. These are not people who necessarily work together the way you would see on a ‘Star Trek’ bridge.”

For Osunsanmi, who grew up watching “The Next Generation” with his father, it boils down to a simple question: “Is it putting good into the world?” he asks. “Are these characters ultimately putting good into the world? And, taking a step back, are we putting good into the world? Are we inspiring humans watching this to be good? That’s for me what I’ve always admired about ‘Star Trek.’”

Should “Section 31” prove successful, Yeoh says she’s game for a sequel. And Kurtzman is already eyeing more opportunities for TV movies, including a possible follow-up to “Picard.” The franchise’s gung-ho sojourn into streaming movies, however, stands in awkward contrast to the persistent difficulty Paramount Pictures and Abrams’ production company Bad Robot have had making a feature film following 2016’s “Star Trek Beyond” — the longest theaters have gone without a “Star Trek” movie since Paramount started making them.

First, a movie reuniting Pine’s Capt. Kirk with his late father — played in the 2009 “Star Trek” by Chris Hemsworth — fell apart in 2018. Around the same time, Quentin Tarantino publicly flirted with, then walked away from, directing a “Star Trek” movie with a 1930s gangster backdrop. Noah Hawley was well into preproduction on a “Star Trek” movie with a brand-new cast, until then-studio chief Emma Watts abruptly shelved it in 2020. And four months after Abrams announced at Paramount’s 2022 shareholders meeting that his 2009 cast would return for a movie directed by Matt Shakman (“WandaVision”), Shakman left the project to make “The Fantastic Four” for Marvel. (It probably didn’t help that none of the cast had been approached before Abrams made his announcement.)

The studio still intends to make what it’s dubbed the “final chapter” for the Pine-Quinto-Saldaña cast, and Steve Yockey (“The Flight Attendant”) is writing a new draft of the script. Even further along is another prospective “Star Trek” film written by Seth Grahame-Smith (“Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”) and to be directed by Toby Haynes (“Andor,” “Black Mirror: USS Callister”) that studio insiders say is on track to start preproduction by the end of the year. That project will serve as an origin story of sorts for the main timeline of the entire franchise. In both cases, the studio is said to be focused on rightsizing the budgets to fit within the clear box office ceiling for “Star Trek” feature films.

Far from complaining, everyone seems to relish the challenge. Visual effects supervisor Jason Zimmerman says that “working with Alex, the references are always at least $100 million movies, if not more, so we just kind of reverse engineer how do we do that without having to spend the same amount of money and time.”

The workload doesn’t seem to faze him either. “Visual effects people are a big, big ‘Star Trek’ fandom,” he says. “You naturally just get all these people who go a little bit above and beyond, and you can’t trade that for anything.”

In one of Kurtzman’s several production offices in Toronto, he and production designer Matthew Davies are scrutinizing a series of concept drawings for the newest “Star Trek” show, “Starfleet Academy.” A bit earlier, they showed me their plans for the series’ central academic atrium, a sprawling, two-story structure that will include a mess hall, amphitheater, trees, catwalks, multiple classrooms and a striking view of the Golden Gate Bridge in a single, contiguous space. To fit it all, they plan to use every inch of Pinewood Toronto’s 45,900 square foot soundstage, the largest in Canada.

But this is a “Star Trek” show, so there do need to be starships, and Kurtzman is discussing with Davies about how one of them should look. The issue is that “Starfleet Academy” is set in the 32nd century, an era so far into the future Kurtzman and his team need to invent much of its design language.

“For me, this design is almost too Klingon,” Kurtzman says. “I want to see the outline and instinctively, on a blink, recognize it as a Federation ship.”

The time period was first introduced on Season 3 of “Discovery,” when the lead character, Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), transported the namesake starship and its crew there from the 23rd century. “It was exciting, because every time we would make a decision, we would say, ‘And now that’s canon,’” says Martin-Green.

“We listened to a lot of it,” Kurtzman says. “I think I’ve been able to separate the toxic fandom from really true fans who love ‘Star Trek’ and want you to hear what they have to say about what they would like to see.”

By Season 2, the “Discovery” writers pivoted from its dour, war-torn first season and sent the show on its trajectory 900-plus years into the future. “We had to be very aware of making sure that Spock was in the right place and that Burnham’s existence was explained properly, because she was never mentioned in the original series,” says executive producer and showrunner Michelle Paradise. “What was fun about jumping into the future is that it was very much fresh snow.”

That freedom affords “Starfleet Academy” far more creative latitude while also dramatically reducing how much the show’s target audience of tweens and teens needs to know about “Star Trek” before watching — which puts them on the same footing as the students depicted in the show. “These are kids who’ve never had a red alert before,” Noga Landau, executive producer and co-showrunner, says. “They never had to operate a transporter or be in a phaser fight.”

In the “Starfleet Academy” writers’ room in Secret Hideout’s Santa Monica offices, Kurtzman tells the staff — a mix of “Star Trek” die-hards, part-time fans and total newbies — that he wants to take a 30,000-foot view for a moment. “I think we need to ground in science more throughout the show,” he says, a giant framed photograph of Spock ears just over his shoulder. “The kids need to use science more to solve problems.”

Immediately, one of the writers brightens. “Are you saying we can amp up the techno-babble?” she says. “I’m just excited I get to use my computer science degree.”

After they break for lunch, Kurtzman is asked how much longer he plans to keep making “Star Trek.” 

“The minute I fall out of love with it is the minute that it’s not for me anymore. I’m not there yet,” he says. “To be able to build in this universe to tell stories that are fundamentally about optimism and a better future at a time when the world seems to be falling apart — it’s a really powerful place to live every day.”

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