Hello everyone! 🙂
Welcome to ‘Bradley’s Basement’ blog and I’m Tim Bradley!
For Christmas last year, I had Season 1 of ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ given to me by my best mate Stephen from school. I greatly enjoyed checking out this series. I’ve not seen ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ that precedes this, but it was very nice to check out one of the latest ‘Star Trek’ TV shows.
‘Strange New Worlds’ is a prequel series to the original ‘Star Trek’ TV show featuring Captain Kirk, Spock and Dr. McCoy. It also happens to be a spin-off of the ‘Discovery’ series. It’s also a sequel to ‘The Cage’, which was the first pilot episode to the original ‘Star Trek’ TV series featuring Captain Pike. 🙂
For those unaware, ‘Star Trek’ in the 1960s was going to begin with Captain Christopher Pike before it was changed to be about Captain James T. Kirk. ‘Strange New Worlds’ is essentially Pike’s show, albeit he’s a bit older here than when he debuted in ‘The Cage’, which later became ‘The Menagerie’.
Pike has also appeared in Season 2 of ‘Discovery’, which I’ve yet to see. It was very intriguing to check out what could have been a Pike-centred ‘Star Trek’ series compared to what we know and love in the original TV series with Kirk. Anson Mount plays Captain Pike very well throughout Season 1.
It’s also good to have another ‘Star Trek’ series set aboard the original starship Enterprise that would appear in the original TV series. The atmosphere and tone of the series does have echoes of the original TV show and I feel ‘Strange New Worlds’ does it better than that reboot film trilogy we had.
There are issues concerning the aesthetics of the TV show, especially concerning the Enterprise’s bridge doesn’t exactly match with the 1960s design in the original TV show. The lightning is also very often dimly-lit, especially on the Enterprise bridge, and I feel the opening title sequence is too busy.
Despite these issues, I was able to get into each episode of ‘Strange New Worlds’ and enjoy them for what they are. It also helps that the episodes are mostly standalone episodes as opposed to being a continuing story arc, which was the case for each of the three seasons that ‘Star Trek: Picard’ had.
As well as Anson Mount as Captain Pike, there’s Ethan Peck as Mr. Spock. He also played Spock in Season 2 of ‘Discovery’ with Anson Mount. Ethan Peck has done a great job in recreating Spock’s character, based on Leonard Nimoy’s performance. His character development is also well-handled.
There’s Jess Bush as Nurse Christine Chapel, Christina Chong (who played Lorna Bucket in the ‘Doctor Who’ episode ‘A Good Man Goes to War’) as La’an Noonien-Singh, Celia Rose Gooding as Nyota Uhura (Yes, her! 😀 She’s a cadet in the show) and Melissa Navia as helmsman Erica Ortegas.
There’s Babs Olusanmokun as Dr. Joseph M’Benga (the character appeared in a couple of episodes of the original ‘Star Trek’ and was played by Booker Bradshaw) and there’s Bruce Horak as chief engineer Hemmer, who happens to be an Aenar, which is an albino subspecies of the Andorians. 🙂
And there’s Rebecca Romijn as first officer Una Chin-Riley, or Number One as she was called in ‘The Cage’ episode and was originally played by Majel Barrett. Rebecca Romijn played Mystique in the first three ‘X-Men’ films and she’s portrayed Una Chin-Riley/Number One in Season 2 of ‘Discovery’.
Altogether, there are 10 episodes in Season 1 of ‘Strange New Worlds’. It was interesting to check out the finale of Season 1 where we have an alternative version of ‘Balance of Terror’ where Pike is dealing with the Romulans instead of Kirk, and we also have Paul Wesley as Captain Kirk in the episode.
Season 1 of ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ has been great to check out. I enjoyed it more than I expected, and it was nice to see this series focusing on Christopher Pike as the captain of the Enterprise. It’s also very interesting how it depicts the Enterprise’s early voyages before Captain Kirk came along.
I’m looking forward to checking out Season 2 of ‘Strange New Worlds’ sometime soon. 🙂
Thanks for the Christmas present, Stephen! 🙂
And thanks to everyone for reading! 🙂
Bye for now!
Tim 🙂
Bradley's Basement 