Now that the dust has settled on yesterday’s huge announcement confirming that Anson Mount, Rebecca Romijn and Ethan Peck will star in the Discovery spin-off — Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, let’s look at what we might expect from the new series.
RELEASE DATE
Thanks to this widely circulated image, which came out minutes after the announcement hit the media:
We know that CBS All Access is planning to release the show next fall, the year 2021. But that might be optimistic thinking, as the no one in the world knows when it might be safe to return to working normally in Hollywood, Toronto (where Discovery is filmed and SNW will be filmed), or anywhere else.
STYLE
According to an article in Variety, this new Trek will actually be more like The Original Series than anything else. Writer Daniel Holloway spoke with SNW co-creator and executive producer Akiva Goldsman, who said that the episodes will be more self-contained, rather than serialized, like they are in Discovery or Picard.
“We can really tell closed-ended stories,” Goldsman told Variety. “We can find ourselves in episodes that are tonally of a piece of the type of episode that Strange New Worlds might attempt that Discovery or Picard might not.”
To get back to the style of story that The Original Series used to great effect — the planet or problem of the week, with a problem, Kirk and company figured it out after 45 minutes — will be the basis, but not a template which they must adhere to at all times.
“I think one thing that we always struggled with [as fans] was that Kirk is heartbroken at the loss of Edith Keeler in ‘The City on the Edge of Forever’ and has to be just fine the next week,” Goldsman told Variety. “I think what we would want to do is keep the characters having moved through and recognizing the experiences they’ve had in previous episodes, but to be able to tell contained, episodic stories.”
TEAM
The creative team behind SNW might sound familiar to fans who watched Discovery and Picard. The very first show was written Goldsman, based on a tale created by Goldsman, Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet. The trio will also serve as executive producers on SNW, with Henry Alonso Myers, Heather Kadin, Rod Roddenberry and Trevor Roth as well. Strange New Worlds will be produced by CBS Television Studios, Secret Hideout and Roddenberry Entertainment — the same forces that brought us Discovery and Picard.
TONE
In his brief appearance in Alex Kurtzman’s Twitter video, Anson Mount said that they would soon “get to work on a classic Star Trek show that deals with optimism and the future.”
Captain Pike, I mean Mount, may summed the entire SNW experience up in one perfect sentence. Many criticized Discovery for being too dark, and for having no real good people to root for, and Picard for not holding an optimistic view of the 24th Century. SNW will break from those views, and give Trek fans a leader (Pike) who will make mistakes but nine times out of ten will do the right thing.
WHY NOW
We at Trek Report think this has been in the works since Mount signed on for his first appearance on Discovery. Mount and Romijn are “A-level” talents who could star in any number of projects. We think this has all been planned for some time because of a number of clues — one biggie is Anson Mount’s Twitter location.
But, with CBS All Access rebranding soon, and with Kurtzman’s mandate to help make Trek into the global franchise CBS thinks it can be, creating a new show with an already established and popular cast is a no-brainer. Picard helped CBS break new subscriber ground, and Kurtzman and company know that another Trek show (with Picard, Discovery, Section 31, Lower Decks, and possibly more) can help bring more eyeballs to the streaming network.
