In “Strange New Worlds,” season 1, episode 3, “Ghosts of Illyria,” the show introduces the idea that chief medical officer Dr. Joseph M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) has a terminally ill daughter he keeps in stasis in the Enterprise’s transporter system. However, it’s not until episode 8, “The Elysian Kingdom,” that this emotional subplot gets folded into the main plot.
That’s just one example of how “Strange New Worlds” combines “serialized characters” with “episodic storytelling,” as Akiva Goldsman says. It’s a move that helps mend frustrations Goldsman felt with “Star Trek: The Original Series” as it catered to viewers with one-off episodes back in the 1960s:
“I was always frustrated at the end of ‘City on the Edge of Forever,’ where Jim Kirk [William Shatner] would have to watch Edith Keeler [Joan Collins] die — and then be fine next week. So the idea that you could bring emotion from episode to episode, but still do that classic TOS genre jump, and you’re getting to do all the great things ‘Star Trek’ can do in a show — that’s super fun for me.”
As guilty as “Picard” was of reheating old “Next Generation” stories, you can see where “Strange New Worlds” looks outward to other sci-fi for inspiration, with episodes like “All Those Who Wander” and “Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach” riffing on the “Alien” movies and the Ursula K. Le Guin short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” respectively. The show isn’t without flaws, but the fairy tale costumes of “The Elysian Kingdom” and the body-swap shenanigans of “Spock Amok” also feel somewhat true to the zaniness of “Star Trek: The Original Series.”
“Strange New Worlds” season 1 is now streaming for free on YouTube, ahead of the season 2 premiere on Paramount+ on June 15, 2023.
