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Tripwire Reviews Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season One Blu-Ray

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3 years ago

March 26, 2023

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A Voyage Of Rediscovery

Tripwire’s editor-in-chief reviews Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season one coming to Blu-Ray from May and on digital now…

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season one
Created by Akiva Goldsman and Alex Kurtzman, based on Star Trek by Gene Roddenberry
Stars: Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, Jess Bush, Melissa Navia, Christina Chong, Celia Rose Gooding, Melissa Navia, Babs Olusanmokun

In recent years, streaming and to a lesser extent the big screen have struggled to keep Roddenberry’s Star Trek concepts alive in a very different world from when they were created. Star Trek Discovery and Star Trek Picard have attempted different takes on modern day Trek tales. Anson Mount as Captain Christopher Pike and Ethan Peck as Spock were introduced in Discovery and they were by far the best thing in a season that didn’t really get past take off. Here Pike is in charge of the Enterprise and Spock is his right-hand man. Mount has a great deal of onscreen charisma, warm and human, a counterpoint to Kirk’s arrogance, while Peck is a complex and interesting Spock. There is real chemistry between the pair which manifests itself well throughout here. The other thing about Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is that it has many of the ingredients that Discovery lacks like humour and levity but doesn’t stint on the sci-fi drama. It has a diverse cast including an African-American actor who plays Dr M.’Benga and Celia Rose Gooding who portrays a young Uhura from the original series. But their presence is there in the service of the story so it adds to the plot mix as the remit of the 1960s show was about racial integration so this is very much in the vein of its original vision. The rest of the crew offer equally intriguing dynamics with a blind Andorian, Hemmer, played by Bruce Horak, Pike’s Number One Una Chin-Riley (Romijn) a woman with a dark secret, Khan relative La’an Noonien Singh (Chong) and helmswoman Erica Ortega (Navia). None of them are here as a box ticking exercise but to offer an environment in which classic Trek stories with a little bit of a modern twist can work. Not all of the crew survive the entire run which adds extra heightened emotions and when the loss of that character comes, it is a testament to the show’s writers that it does hit the viewer hard. Strange New Worlds is shot through with the spirit of Star Trek.

This first 10 episode run runs the gamut in terms of its tone and approach with lighter episodes like The Elysian Kingdom which sees the ship taken over by an alien consciousness connected to the doctor’s daughter and Spock Amock where the Vulcan swaps places with his girlfriend Tpring through a ceremony which goes awry to much darker episodes like Lift Us Up Where Suffering Cannot Reach where Pike is forced to choose between a former love and the planet’s barbaric use of sacrifice and All Those Who Wander where the crew are forced to confront their darkest demons when they come face to face with deadly aliens The Gorn. The final episode in the run sees Pike forced to deal with the consequences of his actions while introducing us to a new version of Captain Kirk in the shape of Paul Wesley. The show had a number of choices when it chose to give us a new Kirk: either stunt casting like the films did with Chris Pine, with an actor who had the flavour and feel of a younger Shatner or someone who was very different to the original show’s pick. This was the only thing in the show that I wasn’t quite sure whether it worked but because Strange New Worlds fits into the Star Trek canon, this is something that they would have had to address at some point anyway.

Pictured: Ethan Peck as Spock, Anson Mount as Pike and Rebecca Romijn as Una of the Paramount+ original series STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS. Photo Cr: James Dimmock/Paramount+ ©2022 CBS Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The extras here are entertaining with a video diary featuring Mount talking us through the show’s pre and production, another extra with the show’s production designer Jonathan Lee showing us how they approached creating the worlds the crew encounters and a raft of deleted scenes from a number of the episodes.

Strange New Worlds gets the balance right with enough humour, drama and a range of characters who feel like they have been properly developed matched with actors who bring something fresh and new to the formula while still very much in keeping with the show’s ethos. Mount is of course SNW’s centrepiece as Captain Pike but the rest of the cast help to flesh out proceedings here with a range of foibles, flaws and credible character traits.

The first season ends on a cliffhanger with one of the crew being arrested so they have set things up nicely for the second run which kicks off later this year. For fans of Star Trek, Strange New Worlds is well worth grabbing and there is enough here for those who just have a passing interest in Trek to appeal to them as well.

JOEL MEADOWS

Here’s the show’s trailer from last year

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1 available now digitally, on Blu-ray, DVD and Blu-Ray Steelbook and on limited edition 4K Steelbook on 15 May