Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1x01 "Strange New Worlds" (2022) TV Episode Review

 Hey everyone! I am back once again with another TV show review. This time I'm going to be talking about the first episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which also happens to be called "Strange New Worlds". Again, there will be some spoilers for this episode, so if you haven't seen it yet, don't read this review until you do. Now, without further ado, let's get into it.

I've had mixed feelings about Star Trek: Strange New Worlds ever since it was announced because on the one hand, I wanted to see Anson Mount and Ethan Peck get their own Star Trek series. On the other hand though, the people involved in this show are also some of the ones that botched the first seasons of Discovery and Picard, so I was dreading what they'd do if they had an entire show to focus on Pike, Spock and the crew of the Enterprise. Thankfully this episode eased those fears.

One of the things that I love about this show so far is that it's truly episodic, the way TNG, early DS9, and Voyager were. This episode felt like a complete story with a beginning, a middle, and an end and now the crew can go on to more adventures in the coming episodes. 

I also love how the show hit the ground running and did a Prime Directive story right out the gate. Not just a Prime Directive story, but a good Prime Directive story. One that takes what's going on in the world today and using a new civilization as allegory for that stuff, rather than shoving it in our face like season 2 of Star Trek: Picard did. Which works so much better honestly. 

The new cast is incredible. And I love that everyone who was introduced in this episode got a moment to shine, and we got a few details about each of them. With Discovery we didn't even learn the majority of the Bridge crew's names until the second season, and even then most of them have been shafted for other characters. I honestly don't have a favourite or a standout in this episode because they were all so good, but I do really like Jess Bush as Christine Chapel, Christina Chong as La'an Noonien-Singh, and Celia Rose Gooding as Nyota Uhura. We didn't get a whole lot with Dr. M'Benga or Lieutenant Ortegas, but both were pretty solid as well. I especially liked it when M'Benga announced what he and Chapel called a "Delta Scorpi VII", which is a reference to a similar incident where a being from another planet woke up in the Enterprise's Sickbay and ran away, Ortegas replied, "Always when I'm in the captain's chair". Which makes me wonder if that's a sly reference to the TNG movies where something happens to the Enterprise-D and the Enterprise-E every time Riker is in command (i.e. the ship getting destroyed, assimilated, or damaged), or if it's a sign of things to come when Ortegas is in command of the ship.

The one thing that I was a little unsure of was having that scene with Spock and T'Pring that was shown in the trailer, simply because I couldn't remember whether or not it was mentioned in "Amok Time" how long it had been since Spock had seen T'Pring last. So I rewatched that episode again just to be sure, and it wasn't mentioned at all. Which means that scene doesn't clash with what Spock said (or didn't say) in that episode, which takes place after this one. I didn't have much of a problem with it anyway, because I always felt that Vulcans clung to the ancient ways a little too much, and so I felt that if Spock hadn't seen T'Pring since they were children, it was weird to have them get married. Which is why I don't understand arranged marriages and betrothals in some cultures that populate the real world. But, I liked T'Pring in this episode alot better than I liked her original version in "Amok Time", so it didn't come off as weird in this episode the way I was afraid it would. 

I'll be honest, I really liked the connections that the characters we already met on Discovery had with the new characters being introduced in this episode. Like, Pike was friends with M'Benga because they were posted in each other's hometown, and served together in both places, and that Una (Number One) had rescued La'an from the Gorn when Una was an ensign and La'an was a child (or a teenager). I think Ortegas was part of Pike's crew prior to this episode because she was already familiar with Pike and Spock. Uhura just fit in really nicely. I'm interested to see how Chief Engineer Hemmer and Lieutenant Sam Kirk, who is Jim Kirk's brother, gel with everyone in the next episode, since they didn't show up until the end of this episode.

Overall this was a wonderful, strong, start to Strange New Worlds. I really hope things keep going the way they did in this episode, because it was fun to watch. It was optimistic, full of heart and the characters were fantastic. It wasn't trying to be Star Trek, it IS Star Trek and I am very excited to see what next week's episode brings because I read the synopsis and it sounds awesome. I definitely recommend watching it week to week. Because of the episodic nature of this show, I'm going to try and review the show each week because it'll be a complete story each week so I won't be spending ten weeks saying, "I guess we'll see how it works at the end of the season" because that could get tedious. Especially with shows like Picard, where basically not a whole lot happened in each episode.

Alright folks, that's going to be it for me for this week. I will be back next week though for more reviews and posts. So until then have a wonderful weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.