'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' Cast Dissect Boldly Going Deep Into Research and Franchise Roots

With a title that nods to a line from the famous captain's monologue that opened the original Star Trek series, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds — the latest entry in the fabled sci-fi franchise created by Gene Roddenberry — suggests an unexplored yet also familiar final frontier ahead. But the series also features an array of characters recognizable to devoted Trek fans — a crew they'll also be discovering afresh in bold new ways. 

Strange New Worlds is set aboard the very same U.S.S. Enterprise that served as the hub of the 1960s series, but in the era just a few years prior to the captaincy of James T. Kirk. Instead, it centers on characters originally introduced in "The Cage," Roddenberry's first pilot for Star Trek which was rejected by NBC for being too cerebral, but was still promising enough to earn the creator a do-over, a network first at the time; it was later repurposed for a two-part flashback, "The Menagerie," midway through the series' debut season.  

Warping away from the heavily serialized storytelling of recent Trek installments, Strange New Worlds brings the franchise back to a more episodic approach (with ongoing story arcs also baked in), reenergizing the long tradition of resonant allegorical commentary on societal current issues through a sci-fi lens.  

"Gene Roddenberry really hit the nail on the head when he developed this concept and this world," series star Ethan Peck tells Metacritic. "All throughout history we struggle between light and dark, and I think Star Trek envisions a harmonious version of things where, even though we are all so different on this planet, there is a way that we can understand one another and have love for one another; have space for each other's feelings, beliefs, ideas; and that in doing so we are strengthened and empowered to become something more." 

The dashing, introspective Captain Christopher Pike; the cooly aloof first officer initially known only as Number One; and the half-human, half-Vulcan science officer Mr. Spock were originally played by Jeffrey Hunter, Majel Barrett (later to become Mrs. Gene Roddenberry off screen), and Leonard Nimoy (the only actor carried over into his Emmy-winning, ultimately iconic role).  Reintroduced five decades later during the second season of Star Trek Discovery, as portrayed respectively by Anson Mount, Rebecca Romijn, and Peck, those characters now form the core of the Enterprise command crew at the heart of Strange New Worlds. 

In a surprising move, the Enterprise is also crewed by several additional newly arrived characters with ties to the Kirk era: Nyota Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding, taking on the role first played by Nichelle Nichols) is a rookie cadet seeking her path in Starfleet, on her way to becoming a key member of Kirk's Bridge crew; sickbay nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush, taking on an entirely different role played by Barrett) is a semi-regular presence with an unrequited crush on Spock; and Christine's superior Dr. M'Benga (Babs Olusanmokun, assuming Booker Bradshaw's role, who appeared on briefly in two episodes originally).

Meanwhile, additional crew offer more oblique connections: A brand-new character, security officer La'ran Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong) mysteriously shares a surname — and DNA ties — with one of the franchise's greatest antagonists, Khan (Ricardo Montalban), the genetically engineered 20th Century superhuman of the 1967 episode "Space Seed" and the 1982 feature film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Even female helmsman Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia) is a super-deep-cut nod to the name of a male character mentioned in Roddenberry's original pitch but who never appeared in the series.  

That made for a lot of potential homework for actors looking to tie together various threads spanning over five decades of mythology.  

Christopher Pike (Anson Mount)

After his troubling experiences in "The Menagerie" and finding his groove again as a captain in Discovery, Pike steps back into the command chair trying to come to grips with fresh emotional baggage.

When last seen, he'd gotten a glimpse of the unsettling fate — scarred, physically paralyzed and rendered mute by radiation by his heroic actions — that avid Trek viewers know awaits him in the future.

"I'm an actor who does his research," Mount tells Metacritic.

A devoted fan of the original Trek in particular, Mount says he delved into the existing iterations of Pike — both Hunter's and the alternate universe version played by Bruce Greenwood in director J.J. Abrams' 2009 film franchise reboot — in preparation for stepping in Starfleet. But he still had license to put his own stamp on the role, first for Discovery and now in depth for Strange New Worlds. 

"I think that there is a sense of responsibility [in that] I have to deliver the second act of Pike. We got the first act with Jeffrey Hunter, and also got a glimpse of the third act. [But] I didn't feel at all hindered by what Jeffrey and Bruce had laid down, because I felt I was just playing a different Pike in a different era of his life — and in the case of Bruce in a different universe. So, I very much felt the freedom to come in and make it my own." 

Mount likens his approach to a lesson learned during his training in the theater when taking on a legacy role like the titular classic in William Shakespeare's King Lear. "If you're going to play Lear you don't think to yourself, 'OK I have to do Ian McKellen's Lear,' or 'I have to steer clear doing Patrick Stewart's Lear.' You just do Lear," he explains. "And so, that's what I've been trying to do, and I think Pike is closer to me than most characters I've played. I've learned enough at this point as an actor to just trust that as long as I am finding ways to have fun and being engaged that it usually works out OK."

Number One (Rebecca Romijn)

Romijn is another self-proclaimed longtime fan of the franchise, having grown up watching the original series with her mother. 

"None of us take this lightly," she says of the responsibility of following the path of what's already been laid down. "I think we all kind of feel like caretakers, custodians.

But because she considers Number One "a blank slate" (after all, "We only saw her for 14 minutes of screen time. She was just doing the tasks at hand, so we never knew her as a character," the actor points out), she, too, had some freedom to shape who the character will become better known to be.

"Now she has a name — Una Chin-Riley — and loves the stars and Starfleet more than anybody," says Romijn, noting that she was excited by the motivation the writers developed for her distant nature. "It's a great color to play because there's something that she's hiding. And she is very good at her job and it's slightly intimidating — to keep people at arm's length because she's hiding something. So, it's a really fun layer to work in there, and we're going to keep exploring that as we move on."

Spock (Ethan Peck)

While Pike and Number One have previously appeared only fleetingly in the hundreds of cumulative hours of episodes and films produced in the franchise, Spock, as played by Nimoy, is one of Star Trek's most central — and most popular — characters. Peck admits he took on the role of the younger incarnation, one that both occasionally tries on and rejects experiencing human emotion, with no small degree of trepidation. 

"Firstly, it was mostly terrifying because this character is so important to so many people," says Peck of his initial foray into the role on Discovery. "I would call [myself] a recovering perfectionist, and I needed to do it properly and do it right and do it authentically. That has since worn smooth with time. I'm much more comfortable with the responsibility."  

Peck says his take on young Spock is an intellectually curious "humanist," with a huge sense of self-awareness and consideration for others to make the most logical, and mutually beneficial, decisions. 

"He's very utilitarian in that way. He is doing what's best for everyone. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one," he explains.

Peck finds he enjoys the logic puzzle in his work: "It's a very complicated dance every day," he says. "A lot of who I am as Ethan lends itself to this character. For whatever reason, the experiences I've had and where I'm at in my life really lend itself to this role."

Nyota Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding)

For Gooding, there was a weight of assuming the mantle of a role as beloved as Uhura, an early symbol that Black people had an equal place in the future for audiences during a crucial moment in the Civil Rights era. 

"Specifically stepping into this character that has such an incredible legacy, it was at first a little daunting," she says. "But as I've gotten more comfortable and just more used to this universe, it's been a dream. I am so excited to share my Uhura with the world." 

Her Uhura is not yet the poised, professional officer who's found her calling, though. She is honoring someone else's dream by enlisting and not even sure she belongs in Starfleet.

Christine Chapel (Jess Bush)

Bush's Nurse Chapel is far more confident and carefree than previously seen, though her platonically friendly relationship to Spock shows early promise of blossoming into something deeper.

Similar to Mount, Bush happily immersed herself in research, studying both the history of Chapel and also Barrett, the actor who played her, after booking the role in order to better understand the universe and "what it meant to people at the time, and what it has meant to people contextually, culturally" since, she says.

"I think that's important to carry that forward, and reinterpret that for how relevant it is now," she continues.

La'ran Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong)

As Khan's descendant, franchise newbie Chong is playing a strong-willed, no-nonsense security officer who still haunted by a harrowing, deeply felt childhood trauma. 

Both that meaty backstory and the decades of profound activism of such franchise stalwarts as Nichols and George Takei is where Chong sees the most potential in not only continuing conversations, but also an important legacy that earlier versions of the franchise have deeply rooted into place.

"It's a show that we can use as a platform to talk about things that we care about that are important that make the world a better place," says Chong. "I hope to do some good in the world with our roles and our platform that we now have." 

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is