‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Season 2 Gets Weird and Wonderful | Review
If there was one thing that the first season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds did extremely well, it was the way that it took full advantage of its episodic structure, and Season 2 builds on that structure even more. With the new era of Star Trek, the franchise has fully embraced the idea of allowing each show to have its own unique tone, structure, and focus, which has given way to a collection of really compelling series that explore the universe in different ways.
While audiences know, more or less, where things are headed for most of Strange New Worlds’ cast of characters, Season 2—like Season 1—never dips into futility. The characters that have storied histories within the Star Trek universe are still given the opportunity to surprise audiences with new experiences and fresh interpretations, and while their fate may be predetermined, their storylines still feel bold and exciting.
Season 2 boldly ventures into the realms of time travel, romance, action-adventure, and even courtroom drama, neatly reminding audiences that Star Trek is so much more than just sci-fi. The sci-fi component is simply a base for so many other genres to be explored through the lens of, and It certainly helps that Strange New Worlds has brought in directors like Chris Fisher, Valerie Weiss, Amanda Row, Eduardo Sánchez, Jordan Canning, and Dan Liu to bring their own unique vision to the writing of Henry Alonso Myers, Akiva Goldsman, Dana Horgan, David Reed, Kirsten Beyer, Davy Perez, Kathryn Lyn, and Onitra Johnson.
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Season 1 ended on a pretty serious cliffhanger, with the U.S.S. Enterprise’s First Officer Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn) being taken into custody for hiding her true identity from Starfleet, and as teaser trailers have indicated, this is a plot line that the series is quick to return to with Season 2. With this episode, Star Trek gets to dip its toes into the realm of political thrillers, which is both intriguing to watch and utterly nerve-wracking.
What’s so fun about Strange New Worlds’ episodic storytelling, is that it gives them the freedom to place each member of the main ensemble into new, and oftentimes unexpected, scenarios. Not only is this fun for the audience to watch, but it seems like the actors are having the time of their lives as well. So many of the show’s most straight-laced characters are pushed out of their comfort zones, and the actors are given the opportunity to explore new aspects of their characters, with great success. This is especially true for Ethan Peck who gets to explore a whole new side of Spock, which manages to respectfully recontextualize a lot of what we know about Spock’s future.
La'an (Christina Chong) was one of the most interesting characters introduced in Season 1, both because she was a brand-new character and because she had a surprising connection to one of Star Trek’s most notable villains, and the first six episodes take that intrigue to a whole new level. Season 2 proves that Chong is undoubtedly one of Strange New Worlds’ strongest performers by providing her with some of the more emotionally charged and overarching storylines. It’s very fun to see a character like La’an, who is very by the books and a little more reserved than her peers, paired off in an episode with one of Star Trek’s biggest rule-breakers: James Kirk (Paul Wesley). Their episode is the best of the first half of Season 2 and, until the screeners for the back half arrive, it may be the best episode of the series to date.
Image via Paramount+
Wesley is another clear stand-out from the first six episodes, which is impressive considering he’s only in a handful of those episodes, and only the main focus in two of them. After Season 1 teased his version of Captain Kirk, Season 2 gives Wesley free rein to bring his own personality to the character—and it’s exhilarating to see on screen. While we haven’t gotten a lot of interaction between Kirk and Spock (Peck) just yet, it’s easy to see that they will share the same dynamic as the Kirk and Spocks that came before them. He’s still a bit arrogant and definitely still the womanizer we all fell in love with in The Original Series, but the scripts give him a lot to work with and explore as a character.
The first six episodes also feature some really fun moments for Captain Pike (Anson Mount), Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush), Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia), Nyota Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding), and Dr. M'Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) Even when the episodes focus more on one character over others, they writers manage to find a neat balance with still utilizing the ensemble to bolster that story and open up avenues of future exploration.
In terms of Season 2’s overarching plot, Strange New Worlds doesn’t necessarily show its hand in the first six episodes. The Gorn are still very much a galaxy-wide threat, much as they were in Season 1, but the specifics of where that subplot is headed have not yet been revealed. The focus is very much on the core cast of characters—and newcomer Carol Kane’s hilarious engineer—but there seems to be a connective tissue between each story that points in the direction of a potential clash with a familiar enemy. Allowing a threat like the Gorn to linger in the background both helps the series to build anticipation and also allows them to focus on the more immediate stakes at play for each character.
With Star Trek: Picard’s incredible series finale still fresh in the minds of Star Trek fans, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is a nice change of pace. While there’s no shortage of high-energy action and anxiety-inducing drama, the first six episodes shift Star Trek back to more light-hearted fare. With character-driven episodic episodes, Strange New Worlds Season 2 feels the most like The Original Series, which is a very fun place for the series to be.
FINAL VERDICT: A
