Strange New Worlds Season 3 Trailer Breaks Canon, Restores Star Trek Spirit
Here's proof Star Trek can be fun again.
Do we even care if Strange New Worlds matches up exactly with the canon of Star Trek: The Original Series? In the thrilling, hilarious — and long-awaited — new trailer for Strange New Worlds Season 3, the answer is no, we do not. The reason why? This is just way too much fun. In the most bonkers trailer for any new season of any Star Trek series in a long time, Strange New Worlds (emphasis on “strange”) is breaking reality, mixing aesthetics, and boldly doing a few genres that Star Trek has never done before.
Here’s the new trailer in all its glory and why its genre-smashing tone harkens back to the old-school Trek, from the 1960s to the 1990s.
In the new trailer for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3, we start with a musical cue from the original 1960s show and then get a ton of images that seem to indicate that these 10 episodes will (mostly) focus on delivering truly standalone, zany adventures. But these aren’t just in the style of the 1960s show. Yes, we see a metafictional episode that features a throwback version of the series — but almost done in a Flash Gordon style. But there’s also some kind of noir whodunit mystery episode, which appears to take place on a Next Generation-era Holodeck. So, not only is the zesty, over-the-top nature of The Original Series at play here, but quirky, genre-bending episodes from The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager are also making a big comeback here.
According to the official press release from Paramount+, this season of Strange New Worlds will be the wildest yet. Here’s the synopsis of what fans can expect from this batch of episodes:
“The fan-favorite series returns this Summer and features genre-bending stories including a murder mystery, a rom-com, and a documentary-style episode.”
Clearly, the “murder mystery” episode is the one in which we see La’an (Christina Chong) and Spock (Ethan Peck) on a version of the holodeck. Are they supposed to have that technology yet? Well, in The Animated Series, the classic Enterprise did have a holographic “recreation room,” which is more or less canon. (And Gene Roddenberry did want to introduce some version of the holodeck in TOS Season 3, but obviously couldn’t for budget reasons.) Plus, Discovery Season 1 (you know, the show that SNW was spun-off from) also had a version of the holodeck way back in 2017. A rudimentary holodeck maybe, but still.
This episode seems to be the spiritual sequel to the TNG Dixon Hill episodes like “The Big Goodbye,” but it’s unclear if we’ll be able to ever get over whatever kind of character Pike (Anson Mount) is playing here.
Captain, is that you?
Then, there’s the “rom-com,” which is probably the scene in which Spock and Chapel (Jess Bush) are in bed together. Finally, the “documentary-style episode” is perhaps the meta-fictional one in which we see Kirk (Paul Wesley), Ortegas (Melissa Navia), and Chapel in their aforementioned Flash Gordon meets The Original Series get-up. Is this an alternate universe or some kind of in-universe version of 23rd-century entertainment? It's unclear, but in the trailer, Spock does say something about how “our reality has been changed.” Is he referring to just one episode or the whole season?
Elsewhere in the trailer, we see some more normal Trek fare, including an episode which seems to feature the return of the Klingons, some more monstrous Gorn action, as well as a meeting between Kirk and Scotty (Martin Quinn). Whether Strange New Worlds will top the popular musical episode “Subspace Rhapsody” is clearly no longer really a question.
Kirk (Paul Wesley) is looking very retro in Strange New Worlds Season 3.
Because, in a sense, the more Strange New Worlds pushes the envelope of what it means to be a Star Trek show, the more it actually starts to feel like a classic Star Trek show. Hopefully, if this season lives up to the hype of this trailer, the future of Star Trek will be just like its past: Treating science fiction not as a genre, but as a place to tell every single type of story, in every genre imaginable.
