Michael Gibson/Paramount+
Star Trek has always been beholden to the past. It’s latest spinoff, Paramount+’s prequel series Strange New Worlds is no different, propelled as it is by the highs and lows of so called “NuTrek.” But in the constant struggle between carving a new path and recapturing fond Star Trek memories, Strange New Worlds may have found the perfect balance.
In a more serialized format than its immediate predecessors, Picard and Discovery, Season 2 of Strange New Worlds takes time to examine singular crew members and give those characters room to establish themselves in their new iterations, much as The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine endeared us to their crews 30 years ago. Gone is the gloom of Picard and the singular focus on Burnham of Discovery, replaced with an optimistic, warm, welcoming Star Trek that best evokes classic series in a key, maybe surprising way: How unabashedly horny it is.
Hold on, when was Star Trek horny, you ask? Well, hearing Kirk (William Shatner) tell Spock (Leonard Nimoy) to “push—push harder—dig it in there” to help with “back pain” didn’t exactly feel chaste. Nor did Picard (Patrick Stewart) strutting around Risa with his voluminous chest hair to do some “archaeology” with Vash (Jennifer Hetrick). There’s also Riker’s (Jonathan Frakes) sex-jazz, the will-they-won’t-they dynamic of Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) and Chakotay (Robert Beltran), the persistent simmering sexual tension between Dr Bashir (Alexander Siddig) and Garak (Andrew Robinson) … the list goes on.