After an extended hiatus due to the writers’ and actors’ strikes (a wait made all the more unbearable thanks to its second-season cliffhanger), Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 sees us finally return to the continuing adventures of the Starship Enterprise. With the adventures being more action-packed, funnier, scarier, gorier, and even, dare I say, sexier, and with Captain Pike’s hair taller than ever before, it feels good to be back.
First things first, this review is going out a full month before Strange New Worlds Season 3 debuts, so fret not, intrepid Starfleet officer, there’ll be no spoilers here. Instead, I’ll be trying to distill just what it is that makes this wonderful show so… wonderful.
I think, in large part, it’s down to the show’s willingness to embrace the titular strangeness with a sense of joy and sincerity while knowing at what pitch that strangeness needs to be deployed for the particular story being told in a given episode. This can range from the lighter side, be it an almost farcical alternate reality wedding episode, or a noir-tinged murder mystery, to the darker side, as in the third episode of this season, which riffs on a specific staple of the horror genre to great aplomb.
Before I go further, if you’re new to Strange New Worlds and want to check it out, I’d advise stopping here and doing so. Anything else I say from here on is for the returning fans excited to hear more about what’s to come this season. So do yourselves a favor, you have a month to catch up on Seasons One and Two, and come back to this review when you’re as excited to see what the cast and crew have cooked up for this season as I was before tuning in.
Now, back to it; equally integral to Strange New Worlds’ success is its cast. By this point, we know how great Anson Mount’s Captain Pike is, that Ethan Peck has managed to make one of the most iconic characters in fiction, Mr. Spock, his own, or how Jess Bush’s Nurse Chapel has imbued a character who has been around since the 1960s with a vibrancy that has made her a series standout. I could go on and on and on, waxing lyrical about every member of the main cast and how perfect they are, but instead, I’ll take a moment to drill down on one or two characters who haven’t shared quite as much of the spotlight as they may have deserved.
Firstly, there’s Melissa Navia as Erica Ortegas (she flies the ship). Ortegas has always been a fun presence on the show, but while the rest of the main cast have all enjoyed episodes dedicated to their respective character journeys, she’s been left a bit to the side. Thankfully, that’s all different in Strange New Worlds Season 3. Having been kidnapped by the Gorn at the end of Season 2, it’s fair to say Erica has a fair bit of trauma to work through. This gives Navia some great material to work with over the season, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it continues playing out past the five episodes I’ve seen so far.
Secondly, I’d like to highlight someone who, more by virtue of having their own ship to run than a deliberate lack of focus, hasn’t had as much of a presence until Strange New Worlds Season 3, is Melanie Scrofano as Captain Marie Batel. Introduced all the way back in the first season premiere as Captain Pike’s girlfriend, she appeared intermittently throughout Seasons 1 and 2 before, much like Ortegas, being given a new focus this season following her own encounter with the Gorn during the Season 2 finale. This leads to Captain Batel sticking around on the Enterprise in a more regular capacity this season, allowing Scrofano to dig deeper into the character, both in her relationship with Pike, and who she is and why she keeps going.
An element of Strange New Worlds Season 3 I’ve been blown away by is its use of the LED Volume. This device allows a CGI background to be projected behind the actors to give them a greater point of reference than the standard for years of using a green screen, and the background is added during post-production. It may seem odd to single out one specific type of effects work in an effects-heavy show, but the reason for doing so is that I’ve been angry about how another famous Star franchise has squandered the promise of the Volume. Seeing it in full effect, seamlessly integrated into actual sets, can be mind-blowing, and I’d argue it’s the most effective use of the technology outside Matt Reeves’ The Batman.
There are even more factors that have gone into making Strange New Worlds Season 3 as wonderful as it is, and I could keep going on forever about them, but I’ll sign off here by simply saying to watch this show. In a time when so many sci-fi properties have devolved into self-congratulatory, self-reflecting storytelling, Strange New Worlds repeatedly embraces the strange and the new in exciting ways. I’m so very excited to see where it goes from here, both through the remainder of Season 3, onwards into the already filming Season 4, and on to it’s now confirmed fifth and final season.
