Star Trek: Strange New Worlds was on point, so to speak, as the popular series and its actors returned to Hall H as part of the Star Trek Universe panel at San Diego Comic-Con — and the audience was all ears for it.
Castmembers Rebecca Romijn and Ethan Peck, who missed last year’s panel due to the writers and actors strikes, beamed up onstage alongside executive producers Alex Kurtzman, Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers.
The panel featured a first-look clip from the upcoming third season of the show, set to debut in 2025.
The show, based on the years that Captain Christopher Pike manned the helm of the U.S.S. Enterprise, follows Pike (Anson Mount), Science Officer Spock (Peck), Number One (Romijn) and the crew of the ship before Captain Kirk boarded it as they explore new worlds around the galaxy. The cast also includes Jess Bush, Christina Chong, Celia Rose Gooding, Melissa Navia, Babs Olusanmokun, Martin Quinn, Paul Wesley and Carol Kane.
The clip sees members of the crew, including Pike, forced to become Vulcans, the logical and emotion-controlling aliens of which Spock is one (well, half of one, as the first look repeatedly and humorously underscores). Kane’s character, a Lanthanite alien named Pelia, is also given the same transformative drug as the others, but it doesn’t affect her, just like LSD didn’t in the ’60s, ’90s or last July, as she says.
The newly Vulcanized crew completes its mission in record time but not everyone is happy. And there is one slight complication. Check out the clip below.
It was also announced that Cillian O’Sullivan (In From The Cold) will play the role of Dr. Roger Korby, a character first introduced in the original 1960s series. In his one-episode appearance previously, he was played by Michael Strong. He acted as an antagonist and was the ex-fiancée of Nurse Chapel, who in Strange New Worlds is played by Bush. SNW looks to explore the character as O’Sullivan will be a recurring guest star in the upcoming season.
When asked what the secret sauce was to the show, Kurtzman said, “The cast is unbelievable. It goes back to the original series…standalone episodes that carry emotional serialization, the switching genres so deftly…It feels like old school Trek told in a brand new way.”
Another first look from season 3 below.