‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Season 2 Review – Maybe A Little Too Strange This Time Around

Paramount+’s latest addition to the Star Trek franchise, Strange New Worlds, finished up its second season recently. I absolutely LOVED the first season, and you can check out my review of season one here. I was excited to watch this lovable bunch blast through the galaxy for another 10 episodes. My wife will attest that I was probably a little too excited. We watched the first episode… and we were not impressed. You can read all of my thoughts on that here.

Needless to say, I had doubts for the remainder of the second season. I can report that I was, thankfully, wrong on a few counts in my early impressions. It was truly a roller coaster for 10 episodes. Continuously trying to do something different from the episode before. We had crazy action episodes, a crossover with a cartoon, a musical, and a lot more.

The Episodes

• Episode one was a crazy reintroduction to the show for anyone first joining. We’re reintroduced to all of the characters in a fun way. Spock (Ethan Peck) is treated to his first taste of the captain’s chair in some blatant violation of an Admiral’s order too. It’s not the greatest example of Star Trek, but it has its moments.
• Episode two mostly follows Una, Number One (Rebecca Romijn), and her intense legal battle after revelations at the end of the previous season that she is of a genetically engineered species not allowed in Starfleet. Trek court episodes are usually solid, and this was no exception. It’s not super subtle, but it’s not overly heavy-handed either.
• Episode three takes the Enterprise’s security chief, La’an (Christina Chong), on an emotional blast to the past and really builds out her character. The episode takes some time to retcon a few things for Trek’s backstory and establishes an interesting precedent for continuity going forward. We also get to spend some more time with Paul Wesley’s young James Kirk. He pops up a few times this season, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s fully added to the crew next season.
• Episode four follows Pike (Anson Mount) and his away team to a planet where you lose your memories after prolonged exposure to an asteroid. Pike ends up remembering and forgetting a lot more than he bargained for when he and his team are forced to spend some extra time down on the surface.
• Episode five sees Spock injured in a shuttle accident with Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush) and some aliens try to fix him up. Unfortunately for Spock, they make him fully human! Hijinks ensue, and Spock even gets to try bacon. It’s a mostly fun episode. Spock’s fiancé T’Pring (Gia Sandhu) ends their relationship but he almost immediately ends up in some kind of relationship with Nurse Chapel, so it’s hard to know how to feel about the whole thing. (I should point out that SNW has been, very unsubtly, building to a Spock/Chapel relationship the entire time. This still feels weird though.)
• Episode six follows Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) as she encounters a strange frequency that at first seems to cause hallucinations but is also slowly degrading her, and everyone else’s, brain! I like Uhura in this show a lot, and the showrunners clearly do too. Gooding really hits her stride as Uhura this season, and I’m really interested to see where she takes the character.
• Episode seven is probably the highlight of the season. The crossover episode with Star Trek: Lower Decks. In the future, Ensigns Boimler (Jack Quaid) and Mariner (Tawny Newsome) discover a portal to the past where, conveniently, Pike’s Enterprise crew finds them and helps them get back to their own time. This episode is full of energy, it’s extremely funny, and for a longtime Star Trek fan a lot of fun references and Easter eggs to find and pick up on. Quaid and Newsome bring their animated characters to life perfectly.
• Episode eight really leans into the TOS era Starfleet v Klingon conflict, and shows how the war effected various members of the Enterprise crew. It especially focuses on Dr. M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun), culminating in a very dark scene that colors him very differently. It’s always weird to see people of medicine fighting. Overall, the episode was a clever way to show how PTSD effects people and the others around them.
• Episode nine tries to be a musical romp through space, and ends up being pretty fun. We see just about every main crew member get a song (Spock’s breakup song is absolute magic. Convince me otherwise.) The Klingons get done DIRTY, but aside from that “Subspace Rhapsody” is a fun and silly episode that I’d be happy to revisit.
• The finale episode, “Hegemony,” follows up on the ending thread of the first episode. The Gorn attack a newly established Federation colony where both Pike’s lady, (Melanie Scrofano) and Spock’s former lady are in terrible danger! The crew has to spring into action and rescue anyone on the surface who hasn’t been eaten or turned into egg-fodder while also not starting a war with the Gorn. We, finally, get to meet Scotty (Martin Quinn), and there are some really great and tense action scenes. We leave on a suspenseful cliffhanger to start next season off with a bang.

Pros and Cons

Overall the second season of Strange New Worlds is an enjoyable, mostly character driven, episodic space adventure serial much like previous iterations in the Trek franchise. Not every episode lands, but there are more hits than misses. The first episode put a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, but things improved steadily.

The visuals and the sound design this season were fantastic. The Enterprise looks phenomenal inside and out. There are a lot of great visuals for crazy space phenomena or alien races. I especially love that the Klingons are now closer in look to the TNG/DS9 era. It’s the best look for them in my opinion, and even when they’re doing outrageously inappropriate musical numbers, they look just right.

The music, especially for the musical episode, and the overall sound design have been worked on a lot and it shows. There was a lot of time and effort put into making things sound exactly right. Some, like Celia Gooding, make this easier than others.

The weakest part of this season, for me was the new Chief Engineer Pelia (Carol Kane). I love Carol Kane, but this character did not work for me. Pelia comes across as the ultimate quirky weird science lady, and its just WAY too over the top. I’m sorry Carol. Don’t hate me.

The Final Verdict

This season was a lot of fun and I was glad to see this crew of the Enterprise back in action, but the fun outweighed the Star Trek-iness this time around, and that was a big part of what I enjoyed about the first season. We got to spend a lot of time with some of the characters that missed out on the spotlight last time. We also spend some more time with others and recontextualize how we might feel about them a little bit.

Anson Mount’s Pike takes a backseat a lot this season as well, and he is without doubt my favorite character. I genuinely wish that Pike had been utilized a little bit more. When he does get to be part of the story, it’s always to that episode’s benefit.

I like that we’re introducing more and more of the OG enterprise crew. Scotty seems like he’s going to be fun, and maybe he can balance out Pelia a bit. Kirk is doubtlessly going to join the crew soon as well, and Paul Wesley does a great job bringing his version of the character to the series. I worry that the showrunners may be sprinting to a remake of the original series. There are at least a few characters left to introduce before we get to that point, and they have said that Pike has 10 years until his accident, so fingers are crossed we have some time left with this version of the Enterprise crew.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is currently available to stream on Paramount+. 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69mzZqcM0qw]