Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

The first season finale of the series Star Trek: Discovery set-up the second season by introducing the USS Enterprise, the starship from Star Trek: The Original Series.[3] Then co-showrunner Aaron Harberts wanted to explore Enterprise Captain Christopher Pike, feeling that he had not been seen much in Star Trek previously. Harberts was less interested in exploring another Enterprise crew member, Spock, given his many appearances throughout previous iterations of the franchise,[4] and was reluctant to have an actor other than Leonard Nimoy or Zachary Quinto portray the character.[5] However, Spock was confirmed to be included in the season in April 2018.[6] That month, Anson Mount was cast as Pike,[7] and he revealed in July that Rebecca Romijn would portray original series character Number One.[8] Mount and Romijn both signed one year deals for the series as part of an attempt by the producers to closer align Discovery with the wider Star Trek continuity.[9] In August, Ethan Peck was announced as portraying Spock in the season.[10]

The series stars Anson Mount as Christopher Pike, Rebecca Romijn as Number One, and Ethan Peck as Spock, reprising their roles from Star Trek: Discovery

In June 2018, after becoming sole showrunner of Star Trek: Discovery, Alex Kurtzman signed a five-year overall deal with CBS Television Studios to expand the Star Trek franchise beyond Discovery to several new series, miniseries, and animated series.[11] After Mount was revealed to be leaving Discovery with the second season finale, fans of that series began calling—including through online petitions—for him to reprise the role of Pike in a spin-off series set on the Enterprise, alongside Romijn as Number One and Peck as Spock. Mount and Peck both responded positively to the idea,[12][13] though Mount said his return would involve "a lot of creative conversations".[14] Kurtzman also expressed interest in the idea, saying, "The fans have been heard. Anything is possible in the world of Trek. I would love to bring back that crew more than anything."[15]

At the 2019 San Diego Comic-Con, Kurtzman announced that the second season of companion series Star Trek: Short Treks would include three shorts starring the Enterprise actors. He said this was a way to bring those characters and actors back after Discovery jumped into the future for its third season, but this would not preclude a spin-off series featuring the Enterprise cast from being made.[16] In January 2020, Kurtzman said active discussions regarding a spin-off series featuring the actors had begun, and he had been "tossing ideas back and forth" with Akiva Goldsman who already served as an executive producer on other Star Trek series. Kurtzman said he would prefer for a potential spin-off starring the Enterprise cast to be an ongoing series rather than a miniseries, and said it could explore the seven years between Discovery's second season and the accident that seriously injures Pike in The Original Series.[17] Kurtzman soon stated that two unannounced Star Trek series were in development for CBS All Access,[18] and the spin-off was reported to be one of them in March.[19][20]

CBS All Access officially ordered Star Trek: Strange New Worlds to series in May 2020, with Mount, Romijn, and Peck confirmed to be reprising their roles. Kurtzman and Goldsman were confirmed to be executive producing alongside their fellow Star Trek producer Jenny Lumet, Henry Alonso Myers, Heather Kadin of Kurtzman's production company Secret Hideout, and Rod Roddenberry (the son of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry) and Trevor Roth of Roddenberry Entertainment. Aaron Baiers, Akela Cooper, and Davy Perez were set as co-executive producers. Goldsman wrote the script for the series' first episode based on a story he wrote with Kurtzman and Lumet, and was set as showrunner alongside Myers. Goldsman would also remain an executive producer on Star Trek: Picard.[1] Myers joked that "The Cage" (1965), the first pilot episode of The Original Series which stars the same main characters, could be considered the pilot for Strange New Worlds as well, making the series "the longest pilot-to-series pickup in the history of television".[21]

Goldsman had written the first episode by the time of the series' official announcement in May 2020,[1] and said the series would be more optimistic and episodic than Discovery and Picard, a style closer to the original series. He did note that the series would continue to take advantage of serialized storytelling to develop character arcs.[23]

A writers room for the series was underway by July, with stories for 10 episodes already broken by the end of that month.[24] In August, Kurtzman said "we have actually been able to get quite ahead in scripts" for the series due to the COVID-19 pandemic preventing the start of production.[25] He felt what audiences had responded to when watching the characters on Discovery was their "relentless optimism", and said the spin-off would explore how Pike remains an optimistic leader despite learning about his tragic future during the second season of Discovery.[22] Myers elaborated on the series' approach to episodic storytelling, explaining that the writers wanted to "bring a modern character sensibility" to "Star Trek in the way Star Trek stories were always told. It’s a ship and it’s traveling to strange new worlds and we are going to tell big ideas science fiction adventures in an episodic mode. So we have room to meet new aliens, see new ships, visit new cultures."[26]

Anson Mount, Rebecca Romijn, and Ethan Peck reprise their respective roles from Star Trek: Discovery in the spin-off.[19][1] Their characters were first introduced in "The Cage", which starred Jeffrey Hunter as Pike, Leonard Nimoy as Spock, and Majel Barrett as Number One.[7][23] Peck said the characters will evolve in Strange New Worlds from their portrayals in Discovery to be closer to their original incarnations, which he described as a "whole new challenge".[23] Perez described Pike and Number One as the "parental figures" of the Enterprise, particularly to Spock since he is "not the wise, old Spock from The Original Series, [he is] still finding himself".[26]

Design work for the series had begun by August 2020, and Myers said the production had been looking for ways to keep continuity with past Star Trek series. He elaborated that they wanted to "keep some of the amazing design elements from the 60s that were incorporated in [The Original Series while] updating it for a modern audience."[26]

With the series' announcement in May 2020, Goldsman said he was unsure when production would begin on the series due to the COVID-19 pandemic,[23] but Kurtzman stated on August 12 that filming for the series would take place in 2021.[25] Pre-production for the series began on August 24, with filming scheduled to take place from February 15 to July 21, 2021, at CBS Stages in Mississauga, Ontario.[27][28] Kurtzman said in October 2020 that filming on the series would be a "systematised, militarised operation" due to the pandemic, which the crew would have already experienced due to the same approach being used for Discovery first. He elaborated that filming would function in "pods" to minimize the potential spread of the virus, and added that, due to the pandemic delays, the series would begin filming with more completed scripts than is usual for Star Trek.[29] CBS is constructing a video wall to allow for virtual production on the series, which they also did for the fourth season of Discovery, based on technology developed for the series The Mandalorian.[30]

By December 2020, Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard composer Jeff Russo had discussed Strange New Worlds with Kurtzman, including how it "should be treated musically", but whether Russo would be involved in the spin-off's score had yet to be determined at that point.[31]