Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3 hits the mark by putting characters before plot

From the beginning of its 2022 launch, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds offered a different approach compared to previous entries in the franchise. Tapping into nostalgia with a prequel to the original ’60s Star Trek, Goldsman and his co-showrunner, Henry Alonso Myers, provided fresh spins on the original show’s most famous characters and minor players alike. Strange New Worlds has alternated between issue-driven stories and silly stuff like body-swapping plots and musical numbers, the kinds of weightless plot devices that previous Treks used to pad out traditional 26-episode seasons.

The original 1966 Star Trek series established the franchise’s episodic formula, with the starship Enterprise facing a new crisis or adventure each week. A new set of creatives copied that model to great success when they revived the franchise in 1987 with Star Trek: The Next Generation. But in 1993, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine started changing up that formula with a story set in one place. In the later years of DS9’s run, it focused almost entirely on an ongoing story and season-long arcs. The approach required more commitment from viewers than Trek fans were used to at the time, and the franchise largely returned to more episodic adventures with the Voyager and Enterprise series. 

When Star Trek rebooted for the streaming era, executive producer Akiva Goldsman boasted that Star Trek: Discovery would be more serialized than Deep Space Nine ever was. He kept that promise  with Discovery and the Next Gen reunion Picard, but far-reaching plots weren’t enough to make the shows great. Both had highlights, but were largely hampered by clumsy storytelling and radical shifts in direction.  However, Strange New Worlds’ third season, which premieres July 17 on Paramount Plus, continues to show the power of a hybrid approach to storytelling, mixing in long-term and short-term plots, but always prioritizing character growth.

The weakest entry in the first half of season 3’s 10-episode run is the opening installment: “Hegemony, Part II” is a wrap-up of season 2’s closing cliffhanger, which saw many of the crew of the starship Enterprise abducted by the Gorn. The second half of this two-part arc focuses on their efforts to escape, while on the Enterprise, Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) tries to save his partner Captain Marie Batel (Melanie Scrofano), who is infested with Gorn eggs. If they hatch, the Gorn young will devour her from the inside, then attack the rest of the ship. Meanwhile, a looming invasion threatens the entire United Federation of Planets. “Hegemony, Part II” doesn’t live up to the franchise’s first major cliffhanger, Star Trek: The Next Generation’s “Best of Both Worlds”: The stakes are just as high, but the solutions feel too convenient.

While the season 3 premiere feels rushed, the impact of “Hegemony, Part II” grows over the course of the season, gnawing on the crew like baby Gorn. Goldsman and Myers focus on how the characters are shaped by the horrors they’ve experienced. Sometimes that means an opportunity for personal growth. Having faced her worst fears, security chief La’An Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong) — whose family was murdered by the Gorn — is finally able to move forward and leave herself open to new experiences, like teaching Spock (Ethan Peck) how to dance.

Chong’s stoic, intense character previously showed room for growth in her season 2 time travel romance episode “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow,” and she spends even more time in the spotlight this season. She gets to have some fun solving a mystery and starting a new relationship fully on her own terms when testing Starfleet’s first holodeck in episode 4, “A Space Adventure,” a sort of mashup of Knives Out and Galaxy Quest. Directed by Star Trek: The Next Generation star Jonathan Frakes and penned by “Subspace Rhapsody” co-writer Dana Horgan and Kathryn Lyn, who co-wrote season 2’s excellent Star Trek: Lower Decks crossover, the episode is mostly a vehicle for Chong, but it’s a treat to see the cast commit to the whimsy.

Season 3 also leans into the Enterprise being a messy loveboat of relationship drama in “Wedding Bell Blues,” an absolutely hilarious episode continuing the fallout from Spock and Christine Chapel (Jess Bush) breaking up via a musical number in season 2’s penultimate episode, “Subspace Rhapsody.” Rhys Darby of Our Flag Means Death and the What We Do in the Shadows movie plays a trickster with deep Star Trek roots, manic panache, a fabulous coat, and a determination to craft a happy ending for Spock and Christine. The whole affair provides a wonderful opportunity for the costuming department to show off some futuristic formal wear while setting up sparks for a fresh romance involving Nyota Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding).

PTSD has been a running theme for Strange New Worlds since the introduction of the Gorn in season 1’s fourth episode, “Memento Mori.” For Federation/Klingon war veteran and Enterprise helmsman Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia), the fresh trauma of her experience with the Gorn opens old wounds. Navia previously showed the bite under her normally wisecracking, hypercompetent pilot façade in season 2’s “Under the Cloak of War,” and the breaks in her composure understandably rattle the rest of the crew.

The tension particularly allows second-in-command Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn) to demonstrate her strengths as a stern but fair leader able to act in a crisis, then come back to deal with the fallout, in a way that shows how well she understands the people serving under her. The writers further explore the heavy weight the Federation/Klingon war carries for chief medical officer Joseph M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) in an episode that skillfully uses a zombie infestation as a tense backdrop for a much more personal conflict.

M’Benga also shines in the horror-driven episode “Through the Lens of Time,” when a villain reaches back to the character’s earliest plots to try to get under his skin. It’s a great example of how the series can zip between stories while remembering the things that matter most to the Enterprise crew, slowly building up relationships until the showrunners and writers are ready to bring them fully into focus. The show continues to hint at bigger conflicts brewing for later this season or possibly even beyond, but the writers are taking their cues from a slower era of TV by dropping those potential hooks amid strong, contained character-driven episodes, rather than focusing purely on the mystery or overarching threat.

The mix of horror and whimsy might be jarring for a lesser show, but the tonal whiplash just feels par for the course on a spaceship prepared for anything. Strange New Worlds will end with a shortened fifth season, but it deserves to have gotten the 100-plus-episode count of the 1990s Star Trek shows. As it is, the show is making every moment count by reaching into the franchise’s past to find a new way to make great TV.

The first two episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3 premiere on July 17 on Paramount Plus. Further episodes will be released weekly on Thursdays.