Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Creator Teases Episodic, Adventure-of-the-Week Format

In Strange New Worlds, coming soon on Paramount+ and set in the timeline of Star Trek: Discovery, Captain Pike, Science Officer Spock and Number One will set out to explore new worlds around the galaxy on the U.S.S. Enterprise. The series, which is set to feature Starfleet uniforms and a ship design inspired by the original Star Trek series, is arguably the closest that the franchise has ever come to a reboot on TV, although obviously the films did so about ten years ago. And along the way, it will do one more thing that might remind fans of The Original Series: the threats will be primarily one-and-done, episodic ones, rather than serving an over-arching arc throughout the season as most contemporary TV series do.

That’s according to Akiva Goldsman, who has served as a producer on Discovery since it launched and will be the EP on Strange New Worlds. Goldsman said recently that Strange New Worlds is the kind of show he wanted to do when he signed up to do Discovery. Invoking a numebr of the series’ most beloved and famous episodes, Goldsman makes the case that some of the things that audiences most closely identify with the very best of Trek tend to be more episodic,

“It’s unlike the other shows in that it’s really episodic,” Goldsman told The Hollywood Reporter. “If you think back to The Original Series, it was a tonally more liberal — I don’t mean in terms of politics, but it could sort of be more fluid. Like sometimes Robert Bloch would write a horror episode. Or Harlan Ellison would have ‘City on the Edge of Forever,’ which is hard sci-fi. Then there would be comedic episodes, like ‘Shore Leave’ or ‘The Trouble with Tribbles.” So [co-showrunner] Henry Alonso Myers and myself are trying to serve that. We’ve all become very enamored, myself included, with serialized storytelling. And I’m talking to you from behind the stage where we’re shooting Picard, which is deeply serialized. But Strange New Worlds is very much adventure-of-the-week but with serialized character arcs.”

Using characters and cast members established in Discovery, the idea may be to broaden the definition of what makes modern Trek tick, while still feeling like it’s of a piece with the other series on the air.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is now filming its first season for Paramount+. There is no set premiere date yet.