Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Update Revealed at Comic-Con 2020

In May, CBS All Access announced Star Trek: Strange New Worlds as one of the new series in development as part of the Star Trek Universe. During Thursday’s Star Trek Universe panel for Comic-Con@Home, executive producer Alex Kurtzman offered on update on the Star Trek: Discovery spinoff, which follows the crew of the USS Enterprise introduced in Discovery‘s second season. Kurtzman reveals he’s been keeping theCaptain Pike, Spock, and Number One-led show a secret since last year’s Comic-Con, but now a writers’ room is active, and they’ve already broken down the first 10 episodes of the show.

“I really wanted to tell everyone about it last Comic-Con,” Kurtzman said while introducing the panel. “People were poking around and asking questions, and we couldn’t say anything. But we were already having real active conversations at that point.

“The room has started. There are 10 stories broken, which is very exciting. They are just sort of at the beginning. But it was one of those shows that I think everybody came in with such enthusiasm and so much love.”

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds stars Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, and Rebecca Romijn later appeared during the Star Trek: Discovery portion of the panel to talk about their characters’ roles in Season Two of that series. They also discussed how their experience in that season affects their character’s trajectory in Strange New Worlds.

“I think the biggest thing, obviously, was seeing my future, and when you see how it’s all going to end and that it’s not so pretty, what do you do with that?” said Mount, who plays Capt. Christopher Pike. “I think there’s a reason that we can only see our past because we’re a very neurotic species, and we wouldn’t know how to comport ourselves. And so I think ultimately the question becomes, ‘How do you move forward?’ I think he’s going to wrestle with how he can best utilize the rest of his life for the good of the world, the universe… He’s not thinking about it as a team yet because he’s wrestling with it himself, which I hope he’s going to learn to let other people help him wrestle with it.”

Peck discussed how Star Trek: Discovery put his Spock on the path to becoming the Spock of Star Trek: The Original Series. “Spock’s interaction with Michael Burnham is essential to transforming Spock from somebody who’s been born on Vulcan who’s half-human that has been taught to be Vulcan, and I think Michael Burnham gives him the permission to be human and teaches him what it is to be human,” Peck says. “And so that is essential to the development of Spock as we follow along between the conflict between his emotion and logic going forward into when we first see Leonard Nimoy in The Original Series. It’s a huge character point for me and will dictate a lot of behavior for Spock, because of his interaction with Michael.”

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is now in development. Star Trek: Discovery returns for its third season later this year.