‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ To Premiere On May 5; Renewed In Advance Of Debut
by Erik Amaya
The bold new era of a new Star Trek episode every week on Paramount+ is finally at hand.
In a flurry of announcements on Tuesday, the ViacomCBS streaming service announced its plans for the Star Trek family of series. The most important of these is, of course, the arrival of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds on May 5. The new series stars Anson Mount as Captain Christopher Pike, Rebecca Romijn as Number One, and Ethan Peck as Lt. Spock. The trio first appeared as the characters in the second season of Star Trek: Discovery, but Strange New Worlds sees them back on the U.S.S. Enterprise as it investigates alien civilizations ten years before Spock and James T. Kirk’s five year mission.
Before that debut, though, Discovery returns for the back-half of its fourth season on February 10th with a fifth season commissioned for next year. Following Discovery, Star Trek: Picard returns on March 3rd. The program is currently shooting a third season — despite a COVID-19 outbreak on set — and no word was given in regards to a fourth.
After Strange New Worlds, Star Trek: Lower Decks returns for more TNG-inspired humor in the summer with an additional ten episodes of Star Trek: Prodigy set for later in the year. Lower Decks, meanwhile, has been renewed for a fourth season.
The cumulative effect is what Paramount+ has wanted for the franchise since securing Patrick Stewart for Picard: new Star Trek content every week of the year. The streamer put a number of potential Star Trek series in development to secure the goal — including seemingly abandoned series featuring Kirk nemesis Khan Noonien Singh and Section 31, the Federation’s black ops department. Of course, these could spring to life at any moment. In the interim, though, the current shows represent just about enough content to accomplish weekly new Star Trek — although we imagine the ongoing pandemic will still cause some disruptions.
Star Trek: Prodigy is currently streaming new episodes weekly though February 3rd.