Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Cast Interview—Inheriting Legacy

One of the biggest leaps back yet is Star Trek's next step. Although the new Star Trek shows kicked off with Discovery, at first a prequel set before the events of the original series, now it's farthest flung future is Strange New Worlds.

The longest pilot-to-series pickup was called it by one of our showrunners. In a video chat with io9 at a press junket for Strange New Worlds, the actress who plays Lt. Ortegas said that it was really funny. The main cast of the show doesn't have an eager flight jockey who pilots the Enterprise through the many dangers it faces. There is a tiny link back.

She is a brand-new character, but her last name is the same as that of a character who never made it to screen. It became a different person. It became symbolic for me as an actor and as a Star Trek fan. We're going to be making new fans from this show, but we're also trying to bridge the divide of how Star Trek connects generations. It has been exciting, a lot of pressure, but I think we can handle it thanks to our amazing writers and cast.

The links to the original Star Trek series play on the minds of the cast of Strange New Worlds.

It has been amazing to have the knowledge of where the future of the franchise is compared to where we are coming from in the first season. Uhura doesn't know she will have a future on many different starships. It's cool to know the future and play the present as an actor.

I did a lot of research because I am a new Trek fan. There was a lot going on.

For some of Strange New Worlds, there were actual performances to turn to. I think Akiva and Henry handled the writing beautifully, and how we got to come up with a plan for the character, really well. They had their two cents, but I also had a license to explore. It has been a wonderful process and I felt honored to do it.

It was even harder for Olusanmokun because Dr. M was only seen in two episodes. I could just give him something new, something that is unknown, you know? I hope the journey we take him on and what we show of his life is something that the fans can connect to.

The pressure to embrace Star Trek's history wasn't just felt on Strange New Worlds. It was even more demanding for its three returning heroes: Mount, Peck, and Romijn, who all first created these new continuations of their characters for Star Trek: Discovery's second season, and several Short Treks anthology minisodes. It was a chance for Mount to grow the character he had developed on Discovery, but also to help lead a show that would grow into something different to all the other Star Trek series out there right now. How can we encourage our directors to do well on the show? We wanted to re-inject a sense of fun in Star Trek, and I hope we succeeded.

With some of the pressure relieved, there were more chances to push a now-familiar face like Pike even further. The most important thing in the room was not the question, but the door to his office. That's one of the few things that I knew I wanted to do.

Mount's returning colleagues felt the need to find a balance between respecting what came before and carving a new identity for these characters. I feel like a custodian of this beloved character that only got 14 minutes of screentime in the original pilot. She only performed a task at hand. She has a name now and it is fun to flesh out this blank slate.

The actress said that they don't take it lightly and that they were very protective of their characters.

It never gets normal. It doesn't feel like something ordinary. I think the onus is more comfortable at this point, it doesn't feel like a back-breaking version of Spock, said Peck, who returns as Spock after depicting a rather tumultuous version of the character on Discovery. It made for something super-burdensome. I think time has alleviated the discomfort of that and continues to, but I hope that it never becomes normal or comfortable because I think that it is a great catalyst for creativity. It is very inspiring.

Paramount+ will show Star Trek: Strange New Worlds on May 5.

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