The cast and crew of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has hit warp 7 in delivering a high-energy, beautifully-produced show that is fun to watch and is easily accessible for Trekkies, Trekkers, and especially Trek Novices who think canon is just a suggestion. With familiar faces like Spock and, now, Montgomery Scott joining the bridge, SNW continues to pull from Trek’s rich, 60+ year history… then tosses such legacy into a nearby wormhole by retconning and even ignoring viable canon.

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Season 3 picks up where Season 2’s cliffhanger left off: with the Enterprise under siege by the Gorn, who are apparently now on loan from the Alien franchise. The Enterprise is under attack and half the away team, including La'an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong), Lt. Ortegas (Melissa Navia), and Jim Kirk’s brother Sam (Dan Jeannotte). While back on the Enterprise, Captain Pike’s (Anson Mount) ladylove, Captain Batel (Melanie Scrofano) is implanted with a Gorn embryo in a storyline that feels suspiciously like the writers asked AI for help on devising sci-fi horror tropes.

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The episode gives Anson Mount’s Pike the spotlight and allows him the chance to make tough decisions, commanding and with conviction. He is a man of action as well as one that makes decisions based on the data available to him, leading Pike to be a perfect example that foretells how his successor will perform in a likewise manner. Pike, of course, can still boast having the best hair in all of Starfleet.

 

“The Hegemony, Part II” has action galore and, unlike the season 2 opener, throws some love onto all the cast members, including sweeping, cinematic shots of the show’s true star: the Enterprise; still the best starship in sci fi pop-culture. 

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But the biggest misfire? The Gorn. SNW falsely presents the Gorn snarling xenomorph clones stripped of the intelligence and eerie menace that made the original rubber-suited lizard of 1967’s “Arena” compelling. Instead of an evolution, Trek’s legacy is once again ignored and, sadly, regressed. 

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Episode 2, “Wedding Bell Blues,” doubles down on the awkward by returning to the Spock/Chapel romance—an idea that wasn’t great in Season 2 and hasn’t aged any better here. In a plot that feels like a fanfic fever dream, Spock pines after Chapel, who is now dating Dr. Korby (Cillian O'Sullivan, an Irish actor perhaps best known in geek circles for the Daredevil: Born Again episode where he portrays a bank robbery gang leader). The result is a romantic dramedy that might make sense on a CW show targeted for tweens but feels like a transporter accident in the Trek universe. Canon? We hardly knew ye.

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There is a charming cameo at the end that nods to a classic character, and it’s the one brief moment that feels like Strange New Worlds hasn’t completely undocked from its source material.

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In the end, SNW still wants to be a cool, modern, genre-savvy Trek, and in many ways, it is. Strange New Worlds is glossy, fast-moving, and full of charm. But it also repeats itself, reworking character dynamics that didn’t need reworking, and casually vaporizing canon when it becomes inconvenient. Entertaining? Absolutely. But for longtime fans hoping for something a little more strange—or a little more new—Strange New Worlds is also undeniably underwhelming.