Star Trek: Strange New Worlds had a lot of expectations to live up to, and it’s safe to say that the series’ first episode met most of those expectations and more. “Strange New Worlds” is both a stellar introduction to the new show and a fantastic homage to the most classic of Star Trek tropes: the Prime Directive dilemma.

The episode opens with a lofty monologue about the wonders of first contact ready by Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romjin) — the Enterprise first officer known best as ‘Number One’ — accompanied by footage from an alien bunker tracking a UFO in their skies. The Kiley, who live in a near-current-day-Earth society, eventually get a clear image of the vessel: a single-nacelled Starfleet ship.

It’s a tantalizing start to the story — undercut a little by the smash cut back to the frozen fields of Bear Creek, Montana… where an off-duty Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) is spending his shore leave making pancakes, watching The Day the Earth Stood Still on repeat, and enjoying the intimate company of fellow Starfleet captain Batel (Melanie Scrofano).

Captain Pike, in his full beard and phone-call avoiding glory, is still reluctant to return to space after being shaken to the core by the vision of his future imparted upon him back in Star Trek: Discovery’s “Through the Valley of Shadows” — something entirely off-limits to share with Batal, thanks to the super-secret classification surrounding all things Discovery.

She encourages him to get back into uniform, telling him he’s “got better places to be” — and Starfleet Command seems to agree, as soon Admiral Robert April (Adrian Holmes) tracks down the wayward Pike to order him up to the Enterprise. Pike’s hesitant to follow April’s directive, even after he learns Una’s been captured during a first contact mission that’s gone wrong — “You can quit when you get back,” April tells him.

From the winter snow to the sands of Vulcan, we head next to check on a nervy Spock (Ethan Peck) sharing a meal with T’Pring (Gia Sandhu) on the anniversary of their betrothal. It’s an odd scene: they’re clearly both deeply attracted to each other, but it’s still a little disjointed, especially when T’Pring goes from dismissing his Starfleet career as “gallivanting around the galaxy” one moment to proposing to him in the next.

Retconning “Amok Time” is a risky move, no matter how you do it — but I don’t think it’s the worst idea. If anything, having the pair start off as being so close and committed to each other makes T’Pring’s treatment of Spock in “Amok Time” even crueler. We’ll see more of this pair together later this season, and presuming T’Pring continues as a recurring character beyond Season 1, there’s plenty of time for the show to portray the decline and ultimate collapse of their relationship.

As for Spock’s own statements on their relationship: can we really trust a person who has never told a truth about his personal life — ever? I’m cautiously optimistic. They’ve got time to try and get us from A to B, even if they’ve given themselves a lot of distance to cover.

Eventually both Pike and Spock return to the Enterprise — the captain arrives by way a rather glorious shuttle trip up to Spacedock — and after catching up on some ship’s business, we get a very poignant moment where the two reflect on the loss of Michael Burnham (along with the rest of the USS Discovery crew) just a few months earlier.

It’s really satisfying to see Strange New Worlds treat the series from it was spun off seriously — as we’ll revisit later in the episode — when it really had no requirement to do so (beyond vague references to how Pike received a vision of his future). Taking the time to allow these character to contemplate the effects of their Discovery encounter is a welcome component to the story, even if it’s not critical to the series as a whole.

We are quickly introduced to our new Enterprise crew as the ship prepares for departure: Lt. Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia) at the helm; young “prodigy” cadet Nyota Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) at communications, and stern-faced Lt. La’an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong) assigned as an interim ‘Number One’ filling in for Una. The nice moment of Pike’s return to the bridge is, however, marred by his own second-guessing… made more apparent by the hallucination of his future disfigurement reflected in his armrest console.

Eventually, Pike opens up to Spock about the vision seen on Boreth, and how it’s changed him — or, more clearly, how he doesn’t yet know how it will change him. Pike’s fixation on his injury and the feeling that it represents the “death of the man [he is]” is a bit disappointing. Sure, it’s a great plot beat, and the character of a man who knows how his life will end and must face what that knowledge does to him is great — but Pike’s life doesn’t end with that accident.

We know that much, even if he doesn’t and I think by now we should have moved past the 1960s ableist views around disability. I can understand why they didn’t do that; Pike facing the certainty of his death is tonally perfect with the message of this episode, and perhaps the whole series — but it could’ve been handled a lot better.

At the very least, Spock’s advice to the captain  — to use his knowledge to improve himself and his ability to command — is sensible. Pike is going to have to live with his knowledge and learn from it, and that core theme is key clear throughout the episode. Arrival at Kiley 279 kicks off a classic Star Trek prime directive mystery, with an empty starship and strange sensor readings quickly being interpreted as a threat by La’an.

The sparring between her and Spock, which quickly turns into an agreement on the danger, was rather fun and a nice demonstration of La’an’s determination. An attack from the surface confirms Spock’s theory that the Kiley can’t have a working warp drive… but instead, they have something much worse: a “warp bomb.”

Spock’s further conclusion — that the planet is not ready for first contact — means that they must find a way to rescue Una and her crew (all 2 of them, which… doesn’t seem like a lot to run a starship) without causing any more cultural damage.

The next stop is sickbay, where the gregarious Dr. M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) and his new nurse, Christine Chapel (Jess Bush) proceed to “mess with their genomes” — providing a fun backstory for the myriad of alien-design disguises we’ve seen many a Trek hero wear. La’an’s refusal to be sedated for the procedure is a mildly overdone moment about how determined she is to always be alert, but it fits — barely.

What follows is almost textbook. After beaming down and knocking out some scientists (thanks La’an’s quick suggestion to nerve-pinch the locals), the trio are outfitted in local garb to infiltrate the Kiley base — though their task becomes classically complicated by difficulties with Spock’s disguise. The solution, to build a more stable disguise from the genes of the two Kiley scientists who were beamed aboard, is stymied when the one they need escapes.

The day is saved by Cadet Uhura, who calms the panicked Kiley down by talking to him about the local sport “tagball,” a nice callback to future-Uhura’s ability to quickly digest the media of planets, as seen in episodes like “Bread and Circuses.”

Spock’s disguise holds up long enough for the team to make it to Una’s cell, despite a curious Kiley scientist spotting his fluctuating ears in an elevator. Number One’s rescue delivers two bombshells: first, that she and La’an are well acquainted, and secondly, that the Kiley developed a warp bomb because of Starfleet… after watching the space battle between Control and the combined Starfleet/Klingon/Kelpien armada in “Such Sweet Sorrow” which ended with Discovery flying through a wormhole to the future.

It’s a clever plot twist — acknowledging that there can always be unintended consequences of our actions, no matter how noble they might be — and feeds into the ways in which Strange New Worlds won’t let us forget where it came from.

With this revelation, Pike decides to throw caution (and General Order 1) to the wind and reveals himself and Spock — whose disguise has now rather painfully worn off — to the Kiley. Their leader is unimpressed with Pike’s explanation of his mistake, and only really deigning to listen to his pleas for unity after the captain orders the Enterprise into low orbit to show her “who has the biggest stick.”

We’ve all thought about a scene like this, and it works, somehow, if just for the shots of the Kiley staring in awe at the starship that hangs in the sky — but even with the Enterprise’s intervention, talks between the government and the opposition factional are still breaking down. Pike is spurred into action, however, by a cursory remark from La’an, and returns to the planet to bring an important warning in the form of Earth’s own history… and his own, personal future.

Pike’s speech — in all its on-the-nose moral-message-of-the-week glory — is, quite frankly, wonderful. It’s uncompromising about the state of our world, and the “power of possibility” to change it. Mount’s delivery, especially of lines like “right up until the end, life is to be worn gloriously,” is brilliant; he sells the classic captain’s speech in just the way you’d expect. It’s a demonstration of how much Strange New Worlds is taking the emotional maturity of Discovery and marrying it to the moral certainty of the Original Series.

Sure, parts of it will certainly aggravate a certain collection of people — using contemporary news footage of the January 6 US Capitol siege is more direct than Star Trek has ever gone before — but there’s nothing more in line with the franchise’s point of view than  beating the bigots over the head with a message until they get the point. Pike’s message, illustrating how in Earth’s history that violence escalated all the way into a world war, sinks in with the Kiley society at large — even if it has apparently ruffled a lot of feathers in the Federation Council.

It’s a nice, round-up ending,  even if Pike and La’an’s discussion about trust and growth is a bit contrived. The character stuff around La’an feels a little off in this episode. I’m not sure it was unnecessary, or poorly executed; Christina Chong sells La’an’s detached, bitter-but-determined personality well, but considering the focus on Pike, it seems a little distracting.

The final reveal of Lieutenant Samuel Kirk (Dan Jeannotte) — who’ll later die on Deneva — joining the Enterprise crew feels even more contrived, especially as someone who’ll report to Spock, but it makes up for it by being a fun twist. We end with a rejuvenated Captain Pike, ready to return to the stars; it’s a triumphal, if expected, ending.

CAMP NONSENSE OF THE WEEK

There was a lot of classic camp nonsense in this episode, but this week the award goes to Pike’s exasperated “Why is it always an alley?” meta comment after the Enterprise trio beams to the surface. It’s always an alley, Chris, and I don’t know why. No one does.

OBSERVATION LOUNGE

• Like the Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 finale, this episode is dedicated to the late April Nocifora, post-production supervisor on Discovery who passed away in 2021.
   
• 1951’s The Day The Earth Stood Still was directed by Robert Wise, who also directed Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The climax of that film mirrors the climax of the episode well, with the alien alliance imploring a warring world to lay their arms down and join them in stars. (Also: does this mean that Robert Wise is canon in the Trek universe?!)
   
• The shuttle which brings Pike up to the Enterprise is named for Star Trek: Discovery scientist Paul Stamets.
   
• The USS Archer (NCC-627) is the first one-nacelled ship seen in the 23rd century (not counting the Kelvin in that alternate reality); it seems to be inspired by Franz Joseph’s Saladin or Hermes-class designs.

• Chief Kyle (André Dae Kim) works some wonders with the Enterprise transporter; first equipping the landing party with new clothes and gear in mid-beamdown, then materializing a medical solution onto the surface of Spock’s eye.
   
• The fact the Kiley are all dressed in clothes similar to mid-20th century Earth — fedoras and all — is a nice touch.
   
• La’an’s mention of the Gorn — and their rather bloodthirsty nursery planets — represents the first mention of the species in this era; while Terran refugee Lorca kept a Gorn skeleton in his lab aboard Discovery, the species is still generally unknown to the Federation at this point in Trek history.
   
• From her personnel record, La’an Noonien-Singh’s parents were named Sa’an and Ronu, with a brother named Manu. She is the sole survivor of the SS Puget Sound, rescued as a child by then-ensign Una Chin-Riley of the USS Martin Luther King, Jr.

• The development of General Order 1 into “the prime directive” is a nice nod to the nebulous nature of the rule in Captain Kirk’s time. Kirk’s less-than-strict adherence to it fits with it being somewhat loosely-enforced prior to the 2260s.
   
• Originally located “100 AUs from Earth” (as of “The War Within, the War Without), Starbase 1 now seems to have been relocated to a near-Jupiter orbit following its near-destruction during the Klingon War; domes filled with forestry and other Earth-sourced nature preserves have also been added since we last saw it in Discovery’s first season. (The Jupiter location feels like an homage to the classic science fiction film Silent Running.)
   
• It took me a minute to figure out that Sam Kirk wasn’t just Paul Wesley in a moustache.
   
• While this is his first live-action appearance, Robert April was named-checked twice in Star Trek: Discovery display graphics — as one of Starfleet’s most decorated captains (“Choose Your Pain”) and as Pike’s predecessor on the Enterprise (“Brother”).

• Nurse Chapel is a civilian on the series (though outfitted in a Starfleet uniform with rank cuffs, questionably); she’s on leave from “Stanford Morehouse Epigenetic Project.”
   
• Thanks to his half-Vulcan physiology, Chapel injects Spock with her medications in a different location than the human Pike and La’an.
   
• M’Benga’s sickbay features an “emergency medical transporter” pad.
   
• Pike’s video presentation includes stock footage of Starfleet Command from Star Trek: Discovery as well as the Starfleet Museum seen in the Star Trek: Picard series premiere.
   
• In Star Trek history, Pike explains that a second US civil war expanded into the Eugenics Wars, then into World War III.
   
  While the Original Series indicated the Eugenics Wars took place in the mid-1990s, Star Trek: Picard Season 2 took great pains to note that historical records of the early 21st century were extremely fragmented after the devastation of World War III — allowing the current Trek production team to shuffle the Eugenics Wars up into the late 2020s era — but keeping Khan’s creation set in 1996 (as seen in this week’s finale).

I’m still unsure about how the writers are treating Pike’s disability. They are admittedly backed into a corner by both “The Menagerie” and “Through the Valley of Shadows,” but there was room for a better narrative here – one about living life to the fullest with a disability, with a less fatalistic (and outdated) perspective. On the other hand, this is just the first episode — they have time to address this more fully, and frankly, I’m willing to give it to them.

As a premiere, “Strange New Worlds” isn’t perfect, but it’s a fun, interesting and enjoyable episode (with a moral message you could probably see from space). This first episode is a clear mission statement about the show’s pacing, style, and message, how much this homage to the Original Series isn’t going to go over the same ground: it’s ready to give us new lessons.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds returns with “Children of the Comet” on Thursday, May 12 on Paramount+ in the United States, Australia, Latin America, and the Nordics, as well as on CTV Sci Fi Channel in Canada.

Additional international distribution has not yet been announced.