The second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds arrived on Blu-ray and 4K Blu-ray disc in December —  and while it’s still going to be a while until we see the series back on television, today we’re playing a little catch-up and diving into all the special features of the recent release!
 
The four-disc Blu-ray set (and 3-disc 4K Blu-ray set) contains all ten episodes of Strange New Worlds Season 2 — “The Broken Circle,” “Ad Astra per Aspera,” “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow,” “Among the Lotus Eaters,” “Charades,” “Lost in Translation,” “Those Old Scientists,” “Under the Cloak of War,” “Subspace Rhapsody,” and “Hegemony” — along with behind-the-scenes bonus features typical of past releases.
 

Unfortunately, there are no audio commentary tracks for Season 2’s home media release, but the collection does manage to pack in over two hours of interviews, behind the scenes features, and deleted scenes that cover a lot of ground.

“Exploring New Worlds” (46:30) is a very cut-and-dry exploration of the themes and challenges of Season 2. This doesn’t mean there isn’t something here for fans to enjoy, though; highlights include the fabulous art behind the creation of Cajitar (“The Broken Circle”) to the debut of Martin Quinn as Scotty in “Hegemony.”

What continues to come across in these interviews is how much everyone loves what they’re doing this season: Celia Rose Gooding (Uhura) loved the tension and catharsis of “Lost in Translation”; Jess Bush (Chapel) loves working with Melissa Navia (Ortegas) and Celia; Ethan Peck loves playing around with goofy, silly human Spock (your mileage may vary).

It’s abundantly clear from Navia’s interview that Ortegas’ subplot in “Among the Lotus Eaters” was incredibly important to her. Even if I have criticisms of it, there’s no questioning that it was a success from the writers’ and actors’ perspectives.

There are some deeply funny bits, too — the thrill of the Lower Decks crossover in “Those Old Scientists” seems to have cut through the cast and crew like a lightning rod. Jack Quaid (Boimler) and Tawny Newsome (Mariner) are gems in their interviews, especially Quaid’s discussion of his process of bringing animated Boimler to life (alongside the, uh, Spoimler ‘bromance’). There are some issues for me, though — not interviewing Paul Wesley about playing the real Jim Kirk is annoying.

Overall, this was a bit more interesting to me than the Season 1 iteration.

“The Costumes Closet” (13:21) is a bit hit-and-miss. There is a lot of focus on the costuming from Cajitar, with a lot of detail of extra costuming from the great Bernadette Croft. It’s a good description of the worldbuilding that costuming too (a lot more than the writers, it feels like sometimes). The overview of the new dress uniforms designed for “Ad Astra per Aspera” is great (mainly because I love the Strange New Worlds dress uniform!), and it justifies and explains the differences and improvements on the original design.

It is very descriptive and focused on Croft’s team, also touching on Dak’Rah’s outfit (“Under the Cloak of War”) and the costumes for the Rigel VII excursion (“Among the Lotus Eaters”), but tthere doesn’t seem to be much input from the showrunners on costuming ideas.

“Producing Props” (10:46) is pretty dry. This is fine, because it knows you’re here for the props, not the talk. There’s a fair bit of detail on Spock’s Vulcan lyre, as well as the multitude of props required for the Vulcan family rituals from “Charades,” from the boiling kettle through to the gongs of all shapes and sizes.

“The Gorn” (15:37) is a very descriptive and satisfying insight into the new developments in Gorn design and costuming that were deployed with such effectiveness in “Hegemony.” It was certainly interesting to see how much of the Gorn spacesuit and head inside were physical props; everything from the prehensile tails to the sinister lizard eyes. The use of 3D-printed parts involved was a revelation to me, at least; yet another sign of how the technology is revolutionising costuming completely.

Again, however, there was very little discussion of the writers’ thinking behind the Gorn — especially considering the importance of the Gorn as the primary enemies in the show. It’s still an interesting watch, though if you saw the in-depth exploration of the Gorn design in the “Hegemony” episode of The Ready Room with Wil Wheaton, much of that is repeated here.

It’s not the lengthiest presentation on this collection, but perhaps the best feature is “Singing in Space” (22:14), focused of course on “Subspace Rhapsody.”

Now, if you liked the musical episode, this will be a blast, especially for looking at how the actors, composer Tom Polce, and lyricist Kay Hanley worked together to deliver the episode. A lot of people enjoyed working on this, from the producers down to the songwriters (some of the actors seem less enthusiastic, but I’ll leave that to your judgment). The focus within the interviews on Polce and Hanley is well deserved, especially because they were the backbone of this episode.

The Season 2 Deleted Scenes (16:04) were a bit flatter than the snippets from Season 1. There was a little more screen time for Admirals April and Tafune from “The Broken Circle,” but while may have been enjoyable to the nerds like me, it was extraneous exposition that didn’t add much in the end.

The comedy scene of La’an and Kirk wearing the same outfit (“Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”) was cute, and human-Spock discovering the pitfalls of mixing chewing gum with other foods (“Charades”) was amusing, but neither were big losses.

Nearly five minutes from “Lost in Translation” are featured here, mainly concerning the Number One-Pelia tension subpot — which makes sense, considering how short this story was in the final cut. They’re decent scenes, especially when Pelia and Una discuss why Hemmer was so important to the crew, and how Pelia reminds them all of his loss. Again, Carol Kane shines as the chief engineer and I think the scene in the shuttle should have stayed in — I prefer it to the final version!

There is another sequence from the same episode, which seems to be an alternate cut of the Kirk brothers (and Uhura) discussing the nebula aliens; this highlights the good chemistry that Dan Jeannotte and Paul Wesley share, constantly throwing barbs at each other.

The trim from “Those Old Scientists” – another alternate cut, this time of the Orions stealing the time portal – is pretty funny, but on the other hand, the edits from “Under the Cloak of War” are pretty odd. Erased were some pretty good character moments, like a first proper introduction between M’Benga and Chapel (from the J’Gal flashbacks) — but cutting out Captain Pike’s apology for dragging M’Benga into attending the tense dinner seems like a ridiculous decision. The sound work on all the scenes implies that they were all cut very late on the day; an odd choice considering how short the runtime of the final episode was.

What’s cut from “Subspace Rhapsody” is also fairly acceptable, even though I do enjoy watching Wesley and Romjin bounce off each other. The alternate cut of the Klingons in the final song (where they perform a little bit of Les Mis-style Klingon opera instead of K-Pop) is nice, but nothing to write home about.

Overall? A decent set of special features, in my view. The lack of a gag reel and commentary tracks seem telling, mind you; a casualty of the actor’s strike, perhaps? I certainly hope not.

Hopefully both will see a return when Season 3 comes to disc sometime in 2025.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 is in stores now.