
In Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3, there’s a very real possibility that we’ll be getting a metafictional version of Star Trek: a Star Trek show that exists within Trek canon. The newest trailer gives us glimpses of Kirk (Paul Wesley), Chapel (Jess Bush), and Ortegas (Melissa Navia) in an anachronistic 1950s version of The Original Series, while a voiceover suggests this is some form of in-universe entertainment.
So what’s going on here? Does Strange New Worlds have more than one holodeck malfunction episode? Is this the current Trek’s answer to Black Mirror’s “USS Callister?” Is Star Trek going full Galaxy Quest? The answer might be somewhat more elegant, and it goes all the way back to 1979.