With a possible reboot “origin story” feature film in the works and a new future-tense Starfleet Academy series focused on brand-new characters, the original 1960s continuity of Star Trek might seem very distant from the current franchise offerings. And yet, in Star Trek’s most popular show — Strange New Worlds — the canon and vibes of TOS are suddenly more prominent than ever. Going into Season 3 and beyond, it seems that Strange New Worlds is readying to redefine the backstory not just of Spock, Uhura, and Kirk, but the rest of the classic gang, too.
Speaking to multiple outlets, and as reported by TrekMovie, following San Diego Comic-Con, Strange New Worlds showrunners, cast, and crew have laid down quite a bit of information about what’s to come in Season 3 and, hypothetically, the already-greenlit Season 4. For serious Trekkies, the biggest development isn’t that Strange New Worlds will hint at or reference TOS a bit more. Instead, this prequel show is basically going to “drive right into” the start of the first Trek ever.
Scotty becomes a regular — Bones and Sulu next?
While many Strange New Worlds fans were probably aware that Martin Quinn’s take on Scotty would return for SNW Season 3, it was recently confirmed that Quinn would be part of the regular cast, not just a recurring character. (I.E. Paul Wesley’s James T. Kirk is not a regular cast member of SNW, despite appearing in three episodes of Season 2.) Scotty’s appearance at the end of Season 2 in the cliffhanger “Hegemony” was a well-kept secret in the Star Trek camp, which makes fans and pundits wonder if new versions of Hikaru Sulu and Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy are next.
While not confirming Bones and Sulu appearances in Strange New Worlds Season 3, co-showrunner Henry Alonso Myers told Variety:
“These characters are not the people that they will become when we get to The Original Series. They are still younger. They are going through things. They have a lot of life and lessons to go through. They have some growth to do so you don’t see them exactly the way that you would see them later on.”
While the Prime Universe version of Pavel Chekov will be canonically far too young to appear in Strange New Worlds, Bones, and Sulu are very good bets. In two episodes of TOS, Bones works side-by-side with Dr. M'Benga, who in SNW is the current chief medical officer of the Enterprise. M’Benga was a guest character played by Booker Bradshaw in TOS, but Babs Olusanmokun’s performance has utterly redefined the character. So looking at the way SNW handles the rest of the legacy characters (like Paul Wesley’s Kirk and Celia Rose Gooding’s Uhura) is probably a good indication as to how a young Sulu and Bones could appear.
One fun canon note on Bones in Strange New Worlds: If he does appear, it could create a Deep Space Nine crossover. In the 1996 DS9 episode “Trials and Tribble-ations,” Jadzia Dax(Terry Farrell) insinuated one of her previous Trill hosts, Emony Dax, was romantically involved with Bones when he was a younger man. So via Bones, could we get a retro version of Dax?
How Strange New Worlds Could Become the new TOS
The biggest takeaway from the various post-San Diego Comic-Con interviews with Henry Alonso Myers and Akiva Goldsman is that Strange New Worlds is not shying away from its fidelity to The Original Series. Nurse Chapel’s former fiance turned-robot in TOS, Roger Korby, will appear in SNW Season 3, now played by Cillian O’Sullivan. Both Goldsman and Myers noted that his relationship with Chapel (Jess Bush) will be complicated in Season 3, and that “[he] is going to travel a long path before he gets to be the Roger Korby that you see in The Original Series.”
With Season 4 already in the planning stages, Myers and Goldsman know that they’re getting closer and closer to the timeline of The Original Series, around the year 2265. Season 2 of Strange New Worlds was firmly in 2260, which suddenly feels much closer to the classic era than Discovery Season 2 did when it introduced Pike (Anson Mount), Spock (Ethan Peck), Number One (Rebecca Romijn) and the Enterprise in the year 2258. So as SNW keeps going, even if fictional years don’t pass every single season, the showrunners are very aware that they’re inching closer and closer to that classic era.
Speaking to Collider, Goldsman said, “Left to our own devices, which really means if Paramount will, we’ll keep going into the TOS era.”
This notion that Strange New Worlds could overlap with TOS has a massive canon precedent. Chronologically, the very first regular episode of The Original Series (not counting the unaired pilot “The Cage”) is “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” which takes place in 2265. But the funny thing is, all the other Season 1 TOS episodes mostly take place in 2266, meaning that not only do we not know what happened in the years leading up to Kirk taking command of the Enterprise, but we also know almost nothing about what happened during Kirks’ first year, other than that one episode.
Outside of providing great standalone episodes of Star Trek, this detail is perhaps the most interesting for longtime Trekkies. Because at some point, Strange New Worlds could turn into The Original Series Year 1.
Or, as Goldsman told Variety, “We will continue on for as long as Paramount lets us. We will drive right into The Original Series.”
Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds both stream on Paramount+.
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