Calling Star Trek: Strange New Worlds self-referential would be an understatement. But much like many modern Star Treks, at a certain point after all the Easter eggs and callbacks to bygone eras, some of what can be read as references to older Star Trek are also now simply a part of the modern show itself. Although Strange New Worlds Season 4 has more “legacy” characters in the regular cast than “new” characters, folks like Captain Pike (Anson Mount) and Number One (Rebecca Romijn) don’t really feel like new versions of characters that come from the 1964 Star Trek pilot episode, “The Cage.
Eight years after the USS Enterprise appeared in the finale of Star Trek: Discovery Season 1, and four years after the debut of the spinoff that was, at one point, called by the fans, “the Pike show,” these people simply feel like Strange New Worlds characters. And in Season 4, the show has delivered what feels like its most consistent set of episodes since Season 1.
