Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 Premiere Review – A Welcome Return

This Star Trek: Strange New Worlds review contains spoilers for season 3 episodes 1 and 2.

It’s been two years since we last saw Star Trek: New Worlds on our screens, and in the interim, it’s been a bittersweet time to be a Trek fan. Star Trek: Lower Decks wrapped up its five-year mission with its strongest season yet. Star Trek: Prodigy was canceled and rescued by Netflix, only to be canceled again after its second season premiered. Star Trek: Discovery ended as it lived, divisive until its last moments. And the Star Trek: Section 31 movie…well, it’s probably better if we just don’t mention that at all.

Paramount+ giveth and Paramount+ taketh away. Now, a little over a month after the announcement that Strange New Worlds would conclude with a still-to-be-filmed truncated fifth season, the series is back for the start of its third, dropping a pair of episodes that, taken together, are an almost perfect microcosm of everything that makes this series the shining star of the modern day Star Trek universe.

On the surface, these two episodes could not be more different: one is a war story that resolves the cliffhanger left by season two, while the other is a bubbly relationship comedy full of deep-cut lore and darker hints at a larger arc to come. But they are also just another example of this show’s boundless and expansive possibility. Strange New Worlds can do anything, and it just keeps right on proving that fact. By all rights, this show should run forever, but at least we still have the better part of two and a half seasons to spend with this crew. And if “Hegemony, Part II” and “Wedding Bell Blues” are anything to go by, it’s going to be a delightful ride. 

Given that the first half of “Hegemony” aired back in August of 2023, it’s likely that a lot of people don’t remember the specifics of the choices Captain Pike and his crew are facing. In the aftermath of a Gorn invasion, Pike must decide whether to obey orders and retreat or chase after the Gorn ship full of Enterprise and Cayuga prisoners winging their way to almost certain death. Truly, this isn’t all that much of a cliffhanger as the show seems to want us to believe; we’ve all watched Pike as a leader for long enough to guess how he’ll react to a situation like this. He’ll risk anything to save those in his charge, and magically find a loophole or technicality that allows him to do it on his own terms. Which is pretty much exactly what happens, although Mount’s performance makes what is fairly predictable material feel fresh and meaningful. 

The hour is an excellent showcase for Pike’s particular brand of collaborative leadership, and watching him work the problem together with his bridge crew is not only incredibly satisfying but also allows each member of the team a chance to shine in their specific areas of expertise. While Pelia (Carol Kane) and new Engineering squad addition, Montgomery Scott (Martin Quinn), come up with technobabble-filled explanations for ways the Gorn ships can be avoided or defeated, Spock (Ethan Peck) and Chapel (Jess Bush) are desperately working to save Captain Batel (Melanie Scrofano), Pike’s girlfriend and captain of the now-destroyed Cayuga who has been infected by the vicious aliens and turned into a human incubator. And La’an (Christina Chong) is busy facing her worst nightmare, planning a breakout from a Matrix-esque Gorn hive ship full of human feeding pods. 

After some rather spectacular battle sequences (and a run in with a binary star), all ends up (mostly) well. We have a convenient in-universe excuse that neatly solves the Gorn problem for the foreseeable future. Oretgas (Melissa Navia) survives her life-threatening injury, even if it seems as though her experience with the Gorn has left definite scars on her psyche. And Batel miraculously lives, though the treatment that saved her life may have inadvertently doomed her career. (Treated with Una’s Illyrian blood, her job is almost certainly toast should anyone find outside the Enterprise team find out about it.) 

Having gotten the dark, horror-tinged season opener out of the way, Strange New Worlds is free to return to what it does best: Bonkers, yet strangely heartfelt space adventures. “Wedding Bell Blues” takes place three months later, just as Chapel returns from her sojourn off-ship, with new boyfriend (and future fiancé) Dr. Roger Korby (Cillian O’Sullivan) in tow. Taken aback by Chapel’s decision not to follow the “giving themselves some space” promise the pair made each other weeks earlier, Spock is both jealous and petulant, particularly after listening to a romantic story about how perfect Korby seems for his ex. Which makes him the ideal target for the ship’s mysterious new bartender, a strange being played by Our Flag Means Death star Rhys Darby. 

What follows is delightfully silly. With a little help from this new arrival, Spock’s moping manages to somehow rewrite reality into a version where he and Chapel are suddenly about to marry and the whole ship is in wedding planning mode. There’s a wedding cake tasting, outfit prep, a bachelor party, and a prickly but genuine friendship that springs up between the two rivals for Chapel’s affections when Korby manages to convince Spock that reality is broken. But what everyone will almost certainly be talking about is the identity of The Unnamed Character Played By Darby. A powerful alien being with the power to rewrite reality and an obsession with manipulating the lives of humans, we’re never told the name of this particular character, beyond the sobriquet The Wedding Planner. Yet, the episode has more than a few hints about his potential identity.

Sporting an iconic, highly decorated coat and boasting the sorts of powers that few species in the Trek universe possess, it seems very likely that Strange New Worlds means for us to assume that this is Trelane, a puckish, childlike alien introduced in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode “The Squire of Gothos.” He’s younger here—only a mere 8,000 years old!—but shares many of the same traits we’ll see in his later appearance. “Wedding Bell Blues” also appears to confirm that popular (and longstanding) fan theory that Trelane is related in some way to the infamous Q from Star Trek: The Next Generation. After all, the disembodied, glowing ball that appears to chastise the wayward young alien for interfering with the humans’ lives does speak with John de Lancie’s voice. 

Granted, this doesn’t entirely square with the fact that Spock doesn’t recognize him in “Squire of Gothos,” but it’s such a satisfying little Easter egg that it’s fairly easy to hand wave it all by assuming it’s because Trelane’s name is never revealed here. But, still, that’s absolutely Q’s voice, so it feels like enough of a confirmation for me. At any rate, reality is all set right again, leaving Spock to adjust to Chapel’s new boyfriend, Pike to Batel’s impending departure, Oretegas to the arrival of her younger brother (and some Gorn-based hallucinations), and the rest of us to await a new season of adventures. Hit it. 

New episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds premiere Thursdays on Paramount+, culminating with a finale on Sept. 11.