Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Has Found Its Sulu and McCoy
Two more classic characters come aboard the Enterprise for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 5.
Captain Christopher Pike’s five-year mission is coming to an end, but that’s not the end of the voyages of the starship Enterprise. As a prequel to the Original Series, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has always been moving toward the status quo at the start of the first Trek show, understanding that characters like La’an and Ortegas would be replaced by more familiar names. The series started with Spock, Uhura, and Chapel, and then added Kirk and Scotty. Now, Strange New Worlds is adding the Enterprise‘s most famous helmsman and doctor.
Veteran actor Thomas Jane will be taking on the role of Doctor Leonard “Bones” McCoy, joined by newcomer Kai Murakami as helmsman Hikaru Sulu. The two will appear in the sixth episode of Strange New Worlds season five, which is also the series finale.
One third of the Original Series‘s central triumvirate, Bones is a crusty frontier physician who resents all the deep space nonsense he has to put up with to keep Kirk and friends alive. DeForest Kelley’s gruff performance (and incredible beard and necklace in the Motion Picture) made him a fan favorite, yet somehow Karl Urban did an equally fantastic job portraying Bones in the J.J. Abrams films.
Thomas Jane seems particularly well-suited to continue the tradition. Like Kelly, Jane is older than his castmates and comes to the role with several credits to his name. Jane portrayed Frank Castle in the 2004, pre-MCU movie The Punisher, fought with a super-intelligent shark in Deep Blue Sea, and participated in one of cinema’s most depressing endings in The Mist. Lately, Jane has been working in sci-fi television, playing detective Joe Miller on The Expanse. In short, Jane has the experience to play someone more than a little annoyed to be around a bunch of space explorers.
The exact opposite is true of Murakami, who takes over the role from George Takei and John Cho. The young Japanese actor is best known for his video game work, playing Yasuhira in Assassin’s Creed Shadows and Ogasawara Kiyokane in Rise of the Ronin. Murakami also has stage credits, most notably portraying Kazego in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of My Neighbour Totoro. Murakami can bring a fresh energy to Sulu, finding new angles in the future captain of the USS Excelsior.
Exciting as these announcements are, one has to wonder why they’re being promoted at all, given that Bones and Sulu don’t join the Strange New Worlds cast until the last episode of the show’s truncated fifth and final season. The answer could be that Paramount+ is planning to go forward on another prequel series, this time focused on the early days of Kirk’s command on the Enterprise. Given the largely negative reception to Strange New Worlds‘s third season, and the general distaste for constant prequels, fans may not want a continuation.
However, “The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail” was both the best episode of season three and acted as a TOS episode, with Kirk in command of Spock, Scotty, Uhura, and Chapel. If producers can produce more episodes like “The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail,” then maybe we would like some more early voyages of the starship Enterprise, especially with Bones and Sulu aboard.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4 premieres on Paramount+ in 2026.