50 Fun Facts About Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Captain Pike's quiff in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds was likened to Elvis Presley's and which cartoon character's?

Johnny Bravo was the comparison that stuck, and the captain's hair went on to inspire memes and its own fan-run Twitter account. The actor underneath it gives the credit to a stylist he calls a hair guru.

Which animated comedy crossed over with Strange New Worlds when two of its ensigns appeared in live action?

Star Trek: Lower Decks sent Ensigns Boimler and Mariner back in time to meet their heroes on Pike's Enterprise. The actor playing Boimler studied his cartoon self so he could copy its distinctive speed walk.

Which reptilian species, first seen fighting Captain Kirk in 1967, menaces Pike's crew in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds?

The Gorn were slow, hissing brutes in the 1960s, but here their hatchlings are small, fast and instantly lethal. The ship's security chief is the sole survivor of one of their attacks.

Which star of The Boys appears in live action as time-travelling Ensign Brad Boimler in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds?

Jack Quaid had only ever voiced Boimler in a cartoon, and the crossover was suggested by a writer who worked with him on the superhero satire. He kept the character's odd, hurried walk for the live version.

In the first episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Starfleet's General Order One is given which famous new name?

The Prime Directive gets its name after Pike breaks the old rule to stop a planet destroying itself with a weapon copied from starship engines. Starfleet responds by renaming the rule and doubling down on it.

Which Taxi and The Princess Bride actress joined Star Trek: Strange New Worlds as the centuries-old engineer Pelia?

Carol Kane invented Pelia's unplaceable accent herself, so that nobody could work out where the character comes from. She first tried it at a script reading held over Zoom, and the producers loved it.

La'An and an alternate James Kirk are sent back to which 21st-century Canadian city in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds?

Toronto needed little disguise, because the series is made in and around the city. The pair go there to find out why history has changed, and fall for each other along the way.

Which famous Star Trek technology does La'An test, with dangerous results, in a Strange New Worlds murder mystery?

The holodeck traps her inside a whodunnit about a 1960s sci-fi show when its safety protocols fail. Afterwards she advises Starfleet against general use until the technology improves.

Which Flight of the Conchords comedian plays the meddling wedding planner Trelane in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds?

Rhys Darby's Trelane is a child-like being from another dimension, a role first played by William Campbell in 1967. The prank ends only when the trickster's father turns up to tell him off.

What does Captain Pike often do for his officers in his quarters in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, to build consensus?

Pike cooks them dinner in a kitchen built into his quarters, an idea drawn from the lead actor's own way of leading. His culinary skills later help him stir up a mutiny aboard a pirate ship.

Which Hell on Wheels star plays Captain Christopher Pike in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds?

Anson Mount first signed only a one-year deal to play Pike on another show, and fans campaigned for him to get a series of his own. He has said the part changed his life.

Which grandson of the Oscar-winning star of To Kill a Mockingbird plays Spock in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds?

Ethan Peck shaved off his own eyebrows for the part, which cut the time needed to fit Spock's ears and brows from two hours to 70 minutes. He says he keeps checking his performance against Leonard Nimoy's.

Which actress, Mystique in the original X-Men films, plays Number One in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds?

Rebecca Romijn's character was known only by her nickname in the 1960s; the series makes official the name Una Chin-Riley, borrowed from tie-in novels. She also urged the costume designer to revive the uniform dress.

Which star of The Vampire Diaries plays a young James T. Kirk in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds?

Paul Wesley was once William Shatner's neighbour, and the two happened to share a plane ride around the time the casting was announced. Shatner gave the new Kirk his blessing.

Which Tony-nominated star of the musical Jagged Little Pill plays Cadet Nyota Uhura in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds?

Celia Rose Gooding chose natural hair for the part over a wig matching earlier Uhuras. The role was among the performer's first on television, which suited a cadet still finding her feet aboard the Enterprise.

Strange New Worlds spun off from which series, whose second season introduced its Pike and Spock?

Star Trek: Discovery brought in the Enterprise trio for a single season, but fans called so loudly for more that the producers gave them a show of their own. Three short films kept the actors busy in between.

Which streaming service, formerly called CBS All Access, is the home of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds?

Paramount+ ordered the show under its old name, and later called it the service's most-watched original Star Trek series over its first 90 days. In Britain it ranked second among all of the service's originals.

The video-wall sets of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds use technology first developed for which Disney+ series?

The Mandalorian pioneered the wall of LED screens that shows computer-made backdrops live during filming. The Star Trek version is a 270-degree horseshoe about 70 feet wide, with more panels in the ceiling for light.

Which actor, famous as Star Trek's Commander Riker, directed the Strange New Worlds episode Those Old Scientists?

Jonathan Frakes counted it as the 222nd Star Trek episode he had worked on. He had been due to direct in the first season as well, until the pandemic upset his schedule.

In Star Trek, which registry number marks Pike's Enterprise, the very ship that James T. Kirk later commands?

NCC-1701 is the same starship in both eras, with Pike in command during the decade before Kirk takes the chair. For the new series its bridge set was made more compact, closer to the size of the 1960s original.

La'An, security chief in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, descends from which tyrant played on film by Ricardo Montalbán?

Khan is an ancestor she pays for: La'An has faced prejudice all her life because of the family link. In one episode she is thrown back in time and has to save him as a child.

Number One hides which genetically modified heritage, banned by Starfleet, in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds?

Illyrian blood makes her immune to a contagion sweeping the Enterprise, so she gives up her secret to let a cure be made from it. She then offers to resign, and Pike refuses.

Which kind of story is Ad Astra per Aspera, the Strange New Worlds episode about Number One's genetic secret?

A courtroom drama, it ends when her lawyer argues that she was in effect seeking asylum by joining Starfleet. The showrunners wrote her cliffhanger arrest before they knew how the story would be resolved.

Where does Dr. M'Benga secretly keep his sick daughter in the first season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds?

In the transporter, she is held in stasis so that her rare disease cannot advance while he hunts for a cure. The outdated machine he uses lets a virus slip past the Enterprise's filters.

In the Strange New Worlds episode The Elysian Kingdom, what belonging to Dr. M'Benga's daughter do the crew act out?

Her favourite book is a high-fantasy tale, and a lonely nebula with a mind of its own stages it to keep the girl company. Only her father and the telepathic chief engineer notice that something is wrong.

In the Strange New Worlds episode Spock Amok, what mishap befalls Spock and his fiancée during a soul-sharing ritual?

They swap bodies, so each has to do the other's job: she helps Pike through a tricky negotiation while Spock tries to coax lapsed Vulcans back to logic. The doctor and nurse finally put them right.

Which character, first seen in the 1967 episode Amok Time, is Spock's fiancée in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds?

T'Pring has been bonded to Spock since childhood, and the new series gives her a career of her own, rehabilitating Vulcans who have abandoned logic. In the 1960s she appeared in just one story.

Which half-sibling of Spock from the film Star Trek V is revealed as a prisoner in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds?

Sybok is the lover whom the pirate captain Angel wants freed, which is why Angel seizes the Enterprise and threatens to kill Spock. Spock admits the family tie only afterwards, to Nurse Chapel.

Which actress, later married to Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, first played both Number One and Nurse Chapel?

Majel Barrett played Number One in the first pilot, then came back in a blonde wig as Nurse Chapel. She went on to voice most Starfleet computers from 1966 to 2008.

Which star of The Searchers was the first actor to play Captain Christopher Pike, in Star Trek's original 1965 pilot?

Jeffrey Hunter declined to return when the network ordered a second pilot, preferring to concentrate on his film career. The producers replaced his captain with a new one, James T. Kirk.

What is the job of Erica Ortegas, the wisecracking war veteran on the bridge in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds?

Helmsman Ortegas takes her surname from Jose Ortegas, a navigator in the very first Star Trek pitch. The actress worked with the graphics team behind her console to learn how the Enterprise should be flown.

Sam Kirk, a scientist on Pike's Enterprise in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, is which relation of James T. Kirk?

Brother Sam is the elder of the two, and he wears a moustache because William Shatner played the character's corpse in 1967 with a fake one stuck on. The writers set out to explore how unlike each other the pair are.

Which Strange New Worlds episode, the first musical in Star Trek history, has the crew singing out their feelings?

Subspace Rhapsody blames the singing on an improbability field, and it takes a rousing finale from the whole crew to shut it down. A sing-along screening was later held at a fan convention.

Which field, the root of her later communications job, is Cadet Uhura's speciality in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds?

Linguistics comes easily to Uhura, but she admits to Pike that she joined Starfleet only to escape the grief of losing her parents. It is the engineer Hemmer who later urges her to stay.

In Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Dr. M'Benga and Nurse Chapel are scarred by a war against whom on the moon J'Gal?

The Klingons' commander on that moon later defects and comes aboard as a Federation ambassador preaching peace. The doctor, who knows what the man really did there, ends up killing him.

Strange New Worlds is the first show in its franchise since which one to open with the final-frontier narration?

Star Trek: The Next Generation was the last to use the speech in its credits, and every series in between dropped it. Here the actor who plays Pike speaks it, in a sequence that grew out of a temporary edit.

Pike, Spock and Number One all first appeared in which Star Trek pilot, rejected by NBC in 1965 as too cerebral?

The Cage was turned down, yet the network took the unusual step of ordering a second pilot. A producer of the new show joked that it made for the longest wait between a pilot and a series in television history.

Which Oscar-winning writer of A Beautiful Mind co-created Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and directed its first episode?

Akiva Goldsman joined an earlier Star Trek show believing internet rumours that it would follow Pike's Enterprise, and was disappointed to find it did not. He pushed to get the starship into it anyway.

Which eerie electronic instrument features in the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds theme, echoing the wordless 1960s vocal?

Theremin lines in Jeff Russo's theme stand in for the vocal part of Alexander Courage's original tune, which the new piece reworks on a grander scale. The episode scores are by another composer, Nami Melumad.

Which starship does James T. Kirk serve aboard, and briefly command, during Star Trek: Strange New Worlds?

USS Farragut makes Kirk its first officer during the series, and he becomes acting captain when its commander is hurt in an attack by a huge scavenger vessel. The strain shakes him, and Pike talks him through it.

Which admiral, Pike's mentor in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, was the very first captain of the Enterprise?

Robert April began as a cartoon: the character first appeared in a 1974 episode of the animated Star Trek, voiced by James Doohan. Adrian Holmes gave him his first live-action appearance.

Which Cole Porter song does Uhura beam into a space rift, setting off the singing in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds?

Anything Goes is sent out as part of a communications experiment, and the rift answers with a field that makes the crew behave like characters in a musical film. Even a passing warship is caught up in it.

Which actor became the first Scot to play engineer Montgomery Scott when he joined Star Trek: Strange New Worlds?

Martin Quinn was picked from 30 to 50 candidates, after the accents of two earlier Scottys, a Canadian and an Englishman, had drawn criticism. He chose not to imitate the original.

Chief engineer Hemmer in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds belongs to which blind, telepathic offshoot of the Andorians?

Aenar are usually shown as blind, and the actor who plays Hemmer is himself blind in one eye with limited sight in the other. His white eyes were added digitally because the contact lenses hurt.

Which Canadian artist, the first legally blind actor in a regular Star Trek role, plays Hemmer in Strange New Worlds?

Bruce Horak knew from the day he was cast that Hemmer would die in the first season, and set out to make fans love him first. The showrunners brought him back a season later as a different character.

The songs in the Strange New Worlds musical episode were written by two members of which 1990s Boston rock band?

Letters to Cleo's Kay Hanley wrote the words and Tom Polce the music, once he had recorded the cast to learn each actor's vocal range. One number got a dance break after he watched the film Grease.

Which actor, a childlike alien in a 1966 Star Trek episode, cameos as a wartime doctor in Strange New Worlds?

Clint Howard played Balok in The Corbomite Maneuver as a boy, and has turned up in several later Star Trek series since. Here he runs the field hospital where the Enterprise's doctor and nurse once served.

Which archaeologist, first seen in a 1966 Original Series episode, becomes Nurse Chapel's fiancé in Strange New Worlds?

Roger Korby has an Irish accent in the new series because a showrunner preferred the actor's own voice to the British one he wanted to use. Chapel brings him aboard after a research fellowship.

In the Strange New Worlds episode Among the Lotus Eaters, radiation wipes the crew's memories on which planet?

Rigel VII is ruled by a former yeoman of Pike's, presumed dead on an earlier mission, who keeps his own memory by living in a castle that blocks the radiation. Its interiors were filmed in a former convent.

Which actor, Star Trek's godlike trickster Q since 1987, is heard as Trelane's scolding father in Strange New Worlds?

John de Lancie is heard but never seen, and the cameo makes Trelane the son of Q, tying a guest character from 1967 to one created twenty years later.