Strange New Worlds panel talks about new aliens, enterprise expansion, time travel, and more – TrekMovie.com

One of the most popular panels in Star Trek: Mission Chicago was for the upcoming series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. On hand were stars Anson Mount (Captain Pike), Rebecca Romijn (Number One), Ethan Beck (Spock), and Celia Rose Gooding (Oora), along with executive producer and co-showrunner Henry Alonso Myers. The series premiered on May 5th, but they took time from production on season two (episode 6 is currently releasing) to come to Chicago to preview the series. And TrekMovie was there to capture the highlights.

Split show with loads of new aliens, time travel and humor too

Henry Alonso Myers explained how Strange new worlds It will be organized like the classic Star Trek series:

Henry: The width is accidental. Every episode is a new adventure, it’s a new planet, it’s a new genre. One of the great things about Trek is that sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s terrifying, sometimes it’s dramatic, sometimes it’s sad. And we really try to make it happen with each episode individually so that they really feel different — so much so that we even encourage our directors to give each episode a really different look so you can feel it. The only thing we stick with is that we’ve serialized some character stories so that if we say someone – like in TOS – lost the love of their life one week, they won’t be quite well the next.

He went on to say that the show will have many familiar elements, but done differently:

I think we go on adventures that are very similar to the ones they had in TOS and TNG, but also uniquely different from them. It means new worlds, and that means time travel, and that sometimes means that there are superior beings that come and do crazy things for us. This means all kinds of things.

He later talked about how this is an opportunity to introduce new aliens:

We’re trying to be honest with Canon but we’re also trying to introduce some interesting new creatures that you haven’t seen before. We worked with Legacy Effects to make a bunch of really cool synthetic objects as well as some CG stuff. You will meet new aliens. There are new aliens almost every week.

When the moderator noted how the trailers showed some humor on the show, Myers said, “We were blessed with a very funny cast.” He explained how they tried to make sure the show included some humor, but that’s also part of the Trek tradition:

See, life is dramatic and funny too. And we were trying the opposite. Some of my favorite episodes from original seriesIt is TNG and from Nine deep space These are the funny episodes. And we wanted to go back to those sometimes.

A new look at the characters

Myers also spoke about how the writers dealt with each character, including those that have appeared before in the Star Trek canon:

We are approaching each new character. Every character is a real human, and sometimes not even a human. And we try to start with who they are? Where did they come from? What do they want? It must be full of life. And so we try not to allow stress from all kinds of pasts to get into it, because if you do, then you can’t live. You can’t actually be a person because Uhura has some real feelings that she goes through every day if she thinks about all the stress of dating that. This will change who the character is. So we started with who are they now?

Anson Mount explained how his version of Captain Pike differs from Jeffrey Hunter’s version of “The Cage”:

I was aware of this performance, obviously. I’ve been a Trek fan since I was eight years old. I knew there was a departure, but I have to get out in the material in front of me because the script is king. What I said to myself was, “Jeffrey Hunter Pike was representing Pike One. My Pike is representing Pike Two. Everyone changes, right? I hope I get it all by acting Pike Three.”

Rebecca Romijn notes how there were plenty of opportunities to develop Number One:

She didn’t have a name [in “The Cage”]. She was number one. It was a blank slate as far as the characters are concerned. She only had about 14 minutes of screen time. You’ve only seen her do the tasks at hand, so you don’t know anything about her character yet. So it was really fun to develop and get to know this character. Yes, that’s cool, it’s a dream come true.

Celia Rose Gooding spoke about how she saw some of herself on Aura’s Journey:

I did a lot of searching for Celia to find out her place in that life. Because so much of Cadet Aura’s life and Celia’s life blend in different places. We are both young people in the industries we work in, I’ll call Starfleet an industry for now. [laughs] But they are both very young, and they are both very excited to be a part of something. And the beauty about where Nyota is now, she finds out what she wants to do. And she doesn’t know her future as well as we do…she takes it all day in and day out and that’s something I’m trying to do too. And so I try not to jump off the gun and think, “Oh, well, we know 10 or 20 years into the future, that’s where you’re going to be.” I try not to think about it. Because that’s not what she had in mind. What is going through her mind is going through today. Then find out every day as I am, as we all are as people.

Of all the canon characters on the show, Spock is the most developed. Ethan Beck spoke about how he studied Leonard Nimoy’s performance to make sure it was correct:

I focused on Nimoy Spock, of course, because that’s our schedule. I myself, was a fan of the Kelvin films, but leaned more towards Nimoy because that’s what he became. I spent a lot of time with original series And with Leonard Nimoy. When I set up my work, I hear his voice ringing in my head. And I say, “Is that true?” I hope he’s with me as I do it. But at a certain point I stopped watching until I found it for myself.

But there is more to explore Strange new worlds For Spock, as Beck explained:

I think there are a lot of nuances to explore in this series. We see deeper into his personal life and its a privilege and it’s also terrifying, because we want to do it right, and do it right. But yeah, it was very exciting and very challenging.

The Enterprise is a growing personality too

There has been a lot of talk about production design, including Myers and Mount talking about the appearance update approach from original series:

Myers: For all the amazing craftsmen and visual effects artists, our designer and our clients, the things we’d be talking about were, “Okay, how would they do that in TOS? And how would they do that if today’s TOS?” Doing this with today’s sensibilities, visual effects today, money of the day, ideas of the day . And that’s how we’ve been trying to deal with it.

multitudes: Aesthetically only, our production designer Jonathan Lee did an amazing job marrying the original mid-century modern aesthetic you’ve seen in original series With the updated foundation. You still feel like you are in the original 1701.

Myers: The craziest thing about this set is that we built a working spacecraft…every screen works. Every screen you can touch works. It is really amazing.

Rebecca walked in (with Anson supporting her) to talk about how the Enterprise groups continue to expand:

Rebecca: The groups are wonderful. Sometimes I walk around and visit them and imagine that this is one tight-knit ship. We’ve been spread out over several different stages, but they are just projections. They are very beautiful. And let’s not forget that Enterprise itself is a major character on this show. Enterprise is sexy, cool, and fun. They just built a very beautiful set last week, I can’t say what it is.

Anson: That’s the other thing, it keeps growing. The other day Ethan and I walked into a group and we were like, “Wow!” I can’t tell you what it is but we were like, “WOAH!”

AR Wall of alien worlds… and geometry

Like Star Trek: Discovery In the fourth season, Strange new worlds It uses AR Wall technology where actors can perform within a virtual group. The cast and showrunners talked about what this technology has brought to the show:

Cylia: It’s unbelievable what they’ve worked on, especially stuff with an AR wall. This is the scene. This is the thing that amazes me.

Anson: We have a stage where the walls are mainly made of high-resolution screens. So when we go in, the CG environment is already complete and we’re in that environment. And so it really allowed us to blast the field of planets that we’re going to. You will see.

Henry: Our artists spent at least four months building all of these environments for the day everyone arrives. The amazing thing about it is that you see it on screen for months and months, and it gets there and it literally moves with you. I’m going to spoil this where the geometry is set. And it allowed us to create a geometry suite that looks like no geometry has been set on Star Trek before. It’s really unbelievable.

The captain on the bridge

The panel really started with a special surprise for the audience as Anson Mount provided a clip of the first USS Enterprise bridge scene from the pilot episode. Excerpts from this scene were shown in various promotions for the character released earlier this month, but this was the entire scene starting with Pike and Spock in the turbolift running through bridge crew missions, noting that Ona (number one) was absent, With Spock explaining, “The leadership believes I will best serve the mission as Chief Science Officer.” This leads them to enter the bridge with Bayek noting that he will be given a “new number one”, where he meets Lieutenant Lan Nunyan Singh who explains that she has been appointed as the acting first officer. He welcomes her on board, saying she has “some very big shoes to fill.” He asks Ortegas to lie on a path to reach their destination, then meets the Cadets Uhura in communications, nicknamed the “Miracle”. Then the ship exits the space dock and turns.

After the scene was played, Mount indicated that fans should not start the rumors on Twitter and that despite her absence from the scene, “Rebecca is still on the show.”

More coming from Chicago

There is still more coverage from the convention, including reports from other Star Trek Universe panels. Stay tuned with TrekMovie in the coming days for more Star Trek: Mission Chicago. And click here for all Mission Chicago coverage so far.

---

Find more news and analysis about new stranger Worlds at TrekMovie.