Star Trek Day 2021: Strange New Worlds Panel
See Which Legacy Characters Appear in Strange New Worlds
The upcoming series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, expected to launch in 2022, picks up after the events of Star Trek: Discovery season 2. Both a spin-off as well as a prequel that branches off the original Star Trek pilot, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will follow the missions of Captain Christopher Pike, Lt Spock, and Number One on board the USS Enterprise–a decade (give or take) before Kirk takes the helm for the famous five-year mission of the original series.
As executive producer Alex Kurtzman told StarTrek.com when Strange New Worlds was announced in May 2020:
“These iconic characters have a deep history in Star Trek canon, yet so much of their stories have yet to be told. The Enterprise, its crew and its fans are in for an extraordinary journey to new frontiers in the Star Trek universe.”
On Star Trek Day 2021, they unveiled who will join them—including familiar characters Uhura, Nurse Chapel, and Dr M'Benga. The writers promise a more episodic approach to storytelling than Discovery and Picard.
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ABOUT STAR TREK
The Star Trek brand kicked off with Star Trek (now called Star Trek: TOS or “The Original Series”) on September 8, 1966. Airing for three seasons on the U.S. network NBC, the show was created by Gene Roddenberry.
The series followed the voyages of the U.S.S Enterprise, a starship built by the United Federation of Planets in the 23rd century, “to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”
When creating Star Trek, Roddenberry’s inspirations included TV western Wagon Train, the 1956 film Forbidden Planet, Jonathan Swift’s 1726 satirical novel Gulliver's Travels, and C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower novels.
Star Trek has since expanded to include multiple spin-off television series, two different film series, plus novels, games, comics, toys, and other media adaptations. After the conclusion of TOS, several members of the original cast continued to portray their characters (and more) in the 22-episode Star Trek: The Animated Series. They also appeared in six feature films before the film series passed the torch to the cast of TNG.
Star Trek spin-off series include:
Star Trek: The Animated Series (ST:TAS)
Star Trek: The Next Generation (ST:TNG)
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (ST:DS9)
Star Trek: Voyager
Star Trek: Enterprise
Star Trek: Discovery
Star Trek: Picard
Short Treks
Star Trek: Lower Decks
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Star Trek: Prodigy
Over the years, Star Trek has often been a champion of diversity—going all the way back to the original series. One member of that cast, Nichelle Nichols, even leveraged her role to make a real-world impact and bring diversity to NASA.