All Access Star Trek Boldly Speculates About The ‘Strange New Worlds’ Cast

All Access Podcast - episode 33 - TrekMovie


[Strange New Worlds discussion starts at 21:37 ]

Tony and Laurie start with the latest news: The Voyager Doc is going HD, Grudge is getting her own book, and Star Trek is coming to WonderCon. We also talk a bit more about our recent interview with Nicholas Meyer.

They turn to the main topic: the big Star Trek: Strange New Worlds announcement about the official start of production and the announcement of five new members of the regular cast. They discuss each new actor, speculating on what roles they might be playing.

Links to news topics discussed in the pod:

VOY Doc Announces Crowdfunding Goals To Remaster Original ‘Star Trek: Voyager’ Footage In HD

WonderCon@Home To Feature Panels On Star Trek Science, ‘Voyager’ Doc, And ‘Enterprise’ Anniversary

Grudge The Cat From ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Is Getting Her Own Book

Interview: Nicholas Meyer On The Art Of Making Star Trek Movies

Mentions during  Strange New Worlds discussion:

Five Cast Members For ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Announced

Anson Mount’s tweet thanking fans

Rebecca Romijn’s tweet about Celia Rose Gooding winning a Grammy

Babs Olusanmokunn doing Jiu Jitsu

Christina Chong’s Jaguar commercial

Dr. M’Benga

Dr. Elizabeth Dehner

Dr. Phil Boyce

Yeoman J.M. Colt in “The Cage”

Yeoman Colt on Star Trek: Discovery

Cadet Thira Sidhu from “Ask Not

Trekbits: 

Tony: Paramount+  Mexico drone show creates Enterprise

Laurie: Jörg Hillebrand’s Twitter feed featuring TNG set details

Let us know what you think of the episode in the comments, and please post your suggestions for topics we should cover in the future as well as guests you’d like us to have on. (If you have any questions about the new Voyager doc, please post them.)


Subscribe to our podcasts

The All Access Star Trek podcast joins the long-running Shuttle Pod as part of the new TrekMovie.com Podcast Network. If you already subscribe to The Shuttle Pod, your subscription will now include both shows from Network. If you prefer, you can also sign up for only The Shuttle Pod or All Access Star Trek using the links below.

TrekMovie.com Podcast Network of Shows
TrekMovie.com Podcast Network All TrekMovie.com podcasts Apple PodcastsGoogle PodcastsSpotifyPocket CastsStitcher
The Shuttle Pod Podcast The original TrekMovie.com podcast Apple PodcastsSpotifyPocket CastsStitcher
All Access Star Trek Podcast All about the Star Trek Universe Apple PodcastsSpotifyPocket CastsStitcher

Keep up with everything to do with the Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com

84 Comments
oldest
newest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Oooohhh, love the idea of Dr. M’Benga and Dr. Dehner!! They could even have Garry Mitchell join the crew as a security officer!
I don’t get Colt though. Maybe she is going to be transformed?!? I don’t get it, the characters look nothing alike. I hope they eventually have Dr. Boyce with that actor from DS9/ENT but M’Benga works.
The most important thing is that they stick to TOS “final frontier” exploration. If it’s more Master ad Commander / Western in space, wagon train to the stars, Horatio Hornblower than TNG it will be good. If it is TNG lite, it will suck. I know that’s not what the writers want to hear because the writing on TNG/VOY, etc can be done on a napkin and phoned in that one has to work outside their comfort zone but that’s the way it is.
Also… I am pretty sure my Maine Coon sneaks away to go do Discovery but whatever. Discovery is filmed in Vancouver? Strangely enough my cat is starring at me writing this for no reason. Suspicious.

Discovery is in fact filmed in Toronto.

Yeah, no way my cat is doing that unless magical mushrooms which jump you across the galaxy are real… which they are not.

So your cat is a Queen?

Well her name is Elizabeth. And I think she certainly considers herself a Queen.
If her and the kids have a magic mushroom jump drive without telling me I’ll be pretty upset.

The actor doesn’t look like M’Benga either. But he looks VERY much like Cpt. Terrell from TWOK. I could imagine him having been a doctor before becoming captain of the Reliant. According to some cut or unshot TWOK scene, Terrell was an old friend of Bones. Maybe they did medical school together…

Oh man… having Lt Commander Terrell on the big E would be awesome.
I’m cool with M’Benga though. People age with time.
I like when they develop those characters, like with Number One, because it actually adds to the original material in my opinion.
Now there is a whole generation that will be sad to find out Pike ends up in a er.. radiated/knows who Pike is.
It’s not like Colt where she goes from alien to human yeoman; that’s a little far fetched. Why not invent a new character if you want an alien?

I think its pretty clear that the alien is a different person with the same name.

I just hope that this is truly an ensemble show and whilst Pike, Spock and Number 1 will be the main stars, each of the others grt an episode or at least a B plotline from time to time.

I think if you look at Discovery and Picard as models, then it’s a good bet that everyone will get something to do and be more than background characters.

Huh? Are we watching the same show? I don’t even know the names of most of the bridge crew in Discovery – most of them certainly are nothing more than background.

I don’t disagree too much, but they were given more to do in third season for sure. And now I can say I actually remember most of their names. ;)

Well I meant the series regulars, mostly. Michael is the star, but there’s also Saru, Tilly, Culber, Stamets, Adira, Vance, Georgiou (until she left), etc. (Season 2 also had to juggle Pike, Spock, L’Rell, Tyler, and Cornwell.) And in terms of the bridge crew, Detmer got some good stuff this past season, and Owosekun got a little too.

Sure we know a lot about the bridge crew: Detmer, Owosekun, Rhys and that blonde lady that used to play the cyborg :-) Seriously, I think we know more abougt them than on any other Trek show.
Those are people equaling Rand, Chapel, Kyle, Riley or Leslie on TOS…or Ayala, Wildman or Ashmore on VOY…

While the Picard series had things to do for (some) of the side-characters, Discovery is most definitely the “Michael Burnham Show”. Almost every episode is focused on her, and when there’s a problem to be solved, she’s usually the one to solve it. She makes Wesley Crusher look perfectly acceptable.

She’s the star of the show, just as William Shatner was the star of TOS. But Tilly, Stamets, and Saru are the other main characters who get plenty of time for their stories and moments. Georgiou got a ton as well when she was still on. Culber gets some time as well. In season 2 they made plenty of time for Spock and Pike. Season one had Lorca. She’s the star of the show so yes, like Kirk, Michael Burnham solves the problems. I don’t actually like they way so much of it connects to her personally (like her mom being a vital part of… everything) but there has been a ton of character development for the other series regulars.

My only question to the Voyager Doc team is why wasn’t HD footage placed earlier on in the stretch goals or the original 150K? Audiences raved about the HD footage in the DS9 doc. One would think it would be a more prominent component to the documentary this time around. Just MHO.

The real question is why we need a fan-funded DOC in a multi-million dollar franchise walking tall again? The real question is why DS9 and VOY haven’t been COMPLETELY overhauled in HD / UHD by now. One would think making such a doc and a quality update would be in the rightholder’s field.

Okay, you can fan-fund a Space 1999 doc or a Time Tunnel doc because those are long forgotten properties. Trek isn’t at all. It’s very actively exploited by TBTB. Both PIC and PROD have VOY main characters. Financing this doc and the HD upgrade would be in Viacom’s field right now….

Doing the documentary independently may give the makers more freedom to also tackle controversial topics that CBS would rather not dwell on.
As for why DS9 and VOY haven’t been remastered in HD so far: This has been discussed ad nauseam but the the short answer is that CBS doesn’t think that the returns from a remastered DS9 and VOY would justify the substantial cost involved in upgrading the shows.

I think the editorial freedom is a big part of this.

To hell with the cost/returns issue…

With the “Streaming Wars” just starting to heat up, and to remain competitive, DS9/VOY look like absolute garbage next to the HD TOS, TNG or even ENT. For someone who wants to get into Star Trek and see all the past shows, it’s rather jarring going from HD TOS and HD TNG to… SD DS9! While my personal favorite is in fact DS9, I could absolutely see it as being off-putting to some for such a massive reduction in visual and sound quality.

CBS is currently making money from DS9 and VOY by licensing it in SD to many streaming services and TV stations around the world. As long as streaming services and TV stations keep giving CBS money for the SD versions why should they upgrade the show to HD? The number of Trek fans who refuse to sign up for Paramount+ now but would change their mind if Paramount+ offered DS9/VOY in HD is probably relatively small.

Is there really a fan base for Voyager?? Cheers to them, but I’m totally out!! LOL
Unless you pay ME of course, I’ll watch it for some cash but I certainly ain’t paying for it.
DS9 should be remastered way before Voyager in my humble opinion.

I know this is a shock to some old Star Trek fans here, but all of the Star Trek shows have pretty big loyal fantbases these days. And Voyager seems really popular, especially with new fans. The fact that it gets so many rewatches on Netflix proves how much people still like it today. But if it’s not your thing, I don’t think that’s an issue either. There is plenty of Star Trek today to go around. It’s been that way for decades now.

But it was never a surprise (at least to me) that it got as much funding as it did for the documentary. Some people even gave $10,000 to the project. Besides school, I can’t think of anything I paid that much for in one sitting lol.

I also think Voyager has had a resurgence during the pandemic. People are feeling lost and isolated, and can relate to what the crew was going through.

Wow, great point! One of the things I always loved about Voyager is it’s isolation feel and yes probably many relate to that today.

I’d recommend watching Battlestar Galactica if you want some “isolation” feel. Voyager with it’s infinite torpedoes, repair capabilities and resources… okay I guess?!?

Double post

I seen Battlestar Gallactica 3 times now and in fact rewached the entire series just four months ago when I got Peacock and discovered it was there.. Yeah, also a great show and definitely does a much better job with the isolation feel than Voyager. Definitely agree. But it still not Star Trek and can’t do all the craziness those shows do! :)

I’m embarrassed to say I have never watched Battlestar Galactica.

Oh it’s great! Honestly I only watched it when I heard Ron Moore made it lol. First time I watched it was about 10 years ago. But he really did make a show based on how he originally wanted Voyager to be done. It just feels much more grounded and certainly more gritty than Star Trek. But I never watched Star Trek for being ‘gritty’ or ‘grounded’ since I never saw it as either of those things. DS9 came the closest out of all of them, certainly when it came to grittiness. And you probably have to thank Moore for a lot that as well on that show. Discovery tried but failed to feel like BSG in its first season and thankfully moved away from that pretty quickly and feels much more like classic Star Trek in seasons 2 and 3, at least to me.

But I always describe BSG like imagining DS9 and VOY like having a very dysfunctional baby. ;)

Some people didn’t like the religious aspects of the show (which again Moore explored a lot of Star Trek as well with both the Klingons and then the Bajorans on DS9), but I didn’t have any issues with it and I’m an atheist.

For me Moore’s BSG is one of the greatest shows of all time, I love it. I’m not a religious person either and I also didn’t have a problem with the those elements of the show although I’d say I’m more agnostic than atheist. If you’re a big fan of Ron Moore and you’re interested in NASA at all you should check out For All Mankind if you haven’t already. I’ve not watched any of season 2 yet as I’m waiting for all of the episodes to drop but I enjoyed the first season.

I’ve been meaning to check out For All Mankind, too. Two more shows to add to my list.

Yeah my last rewatch of the show last year actually made me appreciate BSG even more; sadly especially when I compare it to the newer Trek shows (since those are more serialized like BSG). I just love the stories and how great the cast and characters are. They do feel much more real than characters on the Trek shows. But then again, they are all human characters, but they also come off more real because they curse, drink, fight a lot etc, something you don’t see much on the Trek shows and yes that includes TOS. Everyone is pretty straight laced on all those shows. But again, those characters are in a different universe where the world has become enlightened after their wars on Earth nearly wiped them out.

But there are definitely a lot of differences between the shows and you can tell Ron Moore just wanted to do weightier things he couldn’t do on Star Trek, even including DS9.

But the show isn’t perfect obviously. I think many really hated the ending (similar to GOT level of hate) and the whole ‘Final Five’ arc which makes no real sense on its head lol. I remember the first time that came up when I first watched it and it was obvious all of that came about way after the show started. It’s so nonsensical, but not a huge deal. But there is a lot that happened (Starbuck) people are still scratching their heads over to this day.

Overall though BSG is still a serialized show done right. It really pays off most of its arcs in a great way and ironically did a WAY better job of the science vs faith debate that they pretended was going to be a really interesting element on Discovery in season 2 and went absolutely nowhere. This is literally why people want Ron Moore back on Star Trek for the new shows because he really does have a real vision for these types of shows and it doesn’t fall into some of the ridiculousness that DIS and PIC ended up doing, but I digress.

As far as For All Mankind, I really do want to watch it, but I just can’t justify owning another streaming service lol. I basically have every major one right now and half of those I barely watch….but it’s hard to dump for me (looking straight at you All Access/Paramount+ ;)) and Apple TV doesn’t even have a library of old shows and movies to watch. I think it’s only $5 in America, but based on what I seen of it, it’s still not worth keeping.

But yes I do want to see the show. I may just wait until season 2 is over and then pay for the service for the month and watch them that way and just cancel. And I’m eagerly awaiting Foundation to begin, which I been reading the original trilogy on and off for the past two years now. As you probably know Apple TV+ is making a show out of that. So I’ll probably end up getting it lol. So maybe I can wait until that starts and watch it then.

LOL Ok, if you say so.
I don’t even think anyone in my circle of friends has ever seen Voyager, except for my bro who just makes fun of it all the time (and he actually watched it)… but I accept that there are way more people out there.

Well, I’d say that the numbers on the doc are pretty telling. Also when the Voyager cast had a Stars in the House reunion for charity, they broke records on how much they raised. (https://deadline.com/2020/05/star-trek-voyager-reunion-fundraising-record-stars-in-the-house-actors-fund-kate-mulgrew-jeri-ryan-1202945347/) So I’d say the show is still popular!

Voyager seems just as popular today as it did 25 years ago! That’s the power of fandom I guess.

Also probably whey characters like Seven and Janeway are back on new shows. And the show will probably get even more new fans in the coming years for any of them who watch PIC or PRO.

And pretty sure that easily gets more watched even now than the new shows because it’s in so many places like the other old shows. Star Trek is more accessible today globally than it’s ever been its 50 years thanks to streaming and the low cost to access it.

We know it’s very popular on Netflix! ;)

Lol I’ll agree that Voyager seems just as popular today as it did 25 years ago.

And exactly why it had no problem raising the money it did for the documentary. Why there are still merchandise, novels and comics still being made for it and why both of its biggest characters, Seven and Janeway, are part of new Trek shows today. And my feeling is more will naturally turn up in time now that the door is open again.

There is still a huge fanbase for the show. I still remember arguing with a member here who literally said that CBS shouldn’t remind people the show even exists because it wasn’t as popular as TOS or TNG. It was the most myopic statement I think I ever heard a Trek fan say because Voyager still has MILIONS of fans today who are just as passionate about that show as you are about TOS or I am about DS9 and etc (but I’m passionate about most of them including VOY). Now they went the opposite way and VOY is having an amazing anniversary year although Covid has dented a lot of their plans.

So none of this should be a shock. But yes, there are certainly many people like you who doesn’t like the show, but most fans do seem to like it, just not in love with it like some of the others.

And that’s fine, there is now 800 hours of Trek with all the combined shows and movies, it’s not really hard to pick and choose the stuff you like versus what you hate.

Out of those two, VOY is definitely my favourite! I like DS9 but it’s not what I expect STAR TREK to be. It’s good but too divergent from the formula that I love: a crew on a starship exploring space. VOY had its issues but I really loved it back then and defended against most criticism. Did it waste the Maquis plot? Sure. Did it ignore the “lost in space” premise in favour of TNG style adventures of the week. Yeah. But that’s also why I loved it. It was more of the same…

Surprisingly I sometimes consider VOY my favourite Trek show. TOS and TNG are more important to me as they are the core saga but there are things I prefer about VOY:

1 For its day and age it had the best effects to date and back then I considered it rather cinematic. They made good use of it with all those space nebulae and planets they encountered.

2 I loved the set which was a lot more realistic than the all too civilian furniture exhibition that was TNG. It had the right size. TNG’s engineer was far too small for such a huge ship while VOY had the perfect set size… bigger engineering for a smaller ship. The grey-ish coloring was also more to my liking.

3 Apart from Neelix, Harry and Kes I was a huge fan of most characters, especially the ladies. Janeway, B’elanna and esp. Seven who saved my late puberty :-) The Doc and Tuvok were also great.

4 THE BORG. They have never looked and felt better on TV. Of course no episode can compete with BOBW, but they got me hooked on those two-parters.

5 The Main Theme. Best TV theme ever. DS9 coming second and PIC third. Just so beautiful.

TOS and TNG will always be the heart and soul of Trek but VOY was the best extension yet.

Voyager used to be my fifth favorite show (basically dead last with the classic Trek shows). Today it’s now my third. Even after all this time, my views on these shows and movies still change and shift. And I think rewatching a lot of the show in the last few years has made me oddly more appreciative of it today. I’ve always loved most of the cast, especially Janeway, the Doctor, Seven and Tuvok but I just love the types of stories it tells. They did a lot of the ‘weird Trek’ or time anomaly stuff more than any other show. I’m always a sucker for those shows.

But what I like most about it, that I really discovered later on, is that Voyager is really the only show about exploration. It’s really the only show that has new aliens and planets practically every week. Even though both TOS and TNG has the ‘seek out strange new worlds and civilizations’ in their openings the irony is they both did very little of that.

I’m rewatching the entire franchise in chronological order and now currently on TOS in second season. Out of the show’s first season and 29 episodes, only a whopping five, yes FIVE episodes had anything to do with actually finding new planets or life. And even then most of those was the Enterprise finding it accidently or being challenged by some alien. Most of it was just bureaucratic stuff like going to different Federation colonies or being caught in some alien conflict as mentioned or science anomalies. Same with TNG. But with Voyager, there was no colonies or Federation business to uphold, it was genuinely about seeking out new life because everything was new to them, even if that wasn’t actually their priority, it was just baked in to the premise from the start.

I really come to appreciate it more and more, especially since sadly none of the new live action shows, DIS and PIC, is even about exploration (although Discovery finally did a lot more of it in third season and another reason why I liked it so much more than the first two). Probably another reason why I like Lower Decks so much as well. Their mission is mostly bureaucratic too like TOS and TNG, but at least it takes them to new worlds.

Since I’m only in the 23rd century, I still have a ways to go before I wind up lost in the Delta quadrant in another 90 years or so, but it will be the first time I watch Voyager straight through, I think ever since it ended. So can’t wait to get there. :)

The show is definitely flawed though (but really they ALL are lol), but I guess because it didn’t actually tackle it’s premise in a deeper way and that’s a very valid criticism of it. And I certainly understand why some fans flat out hate it. But it’s still a great show to me and I learn to love it more now, but I always liked it. In fact out of the spin off shows, VOY first season is probably still the strongest one to me (TOS is still the strongest overall…for first season), but it was a show that I never truly fell in love with like some of the others. But I’m loving the show more than any other time today. Go figure?

And yes that theme song lol! Always been the best one by far. I probably heard it thousands of times now and never get tired of it.

Yeah, I agree so much with you. All Trek shows have been flawed (but who is without flaws)… but I really appreciate your point about Trek having constantly failed to deliver upon its mission of exploration in favour of bureaucratics, politics and war.

One of the reasons VOY did what it did was because it co-existed with DS9. DS9 did all the politics and war stuff and left VOY with a whole new quadrant to explore. They didn’t always deliver the goods due to forehead aliens of the week and too many bad holodeck episodes along the way but at least they got somewhere…

My hopes for SNW, DSC S4, PROD and any new Trek show they come up with… Go somewhere! Give us those truly strange new worlds and new life we’ve been waiting
for five decades.

Whenever I watch otherworldly fantasy set in Wonderland, Neverland or Oz, or those Journey to the Center of the Earth movies… I always have to think: visually this is exactly where I want my Trek to go… Thinking of Avatar, Valerian etc…

I really think Trek should elaborate on those classic fantasy tales a little more. Wonderland, Neverland and Oz have been quoted time and again on Trek and I see no reason why there shouldn’t be any “real” basis for these tales in the Trek universe… We had Greek gods on TOS…

VOY was basically a Trek version of Oz… When Janeway gives her first famous speech at the end of The Caretaker she slightly walks around in circles on the bridge just like Dorothy embarking on her journey home along the yellow brick road. The Vidiians were the Scarecrow, the Hirogen the Lion and those S2 Prototype androids the Tin Man. The Borg Queen soaked in neon-green light was just like the Wicked Witch of the East, with the drones as her flying monkeys.. The Ocampa were the Munchkins…The Caretaker the Wizard…
They got their Crystal Ball moments when Starfleet contacted them on numerous occasions. Waking Moments / Persistance of Vision was the poppy fields and the Emerald City was the heart of Borg territory. And in the end, Janeway cheated to get her crew back. In a way she used time travel to clap her ruby slippers together, saying “There’s No Place Like Home”

Actually, the funny thing about this post is that I remember reading an article when Voyager was still on and a writer actually wrote about his experience trying to pitch stories for Star Trek and one he pitched to the producers of Voyager was literally doing a Wizard of Oz story line. He pitched several ideas but that was one of them. I’m not making this up but Janeway would’ve been Dorthy, Tuvok the Scarecrow and so on. Some crazy alien plot of course. I remember it so vividly because I thought it would be a really fun story to do, but it was shot down because APPARENTLY they had already came up with a similar idea but never did it. Man you have to wonder what kinds of crazy stories that never got passed the treatment stage are just sitting in a room somewhere lol.

I love your Wizard of Oz analogy though, I never thought about it until now.

For me, what drove me to Star Trek was mostly its sense of exploration like many and I think Voyager is really the only show out there that mostly kept to that promise. But then DS9 is literally my favorite Trek show by a mile and that show was the complete opposite of exploration lol.

So I’m not tied to it, good stories are good stories. DS9 simply told theirs better than Voyager a lot of the times. Better than all the shows IMO (or it wouldn’t be my favorite ;)). But as you said, that’s how they tried to distinguish the shows at the time. DS9 was the weightier political show while Voyager was more the adventure show. I think it really worked for both. The difference was DS9 took its premise and ran with it in a way no one was really expecting when it originally debut versus Voyager that didn’t really stick to theirs as fans would’ve liked. I mean no matter what happened to the ship the week before, it looked practically new and pristine a week later even though the nearest starbase was 70,000 light years away. That bugged to no end too lol.

So I’m not defending Voyager overall, it did have a lot of issues, but frankly no more the issues most shows had at the beginning and certainly Discovery and Picard is having right now.

But Voyager worked for me because I loved the fact that they were really ‘out there’ like no other show was and everything was just different. Yeah they found cheats to get back to Earth or remind of us the alpha quadrant but it still took six seasons before they officially made contact with the Federation. I still choke up watching that moment when Janeway is talking to Admiral Paris for the first time. And the episodes were just a lot of fun. Voyager did ‘weird Trek’ better than anyone. I’m rewatching TOS and I forgot a lot of the ‘weird Trek’ stories that show did, but a lot of those were just as bad as they were great. I just rewatched ‘The Apple’ literally yesterday and good god lol. Just a HORRIBLE episode all around. None of these shows are perfect, you just enjoy the episodes you do and try to forget the rest ;).

And I also agree with you, they could’ve went farther and came up with strange(r) new worlds. Stuff more imaginative but I guess that is mostly budget and time issues, especially when you have 26 episodes to produce you can’t make the planets much more ‘alien’ or truly exotic. Most of the shows did they best they could.

Of course the irony is that is why you have movies, so you can do stuff like Avatar with bigger budgets and more time. But sadly most of the movies never did much difference since most of them rarely visited a new planet in general. And the few that did like INS and Beyond, it was all the same generic stuff we gotten for decades now. But I digress!

Your point about the movies is spot-on! They would have had the budget to boldly go anywhere but what they actually did was giving us one generic TWOK rehash after another… They only changed the color of the nebula where the battle took place :-)

That was fun!

I never thought about this before, but when it comes to aliens:

  • T’Pol, Troi, Seven, Ilya, Kes and Dax were female aliens but they seemed pretty human.
  • Phlox, Saru, Neelix, Worf, Odo, and Quark were male aliens and they didn’t seem human.

Seven is human! I also want to point out that all the men you named had a ton of prosthetics on them to make them instantly more alien, and the women all had their real faces completely visible. Obviously a choice on the production side.

I’d say in TOS you had the Orion girls always green, but, er, yeah – good/not good. LOL
Better is the Klingons had good alien females that were actually stronger than the men half the time including the Chancellor in TUC.
Also Saavik and Valaris in the TOS movies were allowed to be just as alien as Spock.

That is the interesting thing about Seven, she is the most alien human on Star Trek lol. Also why I like her in Picard, because you do see she has become more human in the last 20+ years. But Seven was probably one of the oldest Borgs that returned to her original culture. But being a Borg since she was a child, it would take a long time to get back to that.

What I was realizing is that – for the most part – when a series regular gets tons of prosthetics, if they are a man, they are kind of geeky. And if they are a woman, they are kind of hot. I guess I forgot Discovery’s Klingons were regulars. It would be good to see something a little more mixed up. On SNW we might be in for a surprise.

They also changed the original TNG Trill make-up for making Jadzia less covered-up in prosthetics.

Yeah, I think Discovery changed that up, making their main Klingon character a woman and covering (the beautiful) Mary Chieffo up with prosthetics. Airiam too, for that matter. Good point.

It feels good, as a life-long Torontonian, to have Strange New Worlds filmed in my hometown! Cool!

I don’t live there anymore, but I grew up there and visit a lot (when there isn’t a pandemic) and I LOVE that they are shooting Star Trek shows there.

Laurie, I live in Leaside (Bayview and Eglinton) in Toronto. Where did you live when you were in Toronto?

I grew up in Thornhill, but then moved to the Annex… lived at Spadina and Dupont, then moved to Bathurst and, of all streets, Ulster street. I still have a lot of family and friends in Toronto. I miss them and Toronto very much. Last time I was back was November of 2019.

Wow, from 2000 to 2007 I lived in a condo at 190 St George, right around the corner from Spadina and Dupont. I loved the Annex. Small world indeed!

I used to work at The Duke of York on Prince Arthur Avenue, right in that area. (This was several lifetimes ago, in my dropout years.) I loved that area.

I went to The Duke of York all the time, even before I lived in the Annex. Who knows, you might have even poured me a pint!

Only if it was a very, very, VERY long time ago. D’oh.

Well, I’m 65 and have been going there for decades, so you never know. :>)

Omg completely possible. I worked there in the mid-’80s. It was a tight group of people and we had tons of regulars… I bet we have crossed paths. That’s so funny.

It’s a small world, especially when it comes to all things Trek!

It is odd that they have given out so little information about SNW since it’s now filming but I guess they want to keep the surprises as much as possible. Picard was kept pretty secretive as well, especially with its cast or the characters they would play.

While I don’t think it matters if anyone on the cast are playing previous TOS characters, I would be shocked a few of them weren’t.

It might take one more year or more before this show is released. I’m sure they are trying to spread out their announcements

I hope the storytelling for SNW is like Enterprise Season 4 with 2-3 Episode Arcs

SAME!

Ironically I hope they do some arcs. I think arcs work as long as they are thought out (unlike X Files where years of investment do NOT pay off).
My worry here is, ironically enough, that this is the one area they go all out TOS.
I can totally see the writers room going “TOS has that edge.. what is it? It isn’t the whole frontier/exploration/wagon train to the stars/horatio hornblower in space versus us writing technobabble superficial stories, it’s because TOS had stand alone episodes versus arcs”.
Sigh.
Fair enough. Not the end of the world. Just please be 23rd century Trek. This is Pike and the 1701, no bloody A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J(??) We are on J now right?

As long as there is a Brit in the cast then it will be fine

I’m not sure that it would make sense for M’Benga to be CMO. That would mean that he was CMO in the 50s, but then became a lower ranking doctor serving under McCoy in the 60s. They could do what they did with Culber though. Make Piper or somebody the CMO but have him show up rarely or never, and make M’Benga the doctor who we usually see.

Another great podcast. A nitpick on using Dr Dehner though: in Where No Man Has Gone Before, it was stated that she had just joined the ship at the Aldenaron colony. So technically she should be new to the Enterprise In that episode.

I was thinking about that too, but I think those are the kinds of details they’ve played with before. I mean, if you think about Discovery and Klingons (not the way they look but the fact that there is some healthy communication), none of that fits with TOS canon. But it’s okay. I think a small detail like that wouldn’t be a big problem, relatively speaking.

I’m dropping a line to give TrekMovie a huge thank you for the professional sound quality of your podcasts.

It makes such an enormous difference.

I’ve been trying out some podcasts for other franchises, and I just have to bail because the sound is intolerable.

I’ll second this!

I haven’t actually had TG47’s unfortunate experiences with other podcasts, though I only actually listen to a limited number of them with any sort of regularity (this being one).

Still, I guess audio quality can be easily taken for granted, and ‘All Access’ always sounds very clear to me. So, big thanks for the effort that goes into the editing side of things too.

I’ll third this!

Well done Trekmovie for your awesome podcasts. I find the sound (and sometimes guests) of some of the other podcasts out there annoying as hell.

Thanks. We do what we can. Brian and Kayla set up a good standard with Shuttle Pod and helped make sure our All Access podcast had the same sound quality. But we always strive to be better, if I can only get the crows and cars in my neighborhood to stop while we are recording.

And maybe the trains across the street from my house….

I would like to see SNW do a few episodes where the Federation and the Klingons are exploring a new world and the Klingons are the original series Klingons. And maybe tell a story on how they came to power or maybe why they are only used for Federation Space.

Why yeoman Colt is now an alien?

no

Thanks for another great podcast!

Of the SNW cast, Christina Chong is the only one I’m actually familiar with. The rest are all new to me, so I’m looking forward to seeing what they’ll each bring to the show.

I tend to agree with Anthony in that I’m personally hoping for all new characters, and I’m also hoping that most of them will actually be playing non-humans. I always like ‘meeting’ a new crew and then getting to know all of the different characters, and it’s the non-human ones that have often stood out the best IMO.

Although they might all be series regulars, I’m wondering whether all of these cast members will necessarily be playing crew (bridge officers). Could one of them be playing a Guinan/Quark/Neelix type… onboard the ship perhaps, but not as Starfleet personnel? Could one of them also be a regular recurring antagonist (like Gul Dukat)..?

RE: Laurie’s point about Hoshi. I agree. In the early days of ENT, it certainly seemed like her role onboard the ship was going to be far more significant, especially after they made a point of showing Archer recruiting her specifically. With so many first contacts expected in those early years, I had thought that the communications role would have been as significant to ENT as that of say the Science Officer on previous shows. I guess they thought it would be too repetitive to place the emphasis on overcoming a language barrier too often…

Anyway, whoever this new cast will be playing, I’m definitely looking forward to the show itself. If they do decide to include existing characters, M’Benga and Uhura seem like good guesses.

Oh, and I’ll definitely be checking out that drone show!

When you were speculating about Jess Bush another possibility for a younger version of a TOS character I thought of is nurse Chapel. With Number One and nurse Chapel on board, it made me think of another Majel Barrett role, the ship’s computer. How do you think they will voice the computer? The original mechanical voice would seem out of place hundreds of years after Siri and Alexa, but that “Working” is also iconic.

it’s a possibility but as you note, one Majel character may be enough for the show.