Watch: New ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Promo Introduces Lieutenant La’an

Paramount+ is surprising us with their second Star Trek: Strange New Worlds promo of the day, following one focused on Cadet Uhura from earlier today. This second promo introduces chief of security La’an.

Say hello to La’an

Joining Captain Pike (Anson Mount), Spock (Ethan Peck), and Number One (Rebecca Romijn) for the new series will be a collection of new and familiar characters onboard the USS Enterprise. One of the new characters is Lieutenant La’an Noonien Singh, played by Christina Chong, who gets a closer look in the following social media promo. And yes, she is a descendant of Khan Noonien Singh.

NOTE: this Instagram version should be viewable to all

Coming in May

The series debuts on May 5th. Paramount+ has provided the following synopsis:

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is based on the years Captain Christopher Pike manned the helm of the U.S.S. Enterprise. The series will feature fan favorites from season two of Star Trek: Discovery, Anson Mount as Captain Christopher Pike, Rebecca Romijn as Number One and Ethan Peck as Science Officer Spock. The series will follow Captain Pike, Science Officer Spock and Number One in the years before Captain Kirk boarded the U.S.S. Enterprise, as they explore new worlds around the galaxy.

And in case you missed it, here is the teaser trailer…

And the teaser poster…


Find more news and analysis for Strange New Worlds.

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Although I’m more hyped about Star Trek: The Motion Picture – The 4K Director’s Edition, I do plan to give Strange New Worlds a try.

Mostly down with Eaves’ Enterprise redesign — but, man, do I hate the lighting and textures, which make it look like it’s assembled from cast-iron plates. In the wake of the new Director’s Cut, why couldn’t they have made it TMP-beautiful instead??

TMP-beautiful would largely be undone by the way these ships get rendered, since you’d still have this weird bluish cast most of the time. Plus it would require considerable finesse to design a shader or lighting algorithm that reflected — pun intended — the different ways the hull plating read depending on the angle of light and angle of the taking camera. I assume the vfx folks don’t have time for that, or wouldn’t bother with even trying since TPTB apparently like this weird low-rez look for their ships in space. (I don’t blame the vendors for the look — these companies all do excellent work for other series, so clearly they are just following orders here.)

Looking at the trailer, I do wonder if the windmills are a dig at Trump. Guess we won’t know for sure unless some power-mad and delusional tyrant-bully with the intellect of a carrot and the not-so-delicate sensibilities of a rampaging pillager mounts an attack on Earth, only to die horribly while cut to pieces by one of these big fans.

Actually, that kind of “rainbow shader” which more-or-less duplicates Trumbull’s TMP aztec paintjob has been around in CGI circles for many years now. And, hell, even the equivalent of ILM’s shades-of-grey TWOK repaint would be better than making the Enterprise look like a World War II-era battleship. But, as you say, that’s the look they’re deliberately going for, gods know why.

No producer would ever have even the most malevolent and dumbest alien race — think the Pakleds — make the claim that windmills cause cancer. People would just shake their heads and say “Well, it’s written that way because it’s science fiction.”

Agree with you both on this one. Never bought the Aztec panel BS, like in the 23rd century the tri-titanium halls would not have a super refined standard. And future metal panels should “melt” together without joints as well, then separate with special tools “magically” (we will likely have that capability in the next 20 years, BTW…so that’s 21st century tech)

The original E had it right — a smooth structure with no old-tech BS panels.

The original E was designed for 15″ televisions with less than 300 lines of resolution. Ships have panels, we need to deal with it.

That’s a convenient assessment, but doesn’t explain how or why so much of TOS looks terrific in high-def … except for the fact that slow speed 35mm film properly exposed produces terrific results.

Sure, there are some ship shots where they got a little too close to the saucer, and of course the ones ruined by matte lines, but a number of them still look utterly fantastic (like the ‘scenes from next week’ closeup as the ship spins, showing off nacelle caps.) In particular, there are a couple of shots where the ship flies right into camera and the size of the model relative to the field of view of the taking camera lens really suggests great size, because the saucer part kind of overflows the field of view as the lens is engulfed by front of the engineering hull. When they tried those shots on TNG in later seasons with the 4-footer, you didn’t get the same impressive effect, even with ‘better’ film and lenses, because the size of the model relative to the lens just pointed up that it WAS a model.

The best ‘pro’ argument I’ve heard in favor of this need for a big miniature comes from Trumbull himself, who said for proper ‘hero’ shots, the TMP model needed to be 25 or 30 feet in length to really put the scale across. This ties in with my own view that if they had gone that route, you would have been able to do a travel pod shot with a 120-degree tilt down from looking nearly straight up at the dish underside to looking almost straight down at engineering hull — a single shot that would have put across all the scale issues in a way that even TMP doesn’t successfully achieve fully (despite it having some of the finest miniature VFX shots ever.)

I’m wondering if those shaders actually can emulate the different colors from different angles aspect, especially with a fixed and very bright hard key. I’m picky on this stuff, as you know, but I should probably do a deep dive and see what has been done on this, in case I really am behind the times in that assessment. I mean, I don’t really understand shaders because I don’t begin to ‘get’ higher math, so when I was told that the incredible to-me-photoreal textures on the docbot in the original matrix were mostly achieved with shaders instead of lighting, I was kind of like ‘huh?’ — and still am to a great degree. If that kind of emulation was possible then, why isn’t everything in the Marvel movies about a hundred times more credible-looking than we get, and why is there any excuse for the way current Trek vfx looks? Based on the ship shots of the 8-ft E-E in FIRST CONTACT, I figured TREK in the 21st century was all going to look at least that good, instead of sometimes coming off more like TAS uprezzed (which was my initial take on ENT’s E, which looked flat as a plate of pee to me in its first drydock scenes.)

I am Excited for this version of Star Trek. I hope it turns out to be fantastic. It was us fans that got this going. So I hope they rememberd that

It was Paramount wanting to make money got this going.

Yeah, but that is the only reason we ever get any entertainment. Even PBS and the BBC need revenue to keep the lights on. Is there a single example of a Star Trek product that was made out of nothing more than altruism?

Agreed!

And if we push harder we may get a 25th century Stargazer show too once Picard is done! :)

Actually, it was Les Moonvies at CBS with his long-term version for the stream service that would be founded on new Star Trek series that got this going.

Another exciting preview! I wonder, though, why Paramount didn’t hire an Indian actress to portray Singh?

So PC principal from South Park has something to complain about.

You mean the way they had a Mexican play the original, and do a damn good job at it?

Good question. Didn’t they almost hire one for STID but then switched last minute to Cumberbatch, only to receive a bunch of backlash? I would have thought that they wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

Benicio del Toro is not of Indian descent, so far as I know. I do recall that one of the musical chair chief engineers in s1 TNG appeared to be Indian in heritage and speech (and was of course also named Singh, which kinda makes you wonder why all the white crewmembers aren’t named Smith and the Vietnamese named Nguyen.)

I don’t mean him obviously but I think there were rumours that some Indian actors had auditioned for the Khan role.

I’m not sure who you are referring too because the only two other actors seriously considered for that role were Del Toro and Jordie Molla, who is Spanish.

Because people get involved in relationships outside of their own ethnicity all the time? Is it so hard to imagine that somewhere down the line a relative of Khan ended up with somebody who was from somewhere else on Earth?

Exactly M1701!
Casting a Mexican as the original Khan was a fortuitous mistake that 1960s audiences didnt care about. John Wayne or Mickey Rooney playing Asians in the past were offensive mistakes.
But in 2022, Patrick Stewart playing a Frenchman or Christina Chong portraying a south Asian IMHO are perfectly plausible – simply because of immigration and mutiracial marriages. In the 21st century, 90 percent of the marriages in my extended family are multi-racial, so just think what it will be like in the 23rd century!

Plus, if we wait long enough eventually the Earth will be so incredibly mixed it could be very difficult to distinguish who is what. Although pretty sure that will take more than 300 years….

True, but I draw the at lily whit Brit Khan in STID. That was silly.

It’s been hundreds of years since Khan, she’s almost certainly got mixed heritage.

The casting of Benedict Cumberbatch (or Benicio del Toro) as Khan not even 10 years ago is the issue that people should still be sour about though. As much as I respect actors’ rights and abilities to play wide ranges of characters, whitewashing comes from another place, especially when it is at the behest of a multi-billion company in a white-majority country.

Roberto Orci has stated on several occasions that Cumberbatch was cast because the producers didn’t want to go anywhere near the “dark-skinned-middle-easterner-as-terrorist trope. Which, I suppose, would be a prime example of liberal good intentions gone horribly awry. Speaking as a liberal myself, I wish such examples were rarer than they actually are.

Completely agree. Orci is also a 911 truther, so perhaps in his internal version of Trek canon the CIA set up the Eugenics Wars…lol

Keep in mind that Indians are South Asians, not Middle Eastern.

@BobOrci – What sayeth you? Come in from the dark, brother; come home.

I’m hoping she’s Khan’s daughter, who was kept in stasis as an embryo since the Eugenics wars until 20-odd years prior to Strange New Worlds when she was allowed to mature.

That’s actually possible but didn’t Starfleet wipe out all the remaining Augment embryos in the 22nd century once Captain Archer stopped Soong and his Augments? Or maybe I’m remembering it wrong.

But yeah nothing stops them from saying some were kept hidden somewhere. But then that raises another question, how is she able to be a crew member considering genetic engineering is banned in the Federation? And all thanks to her crazy ancestor.

She has to come from somewhere, and embryos stored in cold storage are more likely than a direct line of descent that stretches two-three centuries, no?

I’m just wondering were they officially wiped out in the 22nd century? I just can’t remember.

And she can still be an ancestor of his but not an Augment. I mean Khan could’ve had other relatives too. On the next episode of Picard, we’re meeting his ancestor 400 years from his past, right? So it’s not out of the cards at all. But yeah, knowing this brain trust she probably will be his daughter lol. And I’m OK if it is, just going to be interesting how any of this will be explained.

It’s very, very doubtful she’d be his ancestor unless the Noonien-Singh line ages backwards.

No, she would be his descendant of course. Maybe I wrote something wrong lol. If so, that’s what I meant.

I know. I was just teasing you. :)

Ah, gotcha! I’m pretty slow at times lol.

I think Spiner’s new character is supposed to be an ancestor of Data’s creator, whose own ancestor (not genetically engineered himself) tried to revive Khan’s fellows in Archer’s time. There’s some connection, note the middle name, but not likely a blood one.

And all this because Roddenberry missed an old Indian World War II buddy. Has anyone ever tried to track the guy down using modern technology?

Just looked it up. Some guy has made a personal mission of trying to find Roddenberry’s old friend. Roddenberry was known to embellish of not outright invent things, so who knows if he ever even existed, but it seems as if spelling is so iffy it’s doubtful we’ll ever be sure of anything.

By the way, I came across a suggestion that a Soong named his kid (who would ultimately be the creator of Data) after Khan. So no relation at all except for the fact that the genetic supermen and android creators kept bumping into each other, not by accident.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s a given that he is an ancestor of Data’s creator, heh.

I recently re-watched Enterprise and I could swear that Arik Soong stated that there were other locations besides Cold Station 12 that had frozen Augment embryos. I tried to find confirmation on Memory Alpha but couldn’t.

Honestly, even if it’s not stated, that won’t stop them. They could always come up with something like someone secretly hid Khan’s family line away because how important he was blah, blah, blah.

I still think she could just be born naturally through a family line though. And btw, I learned just today she will have a brother on the show too. How I missed that until now, I have no clue.

What if Khan had a twin brother????

I really hate to say this, but I think you just cracked it! ;D

I try to give these guys the benefit of the doubt, but then I remember all the lame and eye rolling twists of the last four seasons on Discovery…

If he was genetically created, then most likely he had a twin of some sort.

Feels like a cop-out.

Wouldn’t be the first time Trek introduced a twin. Although the “good” twin appearing would be a 180 degree twist from the soap opera cliché of Data’s “evil” twin showing up. Which at one time I thought was a top five dumbest thing ever done in Star Trek moment. But lately it’s been moving off that list…

Soong stole all of the embryos, and the bird of prey that they were on self destructed. There was something left after the explosion, since the Klingons were able to create their own augments. Maybe La’an’s embryo survived somehow.

OK thank you! I just couldn’t remember any of the specifics. But yeah you made a great point I forgot about; that the Klingons were using Augment DNA so you’re right that suggest some embryos could’ve survived.

It still bring up a ton of questions, which I think everyone are asking the same things. But I will wait to see how the show handles it all. But if it comes down to her situation being resolved by becoming ‘classified’ through Section 31 at the end of the show and Spock suggests no one in Starfleet can ever speak her name again for ‘reasons’; I’m going to throw something at the TV this time!

Hard!

I’m hoping she is not even of Khan’s lineage. Honestly I cannot think of anywhere that story line could go that would work in the mid 23rd Star Trek century. Only Klingons as far as I know really care about what your father’s farther farther did. Humanity doesn’t even care about such things TODAY!

But they might care that she shares the same name as one of past Earth’s dictators. It does seem odd that they’d choose to further irritate purists by doing something this blatantly against canon, lol.

If it really was that much of a thing names can be changed. The fact that the family name has either remained or changed back suggests that it really isn’t a thing any longer. If they do decide to make her lineage a story element I really hope it is not about resentment because “your ancestor killed my ancestor” thing. It just wouldn’t fly based on what Star Trek has set up about humanity of that era.

Her name is very likely to serve a purpose and connect her to Khan, otherwise it would be pointless. So it is a given that they are connected, the question is just how.

I really can’t wait to see how they will pull this character off. But she looks like she’s going to be interesting to follow to say the least. And we haven’t had a woman Chief of Security officer since Tasha Yar. Wow!

BTW, does Discovery even have a Chief of Security? There was technically Tyler in first season and then no one. I guess Nhan sort of took over that position for a few episodes in third season and it seemed vacant since.

Discovery is such a weird show lol.

Discovery doesn’t have a chief anything: CMO? no. engineer? Reno, maybe? Science? Saru, sorta. Security? no.

I thought the other doctor was CMO? I can’t think of her name right now (it’s Discovery so not surprising) but the black woman doctor who helps Colbert every few episodes? Isn’t she the one in charge or is she just suppose to be another doctor too?

As for the others, yeah. It’s still ridiculous four seasons in we don’t know who the Chief of Engineer is at least. And it’s not Reno because in one episode she stated a line to Stamets she was sent by the Chief Engineer to resolve a problem. That was in season 2 though; maybe they died before they went to the future and they secretly promoted her. It’s shocking they just didn’t give it to Tilly to give her something to do again. And rank has never been an issue on that ship lol.

Dr. Tracy Pollard. But you’re not wrong for not remembering her.

Whatsherface was a sort of visiting chief of security, I guess.

Yes Dr. Pollard. I was too lazy to look her up. And I like the character, but you have to wonder what was the point of making her CMO? She’s been on the show for four seasons now, I can’t think of a single time her being CMO mattered to the story or Colbert had any conflict with her. Like a lot of the bridge crew, she’s just mostly ‘there’.

It would’ve just made a lot more sense for Colbert to be the CMO since he’s the one that seems to make all the decisions now anyway and basically acts like one. I feel they made these decisions to not have these key positions filled that the classic shows did to feel ‘different’ for different sake like a lot of this show. And that would be fine if they did a better job of making clear who did what even if they weren’t the main characters. Four seasons in and a lot of these roles are still not clear or so sporadic. Sorry, I’m ranting now lol. But you get it.

Oh, sure. I remember that the earliest noises about the show were that it was supposed to be some sort of “Lower Decks” thing, where Michael would be a junior officer, or, even if first officer, the main character while not the central one, if you get my meaning. But she was first officer from the start and although demoted became basically the Most Important Person In The Universe. But the show may still be trying to reflect that- more a focus on Medical Officer #2 and Engineer #2 and so on than the big ones.

Although I didn’t mind the idea of the main character being a lower rank, I didn’t know how that would work when so many of the crisis revolve around the senior staff making the big decisions. I knew if nothing else she had to be on the bridge at least but of course that idea like so many others on Discovery went out the window early on and she’s now the captain.

The irony is Lower Decks the show proves it CAN work. But that’s also because the show does smaller stories as well that’s suitable for lower ranked characters. I can’t imagine a busy body show like Discovery where every season the fate of the galaxy rests in that ships hands but Burnham and Tilly take a side trip to pick up their CMO sex toy. But I would’ve loved to see that episode. ;)

That’s a good point. We don’t know who any department heads are. It’s weird because our characters are treated like they are in charge but there are plenty of clues that indicate they are not. It’s really odd.

And we haven’t had a woman Chief of Security officer since Tasha Yar

Ellen Landry (of course, she lasted even a shorter time…)

Right, I forgot about her! But they cut her down after being in only 3 or 4 episodes. And then Tyler took her place only to be caught as a double Klingon agent which he didn’t know he was. And haven’t had an official one since.

J-E-S-U-S this show! ;)

Nhan! That was it. She was Chief of Security for a bit.

Yeah I mentioned Nhan in my original post.

If Kirk had a Chief of Security we never saw that person. Just putting that out there. I think the first time we saw that on Star Trek was when Chekov became that in TMP.

I’m talking from TNG on obviously. On TOS, security officers were just kind of there to get killed on the away missions lol. But it’s been a vital role for every show since although Picard and Prodigy doesn’t have one for obvious reasons.

“Space is at a premium on the Enterprise. You’ll be bunking with Lieutenants Bonaparte, Mao, Stalin…”

Funniest thing I’ve read in days, thanks!

Hahaha!

And we have a winner!

LOL

Just a few years back, you had Hitler against Lenin in a local election in Peru. Seems like people sometimes take up names they think are famous without actually knowing the historical context.

Wow, really? That’s nuts.

La’aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I laughed, thank you for that!

Her pattern indicates 2.5 dimensional thinking

She reminds me of Drummer on “The Expanse.”

Except Drummer is impossibly competant, considrrable, and cool. Singh here serms impossibly gung-ho for no reason.

Not-quite-sure-of-herself superstrong not-quite-human young female chief of security with some backstory…reminds me of some other series…

But that’s all good.

Oh great … more characters with tragic backstories that define their entire personality. How original …

original kirk was a survivor of a genocide, kelvin kirk lost his father as he was born.
how about ds9’s kira and what she went through during the cardassian occupation.

it not the first time in ‘trek’ but maybe this new character will transcend their trauma as the others have done.

It would be a bit of stretch to say that original Kirk, outside of one episode at the most (and then not as much as Riley) was defined by that genocide.

I favor the character being more shaped by adult experiences, like the OBSESSION incident on FARRAGUT, defining Kirk a helluva lot more than a bad couple of weeks on Tarsus. Then again, I didn’t have any childhood traumas I can recall, outside of getting hit square between the eyes with a baseball bat in 2nd grade (it has since been suggested that maybe that’s why I can’t remember any.)

There’s probably a good counter-argument to this, now that I think of it, just by imagining the lifelong emotional scars that are being inflicted in Ukraine and a couple of less publicized and less Caucasian area of the world right now.

To be fair everything back then was episodic. They didn’t explore it in depth because it had to reset for next weeks episode.

Very interesting!! I’m looking forward to this so much, but I simultaneously want Picard season two to last forever.

so she’s basically Drummer from The Expanse with a Khan backstory? kurtzman & co. sure do love that show….picard is basically an Expanse clone.

Could do worse by a long shot.

Kurtzman & Co wish they could come close The Expanse.

The Expanse with a singular timeline, some hard sci-fi tech rules where the stakes matter as opposed to nonsensical life=AI and time loops is an order of magnitude better than Picard. Quite frankly the real entertainment is the cognative dissonance of TNG fans trying to force themselves to keep watching.

The good news is this little promo did not play up the potential Khan connection. Really hope that doesn’t become a thing. Unless they can find a way to use it in a clever way I haven’t thought of. But come on… This is Secret Hideout. What are the chances of that?

The funny thing is all they would need to do is drop the Noonien part from the name and it wouldn’t be much of an issue. Singh is such a common name it would leave us to wonder if there is a Khan connection, instead of hitting us over the head with “Hey, you guys ever see Wrath of Khan? That was a cool movie, wasn’t it? Huh? Huh? Huh? Well, this character is connected to that iconic character. Hop on these coattails, we’re goin’ for a ride!”

Yep. Yep. Which is why I think it very reasonable to conclude the chances are very high they will be making some sort of issue with that. I truly hope they do something clever and unexpected with it and not just the obvious cliché.

I think she may end up being the breakout character on this series — I am absolutely stoked based on seeing her in this teaser.

She also reminds me a bit of the Carina Drummer character on The Expanse, played by Cara Gee.

This is the most promising new Trek show so far. Very excited to see what they’ve come up with.