The news keeps coming for Star Trek Day, this time about a new addition to the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds cast and the first clip from the upcoming second season. Today’s panel featured SNW stars Rebecca Romijn (Number One), Jess Bush (Chapel), Christina Chong (La’an), Celia Rose-Gooding (Uhura), Melissa Navia (Ortegas), and Babs Olusanmokun (M’Benga), who dropped some new casting news and the first clip from season 2.
Carol Kane plays a new engineer
Academy Award nominee Carol Kane (The Princess Bride, Taxi, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt) will recur on SNW this season, playing Pelia, an engineer who is described as “highly educated and intelligent” and someone who “suffers no fools. Pelia solves problems calmly and brusquely, thanks to her many years of experience.”
Carol Kane as Pelia, a new engineer on the USS Enterprise
First-look clip from season 2
For Star Trek Day, Paramount+ released the first new clip from the upcoming season (no premiere date yet), featuring Melissa Navia’s Ortegas suiting up to go on an away mission. She’s headed to Rigel VII, the planet where Pike and his crew were attacked by the Kalar, a primitive warrior species, just before the events of “The Cage.” In “The Cage,” Pike expresses his regrets about the mission to Dr. Boyce, lamenting the three lives that were lost. He later revisits the planet with Vina in an illusion created by the Talosians.
International viewers can watch the clip on StarTrek.com
The fortress on Rigel VII as seen in “The Cage”
More Star Trek Day
We will have more coverage and analysis of all the Star Trek Day reveals, including exclusive red carpet interviews, in the coming days.
The “Star Trek Day” celebration is available for fans to live-stream worldwide for free at StarTrek.com/Day and on YouTube (Paramount+ and Star Trek Official pages), Facebook (@StarTrek), Twitter (@StarTrekonPPlus) and TikTok (@ParamountPlus). It is available to stream for free in the U.S. only on Paramount+’s Twitch page. After the initial airing, the conversation portions of the event will be available on-demand on Paramount+.
Keep up with news about the Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com.
Love Ortegas, so more is better.
And Carol Kane is the last person I expected to see, and have no doubt that she’ll be great.
Love everything about this clip…. except for Ortegas not getting to go on an away mission. Nice that we’ll finally see some further development for her character this season!
I wanted to cry for her when I saw that.
but what a nice surprise . . . all that build up and then NOT. I didn’t see it coming and that was wonderful.
Pelia is here and she wants to know who hit her in the head with this tricorder!
Ha ha ha! I just saw that ep on Comedy Central the other day!
Man I remember her allll the way from Taxi and still looks great! Happy she’s part of the show.
“Now peel me like a grape so I can get out of here!”
I never heard of Carol Kane but hope she is good in the show. Sounds like she might be SNW version of Tig Notaro.
I rediscovered her in Kimmy Schmidt – Carol Kane can really work a character. She is going to be fun.
Carol Kane is a great addition…..hopefully she lasts longer than her predecessor.
Too Soon way too soon
Carol Kane has been around forever. Because of The Addams Family movies, for the longest time I just assumed she has always been an old eccentric. She was delightful on Taxi, which I rediscovered while trying to justify keeping Paramount+ in the weeks before LD season 3.
She’s going to be magnificent.
I loved her in Scrooged
Kane was superb as Grandmama Addams in “Addams Family Values,” but the role was played (rather forgetably) by Judith Molina in the first one.
Yes! That’s the one I rewatched all the time. Never quite understood why critics didn’t like it more.
She had perhaps the greatest line of all in Taxi: “Dear Lord help me, I’m wacko!”
Great Choice!
Welcome to the family!
Carol Kane on Star Trek, really?! Can that possibly be as awesome as it sounds?
Only if somebody tells her those scary calls aren’t subspace messages — they’re coming from inside the ship! (I’ve never actually seen that WHEN A STRANGER CALLS movie, but I saw the preview for it so many times that I feel like I have.)
Now THAT’S funny!!!
I suspect that they’ll play it straighter than that, sadly. Still, the fact that Reverend Jim was a TOS fan, and that the actor who played him went on to portray the goofiest Klingon of them all, means you just have to work a “Taxi” joke in there, somewhere.
Didn’t know Lloyd was a Trek fan. I just remember an interview with him talking about TSFS and BUCKAROO BANZAI where he sounded a lot more enthusiastic about the latter (though he said something about feeling honored to work with Mr. Spock.)
I still think all of the other choices that I saw mentioned/rumored for Kruge over the years would have been better (except Tom Selleck, because I don’t think he could have managed an appropriate voice), with Olmos and Prochnow both seeming ideal.
Might have affected Olmos’ career negatively, as he’d have done three genre projects in rapid succession with WOLFEN, BLADE RUNNER and TREK, and could have kept him from his best destiny with Moore’s BSG.
I don’t know about Lloyd himself, but the character of “Reverend Jim” Ignitowski on “Taxi” was definitely a Trek fan (it’s treated like an “of course he’s that kind of a doofus” joke; he later goes on to sport an ET: THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL button after that film became a huge hit).
Kevin Pollack’s “the Reverend Jim play Commander Kruge” is hilarious, btw.
Ortegas says her job can get “boring?” That’s funny, because I’ve never before gotten the impression that Ortegas thought being the helmsman was boring; I’ve actually always gotten the impression that she LOVES flying the ship!
I’m glad we’ll be getting an Ortegas focus episode, since I love the character and think Melissa Navia is wonderful in the role.
I loved it when Melissa Navia said during the Star Trek Day broadcast that she was carrying on the tradition of sword-wielding helmsmen. :-) I hope George Takei heard that part…
I’m sure it’s thrilling in battle and stuff but in “reality” most of the time the Enterprise is probably on autopilot.
Yeah, flying in a straight line between two star systems for a week+ is probably one of the boring parts.
I don’t understand how any job in Trek’s future can be boring. You don’t do a job because it needs to be done. You do a job to better yourself and all of humanity. If you don’t like your job, find another one. No one’s depending on you.
If people did jobs because they were necessary despite being tedious, they’d want compensation in some form.
That Ortegas, she can fly the helm for years and act like it’s exciting, and one day she says it’s boring. That’s not even getting into her business of treating Spock like a best buddy for years and years only to one day report him as a Romulan spy just because he shares their ears.
Carol Kane is a wonderful character actor- she’s going to be SNW’s Tig Notaro, but in her own way. I love this casting announcement.
It’s funny Trek is going this route with their Chief Engineers. In the 90s I always wanted Marsha Warfield (Roz from NIGHT COURT) as the engineer on the nonTrek space thing (small privateer ship) I was working on. My dream cast also included Roddy McDowall as the guy who is their night shift.
Really enjoyed Carol Kane throughout the series HUNTERS, which we only just watched last week.
First Simon Pegg, then Tig Notaro, and now Carol Kane. Gene wanted his engineers to be Scottish. Turns out comedians were the better choice!😁🤣
Even more reason for some live-action incarnation of Scotty to voice the hysterically funny ‘The Scottsman,’ which has at least turned up in one of the Pocket Books’ volumes. In fact, that might be an ideal way to intro a pre-TOS SNW Scotty.
That clip is awesome. That is going to be such a cool episode, I can already tell.
Personally I would’ve preferred Madeline Kahn in the role, but she left us some time ago.
I’d’ve preferred Madeline Kahn in pretty much any role — her and Bibi Besch both left WAYYY too soon.
That would have made for a great scene.
Lt. Cmdr. Maddie Kahn, “Cap’n I cannae get any more power tae the warp core. We’re doomed.”
Capt. Kirk, “Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahnnnnnn!!!”
Susan Oliver, too. I heard a podcast featuring someone who’d written a book about her life and career, and the details of her mistreatment as a director at the hands of Pernell Roberts on “Trapper John, M.D.” were just really sad.
For her part, Kahn neatly managed the trick of being simultaneously sexy as hell AND howling funny, which is probably not as easy as it looks.
This is the first time Paramount+ has made trailers and clips globally viewable. Probably just for Star Trek day.
Have fun storming the castle, er, fortress!
Great casting, really looking forward to this!
Have fun storming the Enterprise!
Oh God I hope she does it with a New Yawk accent: “Wouldn’t want to take any attention away
from the HOOKAHS!”
Carol Kane will be a great addition to Star Trek.
Second season will belong to Ortega.
Well that is completely unexpected, but this could be a great decision. Carol Kane has a similar dry wit as Tig Notaro – and we all know how great she’s been on Discovery – so I’m really looking forward to seeing Carol Kane as a snarky engineer.
With that being said, I am a bit disappointed that we’re not getting another alien crew member. Thus far SNW is way to human-centric. With Hemmer gone, the only alien in the main cast is Spock. I’m sure it’s a budget and production issue as makeup is both expensive and time consuming to put on.
It’s a sign of the times that I can’t quite tell if this is a serious gripe about representation.
I’m not sure “serious gripe about representation” is the correct way to put it, but I definitely would like to see more aliens on SNW. It’s not a representation thing, just that it would be fun to see more aliens.
Well to be fair, minus Discovery that’s the way the 23rd century was. Spock was one of the very few aliens in Starfleet at the time. The organization was still very much an Earth based endeavor.
Not thrilled with this choice. What happened to Bruce Hemmer? Why was he dumped after just a few episodes? Don’t get it.
Bruce Horak said in an interview that he knew from the start that Hemmer was only going to be in the first season and was going to die at the end. And they have said that he will be returning in season 2 as another character but haven’t specified if it will be a one-off or recurring character. From what I can piece together, it seems that the character of Hemmer was basically created to form a bond with Uhura primarily, so that his death could set her on the path to choosing to stay in Starfleet.
It was in his contract from the beginning that he was to be killed off early, so not a surprise or shock for him. It’s a shock to us, yes, Hemmer is gone but I believe he’ll be back in another role. Nobody should get too attached to Pellia either… a certain Scotsman is bound to show up sooner rather than later(I just remembered we saw his hands in the finale Lol)
As much as I enjoy the show, the hairstyle choices in this clip and all thru the first season are REALLY distracting! WTF are they trying to prove with this stuff? Just make it look good, please.
Just because it doesn’t look good to you doesn’t mean it doesn’t look “good”. I would say it’s really subjective. All the previous treks had some truly wild and questionable hairstyling.
Explain TNG through ENT questionable hairstyling, please. The most questionable decision was having a bald Englishman as the lead (per GR)…
IIRC at first Gene Roddenberry objected because he said baldness would have been cured in the future. But then later I guess he decided that humanity in the future wouldn’t be preoccupied with such conditions which are literally only skin deep and do not affect health in any way.
Pretty sure baldness makes skin cancer a greater likelihood. But if all you have to do is wave a saltshaker over a body to fix cancer, then I guess it isn’t a pressing concern.
Mount’s hair looks weird in a different way this time, not so Walken-esque and Space Gumby as last year but still distracting. It did look like they fixed Spock’s sideburns, so that’s a needed win.
What happened to pointed sideburns for tarfleet folk.
Obviously she’s in that episode where omnipotent aliens put them through Three Stooges reruns.
Nice, they are already promoting Season 2 while season one is still several months away for some big european markets (Germany).
So when does season 2 air?
Probably Fall 2023
Why would they wait that long? The season is already shot and probably be completely done early by the end of this year. It will probably show up the same time like it did this year, mid-spring. Maybe it will show up later, but early summer the latest.
i really wish they would stop adding humans. they kill of an interesting alien just to replace him with a human. so boring.
Looking at TOS, though, a predominantly human cast is, dare I say, more canon? It seems a little bit funny to go from an aliens-rich SNW to TOS and suddenly the alien crew members dry up until we hit the movies. It may not be visually interesting (or extra-terrestrially inclusive) but it is accurate within the Trek chronology.
Exactly. IIRC it was mentioned in TOS that Spock was not only the only Vulcan in Starfleet he was one of the few if not only aliens in Starfleet. At this time in Trek chronology Starfleet is still very much an Earth-centric endeavor.
You mean except for the 400+ Vulcans on the INTREPID?
I dunno about anyone else but I’m having a really difficult time keeping track of where all these new episode of Trek fit into the timeline. I’m forever having to check the in universe dates on memory alpha. When I saw they were going to Rigel VII I had to check if this is before or after the events Pike and Boyce talk about in the Cage. I think I could do with a wall chart or something.
Well…Pike kind of hogging the action there?