Five new cast members were confirmed for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, one of the new Star Trek series created as part of the project to expand the franchise on Paramount+ streaming platform. A teaser video was also released, officially announcing that the series' production is underway in Toronto, Canada.
Babs Olusanmokun (Black Mirror), Christina Chong (Tom and Jerry), Celia Rose Gooding (Jagged Little Pill), Jess Bush (Skinford) and Melissa Navia (Billions) will join the series as regulars. Even those these are the actors which we'll see regularly on the new Star Trek spinoff, we still don’t know which characters they’ll play. Besides the new cast members, three familiar faces are also confirmed to reprise their roles from Star Trek: Discovery: Anson Mount returns as Captain Christopher Pike, Rebecca Romijn as Number One and Ethan Peck is back as Science Officer Spock.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is both a spinoff of Star Trek: Discovery and a prequel to Star Trek: The Original Series, telling the adventures of Captain Pike and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise in the years before Captain Kirk took command of the ship. This is only one of the new Star Trek projects supervised by executive producer Alex Kurtzman, responsible for expanding the shared universe of the franchise. The series' first episode was written by Akiva Goldsman from a story he wrote with Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet. Goldsman also works as the series co-showrunner, together with Henry Alonso Myers.
Besides existing in the same timeline as Discovery, Strange New World also shares its timeline with Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Lower Decks, both series who premiered last year. The upcoming animated series for kids, Star Trek: Prodigy, also makes part of the new shared universe initiative. With a lot of recent discussion surrounding a new Star Trek movie, this might mean Paramount+ is betting on the success of the franchise to carry on their streaming platform. This is a reasonable strategy since Paramount+ already includes all 726 episodes of the six original series.
There’s still no premiere date for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, but as filming continues and new information becomes available, we’ll be reporting all news about the project. In the meantime, check out the production start video featuring the Strange New Worlds cast below.