2025 Is When Strange New Worlds Must Fully Become Star Trek

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has the opportunity to become the very definition of Star Trek on Paramount+ in 2025. After a 2 year delay caused by the combined SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3 will finally premiere on Paramount+ in 2025. Strange New Worlds returns to a drastically different landscape since season 2 bowed out in 2023, as the prequel series about Captain Christopher Pike's (Anson Mount) USS Enterprise is now the only Star Trek on Paramount+ series scheduled for 2025.

The changing nature of the streaming business and the sale of Paramount Global to Skydance led to Paramount+ ending four of the five Star Trek series that began with Star Trek: Discovery in 2017. Along with Discovery, Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Prodigy, and Star Trek: Lower Decks have all wrapped on Paramount+. However, along with Michelle Yeoh's Star Trek: Section 31 streaming movie, Strange New Worlds benefits by having 2025 all to itself as the lone Star Trek series on Paramount+. With no other series sharing the Star Trek brand in 2025, Strange New Worlds can and should fully represent and embody Star Trek.

Strange New Worlds Must Fully Become Star Trek In 2025

Less "Strange New Worlds" And More "Star Trek"

Pike, Una, Strange New Worlds season 3

In 2025, Paramount+ has the prime opportunity to package and market Star Trek: Strange New Worlds as 'Star Trek.' After all, there are no more competing series on the streamer this year. As the first Star Trek on Paramount+ show that spawned spinoffs, including Strange New Worlds, Star Trek: Discovery was considered the flagship Star Trek series, and it set the tone for the franchise's cinematic and serialized modern style of television. Yet even before Star Trek: Discovery ended with season 5, Strange New Worlds eclipsed it in audience and critical acclaim, with a 98% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds now commands the spotlight without sharing it with Star Trek: Discovery's earnest progressiveness, Star Trek: Picard's heartwarming nostalgia, or animated Star Trek's dizzying inventiveness. As such, Paramount+ must go on a marketing blitz to sell Strange New Worlds to the masses as the very embodiment of Star Trek. After all, Paramount+ clearly believes in the show; the streamer gave an early green light to Strange New Worlds season 4, which films in 2025, guaranteeing Captain Pike's Starship Enterprise crew will have more voyages in 2026.

Strange New Worlds Has Everything Fans Identify As Star Trek

Star Trek's Iconography Is Present In Captain Pike's Enterprise Crew

Kirk and Uhura in action in Strange New Worlds

Not only is Star Trek: Strange New Worlds in an enviable position to become the literal face of Star Trek, but it's the right show for the job. Unlike other Star Trek series about new starships and crews, Strange New Worlds contains the enduringly popular iconography of Star Trek: The Original Series. For legions of Trekkies, Star Trek isn't truly Star Trek without the Starship Enterprise seeking out new life and new civilizations. Strange New Worlds' USS Enterprise is the very same one Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) will one day command on his legendary five-year mission.

Strange New Worlds looks, sounds, and feels like Star Trek to the core.

With its mix of characters from Star Trek's original pilot, "The Cage," a growing crop of icons from Star Trek: The Original Series, and instantly beloved new faces like Lt. La'an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong) and Lt. Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia), Strange New Worlds boasts the biggest names of 23rd century Star Trek. From its primary colored Starfleet uniforms to its classic technology like phasers and communicators, Strange New Worlds looks, sounds, and feels like Star Trek to the core - because it literally is Star Trek updated for the 21st century without breaking and reinventing the mold.

Star Trek Can Become Mainstream Because Of Strange New Worlds

Strange New Worlds Should Be In The Cultural Zeitgeist

Star Trek Strange New Worlds Cast Musical Performance of We Are One

Star Trek is a nearly 60-year-old franchise with enduring popularity, yet it still feels like a niche compared to the more widely embraced Star Wars brand. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is Star Trek's best chance for mainstream viability since J.J. Abrams' Star Trek (2009) became a cinematic blockbuster. Strange New Worlds' cast is, top-to-bottom, an embarrassment of riches when it comes to charming, talented, and incredibly attractive actors, and the show's writing and direction are among the finest on television today.

Every Strange New Worlds cast member from Anson Mount to Rebecca Romijn to Jess Bush to Celia Rose Gooding are splendid ambassadors for Star Trek in the mainstream. Indeed, Strange New Worlds even boasts an icon of stage and screen, Carol Kane, who is delighted to be part of Star Trek in her first science fiction role. Not only should Strange New Worlds' actors be the literal faces of the show, but they should also the faces of the Star Trek brand itself.

Guest stars announced for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3 include Rhys Darby in an unknown role, and Cillian O'Sullivan as Dr. Roger Korby.

Strange New Worlds is also an easy sell for the inventiveness and greatness of Star Trek. Episodic like Star Trek: The Original Series, Strange New Worlds is perhaps the most dazzlingly innovative Star Trek live-action series. Strange New Worlds season 2 delivered Star Trek's first-ever musical episode, an acclaimed crossover with Star Trek: Lower Decks, and the series is stunningly adept at drama, action, and comedy. There is no better current Star Trek series to represent Star Trek to mainstream audiences than Strange New Worlds.

Starfleet Academy Can Be Star Trek’s New Experimental Show

Strange New Worlds Can Represent Updated Star Trek Tradition

A composite image of Holly Hunter against a yellow backdrop in front of an exterior shot of Starfleet Academy from Star Trek: TNG

If Paramount+ fully pivots Star Trek: Strange New Worlds to represent modern and innovative, but classic, Star Trek, it allows the next Star Trek series, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, to become a bold experiment in seeing what more Star Trek can become. Starfleet Academy continues Star Trek: Discovery's late 32nd century era, placing nearly a thousand years between Starfleet Academy and Strange New Worlds in Star Trek's timeline. While Strange New Worlds shines as the Star Trek audiences know best, Starfleet Academy can push boundaries in new ways.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is stacked with a jaw-dropping cast, from Academy Award-caliber actors Holly Hunter and Paul Giamatti, to Star Trek legacy icons like Robert Picardo, to guest stars like Tatiana Maslany and Becky Lynch. But look for Starfleet Academy's true show-stealers to be the young cast playing Starfleet Cadets. Starfleet Academy is on the bleeding edge of Star Trek's future while being inspired by Starfleet's glorious past. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds should be the paradigm that Starfleet Academy's young heroes look to while being what modern Star Trek now means to audiences as well.