Strange New Worlds' Rebecca Romijn And Anson Mount Tease Season 2's 'Big Swings'
The second season of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" is nigh, and it will mark the return of what might be the lightest and most whimsical show in the "Star Trek" canon. In "Strange New Worlds," Spock (Ethan Peck) is more emotional and human than he's ever been, while Captain Pike (Anson Mount) is a genial, approachable captain who regularly invites crew members to his quarters, where he cooks them elaborate breakfasts from scratch. Even the show's most "serious" character, Commander Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn), smiles and talks with the crew from time to time.
The show regularly tackles interesting sci-fi stories in the "Star Trek" tradition, and will indeed have ethical discussions about prejudice, violence, and the nature of memory, but everything feels friendly, ground-level, and approachable. That "Strange New Worlds" has managed to so effortlessly balance heady sci-fi and light humor is a testament to the talent and innovation of the show's writers, and also the cast members, who seem to be as relaxed as their characters.
/Film's own Vanessa Armstrong recently attended a roundtable discussion with Romijn and Mount, and the two of them pointed out that some of the final episodes of the upcoming 10-episode season will reach further and play larger than the episodes that came before. It seems that Trekkies have a lot to look forward to.
Small but mighty
It should be noted that modern "Star Trek" seasons run only about 10 episodes, whereas, during the franchise's 1990s glory days, seasons ran for 26 episodes. The truncated seasons are frustrating for fans who thirst for more, although they are conducive to brief, season-long story arcs. "Strange New Worlds," unlike much of modern TV, is presented in an episodic structure, meaning that 10 episodes will translate to 10 stories that actually conclude.
According to Rebecca Romijn, the shortened seasons are also a mercy on the cast. The show is labor intensive, but also plays with some larger ideas and experiments with genre, making each episode an exciting, unique endeavor. She said:
"We've taken some very big swings genre-wise in season 2, and I know some of you have seen the first six episodes. We have a few episodes coming up after that that are really out there, so we're very proud of them. We're very excited. Anson mentioned earlier that sometimes when you get to episode 9, which is almost at the end of the season, everyone's tired, everyone's almost ready to go home."
Season 2's ninth episode, however, was wild and fun ... but required overtime. It was the cast's enthusiasm, luckily, that kept everyone on task. Romijn said:
"They brought us this episode that was so out there and it required us to work on weekends and we were all so excited about it. It was like this extra wind behind our sails that we needed at that point in the season, so we're really excited to share all these different genres we worked in."
Genres of all kinds
Rebecca Romijn and Anson Mount aren't clear about what kind of sci-fi genre experimentation they mean explicitly — the content of the second season is still a secret — but both actors seemed pleased to deliberately stretch beyond the confines of "Star Trek" traditions. Indeed, one of the showrunners, Akiva Goldsman, seems to have adopted that notion as a decree. As Mount pointed out:
"We have a couple of episodes in the first season that they weren't too sure about, and both of those episodes are ones that popped for us, and so they gave our showrunners a lot more freedom to play with genre. Akiva's mantra continues to be 'Star Trek can be a lot of things,' so we're not just playing with the message that can be told, but within the episodic structure we can play with how we get there."
Already, "Strange New Worlds" has featured an episode wherein the characters are forced into storybook clothing, and one where they fought violent alien lizards. The genre is wide open. That kind of openness is one of the things that Mount found so exciting about working on the show. "Genre has been a fun way of us talking with the writers about what we haven't done, that we would like to do, that makes everybody excited to be there," Mount said, adding that a cast and crew's excitement level is "an undervalued currency in filmmaking [...] especially in television."
You can see the excited cast in action when the second season of "Strange New Worlds" debuts on Paramount+ on June 15, 2023.