14 Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Characters We'd Like To Ship Out With For Season 2, Ranked

By harkening back to the old days of episodic TV rather than the serialized, dragged out, and largely ineffectual "10-hour movie" approach epitomized by "Star Trek: Discovery" and "Picard," "Strange New Worlds" has reminded many of us how much downright fun old-school "Star Trek" can be. Season 1 of the series was promising, even though its back half was nowhere near as strong as its front. It came out of the gate with some well-defined personalities, like Hemmer or La'an Noonien-Singh, and interesting takes on existing but never explored characters, most notably cadet Uhura and Dr. M'Benga.

As season 2 launches, I wanted to take a look back at the first season's 10 adventures and think about which of the characters I'd most like to ship out with on a voyage into the final frontier, ranking them from "nun-uh" to "aye aye, sir!" So, as Pike would say, hit it.

The good Doctor hasn't made much of an impression as a personality because his first season role was largely defined by his efforts to keep his ailing daughter alive. But the actions he took towards that end demonstrate questionable judgment. For example? Preventing the Enterprise medical transporters from receiving upgrades in order to keep his daughter suspended in the pattern buffer, putting the rest of the crew at considerable risk, compounded by his failure to disclose this to anyone. What if an emergency required Hemmer to pull the plug on all the transporters? If no one but him knew she was in there ... poof. Talk about negligence.

Worse, M'Benga goes from a super-protective parent to letting his daughter go off with the non-corporeal entity of the week after barely two minutes' consideration. What? And he doesn't even think to ask if he can go with her? "Hi, alien I know next to nothing about. Sure, take my child away so I can be unencumbered for future episodes." Rubbish.

That's not the kind of chief medical officer I'd trust to treat the disease of the week. Heck, I might not even trust him with a hangnail.

This newest iteration of Captain Kirk suffers from "Kirk Drift," that deviation from the OG captain that all "Star Trek" series since the advent of "The Next Generation" have embraced. The Kirk Drift version of Kirk was first implied by his "cheating" on the Kobayashi Maru test in "The Wrath of Khan." "Strange New Worlds" goes right along with this, suggesting that Kirk is a rule-breaking risk-taker. Sure, old-school Kirk memorably opined that "Risk is our business," but those risks were rarely cavalier or ill-considered. Indeed, his outside-the-box solutions were typically employed when conventional approaches were doomed to failure.

Worse, Kirk as portrayed here is charmless. This isn't merely a function of the script. One only need look at Chris Pine's movie Kirk to see that even a Kirk Drift version of the character can still be appealing. Heck, from the first moment that Shatner appeared as the character in the second pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before," he exuded the sort of on-screen charisma that Jeffery Hunter's original Pike utterly lacked. The inverse is true in "Strange New Worlds".

I'd follow Shatner Kirk or newfangled Pine Kirk in a heartbeat. But "Strange New Worlds" Kirk? Season 2's gonna have to work hard to sell me on him.

T'Pring in "Strange New Worlds" is far more complicated and nuanced than the barely-seen version in the "Original Series" classic "Amok Time." She's a woman with a demanding career who attempts to rehabilitate Vulcan criminals by convincing them to use logic to control the emotions that fueled their crimes. That she apparently sees no conflict between this pro-logic job and her relationship with the half-human Spock suggests she does not look down on humans for being human. Nor does T'Pring go out of her way to pull Spock away from his human half; she even discusses human sexuality in a way that makes Spock very uncomfortable.

The one place where T'Pring's a tad illogical is her apparent inability to grok that Spock is a member of a quasi-military organization, and that as such he is a subordinate who must obey orders. If Pike orders him to come save a negotiation or whatever, he has to go. What she never comes right out and says is that he's chosen a career that conflicts with their personal relationship.

She's smart and resourceful, and if I wasn't shipping out on a Starfleet starship I might — mind you, might — consider working with her.

Word got around that Ortegas claimed that she was going to be the best pilot ever to graduate from the Academy, and Pike called her on it in "Children of the Comet." Unsurprisingly — hey, it's TV — she delivered on that braggadocious claim, skillfully piloting the Enterprise through the impossibly chunk-style coma and tail of the titular comet. That skill alone would make you want her as a member of your starship crew. But personality-wise? Ehhh, would you really want to work with a snark-dispensing wiseacre with a quip for every occasion?

As with Number One, season one of "Strange New Worlds" seriously underused Ortegas. Apart from her scenes with Chapel there's not a lot to get a handle on, except that she's something of a rough and tumble type. Sadly, to date, she's more of a sketch than her apparent namesake. Gene Roddenberry's early 1964 pitch, "Star Trek Is...," described its navigator, José Ortegas (Jose Tyler in the first pilot), as "fighting a perpetual and highly personal battle with his instruments and calculators, suspecting that space, and probably God, too, are engaged in a giant conspiracy to make his professional and personal life as difficult and uncomfortable as possible."

Hopefully they make Erica Ortegas at least that interesting in season 2.

Hemmer's the character we didn't know we needed until we got him. The aphorism "never judge a book by its cover" describes Hemmer all the way. Our first impression was deceiving; the more we got to see him, the more facets we were shown. The character's relationship with cadet Uhura permitted us, like her, to see past his gruff exterior and reveal the nuances of his personality.

I was looking forward to finding out more about Hemmer, until the show literally took to "fridging" him on a freaking ice planet in order to motivate Uhura to stay in Starfleet. In short, he was created just to suffer and motivate a plot-armored character. Prophetically, he told Uhura, "The Aenar believe the end only comes once you have fulfilled your purpose," and that his purpose was "To fix what is broken." Sure enough, as soon as he made an impact on Uhura's life, "the end" was inevitable. Still, while Hemmer left the Enterprise crew at the end of season 1, given how un-final exits are in this universe ... well, never say never again.

Of all the characters I would want to ship out with, he's one of the shippiest. How engaging his successor, Lt. Pelia, will be remains to be seen, but Hemmer's a tough act to follow.

As the breakout character of the original "Star Trek," Spock often threatened to overshadow his captain. His shadow looms so large that other characters are frequently measured against him, be they Data, Tuvok, Seven of Nine, or every other Vulcan we've seen. Fortunately, the new, younger Spock we get on "Strange New Worlds" mostly sticks the landing. What's fun is seeing how this younger, less seasoned version of our favorite Vulcan comports himself as he tries to figure out who he is.

He's as technically competent as ever, so serving with him seems like a no brainer (no "Spock's Brain" jokes, please), but at this point he's relatively inexperienced, and still trying to navigate the limits of a dispassionately logical approach, which doesn't always make him a swell member of your landing party. Example? In "Children of the Comet," after Lt. Kirk gets the bejeezus zapped out of him, Spock counsels a nervous Uhura, "May I remind you that circumstances are less dire than they were. Mr. Kirk identified one error you can avoid. By eliminating that option, he has improved your odds." Her disbelieving feedback is, "Was that actually your version of a pep talk?"

Season 1 of "Strange New Worlds" got off on the wrong foot by damseling Una in the very first episode, where she's a captive in need of rescuing. This is compounded by her underutilization throughout the season. She went from being a standout in guest appearances on "Discovery" to being criminally underused on "Strange New Worlds."

The number one failing of the character is that throughout the season she's largely defined more by what she is than who she is. In "Ghosts of Illyria" Number One reveals that she is an Illyrian, ergo disqualified from Starfeet service due to the Federation's ban on genetic engineering. This  policy is more than a tad hypocritical, given that La'an Noonien Singh is a descendent of the prototypical example of this, yet she's allowed in Starfleet and Number One's kind are not. That Una never confided her secret to anyone, even Noonien-Singh, until circumstances forced it is very realistic. Coming out of any closet is difficult, and fear sometimes prevents us from being honest even with the people least likely to betray our trust. 

That said, Number One's the professional's professional, even though that earns her a rep as "where fun goes to die." I'm certain this issue of being judged by what you are instead of who you are will be addressed in season 2. But based on season 1, I'd ship out with Number One with no hesitations, precisely because of who she is.