Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 Directly (And Finally) Parodies The Original Series

This post contains spoilers for season 3 of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds."

After three seasons spent both earnestly and playfully building up to the events of "The Original Series," Paramount+ prequel "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" has finally touched on the existence of that beloved, groundbreaking original property. The result of the show's first and only "TOS" parody to date is a mixed bag of mid-century attitudes, gaudy costumes, endearingly cheap sets, and strange acting choices.

The retro show within a show first appears during the cold open of "A Space Adventure Hour," which introduces viewers to the not-quite-"Star Trek" show called "The Last Frontier." Presented without context, these moments of "The Last Frontier" are a roller coaster of an experience, one that borrows overtly from Gene Roddenberry's original series — and even recreates its entire opening credits with a similar monologue — yet also adds in flourishes that make its version of a 1960s sci-fi cult classic distinct from its real-life predecessor.

From the episode's first moments, we're shown a starship full of colorful, clunky, retrofuturistic set pieces that throw vague symbols and readings onto the walls. The costumes in the scene range from loosely Trek-adjacent (Melissa Navia's The Doctor dons an aqua boiler suit that women in the original cast likely wouldn't have worn) to embarrassingly period-accurate (Jess Bush's character, a Lieutenant, sports an impractical sparkly pink microdress). A green Agonyan alien with eyeballs for hands is puppeteered with primitive practical effects, and is later revealed to be wearing jeans below her prosthetics during the episode's "blooper"-filled end credits. And then there's Paul Wesley's Kirk — er, Maxwell Saint.

The world is full of William Shatner impressions, and assuming that Wesley's performance here is one of them, it's a pretty weird one. The actor — who, it should be noted, has generally risen to the occasion of taking over such a crucial role in "Strange New Worlds"– delivers his "The Last Frontier" lines in a decidedly pompous and over-the-top way, only sometimes calling to mind Shatner's Kirk. At one point, he says pointedly that he's known for his dic-ti-on, drawing the word out to three syllables. During an outtake, he preens in front of the camera, using it as a mirror to check his hair. Other times, Saint has an audible lisp, and his attempts at conveying authority veer into petulant whininess. In general, it seems like Wesley and the show's writers want to simultaneously remind us of Shatner's famous ego and go in a different, perhaps legally distinct direction; even Saint's costume, a gaudy, grey, ridged suit with olive accents, is a far cry from Captain Kirk's "Original Series" outfits.

To fully understand the absurdity of "A Space Adventure Hour," it's worth examining the episode's larger storyline. Despite the flashy framing device, the action here actually revolves around Christina Chong's La'An, who is tasked with trying out a newfangled piece of technology called a holodeck. Of course, there are no holodecks in "The Original Series" (they first appear in the sequel series "Star Trek: The Next Generation") and La'An's consumer focus trial goes so drastically wrong — nearly blowing up the Enterprise — that she recommends the tech be put away until it can be streamlined and made safe.

Before that, though, La'An restyles herself as Amelia Moon, a sort of Nancy Drew-Carmen Sandiego hybrid from an Earth-made book series she adores. In the holosuite, she investigates a murder involving the cast and crew of "The Last Frontier," who turn out to mostly be a dysfunctional group of alcoholics and Hollywood clingers-on. Among them are cocky leading man Saint, actress Adelaide Shaw (Bush), her boyfriend Anthony McBeau (Babs Olusanmokun), co-star Lee Woods (Navia), producer and ex-actress Sunny Lupino (Romijn), and Joanie Gloss, a high-powered Los Angeles agent played by series standout Celia Rose-Gooding. Ethan Peck's Spock, meanwhile, plays the Watson to La'An's Holmes.

It's hard not to feel like the latest episode of "Strange New Worlds" is poking fun at "The Original Series," especially when we find out that the murder suspects include the show's quirky, difficult creator T.K. Bellows (Anson Mount, who gets the episode's best line when he accuses Spock of being a communist). The crime took place when the series was on the verge of cancellation, and makes much of the cast's cattiness and spotlight-hogging, which was a well-documented if unglamorous part of the real 1960s "Star Trek." The script does just enough to distinguish some of its characters from any real-life counterparts, but will still leave fans with a dramatic, sloppy impression of the making of "TOS." Plus, the best parts of the episode feature castmates like Gooding and Peck, who the script allows to side-step any association whatsoever with the groundbreaking characters they play on "Trek" — or the actors who originated them.

"Strange New Worlds" here attempts to balance an arch look back at the franchise's messy origins with an original, fictional plot with new characters. It also sneaks in a sincere discussion of the flagship show's importance to future generations, and uses an episode that's couched in unreality and multiple layers of meta to do all of this with — Paramount surely hopes — minimal collateral damage. "A Space Adventure Hour" doesn't always hit its mark; it could've gone deeper with its exploration of 20th century Hollywood, and it will likely leave some "TOS" fans feeling bruised. But like most holodeck stories, it's able to tie a neat ribbon around a truly surreal experience, leaving it in the past by the end of the hour — hopefully next to the mandatory microdresses.