Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Paging the Enterprise’s next doctor

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is set to begin filming in February 2021, and so far, only three characters have been cast

As of now, we know Anson Mount, Rebecca Romijn, and Ethan Peck have been cast to star in the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, but that only fills the roles of Captain Pike, Number One, and Spock, leaving one important role unfilled, that of the ship’s doctor.  In the original series episode “The Cage”, which first introduced Captain Pike, John Hoyt played Dr. Phillip Boyce. He was replaced in the premier episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before” by Paul Fix who played Dr. Mark Piper, but Gene Roddenberry never cared for the way Fix portrayed the doctor. So DeForest Kelly was cast as country doctor Leonard “Bones” McCoy who remained on board throughout the original series.

Since Strange New Worlds is keeping three original characters from “The Cage,” can we expect a different version of Dr. Phillip Boyce to serve aboard the Enterprise? That would make logical sense since Dr. Boyce was first up, and since we didn’t get to see a lot of him, it would be a character the series could build on without having to keep to certain mannerisms from established characters.

Alternatively, the series could introduce an original character so they could start from scratch as no one really paid that much attention to either Dr. Boyce or Dr. Piper. However, having a doctor like McCoy on board would certainly add to the original series timeline of the show and possibly even draw in some diehard original fans even though it would be changing the timeline a bit. Still, it would be interesting to see Dr. McCoy just getting started aboard the Enterprise.  Fans would love to see how he interacts with a different captain, and the sarcastic retorts between McCoy and Spock would bring back some welcome memories.