3 Original Series characters we’d like to see in Strange New Worlds

Phillip Boyce

For those unfamiliar, Phillip Boyce was the original doctor on the Enterprise when the cast and crew shot The Cage, the original pilot of the series. The series had a lot of changes and Dr. Boyce was removed from the show but he did still have an appearance in The Menagerie, which repurposed The Cage to tell a different story. One where Spock was attempting to help Captain Pike now confined to a machine that was basically keeping him alive.

The series recontextualized the pilot to be more of an origin story of Spock and Pike’s friendship and time together while serving aboard the Enterprise. Boyce was the ship’s doctor during this time but as Strange New Worlds has introduced a different doctor, one presumed to be the ship’s chief medical officer, Boyce would need to be brought in similar to Kirk. As a character to build an episode or two around.

The reason to bring in Boyce centers around who you’d cast as him. Otherwise, there’s no real point in bringing him. He offers nothing different to the series that another medical character couldn’t fill.

So who do you bring in to play Boyce? Jeffrey Combs of course. Not counting the Hologram-Shran, Combs played 17 characters across Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise. Granted eight of them were just different Weyouns.

Combs is a fan favorite among the fanbase and there were some who were pushing for him to be cast as Boyce. Since they didn’t use the character among the main cast for the show, using him as a guest star is still a possibility.