Star Trek: Strange New Worlds was imagined as a prequel and that’s what it should be

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds should continue on the path that it is on.

There’s a growing debate among Star Trek fans about what to do with certain properties and when to do it. One of the things that some fans want to see, and to a degree that includes me, is for Star Trek to move on and away from the nostalgia-infused modern product. Everything is connected to one another in a deep and all-consuming way.

It used to be that every episode of Star Trek was self-contained and that anything you needed to know would be properly explained to the viewer in the episode. At worst, you’d get a two-parter. But now entire seasons are tied into other seasons into other shows. Now you don’t need to watch an episode, you need to watch an entire other series to sometimes understand significant, yet small, references.

It’s a lot. So it’s not surprising that some fans want the series to avoid that, and allow shows to be their own things with their own stories and characters. That’s what one writer from Collider wants for Strange New Worlds, for the show to break from its prequel-like ways, and forge its own narrative path.

And I totally agree with Nu Trek forging its new identity away from the nostalgia pillars that are currently holding up the shows. Just not on this one.

Strange New Worlds was created to tell the beginning of the Original Series

Strange New Worlds exists to fill in the beginning of The Original Series, namely, who was Christopher Pike in the original pilot and then later in the two-parter, the Menagerie. Strange New Worlds’ entire existence exists because the creators wanted to flush out little-used, but often talked-about characters like Pike, Number One, and others.

And now we can. For Strange New Worlds to break away from its intended goal would make the show utterly pointless. Why put so much time into creating Anson Mount’s Christoper Pike, just to break him away from the established concepts that older fans knew and love?

I’m good with the idea of making any new show stand on its own but if the show was created with a specific concept in mind, don’t deviate from it, you’ll just alienate viewers, which is counter-productive.

Especially since the Nu Trek era has already been accused of doing just that. No reason to add more issues to the franchise.