The WiC rankings: Every single Star Trek show ranked worst to best
2. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, 2022 – Ongoing
The problem with franchise media is that a lot of it is produced because someone high up has decided it needs to be produced for reasons the rest of us cannot fathom. For instance, they started making the Robert Pattinson Batman movies as soon as it became apparent that the Ben Affleck Batman movies weren’t working, they started making the Ben Affleck movies as soon as the Christian Bale/Christopher Nolan ones concluded, because someone somewhere decided that the world would end if there wasn’t always a Batman movie in the works at any given moment. This problem has afflicted Star Trek, resulting in the franchise fatigue that scuppered Enterprise.
Strange New Worlds is different. Strange New Worlds doesn’t exist because someone arbitrarily decided it should; it exists because fans demanded it. Strange New Worlds was spun off from Discovery. In Discovery season 2, we went aboard the Enterprise under the command of Captain Pike, played by Anson Mount. Captain Pike did not match Discovery’s dour tone. Pike, Spock, and the rest of the Enterprise crew were a bright and colorful ray of light in Discovery’s cold dark world. Introducing the Enterprise crew on Discovery was giving fans a glimpse of a show they would rather see.
Of course, just because fans demand it doesn’t mean it’s going to be good, but the people behind Strange New Worlds probably get a boost from knowing they didn’t have to work for the fans’ approval. With SNW, you never get the sense that the people behind the scenes don’t know what they’re doing, or are making it up as they go along. Even when Strange New Worlds is deadly serious, it has an ease that makes it a pleasure to watch.
In two seasons, Strange New Worlds hasn’t produced a bad episode. This gives them leeway to indulge in some pretty crazy ideas, such as a musical episode. But as silly as it can get, there are always moments that anchor SNW in serious drama, balancing some pretty extreme shifts in tone. It’s a balance that I would’ve deemed impossible beforehand.