While there have been a true wealth of new Star Trek projects announced in the past few years, Trekkies got quite a wonderful surprise in May 2020, when it was announced that Star Trek: Discovery was going to spinoff the Season 2 additions of classic characters Spock (Ethan Peck), Number One (Rebecca Romijn), and Captain Pike (Anson Mount) into their own series, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. It's taken a while to get off the ground, but now the cast is celebrating the beginning of filming, and the production has added a whopping five new stars, including a Marvel's Defenders actor.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will truly take fans where we've never gone before, as we'll finally be able to follow the Enterprise crew in the years before Captain Kirk took over the helm of the ship that started it all. We'd gotten some pretty big hints that the new sci-fi sure-to-be hit was, at the very least, gearing up for production, but a video of the cast celebrating their official start just hit the Paramount+ YouTube page, and everyone involved does look very happy to able to hit the ground running. Take a look!
Awww! Everyone seems so excited and awed by the experience of walking through the halls of the U.S.S. Enterprise, don't they? Now, unless you were too distracted from all of your glee over Strange New Worlds beginning to film in Toronto, you likely noticed the five new faces among the cast who will be joining returning stars Rebecca Romijn, Ethan Peck, and Anson Mount as they start their trek around the galaxy. While we don't know just yet who any of these newcomers will be portraying on the show (which is said to be more like The Original Series), they already seem like great additions to the franchise.
First up in the video is Melissa Navia, who was recently seen on the hit NBC medical drama New Amsterdam. You may have also caught Navia in the short-lived AMC drama Dietland, or in appearances on popular series Homeland, Billions, and The Affair, among several others. The clip then moves on to Celia Rose Gooding, who recently starred in the Broadway musical Jagged Little Pill, where her role as Frankie Healy netted the actress a 2020 Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. Gooding has also appeared in stage productions of Urinetown and Fame.
English actress Christina Chong was the next to help us celebrate filming on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and her credits include the recently released live-action adaptation of Tom and Jerry, as well as stints on The CW's Bulletproof, Doctor Who, Black Mirror, Line of Duty, and Syfy's Dominion, among several others.
Babs might be the most recognizable of the new additions, as he had an important part on the Netflix limited series Marvel's Defenders as Sowande, one of the five fingers of the ancient and dangerous organization the Hand. Olusanmokun was also in 2016' Roots mini-series, Black Mirror, Sneaky Pete, Gotham, The Blacklist, Copper, and has a part in the upcoming remake, Dune. Last, but certainly not least, we're introduced to Australian actress Jess Bush, who got her start by competing on Australia's Next Top Model in 2011, and has been seen in Home and Away, Playing for Keeps, and Halifax - Retribution, among other projects.
As I mentioned earlier, we're not sure who any of these new cast members are playing right now, but, just from looking at the group, I can already imagine a pretty fierce crew shaping up for the Enterprise. Olusanmokun, especially, has experience with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and I'd love to see him as the ship's chief of security, wouldn't you?
All in all, it seems like Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is shaping up to be another wonderful adventure. An exact premiere date hasn't been revealed yet, but we might be able to set our eyes on the new Paramount+ series by this time next year, and we'll be sure to let you know when more details about Strange New Worlds are released.
