After two well-received seasons, the third season run of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” slipped in quality – the episodic nature allowing for tonal variations from episode to episode seemed to be overembraced by the production team.
That resulted in too many ‘gimmick’ episodes, quite a few of which seemed undercooked, such as the holodeck murder mystery episode and the documentary-style one. The best-received episode of the third season by far was “Terrarium,” a straightforward Ortegas-centred character episode akin to TNG’s “The Enemy”.
With the fourth and fifth seasons already shot, more of those gimmick episodes are coming with the fouth season’s biggest bet appearing to be a puppet-centric one with Anson Mount’s Captain Christopher Pike appearing as a puppet created by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.
In an interview with Polygon, series showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Akiva Goldsman discussed the episode with Kurtzman calling it the hardest episode to make:
“It is more work than any episode that we have done. It’s more work than the animated one. It’s more work than the musical. It’s more work than a giant VFX episode. It’s a lot of prep. It’s a lot of work on the day. It’s a lot of post.”
Even so, the puppeteers at Jim Henson’s Creature Shop were fans of the franchise and keen to work on it, Goldsman saying:
“If you go to work on Star Trek, the odds are it’s one of your favorite things. You don’t stumble into Star Trek. You race to Star Trek. That’s been so true for so many folks that we’ve gotten a chance to work with, and boy was it true for the folks who were the puppeteers. It was moving and profound.”
The episode will see Pike turned into a puppet due to an “unexpected and terrible transporter accident”. Jordan Canning will direct the special episode.
Goldsman also revealed that the creative team had plans to bring William Shatner back to the franchise at one point, the idea being something of a sequel to the original series episode “The City on the Edge of Forever” in which Kirk settled down with Edith Keeler (Joan Collins).
He indicated that they tried to make it work every single season and even developed multiple scripts around the idea, but the episode never came together in the end.
The fourth season of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” will premiere on July 23rd.
