Strange New Worlds’ season 2 finale would make ’90s Star Trek proud

10.08.2023 - 12:15 / polygon.com / New

The promise of Star Trek: Strange New Worldswas that episodic television — specifically, the episodic adventures of the starship Enterprise — could still captivate audiences in the age of single-day full-season drops and movie-like “television events.”

With the close of its second season, Strange New Worlds is a fantastic reminder that when you combine the traditional self-contained episode format with a crew that knows they’re getting renewed, you can get great television drama.

[Ed. note: This piece contains spoilers for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ season 2 finale, “Hegemony.”]

That is to say, you can get a cliffhanger in which half the cast is teleported to who-knows-where by the Gorn. It’s a great reminder that this sort of thing used to be Star Trek’s bread and butter.

Back in 1990, The Next Generation’s season 3 cliffhanger, “The Best of Both Worlds Part I,” showed Riker taking control of the Enterprise after Captain Picard was captured by the Borg and transformed into the chilling entity called Locutus. The final shot of that episode is an electrifying slow pan over Riker’s face as he does the unthinkable, ordering the Enterprise to fire on its own captain. The summer of 1990 was an uncertain one for Star Trek fans, who had to wait from June’s finale to September’s season 4 premiere to find out what happened next.

Is “Hegemony” as shocking as “The Best of Both Worlds Part I”? Nah, you can’t put that kind of lightning in a bottle twice. But it’s still classic Trek shenanigans.

Yes! This March, Paramount Plus announced Strange New Worlds would return for a third season on the streaming service. Production on Strange New Worlds season 2 wrapped in July, so the folks behind this cliffhanger were confident they’d be able to follow up on it.

That’s the big question. At a Trek-themed Writers Guild of America picketing action in May, SNW showrunner Henry Alonso Myers confirmed that pre-production on season 3 is on indefinite pause until the AMPTP can come to an agreement with the WGA.

And actual production will similarly be on pause until the AMPTP can come to an agreement with the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. It’ll be a much longer wait for Captain Pike to come back than the three months of uncertainty between The Best of Both Worlds parts I and II.

That said! A lot of the characters in the show will definitely make it out of this pickle alive — because they appear in previous Star Trek shows set after this event. Though M’Benga, Sam Kirk, La’an, and Ortegas all disappeared with the colonists to who knows where, we know M’Benga and Sam will be fine, as they both appear in small roles in Star Trek: The Original Series.

La’an and Ortegas, however, are