The Cast of 'Strange New Worlds' Put the 'Star' in Trek and the Cool in Season 3
The Crew of the Starship Enterprise don’t just make fictionalized space travel look good, they share the secrets on how to build character, how to build the genre and most importantly, look cool doing it.
As the cast of Paramount’s ‘Strange New Worlds’ enters the third season of its five-year-mission, there is one consensus about the show - it has returned to at least one of the roots of the original series. ‘Strange New Worlds’ is undeniably the most ‘Trekkie’ Trek audiences have seen in quite some time. It embraces fun, campiness, bizarre concepts and nouveau 60s aesthetics all while teaching viewers about the core morals of Gene Roddenberry’s mantra, and in all that, the cast looks cool doing it.
What’s their secret? How does one dance a Klingon K-pop inspired number and still keep their cool card? FilmSpeak recently sat down with Celia Rose Gooding, Martin Quinn, Jess Bush, Melissa Navia and Babs Olusanmokun to dig a little deeper into this intergalactic mystery. Like the theatre kids in high school, the ‘crew’ of the infamous Enterprise are an unpredictable mix of confidence and fearlessness, but there has to be a key to it all, doesn’t there?
Check out the full interviews with the cast below, or continue scrolling for the remainder of the article.
Is it the job?
“I don't know. I've been living with Eric Ortegas for so long. It's hard to think outside of that.” Navia, who plays Helm officer Erica Ortegas admits it’s difficult to beat being an intergalactic pilot. Helmsmen such as Sulu in the original series, or Tom Paris in Voyager automatically became fan favorites. “I've looked to a lot of the helmsmen in Trek to build not only who she is, but who she also isn't” Navia admits. “When I hear from fans, and I hear from combat veterans, and I hear from soldiers, and I hear from people who have served, and they're [telling me] she's exactly like, you know, the buddies that we served with. To me, that's the coolest thing that means the world when I hear that”.
Melissa Navia as Erica Ortegas
The job may be such a draw in fact, that it has seemingly influenced Navia in real life. “Legitimately, in life, I think pilots are the coolest. I am currently getting my private pilot's license. I do not think I am yet as cool as all the other pilots, but I am faking it ‘till I make it”.
This can’t be it though, can it? Every job in Trek is pretty cool, especially to those of us inclined to be drawn to Trek in the first place. We want to be explorers, or would love to step into the shoes of a security chief, an engineer who jerry-rigs a starship or a xenolinguist. Who wouldn’t want to save the day simply by being a polyglot?
Is it the voice?
Let this writer put it plainly, we can all recognize that Babs Olusanmokun has one of the coolest voices in the game. The smoky realness and soft spoken nature of the actor’s vocal tool gives Doctor M’Benga the exact balance of intelligence, fierceness and the avuncular nature we need from the ship's main caregiver. Or maybe it’s the accent specifically?
But he’s not the only one with an iconic voice. Quinn, who recently stepped into some massive proverbial shoes to play the epochal Montgomery Scott has a great accent as well. Let us also not forget, those original shoes, and subsequent shoes since, have never actually been Scottish before, since the role has been played by a Canadian and an Englishman. Yet this can’t possibly be the secret to the cool card either, can it? Trying to spout all the techno-babble that Scotty is surrounded by as an engineer must be as impossible as a Scot saying ‘purple burglar’.
Martin Quinn (left) as Scotty with guest star Carol Kane (right)
”It’s not that we can’t talk” Quinn laughs. ”It's just that I don't think I'm understood a lot of the time. I think that's more of the problem. Sometimes I've had to hit my t's a little bit more to kind of clarify things. I did that in season two, Episode 10, I felt like I was actually being a bit clearer and hitting my t's a little bit more. Then when we started season three, I was quite nervous. When I get nervous, I get really broad, and I start, like, dropping my t’s. You start talking broader and at the back of your throat. So I'm just hoping that when season 3 comes out, people can understand me.”
Alright. So not the voice. The voice may just make everyone feel like they’re back in high school, and that’s never a good thing. Is it the mystery?
What is great about the characters of this version of the enterprise is that they all have their little secrets. Which is not always the case. Trek, in fact, has been guilty of having characters that can be a little too one-dimensional where everything you need to know about them is on the surface. This writer is not looking to debate that fact, merely recognize that one of the most beloved sci-fi franchises in history is not always all that deep. But this Enterprise and her crew can be. Regardless if it is a new character written for this show, or someone playing a character we’ve seen in past Trek encarnations.
Once again, Navia defends Ortegas, hinting that this third season may finally give fans some insight into Erica we have yet to see. “People want to see so much about her, and they've said [in the past] they don't know enough about her. I feel like in the first two seasons, so much of what Ortegas does, we see that come through in how she flies the Enterprise, and how she is with her crew. You can tell so much about a person with how they carry themselves in their work”.
Babs Olusanmokun (center) and Jess Bush (right) in one of the season’s more fantastical period-pieces.
Yet she’s not the only one trying to build her character up, nor is she the only one who thinks the best is yet to come. “Oh, it's interesting, because we're currently shooting season four as well. So there's so much more to come” Bush explains. Nurse Chapel is a character that has existed in a past iteration of Trek before as well, famously played by Majel Barrett, the partner of Gene Roddenberry. Barrett would make much more of a name for herself when she guest starred as Lwaxana Troi in The Next Generation or Deep Space Nine. But Bush admits, there is so much more to the Chapel puzzle that has yet to be assembled, but is only willing to tease what’s to come in the next two seasons. “When thinking about where we are. I feel like there's so much more of her to discover, and I feel like a lot of that was done in season three, and even more so in season four”.
Since the mystery will always remain for most of these characters, this writer is left with only one theory about what makes the show so cool. It’s not the fictional jobs, it’s not the adventure, it’s not the accents or even the fact the show is filmed in Toronto. After watching 2 seasons of this show, and getting a preview of a particularly fun Jonathan Frakes directed episode, there is only one logical conclusion that even Spock himself could not argue against it.
It’s the hair.