Season 4 of Paramount+’s “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” is off to a roaring start with episodes already airing centered around primeval dinosaurs, a haunted starship, and a hedonistic pleasure planet.
This week’s chapter, titled “A Case of Chiaroscuro”, airs on Aug. 13 and takes another bold swing, featuring a wartime film noir-style tale with tense galactic politics at its core.
We connected with three of “Strange New Worlds'” brightest stars — Anson Mount (Captain Christopher Pike), Rebecca Romijn (Lt. Cmdr Una Chin-Riley), and Carol Kane (Commander Pelia) — to hear about this penultimate season’s boundary-pushing vision delivered by executive producers Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers, and learn more about that Muppet episode called “Level-Five Transporter Accident” that’s coming later this month on Aug. 20.
“We’re all in agreement that season 4 and season 5 are the strongest seasons of the whole series,” Romijn tells Space. “I think the producers had more time to prepare for season 4, and every episode felt incredible on the page. Every episode felt like a really fun challenge. We just had a blast.
“The writers think so outside the box, and I can’t believe they come up with the things they come up with,” continues Romijn. “Every time a writer asks, ‘What haven’t you done that you’d like to do?’ I can’t even think as outside the box as our writers. I leave it up to them.”
Mount echoes those sentiments and finds the sci-fi series to be fully engaged.
“It just feels like the bolts were tight,” Mount adds. “We’ve built this incredible machine and we were able to take bigger leaps and have more fun. Even curve balls that came in season 1 and season 2. I grew tired of going to Akiva and Henry and saying, ‘Are you sure about this?’ And then those ended up being the episodes that really pop. So I stopped asking questions and trusted them. Also, I think the sense of consequence was heightened at the same time.”
Even though Carol Kane’s ancient Lanthanite character, Pelia, didn’t arrive until the second season, even she senses a major shift in the show’s momentum.
“I feel like as we went on people were more and more willing to take risks at every level, from the writing to the acting to the cinematography to the directing and the wardrobe,” Kane notes. “It was like, what the hell. Let’s roll them dice. I feel that was a wonderful freedom.”
As fans eagerly anticipate the Muppet episode (they won’t be disappointed!), the trio all admitted that the Pelia puppet with its wild tangle of blonde hair was the one most of the cast wanted to take home with them.
Sadly, none of the actors were allowed to actually keep their Muppets, though if folks saw the price tag on those puppets they’d quickly understand why.
“We were already working on another episode,” Mount explains when the surreal time arrived to record their particular puppets’ dialogue. “It was really wild going into the recording booth and trying to do an interpretation of someone else’s interpretation of your character.”
“Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” season 4 is now streaming on Paramount+.