Strap in, Star Trek fans, Strange New Worlds is now available on ITVX

Before you get too excited (but do get a little but excited), it’s only season 1 of Strange New Worlds on ITVX, consisting of ten episodes, now available to stream with adverts. Still, If you’re one of many who don’t have a Paramount Plus subscription, and still feel mistreated by the pulling of Discovery from Netflix, it’s still something to celebrate.

ITV themselves have not promoted this (as far as we can see) except via the ITVX service. If you’ve taken heed of our recent Five shows to binge for free on ITVX article, you’ve probably noticed this pop up. It’s an example of their “Drama Drop Sundays” content.

What is Strange New Worlds (season 1) about?

The show spun out from Star Trek: Discovery, and season 1 starts with the episode Strange New Worlds, in which Captain Pike (Anson Mount) is persuaded by Starfleet to get back into space on the Enterprise, following some earlier tragedies. As fans of The Original Series will know, Pike has a destiny. He’s joined by Spock (Ethan Peck), his new number one Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romjin), Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush), Cadet Uhuru (Celia Rose Gooding), helmsman Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia), Dr Joseph M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) and more besides.

The story is a fairly standard tale of a society on the bring of warp drive, but protected from interference. Of course Pike and crew have to interfere, and while forgive, Starfleet strengthens its commitment to non-interference, and embodies this in the Prime Directive. Meantime, Pike decides he’s quite content to be back in space, and cue the rest of season 1.

The season then follows the style of the original (to which it’s notionally a predecessor) with a set of tales exploring the possibilities of space travel. There are a few themes, such as Spock’s relationship with T’Pring, to whom he becomes engaged as the season starts.

We could go on, but really all you need do is pop over to ITVX now!