“He leads by ‘the best idea wins’,” said actor Anson Mount, referring to Captain Christopher Pike, his character in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, in a panel discussion after the world premiere of season three’s opening episode at the Tribeca Film Festival. This was evident in the episode, where at critical moments Pike surveyed his team for rapid-fire ideas on how to contend with the Gorn, reptilian aliens who’d captured many Federation colonists and several Enterprise crew members. Much was at stake, including the life of Pike’s love, Captain Marie Batel, who’s in sick bay infected with Gorn eggs. Pike has “less ego” than other famed Starfleet captains, noted one of the show’s executive producers.
Star Trek’s long had a tension between the franchise’s propounded ideals—democratic, egalitarian, progressive—and the nature of Starfleet as an institution: hierarchical, centralized, quasi-military (and with lines blurred between civilian and military functions). Strange New Worlds retains the context of a vessel with a commander with broad decision-making latitude, and superiors far from the action. Still, in highlighting a consultative management style, the series limns the limitations of autocracy as a mode of leadership in organizations or government institutions. It underscores the problems with pretensions that one individual can fix societal problems or should serve as an unchecked “unitary executive.” Pike recognizes it’s his crew providing most of the knowledge and skills needed, not him in the chair.
I was reminded of Admiral William H. McRaven, retired special operations commander known for overseeing the killing of Osama bin Laden and advising people to make their beds, whose new book Conquering Crisis: Ten Lessons to Learn Before You Need Them discusses the importance of cultivating unvarnished information and advice, and weighing a wide range of options yet moving quickly when necessary. One of McRaven’s recommendations is to draw on a “council of colonels,” an Army term for trusted advisors outside one’s regular circle or chain of command, while keeping staffers in the loop. The importance of staff morale is another McRaven theme, which resonates with Pike’s habit of gathering Enterprise crew members for meals cooked by the captain, rather than produced by a replicator.
Strange New Worlds will end with a truncated fifth season, the show’s culmination presumably focused on Pike’s seemingly foreordained fate, which he foresaw in a horrific vision at a Klingon monastery, with a disfigured and disabled version of himself recognizable to viewers of Star Trek: The Original Series, or TOS, in which Pike was seen living among the mentally advanced Talosians, having been injured after the series pilot didn’t catch on. Pike accepted that outcome, since the alternative would deprive his colleagues on starship Discovery of a crystal enabling their travel into the future, without which all sentient life in the galaxy would perish within millennia. Pike then chose to carry on, despite knowing his own doom. A leader who places broader goals above his own interests will attain loyalty unavailable to one whose self-seeking and ego-gratification inspire desultory displays of superficial compliance.
Strange New Worlds combines episodic stories, reminiscent of TOS, with character development arcs. Ethan Peck and Celia Rose Gooding were on the Tribeca panel and discussed their portrayal of younger versions of, respectively, Spock and Uhura. A moderator pointed out that we were seeing an increasingly confident and, though he “shouldn’t say it, sexier” version of Uhura. “You can say it,” Gooding replied. Spock, it was noted, was in “the most logical part of his life” in TOS, in contrast to earlier and later phases. As Strange New Worlds season three opens, Spock is struggling with his feelings for Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush). As executive producer Akiva Goldsman pointed out, “When you put a lot of hot people in a ship, shit happens.” Chapel, whom I can say is incredibly hot, tells Spock she’s “not good at complicated” when it comes to relationships, though she gratefully accepts his assistance in dealing with the urgent Gorn egg problem in sick bay when an effort at cryogenic stasis goes wrong.
—Kenneth Silber is author of In DeWitt’s Footsteps: Seeing History on the Erie Canal. Follow him on Bluesky