Star Trek: Strange New Worlds showrunners and cast tease the upcoming puppet episode. Set before James Kirk takes command, the series follows Captain Pike (Anson Mount) and the crew of the USS Enterprise. While Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3 is currently airing, season 4 has already been confirmed, and will feature an episode where the cast is turned into puppets.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers tease the upcoming episode and how much work went into it. Due to the unique episode having a different filming process and an additional full crew of puppeteers, the episode took over six months of work. The cast also reacts to the episode, with Christina Chong, Jess Bush, and Rebecca Romijn calling it "Insane," "Pure joy," and "An excellent script."
Myers: I wanna say there was easily more than six months of work on it.
Goldsman: Alongside all the other prep meetings for every episode, there was always a separate puppet meeting.
Myers: I was familiar with how to do some of this stuff. In production, we'd have long conversations with our director in mind, specifically about how to handle puppets.... We had to have a lot of conversations about making puppets. We had to have a lot of conversations about how to handle our crew, because we also have to have a whole crew of puppeteers. It's just like doing a very different type of episode, and it requires a lot of time and care to do it.
There's so many things that are hard and challenging about this. But then you'd go and look at the puppets and everything was okay.
Myers also reveals that he spoke with Angel season 5 showrunner and producer Jeffrey Bell about Angel season 5, episode 14, "Smile Time," where the titular character is turned into a puppet.
Myers: I had just socially a bunch of conversations with him about how they did it. That turned out to be not just a silly conversation but a very useful conversation.
What This Means For The Puppet Episode
Strange New Worlds Takes Advantage Of Its Format
Strange New Worlds leans on the format established by Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation by being more episodic and having less of a focus on an overall story arc. While there are plot points that carry through multiple episodes, the show takes advantage of the classic formula and delivers stories from different genres week to week.
This was especially present in Strange New Worlds season 2, which featured both a musical episode and a crossover with the animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks. The show has a continued commitment to creating episodes that are outside of the box, and they end up being some of the most memorable. With the amount of work and excitement around the puppet episode, hopefully, it will leave as much of an impact.
Our Take On The Tease
It's Taking Inspiration From A Great Episode
"Smile Time" also comes during a place in Angel season 5 where levity is needed. Two episodes earlier, a main character is killed, and in the following episode, another main character is killed. Aside from getting logistical advice from Bell, where it falls in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds may mean it's close to a much darker episode.
