Exclusive: A ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ spin-off series centered around Captain Christopher Pike is officially in the works. We have also done some digging and discovered several details about the show.
First off, the Pike-centric series is currently titled “Star Trek: Enterprise.” Next, the production title is “Strange New World.”
If the title sticks, it’ll be very confusing for Trekkies, to say the least, as there’s already a ‘Star Trek’ series with the same title. The original ‘Star Trek: Enterprise’ was created by Rick Berman (‘Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,’ ‘Star Trek: Voyager’) and Brannon Braga (‘Salem,’ ‘The Orville’). It was the sixth series in the franchise, serving as a prequel to ‘Star Trek: The Original Series.’ The series followed the adventures of the Enterprise, Earth’s first starship capable of traveling at warp five, as it explores the galaxy and encounters various alien species.
The ‘Star Trek’ franchise has a tradition of naming their series after the ship that the show primarily follows, so the ‘Enterprise’ title technically still makes sense. For example, ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ follows the ship “USS Discovery” and the original ‘Star Trek: Enterprise’ follows the “USS Enterprise.”
Therefore, this new Captain Pike series sharing the ‘Enterprise’ name would imply that the show will be following the USS Enterprise again. This seems very likely seeing as how the USS Enterprise ship was left under the command of Captain Pike at the end of ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Season 2.
While looking into the “Strange New World” production title, I noticed that this title has popped up twice before regarding the ‘Star Trek’ franchise:
- ‘Strange New World’ is the fourth episode of the original ‘Star Trek: Enterprise’ and was written by Brannon Braga and Rick Berman. David Livingston served as director for the episode. In the episode, the USS Enterprise encounters a new world much like Earth. A small crew stays on the surface overnight to continue researching the planet. During the night, a violently windy storm brews and forces the crew into a local cave. In the cave, however, the crew members believe they are not alone.
- ‘Strange New World’ is also the name of a television movie based on concepts envisioned by Gene Roddenberry, the creator of ‘Star Trek,’ which first aired on July 13, 1975 on ABC. It was originally a TV pilot and the third attempt to bring Roddenberry’s post-apocalyptic future vision to the small screen. Prior efforts, called ‘Genesis II’ and ‘Planet Earth,’ explored an Earth after a nuclear war and focused on an organization called PAX that was working to bring peace and order to the world.
The series is currently in pre-production, with the scripts for the first season having already been written. A release date is currently unknown.