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'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' cast on taking 'bigger leaps' for season 4's 'outside the box' episodes (interview)
"I think the producers had more time to prepare for season 4 and every episode felt incredible on the page"
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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.