Strange New World’s Showrunner on Bringing Back the Enterprise’s Original Captain

Strange New Worlds follows the adventures of the usS. Enterprise earlier than Kirk sat in its captain’s chair. And whereas we’re ready till season 2 of the collection to see Kirk, Anson Mount’s Captain Pike isn’t the one Enterprise commander within the collection—and never the one one being proven in an attention-grabbing new mild.

With the premiere of the primary episode of the collection this week, information broke that The Boys’ and Arrow’s Adrian Holmes can be taking part in Admiral Robert April in Strange New Worlds. “He was the Captain of the Enterprise before Pike, so he has the same sort of relationship that Pike does to Kirk in the original series,” co-showrunner and Strange New Worlds govt producer Henry Alonso Myers instructed io9 in regards to the resolution to re-introduce April within the collection over Zoom not too long ago. April performs a minor position in Strange New Worlds, however Myers sees it as an essential one due to that parallel. “He has that same mythic place as the person who came before.”

Strange New Worlds marks the primary time that April may have featured in live-action Star Trek in any respect, and his first TV look within the franchise since he made his debut within the 1974 Star Trek: The Animated Series episode “The Counter-Clock Incident.” There, the character was voiced by Trek legend James Doohan, and was a introduced as a white man, not like the person of colour we meet in Strange New Worlds. Times have modified—and a few circles have taken to utilizing a priority of continuity and concern to echo racist dogwhistles at Holmes’ casting.

“You know, as for the ‘controversy,’ I don’t think it’s controversial,” Myers stated at a number of the complains round Holmes’ casting. “I put this under the line of, you know, I think if [Gene] Roddenberry were doing the show today, these are choices that he would make. It’s tricky when you are working with a legacy property like Star Trek, because it’s… I think of it like a collective dream. I grew up watching the original series, Next Gen, Deep Space Nine, and also the movies—I have a particular the idea of Star Trek that kind of came from that. That’s in my memory. [The series has] been around for over half a century: everyone has their own personalized memory of these things, so I think that they bring that to it. I value and respect that.”

“But I also think that… we didn’t want a world that looked like the television of the 1960s. We wanted it to look like the television of now, the world of now. I don’t even think it’s a controversial decision [to have cast Holmes]. We’re doing our version of the character, it doesn’t take away from that version for other people. I hope, in fact, it adds to it. And that’s kind of the fun of this,” Myers concluded, earlier than including “You know, no one complained about Sam Jackson’s appearance [in the MCU]!”

Stay tuned for extra later this week on io9 from Henry Alonso Myers—Star Trek: Strange New Worlds premieres on Paramount+ this Thursday, May 5.

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