Warning: This Interview Contains SPOILERS for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' Season 1 Finale - "A Quality Of Mercy"
The season 1 finale of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is a jaw-dropping time travel adventure with huge surprises. Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) lives through a classic episode from Star Trek: The Original Series and teams up with Captain James T. Kirk (Paul Wesley)!
Pike ultimately makes a choice of whether to change his dark future or protect the timeline from a devastating war with the Romulans, and Strange New Worlds ends season 1 with a cliffhanger about the fate of Number One, Lt. Commander Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn).
Screen Rant spoke to executive producer Henry Alonso Myers, who takes us behind the scenes of the finale to discuss Paul Wesley's casting as Captain Kirk, Pike's decision about his destiny, Una's backstory and arrest, and why Strange New Worlds killed Chief Engineer Hemmer (Bruce Horak) in episode 9.
Let's start with one of the big surprises: James Tiberius Kirk shows up!
Henry Alonso Myers: (laughs) Yeah, who saw that comin'?
We didn't expect Kirk until season 2. Was that always the plan? To have Paul Wesley come in at the end of season 1 and knock everybody's socks off?
Henry Alonso Myers: We always knew that Kirk would come in at the end [of season 1]. We were trying to figure out a story and a way to bring him in. But we didn't know it would be Paul Wesley until closer to the end because one of the challenges was finding someone to play young Kirk. You just never know how long [casting] will take.
And that was a season where we had to find young everybody, so... (laughs) I was very lucky that by the time I arrived on the show, we had Pike, we had Spock, we had Number One. But we didn't have anyone else!
Did you chemistry test Paul Wesley with Ethan Peck (who plays Spock) or anyone?
Henry Alonso Myers: Nope, nope. We auditioned a bunch of actors [and] we saw a bunch of people who were really interesting. Our casting directors went through I don't even know how many people trying to find [Young Kirk]. We auditioned a bunch of actors but no one totally clicked with all of us. But then [it was suggested], "What about Paul Wesley?" I like The Vampire Diaries very much so I liked him. Akiva [Goldsman's] daughter loves Vampire Diaries so he went, "Oh my God, my daughter would freak out."
We were in agreement so we brought Paul to Secret Hideout and they were like, "We like him." He was the guy we all agreed on. So we met with him and had a conversation. It was very clear that he was an intelligent, thoughtful, and real human being, and a really interesting choice for Kirk. He was the guy who rose to the occasion when we needed [Kirk].
And William Shatner approves of him, so there you go.
Henry Alonso Myers: That was crazy! I wanna say it was shortly after we shot [the episode], he sent that picture [of Paul and William Shatner on an airplane] to me and Akiva. He was like, "I was seated next to Shatner on a plane! It's kismet!" He didn't tell Shatner anything and he was very respectful. When the news [of Paul's casting] ended up breaking, he shared the picture with the world and Shatner was so kind about it.
My jaw dropped several times during the finale. Kirk was one, but before that, it was when I realized, "Holy s---, this is "Balance of Terror!" Why did you choose “Balance of Terror” as the pivotal event Pike had to live through and fail at?
Henry Alonso Myers: I'd love to say I have a better reason other than I just really love that episode. I thought it would be fun. It was kind of like we wanted to retell a classic Trek episode using our characters and we didn't want to use "Spock's Brain," so... (laughs)
Good choice!
Henry Alonso Myers: I always loved that episode. I always thought it was a fantastic example of what kind of storytelling Star Trek does really well. I love the submarine movie of it all. We'd had a couple of ideas that were sort of coalescing into an episode. One was 'Retell a classic Trek story with our characters,' one was a time travel thing where old Pike comes back and says, "Don't do the thing you're gonna do" and sends Pike on a time travel journey.
The other thing that came up was trying to figure out a way to tell the story of how Spock in "The Menagerie" would [do what he does in the episode.] That Spock steals the Enterprise and clearly, he has such loyalty to Pike that comes from somewhere. We wanted to start to tell where that came from.
The central question in season 1, which you paid off in the finale, is whether or not Pike can change his future. And I guess the answer is now, "No no no, that's a bad idea."
Henry Alonso Myers: Well, I think the answer is he can but is it the right choice to make? And he is not a person who would make that choice. He would not. He survives. It's not that he doesn't survive his future. It's more about learning to live as a changed man.
But as a moral person, he's not someone who can do that. He couldn't do it to Spock, he couldn't do it to the universe. The minute he realized that the universe was not a better place for having changed his fate, he went back.
I loved the idea that Pike would essentially transfer his future to Spock and he couldn't do that to him. And I loved the acknowledgment that Spock's got important things to do. Very big things.
Henry Alonso Myers: Fate of the galaxy type of things.
Also, great idea to bring back the red Star Trek movie uniform and put Pike in it.
Henry Alonso Myers: Oh my God, the minute I saw Anson on set in that red uniform, the little kid in me [squealed]. (laughs)
Season 1 ends with a cliffhanger of Una getting arrested for lying about being an Augment. Everyone expected La’an (Christina Chong) to be the Augment because she’s related to Khan, but can you talk about the choice to make that Una’s backstory?
Henry Alonso Myers: Part of it was about trying to tell a story that was relevant to today. We were looking for a story about the prejudices within Starfleet. In many ways, it's a perfect organization, it's a utopian organization. We were sort of poking at it to see where the flaws are.
We didn't want to tell a story where Starfleet is the bad guy. This is not the tone of our show. This is an optimistic show about the great things that come out of Starfleet. But even when you do great things, you can do damage without intending to. While looking for a story to explore that, there was some stuff in the beta canon about Una being an Illyrian. That was compelling whenever it came up in the [writer's] room.
We told Una's story [in "Ghosts of Illyria"] and one of my favorite moments at the end is when Una says in her log, "What if I wasn't one of the good ones? Someone who saved everyone. When is it enough to just be who I am?" There was a lot of discussion in the room when we realized we hadn't quite told all of that story. There was a lot of stuff left on the table so we wanted to go a little deeper.
Sometimes when you set something up in a television show, you don't always know where it's gonna go but you realize it's a setup. When Akiva and I put that [cliffhanger] at the end of the season, we didn't know how we were gonna solve it. I mean, we know now! (laughs)
The other thing that made my jaw drop in the finale is hearing Scotty's voice. Speaking of Chief Engineers, why kill Hemmer? He was such a great character. That was heartbreaking.
Henry Alonso Myers: He was a great character. I loved Hemmer. That was heartbreaking, you're 100% right. We knew that character was gonna die before we cast him. That was part of the goal of that character. When Bruce came in to do the role, we told him at the audition.
Our approach was this is a show about legacy characters, and people are gonna say, "There's no tension because we know everyone survives." And we wanted to say, "What if not everyone survives?" And part of that was also to see our characters go through loss.
The thing we didn't know was how wonderful Bruce would be, and how much he would pop. He really popped with Uhura [Celia Rose Gooding]. That was one of my favorite relationships. You just never know what's gonna happen [on set]. All I will say is that Hemmer may be dead but this is not the last we will see of Bruce on our show. I will say that in the classic Star Trek tradition.
To Be Continued... with the blue font.
Henry Alonso Myers: (laughs) Exactly.
Check out our other interviews with Star Trek: Strange New Worlds stars Gia Sandhu, Christina Chong, Rebecca Romijn, Ethan Peck, Jess Bush, Jesse James Keitel, Bruce Horak, and Anson Mount.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2 premieres in 2023 on Paramount+.