Star Trek Strange New Worlds

 The latest Star Trek series, and after a disappointing Discovery, and a not really Star Trek-y Picard, this is what it is all about.

Adventures in space!

Taking place before Kirk's famous mission, this follows the previous crew of Enterprise, under command of captain Pike.  It is set after the season he took command of Discovery, and as such he has the knowledge of what his ultimate fate will be.

This weighs heavily on him, and his crew, including younger iterations of both Spock, Chapel and Uhura, try to convince him that the future is not set in stone and he might not meet the accident in about 10 years time.  But of course, the mission comes first as well, and this leads to various first contact missions.

There is a funny moment as well in the second episode when an admiral tells them the no contact rule will be renamed the Prime Directive, with Pike retorting "those names never stick".  But the season also has some very strong, moral episodes as we get to know from Star Trek, like a planet's society resting on the shoulders of a child having to be sacrificed to power the "world engine".

With a rather diverse crew, including a blind engineer and even a Nonien-Singh as security officer, the season has a lot of various points of view to the episodes, and not Discovery's "the captain is the only one present and solving everything" feel to it, but an actual crew that contributes to the problems at hand.  Including the struggles of the Federation coming in touch with unbeknowst opponents, and how their always peaceful approach gets them into trouble at times.

There are also very tense episodes, like the one where they go out to retrieve the crashlanded USS Farragut, only to end up in an Alien like episode with one of the core cast required to make the ultimate sacrifice...

But this series is ace, and Trek as it used to be: episodic storytelling, varied crew centered episodes, a captain that has it's flaws... let season 2 warp in soonish!