THREE ENTERPRISE

STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS IS BACK AT LAST, BOLDLY GOING INTO UNCHARTED REALMS OF HUMOUR AND HORROR. "IT'S HARD TO KNOW WHAT WOULD BREAK THE SHOW..."

-  NICK SETCHFIELD

FULL WARP AHEAD! A familiar command on any starship bridge but it could also be a mission statement for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

From an all-singing, all-dancing encounter with a cosmic improbability field to an equally reality-melting crossover with cartoon sister show Lower Decks, this 23rd century prequel is unafraid to bend, stretch and, yes, warp the very protomatter of the franchise.

"We definitely challenge ourselves to find genres we can use to continue to serve the story and that we haven't used before," says series co-creator Akiva Goldsman. "We're probably not going to do another musical, even though we loved doing the musical.

"We have this cadence of sci-fi action-adventure, which is sort of the metronome, right? Then in between we do other things. The precedent there is The Original Series, where you find that [kind of] genre-shifting. We've obviously taken that to heart."

"We usually try and come up with a concept, and the concept can be as big and as crazy as possible," says fellow showrunner Henry Alonso Myers. "Then we check the tyres and spend a lot of time asking 'How do we make this a Star Trek episode? How is it about our people? How is it telling a genuine story and giving us an emotional conclusion that actually takes the genre and says something?"

Clearly the Strange New Worlds writers' room generates its very own improbability field. Have they ever had an idea where they've thought no, that's too far, that's going to break the show?

"We've probably done them!" Goldsman laughs. "There have been some we haven't been able to figure out. Every year we've said 'Let's do a Western!' I don't think it would break the show at all, I just don't think we know how to do it.

"We really wanted to do a TAS [