Star Trek: Strange New Worlds EPs Defend Season 4's Genre Homages Amid Fan Criticism: 'There Is A Method To Our Madness'

"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" has been serving up some strange new episodes this season... and some fans are not exactly onboard. 

Season 4 of Paramount+'s "Trek" spin-off has been hopping from genre to genre each week, with departures like an episode shot in black-and-white in the style of film noir, an episode that paid homage to TV soap operas, and an episode where the Enterprise crew turned into puppets. (The trend continued this week, too, with La'an transported to a fairy tale world of knights and dragons.) A vocal contingent of Trekkies have been complaining about these so-called "gimmick episodes" and giving them dismal ratings on IMDb, so we thought we'd ask "Strange New Worlds" co-showrunners and executive producers Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers: What would they say to fans who want to see more conventionally sci-fi "Trek" episodes?

"I get it, and we love those, too," Goldsman tells TVLine, but "that's not our show." He points out "it's in the title": "Our worlds are genres." He adds that "I really do respect and hear the criticism that: 'When you have 10 episodes [per season], should they be more homogenous?'" But "for us, the answer was no, because the original series always jumped around in genre." (Goldsman does concede, though, that the original "Star Trek" series "had more episodes per season," airing at least 24 each year.) "Part of what 'Star Trek' did well was use genre for storytelling, and that was what we wanted to explore in this series," he adds: "We are 'Star Trek' fans, deeply, and we try to respond to the fandom in us — and you can't really please all the people all the time."

"Strange New Worlds" EP Henry Alonso Myers agrees that the show's writers are Trekkies through and through: "We love classic 'Star Trek' episodes more than you can possibly imagine, but we also like trying new things." He adds that "the goal is to make a 'Star Trek' at some point in our season that is for everyone, to reach out to people who don't know 'Star Trek' and who might find something that surprises them or interests them." He admits that "not every 'Star Trek' is for everybody, but I guarantee that the bulk of the episodes that we do in our season will be for most people. There is something to love in every season, and that's what we were really going for." 

To illustrate his point, Myers runs down the wide variety of episodes Season 4 has offered so far: "I think people who love the Tribbles are probably going to love the puppet episode. I think people who love some of the more classic ones will love Episode 6 [the real-time thriller 'Off-Hour'] because that is a straight fastball down the middle for what is a great classic 'Star Trek.'" For him, "the goal was to create a show that reached out to more people, but also pleased the people who love the show, to give them some surprise, a new version, a point of view about things that they hadn't gotten to see before, and also to win people over who never thought of 'Star Trek' and thought they'd check out a crazy show that would do something as insane as puppets. That's our goal."

Even with a scenario as wild as Season 4's seventh episode, which saw Pike trapped in a melodramatic soap opera, allowed Pike to confront his repressed emotions about losing his beloved Marie Batel in the end, "Strange New Worlds" EP Akiva Goldsman points out. "We do try to use the genre to move character" forward, he says: "The thing about a soap opera is, for all its broad expression of emotion, it creates a context where you get away with that ending from Anson [Mount] in a way that you might not in a more standard and more typical story structure and tone. So you know, there is a method to our madness. Whether we land the plane each time or not, it's certainly not for lack of trying."

What do you think of Season 4's genre homages, "Trek" fans? And what have been your favorite episodes so far this season? Beam down to the comments to make your voice heard.