The celebration of Star Trek and its legacy continues with four new video releases from Paramount+, for their new shows Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and the new animated series Star Trek: Prodigy, as well as the Season 2 trailer for Star Trek: Picard and the mid-season trailer for the animated action/comedy series Star Trek: Lower Decks.

Star Trek as a franchise is now 55 years old. The first episode of the original series made its debut on September 8, 1966, the date now widely regarded as Star Trek Day. Now that Paramount+ is betting its entire business model on Trek, the fans reap the benefits. There are now more Trek shows in production than at any time in the history of the franchise.

[su_note note_color=”#66d4ff” radius=”5″]Paramount likes to geolock their YouTube videos. Don’t worry. There is no geolocking on SCIFI.radio.[/su_note]

Trailer park

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Anton Mount stars as Captain Christopher Pike, the man who commanded the Enterprise before James T. Kirk took command of it. This video from Paramount+ introduces the entire cast of characters in the new series.

We’ve met our captain, our first officer, and our science officer, and now the rest of the Enterprise crew are here! Stars Anson Mount, Rebecca Romijn, and Ethan Peck are joined by the new cast members joining their ranks and share their excitement to start all-new adventures in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. It’s a blend of new faces in familiar, established roles, and new characters as well.

Star Trek: Prodigy

It’s not possible to make a new Trek series that’s completely detached from everything that went before, but Star Trek: Prodigy comes pretty close. By creating a cast of characters to crew a Federation ship who have never even heard of Starfleet, and putting that ship out on the fringes of Federation space, the opportunities for great storytelling are laid out before us in abundance.

Developed by Emmy Award-winners Kevin and Dan Hageman (“Trollhunters” and “Ninjago”) the CG-animated series Star Trek: Prodigy is the first Trek series aimed at younger audiences and will follow a motley crew of young aliens who must figure out how to work together while navigating a greater galaxy, in search for a better future. These six young outcasts know nothing about the ship they have commandeered – a first in the history of the Star Trek Franchise – but over the course of their adventures together, they will each be introduced to Starfleet and the ideals it represents.

The ship is the Protostar, a Federation training vessel that has somehow been abandoned, resting on the surface of a planet where hope is little more than a word. A bunch of teenagers of various species find the ship and use it to escape their lives of totalitarian oppression.

The first season of it is ten episodes, and features Kate Mulgrew as a Command Training Hologram.

Star Trek: Picard

The much celebrated series Star Trek: Picard is back for a second season. Sir Patrick Stuart is back in the title role, and so are the rest of the cast – but so is John DeLancie, reprising his role as Q. The trial, as he says, is never over.

The new storyline for the new season has Picard and crew traveling back to the past to undo a series of events which results in a dark turn that effects the fate of the entire galaxy.

Star Trek: Lower Decks

This animated series is halfway through its second season, but that didn’t stop Paramount+ from releasing a mid-season trailer, to show us some of the Trek-immersed antics of the ensigns on the lower decks that hold everything together while the U.S.S. Ceritos bumbles from one mission to the next.

The series stars Tawyny Newsome as Ensign Beckett Mariner, Jack Quaid as Ensign Brad Boimler, Noël Wells as Ensign D’Vana Tendi, Eugene Cordero as Ensign Samanthan Rutherford, Dawnn Lewis as Captain Carol Freeman (Captain of the Ceritos), Jerry O’Connel as Commander Jack Ransom, and a host of others.

The show pokes fun at Trek, but at the same time always stays true to the core message that Star Trek always conveys: we are stronger together; we can be better than our primitive impulses; there is a bright future ahead for us if we choose it.

Trek for Everyone

No matter what your tastes – deep stories, action stories, comedy stories, or fresh-faced adventure, there’s a Star Trek for you.

And naturally, we have music from all of these right here on SCIFI.radio, and there is so much more to explore. Stay tuned. Live Long and Prosper.

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SCIFI Radio Staff

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