I’m going to say any or none of the suggestions here may be right.

And some of them, like Inner Light, are awful choices simply because their impact is very dependent on having the context the rest of the series and characters.

The main thing is that Star Trek has a wide variety of tones. The way to success is to provide excellent examples of very Trekie episodes that are in the genre or tone that your brother already likes.

Don’t show them action if they like cerebral mystery. Don’t show them romance if they like action. Don’t show them intense drama if they’re into comedy. If they’re into animated comedies or anime, start with Lower Decks or Prodigy not TNG.

Examples from this perspective…

If they like psychological horror, then TNG’s ‘Schisms’ or Voyager’s ‘The Thaw’ might be best.

If they like action, Discovery’s two part pilot might be the one or even the movie Star Trek (2009).

It seems that Christina has been able to convince the Showrunners to incorporate some of her own enthusiasms into La’an’s character.

In a TrekMovie piece, she’s quoted saying that she and Ethan Peck had a total of 75 hours of dance and fight choreography preparation over the season. The heaviest episode is in the back half of the season.

While I enjoyed the edgier La’an, Goldsman seems to have a very rigid idea that, in drama, trauma is the foundation of character development. It’s tiresome when every single character has to have a traumatic backstory, experience trauma in the show, or look forward to trauma (in Pike’s case).

So, as an example, it seems that the only way for Ortegas to have a character arc is for her to be traumatized and go through the process of overcoming that.

In that case, it’s better to have La’an move on. Between Tomorrow cubed and Hegemony II, we’ve seen two very significant life events for her that make it credible that she could finally more on.

As a TAS fan, it’s great to hear that Alonso Myers and Goldsman are enthusiastically weaving in TAS elements where they can.

Between them and McMahan helming Lower Decks, we’ve had genuine determination to weave TAS into live action and put aside the claims that it isn’t canon.

I’m somewhat sad about the lack of Kzinti though. Larry Niven would be enthusiastic to have more Kzin in Trek from everything he’s written on that point.

So, this makes 5 different Star Trek series where John De Lancie has appeared as Q (if we’re taking Akiva Goldsman’s offscreen confirmation).

Doesn’t that put him in a tie with Jonathan Frakes as Riker?

I’m glad to get any kind of 5th season.

If there’s a new show, I would rather that they time skip forever to the end of TOS, after TAS.

A late year 4 and year 5 show would fit with the age of the cast, especially Paul Wesley as Kirk. Even Celia, who was a young Uhura in the first season of SNW is catching up given the slow pace of production and release with the pandemic and strike impacting timelines. Even if they just carried on, a TOS-based SNW spin-off wouldn’t be premiered before late 2027 or early 2028 at best.

Disappointed, but not surprised that SNW was sold as the lead into TOS - the entire show seems to have been based on that pitch to the senior executives obsessed with reboots.

It’s a great show but not what it could have been but likely the only version of it that could have been greenlit in this past decade.

I find I am delighted with Quinn’s Scotty.

I could have waited another season for him to be introduced - but I also could have been happier if SNW wasn’t so laser-focused on building the backstory of legacy characters vs giving us more of the new ones - and the cipher that was Number One.

Anyways…

Here’s a complication of TAS Scott images. I think that TAS Scotty looks somewhat in between Quinn and Doohan.

I’m rather interested to see where they go with Korby.

It’s important for Christine Chapel’s character that the backstory they are developing for the TOS relationship is credible.

It was really rather sad and mortifying for Chapel in TOS to be shown as a intelligent and successful scientist, who took a Starfleet starship posting as a nurse to track down a missing fiance only to have him revealed as a dark mastermind turning people into androids.

Having what appeared to be a one sided, unrequited longing for Spock as well, made Chapel come across as pathetic, and very much shifted it to misogyny. Or, at least a complete failure of a Bechtel-type test where a female character exists for more than her interest in male characters.

(Even Majel Barrett’s Number One in ‘The Cage’ was put in an unrequited attraction situation with Pike.)

I have started (another) rewatch of TAS recently.

This time, what’s struck me is how much the Kirk in TAS aligns with Paul Wesley’s performance.

Despite TAS being animated to look like Shatner’s Kirk and Shatner voicing the part, somehow there’s less swagger and a more intellectual Kirk in TAS.

It’s in the writing surely but perhaps the creators had a sense that they needed to shift the tone to sell the drama on an animated show — especially one that took advantage of the medium to show even more trippy aliens and phenomena.

I wasn’t looking for it but there it is.

The Animated Series that ran in the mid 70s although it was originally just called ‘Star Trek.’

It had the same cast as TOS. Roddenberry was the showrunner again (after leaving before season 3 of TOS) and DC Fontana was the Supervising Editor in charge of the scripts.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Animated_Series

At 22 episodes total, and only 6 in TAS second season, it could go either way.

I am willing to concede so that those who don’t love TAS much as I do can get their proper closure to the 5 year mission.

And then there’s part of me that very much wants Vanguard to be the new, darker station-based serialized ensemble show to fill the DS9 niche we haven’t quite had in this era.

TAS is the 4th season of TOS - with some of the scripts adapted from the prep for a live-action TOS season 4 that never happened. (Yes, TAS IS canon!)

Now, we know that Arex and M’Ress are difficult to bring to live action, but who’s to say that their rotations on Enterprise aren’t done, and Chekov isn’t back, as year 5 begins?

Indiewire has a less positive review - “Brings the Fun — and Zombies — but Misses Chances to Go Deeper”

https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/shows/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-season-3-review-1235132207/

As I share this reviewer’s opinion on Tomorrow-cubed, I think I’m at the point of wanting to stop myself from reading more reviews now…

I’ve been wondering how much of the decision to wrap SNW with a short sixth season might have to do with Goldsman’s contract with Paramount coming to an end and his new one with another franchise and major studio.

SNW really was his project, regardless of Alonso Myers being the co-showrunner.

There’s a possibility that this is also about a change in leadership as the show transitions to a true TOS show, perhaps hopping to a time post-TAS but before the movies, and even shifting somewhat in tone.

All of this would make sense of casting an older actor as Jim Kirk.

Ryan Britt had a good review for Inverse, and an interesting take on the show overall.

It’s tempting to say that SNW succeeds because, of all the newer Trek shows, it’s the one that feels the most like fan fiction. Or perhaps, to put it another way, it’s Star Trek version of Marvel’s What If? In this case, the “What If?” scenario that is floated in nearly every episode is “What if the 60s Star Trek show were made today?”

Given how much of a OG fan Akiva Goldsman is, this seems a fair assessment - even if other, mostly younger fans, have different ideas about where the show should link up with the original.

https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-season-3-review

I was hoping that SNW would focus on Pike and his crew and less on the legacy characters.

But it seems Goldsman has had his ideas about it since the early 1970s and he’s fulfilling his fan dreams, as an EP and writer, of filling in the backstories of the characters he and we love. I can’t naysay that and it certainly sold the suits on 5 seasons of an excellent show.

We have to keep in mind that we’ve only seen 20 of 46 episodes, less than half the full run.

I believe that the new benchmark for selling a licence for reruns on other streamers and linear has dropped from over 70 episodes to a bit over 40 based on various industry reports. So this definitely puts SNW above that threshold.

This does raise the question though whether there is a plan to morph this into some kind of TOS continuation past year 5 and TAS.

So a half season + a one-hour series finale?

Having only 5 seasons seems the new normal since they haven’t been able to actually produce one season per calendar year and actors’ contracts run 7 years.

But having a short season seems weird, like some kind of negotiated compromise.

This is just going to feed the ‘Kurtzman is done when his contract expires …’ speculation.

Now I wish I had preordered Spock.

The one I want most is Number One but it would have been great to have the set.

Should we start a pool?

One of the things in the interview, that’s super interesting, is that the original script had a scene that would have made it absolutely unequivocal that Hemmer was killed.

And it was shot, with some significant Sfx challenges.

The interviewers asked Bruce if there were any scenes left in the cutting room floor and he responded that there was.

:::The actor was in harness for a falling scene in which he would have been fighting off young Gorn. He had been pleased to have the opportunity to have a heroic on-screen:::

But the scene was cut despite it being challenging production-wise, all the more so with a blind actor in prosthetics.

So, one has to wonder if the showrunners decided to keep the door open for Hemmer to return…