Paramount+ has become the go-to streaming service for all things Star Trek. Following the success of Star Trek: Discovery, the streaming service continued to build its Star Trek library with the addition of Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. The latter series, which just ended its first season to critical acclaim, chronicled Captain Pike, Science Officer Spock, and the rest of the U.S.S. Enterprise as they visited different parts of the Galaxy. It is set 10 years before Star Trek: The Original Series and is the first spin-off from Star Trek: Discovery.
The series showed Captain Pike in his post-retirement glory gearing up to hand the Enterprise to one Captain Kirk, with Strange New Worlds finding him in his prime leading the Enterprise with new and old faces alike. When showrunner Alex Kurtzman pitched the series to then-CBS All Access, he pitched them on an ever-expanding universe that could potentially see crossovers between the different shows, ala the Marvel Cinematic Universe. We did not know when the first crossover would happen, but San Diego Comic-Con has provided that answer.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is officially crossing over with Star Trek: Lower Decks, which is the first animated Star Trek series since 1970 and follows the adventures of the Cerritos in the year 2380. The show is now two seasons in, and it has been revealed that Season 2 of Strange New Worlds will see a live-action crossover between the two shows. Even cooler, it will be directed by Commander William Riker, himself Jonathan Frakes. Frakes was actually one of the ones who pitched CBS on some Star Trek content before they decided Kurtzman would be the sole showrunner, so it is exciting to see him get a shot to direct this first crossover episode in the Star Trek Universe.
