‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Finds a Captain Kirk

He’ll follow in the footsteps of William Shatner and Chris Pine, and will first appear in Season 2.

Even though ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ promises to show us the adventures of the USS Enterprise before the time of the original ‘Star Trek’ series, it appears that the most famous ‘Trek’ starship cannot entirely do without its most iconic captain. Yes, the show has now cast someone to play James Tiberius Kirk.

Paul Wesley, who might still be best known for playing Stefan and various other characters during his run on ‘The Vampire Diaries’, is the latest actor to inherit the role once made famous by William Shatner.

Of course, these days, there are also audiences who identify Chris Pine from the J.J. Abrams movies as Kirk, though Shatner will probably remain the most recognizable example.

“Paul is an accomplished actor, an astonishing presence and a welcome key addition to the show,” executive producer Alex Kurtzman and showrunners/executive producers Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers said in a joint statement. “Like all of us, he is a life-long ‘Star Trek’ fan and we are excited by his interpretation of this iconic role.”

Quite how Kirk will fit into the story is being held behind deflector shields for now, but here’s the wrinkle: he’s not showing up until Season 2, which kicked off shooting shortly after the series was renewed in January.

Season 1, meanwhile, will still focus on Anson Mount as Captain Christopher Pike, who was the commander of the ship in the original ‘Star Trek’ pilot ‘The Cage’, famously rejected by the network and re-tooled into two-part episode ‘The Menagerie’, which showed Pike’s fate to be critically injured and forced to spend time in a life-support mobility device.

That tragic destiny also played into Pike’s story in Season 2 of ‘Star Trek: Discovery’, where he briefly took command of the ship and, upon learning of what lay ahead, decided to quit Starfleet.

Yet because watching him ride horses and hang out in a wooden cabin doesn’t exactly scream “thrilling space adventure”, he’ll be pulled back to duty for this first run of ‘Strange New Worlds,’ which involves a spatial anomaly initially, but seems to promise more episodic storytelling, “alien/planet of the week” in keeping with the classic ‘Trek’ shows.

Anson Mount as Captain Pike on Paramount+'s 'Star Trek: Discovery.'

Mount’s Pike is joined by Ethan Peck, who returns as the younger Mr. Spock (the science officer at this point on the Enterprise, and Rebecca Romijn as first officer Number One (whose actual name we’ve since learned is Una Chin-Riley).

The rest of the crew is a mixture of established characters played by new actors and team members we’ve not yet met in the history of ‘Trek’.

Babs Olusanmokun plays M'Benga: A human doctor aboard the Enterprise, who was portrayed by Booker Bradshaw in a couple of episodes of the original series.

Celia Rose Gooding has the iconic role of Nyota Uhura, who oversaw communications on Kirk’s version of the Enterprise but is here seen as a cadet. Nichelle Nichols most famously portrayed her, though in the Abrams reboot, it’s Zoe Saldana.

Jess Bush is Nurse Christine Chapel, the character Majel Barrett played after Number One was rejected following that original ‘Trek’ pilot.

Christina Chong appears as La'an Noonien-Singh, a relative of Kirk nemesis Khan Noonien Singh, who the Enterprise crew won’t encounter until Kirk’s era in charge, so it’ll be interesting to see how she fits into the story.

Bruce Horak is Hemmer, An Aenar officer part of the albino subspecies of the normally blue Andorians, who are also usually blind. And Horak makes Trek history by being the first partially blind actor to star on one of the shows.

Finally, we have Lt. Erica Ortegas, about whom very little is known right now.

‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ will launch on Paramount+ on May 5 with the first episode, and releases episodes weekly.