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live-action sitcom. But within the first few episodes, the show is taking other risks, too.

Strange New Worlds is already greenlit for a third season, but how much longer can the series go on? The canon of The Original Series is getting closer and closer, and certain elements of continuity may not entirely match up. Goldsman points out that Spock’s journey is a big part of Strange New Worlds, and the existence of “smiling Spock” in the original Star Trek pilot, “The Cage,” has been a gift to the writers.

Essentially, before the character of Spock was fully formed by Gene Roddenberry and Leonard Nimoy, and before Star Trek found its footing, Spock was not meant to be as coldly logical as he became. As a result, Spock’s smile in “The Cage” and his general emotionalism have become a canonical mystery. Starting with Short Treks in 2019, it’s a mystery that Strange New Worlds is still untangling. Goldsman says “something happened between ‘The Cage’ and ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before,’” in terms of Spock’s demeanor. Part of season two does begin to acknowledge very openly just how different the Spock of this series is right now from what most fans know. While the show isn’t ignoring the differences between Ethan Peck’s Spock and Leonard Nimoy’s Spock, it isn’t going for a quick fix retcon, either. In fact, Goldsman thinks that if the show were able to run for a decent amount of time, something even more interesting than a retcon could occur.

“Look, when it comes to canon, we’re screwing with it a little bit,” Goldsman admits. “There was no indication that Uhura served on Pike’s Enterprise. We’ve invented that from whole cloth. We’ve retconned Spock and Chapel’s relationship. But I think it is our job to get there. The closer we get to that moment, just after ‘Where

No Man Has Gone Before,’ we have to acknowledge canon. And the closer we get, we have to start to resemble The Original Series.” Why after “Where No Man Has Gone Before?” Well, for Goldsman, The Original Series as we know it doesn’t really start until we get the core cast (including Dr. McCoy) and everybody else in their “correct” uniform colors, which wasn’t really the case until a few episodes into the show’s production run.

That said, Goldsman knows not everything can stay in this nebulous in-between stage forever, and firmly believes the series could safely continue for seven years before hitting real TOS problems.

“If we were so lucky as to continue, I think we could even overlap,” says Goldsman. “I think that would really be interesting to actually rub up against The Original Series.”

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season

Two debuts on Paramount+ on June 15.