STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS Season 4 Finale Gives Us a Taste of the YEAR ONE Spinoff We May Never See

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has spent years inching the Enterprise closer to the version fans know from Star Trek: The Original Series. The Season 4 finale, “Tomorrow’s Enterprise,” finally lets us see what that future could look like, and it makes Paramount’s decision not to greenlight Star Trek: Year One suck a little more.

The episode sends Celia Rose Gooding’s Uhura into one very strange situation when the Enterprise begins observing a white hole, a theoretical counterpart to a black hole. On the other side of the phenomenon is another Enterprise, except this ship exists one year in the future.

Things have changed quite a bit. Anson Mount’s Christopher Pike has left the Enterprise and Paul Wesley’s Jim Kirk has been promoted to captain. Ethan Peck’s Spock, Jess Bush’s Christine Chapel, Martin Quinn’s Scotty, and Uhura remain aboard, while Rebecca Romijn’s Una and Christina Chong’s La’an are gone.

Ortegas, played by Melissa Navia, has moved on to teach at Starfleet Academy. Babs Olusanmokun’s Dr. M’Benga appears to be preparing for a transfer to Vulcan, which creates an opening for Leonard “Bones” McCoy, who will be played by Thomas Jane in Season 5.

Even the look of the crew is changing. Uhura and Chapel have adopted hairstyles and uniforms closer to their The Original Series counterparts.

Basically, we’re watching Pike’s Enterprise transform into Kirk’s Enterprise right in front of us. That makes “Tomorrow’s Enterprise” especially interesting because it gives fans a small sample of what the proposed Star Trek: Year One series might have delivered.

The plan from Strange New Worlds co-creators Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers was to finish Strange New Worlds after Season 5, with each season representing a year of the Enterprise’s mission, and potentially continue the story into Kirk’s command. Year One would have followed the first year of the Enterprise’s five-year mission under Kirk in 2264.

Unfortunately, Paramount never gave the series a greenlight. With the Strange New Worlds sets now dismantled and cast and crew moving to other projects, its chances aren’t looking good.

Goldsman explained where things currently stand: “Nobody's called, the sets are gone. Everybody else has started to take other jobs. It's never been officially yes, and it's never been officially no. But I don't see it happening.

“I don't know. It's above my pay grade. Maybe somebody calls and says, 'Hey, do a two-hour movie,' or, 'We want the show.' Great! But there was a moment where it would have been the most expeditious, creatively and economically, to just continue because we had a lot of assets which are now no longer.”

That’s a damn shame because Year One is such a natural continuation of everything Strange New Worlds has been building toward.

Kirk has become an increasingly important part of the series despite not being stationed on the Enterprise during this period. We’ve also watched him develop the instincts that will eventually define his command style. “

The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail” forced him to take command of the USS Farragut, while “Orders of Magnitude” had him defying an admiral because he believed the orders he’d received were immoral.

The destination has always been sitting there. That idea goes all the way back to Season 1 and Pike’s struggle with his own future. Pike already knows he will eventually be horribly injured by radiation, thanks to the vision he experienced during Star Trek: Discovery.

Much of the first season revolved around his attempts to understand whether that future could or should be changed.

The Season 1 finale, “A Quality of Mercy,” finally gave him his answer through a new version of the classic The Original Series episode “Balance of Terror.”

Pike travels through time and discovers what happens if he remains captain of the Enterprise during its encounter with the Romulans. His preference for diplomacy leads to disastrous consequences, including massive casualties, Spock suffering devastating radiation injuries, and a decades-long war between the Federation and the Romulans.

Kirk, meanwhile, argues for a more decisive response. Fans already know from the original “Balance of Terror” that Kirk’s approach ultimately succeeds.

Pike comes to understand that preserving the future means eventually stepping aside and allowing the next generation to take over. It’s also Strange New Worlds acknowledging that, no matter how much room it has to play with these characters, The Original Series is waiting at the end of the road.

“Tomorrow’s Enterprise” plays with that same idea in a clever way. The white hole creates a literal bridge between two periods of Star Trek, much like Year One would have connected Strange New Worlds directly to the Kirk era.

It make perfect sense that Uhura is the character caught between those worlds. The two versions of Uhura communicate across time to prevent Scotty’s death, preserving another important piece of the future we already know.

There’s also something wonderfully appropriate about the Year One name itself. The title convention dates back to Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s landmark 1987 comic Batman: Year One, which became one of the most commonly recommended starting points for new Batman readers. DC later applied the concept to characters including Superman, Wonder Woman, and Green Arrow.

For Star Trek, that could have meant revisiting Kirk’s first year commanding the Enterprise while filling in territory that The Original Series never had the opportunity to explore. Rather than simply remaking classic episodes, the show could have explored the relationships, missions, and decisions that transformed this crew into the legendary lineup fans have known for decades.

That’s what makes Paramount passing on the pitch so frustrating. Strange New Worlds already assembled the actors, characters, creative team, sets, and audience needed to make the transition!

Maybe Paramount eventually changes course. Goldsman even leaves open the possibility of a movie or some other continuation if the studio comes calling.

For now, though, “Tomorrow’s Enterprise” may be the closest we ever get to seeing Star Trek: Year One. If that’s really the case, the Season 4 finale gives us one tantalizing look at the Kirk-led Enterprise that could have carried Star Trek into its next chapter and it looks like it could have been a lot of fun.