Star Trek Day has brought many gifts, but this one’s especially welcome. In its upcoming second season, Strange New Worlds will have a new face aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise: None other than the incredible Carol Kane is coming aboard as Pelia, the ship’s engineer
Kane’s career includes recent turns on Hunters, Gotham, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (her house is definitely not a sideways boat), and Los Espookys, but to an entire generation she may always be Valerie from The Princess Bride. You know: “I’m not a witch, I’m your wife!”
Paramount says of Pelia: “Highly educated and intelligent, this engineer suffers no fools. Pelia solves problems calmly and brusquely, thanks to her many years of experience.”
Calm and experienced is good on this ship, which is always facing some kind of unprecedented and peculiar space situation (as one does). Brusqueness, though? I’m already looking forward to watching Captain Pike (Anson Mount) deal with another brusque and extremely skilled member of his crew. Will she get along with La’an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong) or will their personalities make them bounce off each other like the wrong ends of magnets? How much fun is easygoing Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush) going to have with another serious person to poke gently at?
Paramount also released a first look at season two, which features poor Ortegas (Melissa Navia) getting her hopes up about getting to be part of a landing party.
Strange New Worlds will return to Paramount Plus for its second season sometime in 2023—but if you haven’t watched the first season yet, you really, really ought to.
I’m a bit disappointed that it seems to be yet another human on a crew that’s already full of them, but at least it’s not Scotty.
(Nothing against Scotty; I just want more new characters to be developed)
Ortega is rapidly becoming one of my favorite characters.
Its good to see a good sense of humor and wit.
Why another woman. Between Discovery and now SNW the whole cast is predominantly women. Besides Booker there absolutely NO testosterone on the show. And now SNW feels the need to follow suit. I’m all for strong female characters but guys, c’mon now.
@3 Captain Pike has enough testosterone and cowboyness to power SEVEN Enterprises!
At least according to my wife.
My wife…and not me.
*ahem*
Carol Kane!!!!!! Squeeeeeee!!!!!!!!! I love Carol Kane!
Guess I’m gonna have to start watching yet another Star Trek show (not that there’s anything wrong with that
)
Oh come on Steven, males have dominated media for, well, since radio, movies, tv and Internet have existed. Grow up, it’s the 21st century, surely you can let the scales balance a bit and let the females have a couple of shows. You seem to mean well, but c’mon now.
But yes, this is going to be great and I look forward to whatever comedy emerges.
@3 Culber and Stamets lack testosterone? I suppose Kelpian hormones may be different, so you could be right about Saru. There’s also those two bridge officers whose names escape me. Also Admiral Vance.
Dr. Lilia
The “Grow Up” comment is insulting. I have grown up with Trek and dare say I probably know the show and history better than most. Strong female characters are a staple in the franchise. But pushing the boundaries to the point where str8 men are no longer a part of the story is just too much. BALANCE. Janeway, Dax, Torres, Seven, Kira are all WONDERFUL examples of what women are about. Star Trek definitely should be inclusive but aren’t we taking some things a bit too far.
Well Pike, Spock, M’Benga, Saru, Culber, Stamets, and Booker are all WONDERFUL examples of “what men are about.” So what seems to be the problem?
Also, your cited examples of “strong female characters” all come from shows where the men outnumber the women by a significant margin. If BALANCE is so important, then surely it makes sense to have a couple of shows where the women outnumber the men?
Interesting… That makes Kane the second Taxi cast member to appear in Star Trek, decades after Christopher Lloyd became the first.
@9/Steven: Every Trek series’s core cast from 1966-2005 was between 2/3 and 6/7 male. SNW’s season 2 cast will be 2/3 female. Unless you’re just as upset by the male-dominated casts of the older shows, your objections are… unpersuasive.
Also, women do have testosterone in their systems, and men have estrogen. The difference, like all differences between male and female, is merely one of relative proportion.
“But pushing the boundaries to the point where str8 men are no longer a part of the story is just too much.”
Christopher Pike, Spock, and Joseph M’Benga are all evidently heterosexual males. They are very much a part of the story. Indeed, they got more character development in season 1 than any of the female regulars except La’an.
Carol Kane? Please and thank you!
Cool! Season 1 was great. They’ve earned my trust
My favorite response to this casting news is this gem from Trek novelist David Mack:
“Now we just need to get Billy Crystal in there somehow and have him and Carol Kane wave goodbye to Pike as he dematerializes on the transporter pad — “Have fun storming the plasma caves!”“
Saw that Tweet yesterday and I couldn’t stop laughing.
Am I the only one who knows her more from Scrooged than Princess Bride?
Mr. Magic @@@@@ 14:
I don’t know, “You think it will work?” “It would take a miracle” could be worked in a bit more easily. *grin*
@16/Austin: I still think of Taxi first when I hear Kane’s name. Also The Muppet Movie (“That’s a myth! Myth!” “Yeth?”). I guess the most recent thing I’ve seen her in was Gotham, where she was the Penguin’s mother.
I know her best from Taxi, where she had the immortal line: “Dear Lord, help me, I’m wacko!”
Great to have her aboard.
A great actor adept at both comedy and drama. Hurrah!
Female characters bring valuable new perspectives to traditionally male environments. Frankly, we need to crank down the level of testosterone in today’s world.
On the one hand, a brusque engineer who doesn’t suffer fools–don’t we already see this character all over the place?
On the other hand, Carol Kane!
I associate Kane with Taxi and Scrooged more than Princess Bride myself. Now that she’s (very) belatedly joined Christopher Lloyd in the Star Trek mythos, I’m picturing what roles the rest of Taxi’s cast might play; for sure, Judd Hirsch would be a misanthropic Klingon general suffering the ignominy of not having died in battle yet also, speaking quite frankly, glad not have been.
I’m not against women engineers, for I am in fact one of them. But I wanted to see more non-humans on the show. BOOOOO. Well, maybe she’s one of the aliens who has an extra arm or eye tucked away somewhere…
Whenever I think of Carol Kane, the first thing that comes to mind is her hitting Bill Murray in the face with the toaster in Scrooged. And the next thing I think of is how there has not been a moment I’ve ever seen her on screen whether it’s television or the movies where I’m not completely transfixed. She is amazing.