Strange New Worlds Showrunner on TOS Inspiring Recent Kirk Episode

Posted in: Paramount+, Star Trek, TV | Tagged: star trek, strange new worlds

Strange New Worlds Showrunner on TOS Inspiring Recent Kirk Episode

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds showrunner Henry Alonso Myers discusses how the TOS classic "Doomsday Machine" inspired "Orders of Magnitude."

Published Wed, 16 Sep 2026 15:37:09 -0500
by Tom Chang
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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' latest episode in season four, "Orders in Magnitude," was certainly one of the most memorable as a character-defining moment for Lt. James T. Kirk (Paul Wesley), the man who will be captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise on The Original Series. As he's visiting from the U.S.S. Farragut, Kirk becomes the provisional first officer on the Enterprise when war hero Admiral Reger (Joe Morton) takes over when Pike (Anson Mount) and Riley (Rebecca Romijn) are on an away mission. Showrunner Henry Alonso Myers spoke to TrekMovie.com to break down the episode, its tensions, and its inspiration.

Strange New Worlds Showrunner Henry Alonso Myers on How 'The Original Series' Inspired "Orders of Magnitude"

As far as the direct inspiration, which TM pointed out was the 1995 naval thriller Crimson Tide, Myers pointed out it actually came from existing canon: "For this one is — I don't want to say straight down the middle, but I want to say it's as high-level a version of a classic Star Trek episode as we have…I would say it's part 'Doomsday Machine' (from season two of 'The Original Series')… We try to touch on a bunch of classic elements, but also to try to tell our own version of it. Because we wanted to tell a story that was very much about the ship, very much also about Kirk, and also tell an interesting B story that covered a lot of other elements."

During the episode, the Enterprise is hunting a cloaked ship and following it back to a planet, but not everything is all what it seems to Kirk, as he suspects something is wrong, which makes it all the more suspicious as his father, George Kirk, who served under him, was never the same with his life and career after organizing the rescue of their ship. With tensions reaching their boiling point on the Enterprise, Kirk investigates what really happened, along with his intuition, to expose Reger's compromised state before the Federation could be responsible for something cataclysmic, potentially killing the 5,000 inhabitants of the planet.

"We wanted to explore what is a genuine challenge for a commander. Like it's really hard. We didn't want it to be black and white; we wanted it to be extremely hard," Myers said. "The things that I think are interesting and challenging for a captain is how do you stand up to something that you don't necessarily believe, even if it's a battle? That's what we wanted to do. Making it easy for Kirk is not a great move. It's not a great dramatic move. And so we really wanted to push him to the edge of what he was willing to do. And I think that actually speaks more to his character. The episode is really about what he is willing to risk to do what he believes is right. To make it like an easy — this is a good thing, and this is a bad thing — would have just made it easy for him, and I don't think that makes the drama as compelling."

Crimson Tide follows a US naval ship that stands on the brink of nuclear war as a captain (Gene Hackman) and his XO (Denzel Washington) are at odds, trying to clarify orders to fire their arsenal. The captain is bent on following the last clear orders from naval command, while the XO is trying to buy time to clarify the last message sent that was broken up, before confirming nuclear war as the ranks are divided on the submarine.

During the events of "The Doomsday Machine," the Enterprise encounters a trail of destroyed star systems and arrives at a distress beacon of the U.S.S. Constellation, heavily damaged, but finds the only remaining crew member, Commodore Matt Decker (William Windom), who's nearly catatonic and suffering from severe mental shock, but bent on destroying the planet killer that nearly destroyed his ship and destroyed the planet his crew evacuated to. When Decker recovers at Sick Bay, he asserts his authority to go after the planet killer after Kirk (William Shatner) is away on the Constellation overseeing its repair efforts. As he orders the Enterprise to attack the planet killer, it retaliates by ensnaring it in its tractor beam. As Kirk repairs enough of the Constellation, he uses the ship's weapons to fire at the planet killer to free the Enterprise and gets Spock (Leonard Nimoy) to relieve Decker, still not over his grief and need for revenge, of his duties.

For more on Myers talking about the remaining season four episodes of Strange New Worlds, you can check out the rest of the interview. The final two episodes of season four, which also star Ethan Peck, Christina Chong, Melissa Navia, Celia Rose Gooding, Jess Bush, Babs Olusanmokun, and Martin Quinn, stream September 17th and 24th on Paramount+.

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