How 'Strange New Worlds' Made Sure the Puppet Episode Still Felt Like 'Star Trek'

The long-awaited puppet episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds beamed onto Paramount+ this week, maybe the most out-there swing yet for a show that never met a gimmick it didn’t like. But much like season two’s musical episode, “Subspace Rhapsody,” season four’s “Level-Five Transporter Accident” manages to still feel like Star Trek—despite the fact that most of the characters have gotten a Jim Henson’s Creature Shop makeover. Strange New Worlds executive producer Henry Alonso Myers, who co-wrote “Level-Five Transporter Accident” with Dana Horgan, explained how the show approached that challenge. “We spent a lot of time trying to basically make sure that it worked and felt genuinely like a Star Trek episode,” he told TV Insider. “Yes, we were going to have fun. Yes, we were going to do all of these things, but if it doesn’t feel like Star Trek, what are we doing? That was what we had to hold to throughout the entire episode. I mean, one, we had not done a transporter accident episode yet, and we felt like this was an opportunity to do a transporter accident at a level which it had not been done before in Star Trek.” And if you’re going to do a puppet episode, the Strange New World