Warning: This post contains spoilers for Thursday’s “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.”
“Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” has already given us dinosaurs and ghosts this season… but even that didn’t prepare us for puppets.
This week, the Enterprise crew experienced “a level five transporter accident” when Scotty’s attempt to put a puppet through the transporter turned everyone on the ship into a puppet. (Spock was spared, though, since he was safely on a shuttle at the time.) This led to serious comedic hi-jinks, with the puppet crew getting overtaken by a band of Orion pirates but using their unique puppet skills to fight back. (Puppet Pike was thrown out of an airlock into space, but as a puppet, he could survive just fine out there.) As the only human on board, Spock had to do a lot of the heavy lifting — literally — and ended up reaching a new understanding with his Vulcan ex T’Pring… even sharing a tender kiss (!) with her puppet self.
The whole puppet thing was just a dream in Spock’s mind, we later learned, but we still enjoyed the adventure anyway, so TVLine reached out to the “Strange New Worlds” cast and producers to get the scoop on what went into making this episode. (Press PLAY above to watch the full video.)
The cast had to sync up their dialogue to the puppets’ movements
Aside from Ethan Peck, who plays Spock, nearly all of the “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” cast members had to provide a voice for their puppet counterpart. (Paul Wesley’s Kirk wasn’t included, though, he notes: “I got left out of it. I wasn’t invited to the party.”) The puppets — created by the legendary Jim Henson Company — were filmed first, and then the actors had to match their dialogue to the puppets’ movements, “which was tricky,” Martin Quinn, who plays Scotty, says. “I struggled with that… trying to sync up what I was saying with the puppeteer’s version of a Scottish accent and the puppet’s moving lips.” Christina Chong, who plays La’an, agrees: “We essentially had to go with their rhythm and timing… I actually found that really tricky because it wasn’t necessarily how I would have said the line in that situation.”
So how did they pull off this episode, on a technical level? “With great difficulty,” executive producer Akiva Goldsman admits. “It took a very long time. There was a tremendous amount of prep.” But the puppeteers’ enthusiasm for the Star Trek universe helped make it a little more fun, he adds: “There’s a Venn diagram between people who love puppets and people who love Star Trek that we found that is extraordinary. Puppeteers were walking down corridors of the Enterprise having their best day ever.”
Ethan Peck had to film with a room full of puppets as Spock
As Spock, Ethan Peck was the only human cast member on set for much of the episode, and he remembers being distracted by the puppeteers’ artistry while filming his scenes: “The talent they brought in to bring those puppets to life was just extraordinary… It was hard to almost focus because I [was] in such awe of how detailed the performances were. It really did pick up mannerisms of the live-action versions of the [characters], and it’s pretty amazing to watch.”
And speaking of amazing, we had to ask: How was that kiss with the puppet version of T’Pring? “It was so weird!” Peck laughs. “There were people that weren’t normally on set there to watch because they were so curious about it,” but “we played it really sincerely, and I think that’s what makes it sort of funny and strange and interesting.”
Press PLAY at the top to hear more from the “Strange New Worlds” cast and crew about making the puppet episode, and beam down to the comments to give us your take on the episode.
