Anything is possible in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, even seeing the entire cast turn into puppets for one episode. As the Paramount Plus show's creators have revealed, this special season 4 episode took half a year to create, and we know it will be worth every second.
"I wanna say there was easily more than six months of work on it," co-showrunner Henry Alonso Myers revealed during an interview with Entertainment Weekly, following the episode's announcement at the San Diego Comic-Con 2025. "Alongside all the other prep meetings for every episode, there was always a separate puppet meeting," added his creative partner, Akiva Goldsman.
Offering some details about the making of the episode, Myers explained that he was familiar with how to do some of the techniques, but it was a learning process for everyone involved.
"In production, we'd have long conversations with our director in mind, specifically about how to handle puppets.... We had to have a lot of conversations about making puppets. We had to have a lot of conversations about how to handle our crew, because we also have to have a whole crew of puppeteers. It's just like doing a very different type of episode, and it requires a lot of time and care to do it."
Although the episode is included in the next season and it will be a while until it is released, you can already see a teaser below.
In the brief clip, we get a first look at the puppet version of Captain Pike, played by Anson Mount, seated on his chair at the U.S.S. Enterprise.
During the Comic-Con, EW also learned about the cast's first impressions of the upcoming episode. Christina Chong, who plays La'An Noonien-Singh in the show, simply described the experience of reading the script as "insane". For Chapel actor Jess Bush it was "pure joy", while X-Men icon Rebecca Romijn, No. 1 in the series, said that "it's an amazing script."
"There's so many things that are hard and challenging about this, but then you'd go and look at the puppets and everything was okay," concluded Myers.
After all (insert RuPaul's voice here), everybody loves puppets!
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3 is currently airing on Paramount Plus, with new episodes dropping every Thursday. A fourth season is on the way in 2026 and a fifth and final season has also been greenlit.
For more, read our Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3 review, and check out the best sci-fi movies ever made, plus a longer look at all the new TV shows coming your way very soon.
