Star Trek Officially Goes Full Muppets in New ‘Strange New Worlds’ Episode [Exclusive]

EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview contains spoilers for ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Season 4, Episode 5, “Level-Five Transporter Accident.”

Strange New Worlds has officially delivered one of the most delightfully unusual Star Trek episodes of the entire franchise with Season 4, Episode 5, “Level-Five Transporter Accident.” The episode was first teased at SDCC 2025, as the creative team revealed that the series would officially be doing a “Puppet” episode in its then-distant fourth season. The episode goes full Muppets, with incredibly designed puppets from the Jim Henson Company, plenty of physical comedy, and even a touch of romance.

Ahead of the season, I sat down with co-showrunners Henry Alonso Meyers and Akiva Goldsman to discuss this long-awaited episode, which Meyers co-wrote with Dana Horgan. During our conversation, Meyers revealed that the episode required hours upon hours of planning, new builds for the bridge set, and 14 dedicated puppeteers bringing the crew of the Enterprise to life. Meanwhile, Goldsman teased a “timey-wimey” adventure for the Season 4 finale, “Tomorrow’s Enterprise,” which references the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, “Yesterday’s Enterprise.” He also spoke about the six-episode final season expected to air next year and promised to go out on an emotional note. You can watch the interview in the player above or read the full transcript of our conversation below.

This ‘Strange New Worlds’ Episode Required 14 Puppeteers and 100s of Hours of Planning

“I think that there is a median between people who love Muppets and people who love Star Trek, and we really wanted to find a way to explore that.”

COLLIDER: My favorite episodes each season are always the ones where you guys take full advantage of the premise that anything can happen in space. Henry, I know you co-wrote this one with Dana Horgan. How did the concept for this puppet episode come about, and what was the most exciting part of pushing beyond our expectations for this episode?

HENRY ALONSO MYERS: We had been talking about doing a puppet episode for a long time, and we felt that, much like we did with the musical, that in order to do it, we couldn’t just half do it. We couldn’t just do a sort of slight version of it. We really needed to rise up and try to make the best possible version of it.

Then the other thing that we really needed to do was make sure that it felt like a Star Trek episode distinctly, specifically, and in all of the story. The transporter accident kind of ended up being the thing that pulled it all together. We hadn’t done a transporter accident episode yet. We felt like this was a great opportunity to try that.

And part of the goal, I think, in doing the episode was: what is the biggest, most difficult thing that we haven’t had a chance to do yet? I think part of it was also like, if this is the last season, because we never know, what are the things that you really, really, really wish you’d tried? I think that there is a median between people who love Muppets and people who love Star Trek, and we really wanted to find a way to explore that.

I mean, part of our goal in doing this show is to make a show that is, at its heart, for lovers of Star Trek, but also that reaches out to people who’ve never seen Star Trek before and present something for them. So, I feel like there is something for people of all types in a given season. You may not love every episode, but you will love all of the show. There’s something for you in everything, and our goal was to do a big reach for people who had never seen it and do a big reach for people who have seen it and know it in their hearts.

I’d love to hear more from either of you about the logistics of filming this episode with so many puppets. How many puppeteers did you have on set? How much time did it take for props to design and create all of these puppets?

MYERS: I feel like we had 14 puppeteers. Part of it was Jordan Canning, our director, who we had done a lot of prep work with her the season before, literally walking through all the sets, about the concept of it, just as we were talking about it. We reached out to Henson as early in the process as we could, because we felt like they would be the right people to do the puppet builds.

We had a kind of broad early concept of what the episode would be, and we knew that it would lean on Spock, and so we had a long talk with Ethan [Peck] about it. We had to rebuild the captain’s chair in order to have a puppeteer fit through it. There were a few sections that required a lot of adjustment, but you’d be surprised. I mean, our sets are great and are weirdly well suited towards puppeteering.

And then, obviously, this is about having a director who really knows and understands how this has to work, and can work around the sets and work with their understanding of how they want to design the shots in a way that feels like puppets, and yet it gives it that feeling of, “Oh, they just kind of came up with it at the last minute.”

I love the scientific advantage of the puppets not needing to breathe or being able to be chopped in half, and I love the ending moment with them all during their little suitless spacewalk. Were there any “we can only do this with puppets” concepts that didn’t make it into the episode?

MYERS: I feel like there were 100 things that we kept trying, but weirdly, everything ended up in the episode that we wanted. There were a few things that we pushed the idea of that we may or may not have put in the episode finally. Part of it, I think, is that just the presence of puppets alone makes a dramatic scene funny.

Yes, the ‘Strange New Worlds’ Season 4 Finale Is a ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ Reference

“It might be a timey-wimey episode.”

Image via Jan Thijs/Paramount+

We were delighted to reveal the episode titles at Collider. I’m really curious if you can tease anything about the back half, especially the soap opera reference with Chronitron’s “Through the Hourglass” and the finale, “Tomorrow’s Enterprise.”

AKIVA GOLDSMAN: “Tomorrow’s Enterprise,” I think in a very sort of tangential way, is a reference to a Next Gen title, obviously. So, it’s not, dare I say, rocket science for anybody to imagine it might be a timey-wimey episode, to use an adjacent genre reference.

I think what you’ll discover in the back half of the season is it’s fully equipped with all the things we do. It has as classic Star Trek as you might find in the most straight-ahead action-adventure sci-fi way, and then it does that thing that we do, which makes us Strange New Worlds. Our worlds are genres, and what we try to do is we try to use different genres as different lenses on storytelling. So, as we continue to focus on the deepening of our characters and we drive towards the inevitable end, and prepare for that, we’re getting everything ready for that last season, which is ultimately a single suite of six episodes, which lets us say goodbye to the show and hello to the eras that we know.

We’ve had musicals, puppets, horror, noir. So many things. How are you going to top that in the final season?

GOLDSMAN: We won’t, actually. And I mean that honestly. I mean, if we top it, which I hope we will, and I believe we have, we will top it by doing the thing that we do best and that our cast does best, and that all these genres we’re in service of, which is storytelling and emotion, and emotion and emotion and emotion.

New episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds air every Thursday on Paramount+.

Release Date

2022 – 2027-00-00

Network

Paramount+

Showrunner

Henry Alonso Myers, Akiva Goldsman

Directors

Dan Liu, Amanda Row, Maja Vrvilo, Akiva Goldsman, Dermott Downs, Eduardo Sánchez, Jeffrey W. Byrd, Jonathan Frakes, Jordan Canning, Leslie Hope, Valerie Weiss, Sydney Freeland, Christopher J. Byrne, Rachel Leiterman

Writers

Onitra Johnson