I recently started watching Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. One episode in, and I’m not ready to praise it to the stars just yet. I’ve got my reservations. It's clean, polished, maybe a little too neatly packaged, but I’ll keep watching. Because there’s something in the bones of it that still matters.

What caught my attention wasn’t nostalgia or fan service. It was the structure, the logic underneath the story. That same old Star Trek DNA: different disciplines, different perspectives, and the idea that problems are best solved not by brute force, but by thinking differently.

The show reminds me of something from Liddell Hart’s Strategy: the indirect approach. Victory, not just in war, but in anything that matters comes not by charging head-on, but by outthinking, outmaneuvering, and out-understanding. Star Trek, at its best, has always done this. Whether through Spock’s logic, McCoy’s humanity, or Kirk’s reckless gut, the show’s always been about how different minds confront the same problem, and how unity doesn’t mean uniformity.

Even in just one episode of Strange New Worlds, that concept creeps back in. Science, security, medical, engineering, they all look at the problem from their own angle. No one person has the whole answer. But together, they build something that works. That’s not just storytelling. That’s a blueprint.

Because here’s what I’ve always respected about Starfleet as an idea: it’s an organization made up of the best. The best minds. The most courageous. The most disciplined. Not flawless—but refined. Forged. And all of them are pointed at a single, unifying aim:

“To explore strange new worlds.
To seek out new life and new civilizations.
To boldly go where no man has gone before.”

That kind of focused purpose is rare. And when you pair it with excellence not mediocrity, not consensus driven gray sludge, but actual human greatness, you get something almost unstoppable.

This isn’t a love letter to a new Trek show. I’m still undecided on that. But it is a kind of reminder: the best science fiction doesn’t just entertain. It trains. It teaches you how to see the world through other eyes. It reveals that every problem has more than one angle and that the truth isn’t always found in who speaks loudest, but in who listens longest. Even the aliens reveal more about us with each encounter.  

If you want to build a great team, or tell a great story, or even just figure out how to be better at life, look again at the bridge of the Enterprise. Not for the tech. Not for the spectacle. But for the way excellence, diversity of thought, and moral clarity come together with one purpose.

That’s the kind of fiction worth watching. And maybe the kind of future worth aiming for.

#StrategicThinking #ScienceFiction #Leadership #StorytellingMatters #IndirectApproach