A new Star Trek spin-off has been announced by CBS, set to be more “optimistic” and “episodic”.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds was announced on Friday (May 15), and will be set on the starship Enterprise in the years preceding James T. Kirk’s arrival.

The series is set to star a number of characters from previous series Star Trek: Discovery, including Anson Mount as Captain Christopher Pike, Rebecca Romijn as Number One and Ethan Peck as Science Officer Spock.

The show’s co-creator and executive producer Akiva Goldsman has spoken about how the new show will hark back to the early days of the franchise.

“We’re going to try to harken back to some classical ‘Trek’ values, to be optimistic, and to be more episodic,” Goldsman told Variety in a new interview. “Obviously, we will take advantage of the serialised nature of character and story building. But I think our plots will be more closed-ended than you’ve seen in either ‘Discovery’ or ‘Picard.’”

The show follows the Patrick Stewart-starring Picard, the first series of which aired earlier this year, and in which Stewart reprised his role as Jean-Luc Picard. In the original Star Trek series which ran between 1987 and 1994, Stewart played Picard in 178 episodes across seven series.

“I believe so much in what we’re doing,” Goldsman continued of the new series. “I don’t think that there’s ever been a better time for ‘Star Trek’, because of its ideology.

“It’s all about coming together and using the ways that we’re different from one another for the advantage of people as a whole.”