Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer When Carol Kane was approached about joining “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” for its second season, the celebrated 70-year-old actor had to make a confession: She’d never watched a single minute of the venerated franchise. “The science fiction world has not really been attractive to me for some reason,” Kane says. “Now that I’m in it,” she adds with a laugh, “I’m very excited about it. It just wasn’t on my path until now.” Clearly the producers were on to something. Kane’s role on the Paramount+ series fits neatly within her wheelhouse of sublime eccentrics, from her Emmy-winning role on “Taxi” to for-the-ages supporting turns in “The Muppet Movie,” “The Princess Bride,” “Scrooged” and “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.” Here, she plays Pelia, the new chief engineer of the Enterprise and a member of an alien species never before seen on “Star Trek”: Lanthanites, who are extremely long-lived and utterly resemble humans, save for a delightfully inexplicable accent invented out of whole cloth by Kane.
