‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,’ ‘Black Mirror,’ ‘Project Runway All-Stars,’ Prison Stories on A&E

Season Premiere

8/7c

Following a thrilling final season of Star Trek: Picard, the acclaimed spinoff prequel—a throwback to the adventures of the original series—returns for a second season, with Capt. Pike (Anson Mount) temporarily leaving Science Officer Spock (Ethan Peck) in charge while the ship is in space dock. He should have known this crew doesn’t sit still for long. And when the ship intercepts a distress call from on-leave security chief La’an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong), who learns of a plot that could trigger a new Klingon war, Spock defies orders (how illogical) to steal the Enterprise and come to the rescue. Making a strong first impression: Carol Kane as feisty substitute chief engineer Pelia, who’s grown bored with teaching and wants to see action. She gets her wish.

Season Premiere

Charlie Brooker’s Emmy-winning anthology of creepy-to-funny sci-fi stories returns for a sixth season, with five new episodes including a spoof of the Netflix culture. In Joan Is Awful, Annie Murphy (Schitt’s Creek) plays a woman who’s horrified to learn that her unexceptional life has become the basis of a streaming series—with Salma Hayek playing her. Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul co-stars with Josh Hartnett in a space-themed vignette. Expect your mind to be blown more often than not.

Season Premiere

9/8c

While Alicia Silverstone may be the guest judge in the season premiere, the contestants are anything but clueless when the long-running design competition stages its first “All-Star” season. The show welcomes back 14 fan favorites from past seasons—including Kara Saun and Nora Pagel from Season 1 all the way to Season 19’s Prajjé Oscar Jean Baptiste and Anna Yinan Zhou—who hope to impress mentor Christian Siriano (winner of Season 4) and judges Nina Garcia, Brandon Maxwell and Elaine Welteroth. In the first challenge, the designers get a second chance to fix a look that either got them eliminated or resulted in their lowest score.

Season Premiere

9/8c

The eighth season of the hit prison docuseries goes inside North Carolina’s Pitt County Detention Center, where seven brave volunteers go undercover to get a true assessment of conditions within the facility where an inmate recently overdosed from drugs. They’re overseen by Sheriff Paula S. Dance, the state’s first Black sheriff, who’ll have to take action when some of the participants realize this experiment is more harrowing than they imagined. Followed by the series premiere of Booked: First Day In (10/9c), which follows an arrested person through the booking process in each episode while they reflect on the circumstances that landed them in jail.

The satire about fame and misfortune gets more surreal by the week. With “bad boy” pop star Chase (Case Walker) in need of image rehab, sister Brooke (Heléne Yorke) and record-label manager Shuli (Wanda Sykes) decide to make the lad “the new face of mental health,” staging a telethon for “A Night of Undeniable Good.” As usual, good intentions go awry on the night of the show, with guest star Ben Platt caught in the farcical mess. While super-famous mother Pat (Molly Shannon) tries to remember what “normal life” was like with a trip back to Ohio, irredeemable son Cary (Drew Tarver) decides to milk his latest brush with stardom to “win” his high-school reunion. Even by this show’s don’t-call-it-insane standards, it’s all a bit much.

INSIDE THURSDAY TV:

• The 123^rdS. Open (9:40 am/ET, Peacock; 1 pm/ET, USA, 8 pm/ET, NBC): Coverage begins on multiple platforms of the annual golf tournament, going Hollywood as the year’s third major is held at the Los Angeles Country Club.
• Outchef’d (9:30/8:30c, Food Network): Season 2 of the ambush bake-off opens with host Eddie Jackson inviting an amateur foodie to a cooking-show “audition” that turns out to be a surprise showdown with pro Rocco DiSpirito. If the newbie can get even one of four random taste-testers to pick their dish, a $5,000 prize awaits.
• True Crime Story: Look Into My Eyes (10/9c, SundanceTV): A four-part docuseries unravels the weird story of Dr. George Kenney, principal at Florida’s North Port High School, who allegedly practiced hypnosis on his students and was linked to the deaths of three teens over two months in 2011.

ON THE STREAM:

• Bonnaroo (streaming on Hulu): A live stream from the Tennessee music festival is available to subscribers through Sunday. For the lineup, visit www.hulu.com/bonnaroo.
• Jagged Mind (streaming on Hulu): Maisey Richardson-Sellers (DC’s Legends of Tomorrow) stars in an erotic psychological thriller as a woman whose blackouts and morbid visions may be related to her intense relationship with a new girlfriend (Westworld’s Shannon Woodward).
• My Journey to 50 (streaming on BET+): Actress Gabrielle Union makes the most of turning 50 in a two-part documentary special following her on a journey of self-discovery through Africa.