Star Trek: Strange New Worlds showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers have promised that the Paramount Plus show will take viewers right up to the events of the original 1966 Star Trek. The prequel got a step closer with the sixth episode of Strange New Worlds season 3, which places James T. Kirk (Paul Wesley) in command of his future crew for the first time.
Strange New Worlds involves a lot of time travel, so this isn’t actually the first time the show has put some variation of Kirk in the captain’s chair. Wesley’s version of Kirk was introduced in the season 1 finale as the aggressive commander of the USS Farragut, in an alternate future where Enterprise Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) never experienced the devastating accident that leads to Kirk taking over the Federation flagship. The Romulan negotiations Pike and Kirk conduct in that timeline prove so disastrous that Pike becomes further convinced that he shouldn’t try to escape his fate.
A different version of Kirk is captain of the Enterprise in another alternate timeline in season 2. Most of that episode is actually spent on Earth in the 2020s, as Kirk and Enterprise security chief La’An Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong) try to stop a Romulan time traveler from altering the past so that the United Federation of Planets never forms.
The Kirk of Strange New Worlds’ primary timeline has no memory of either of those episodes. He has made a few visits to the Enterprise, where his older brother Sam (Dan Jeannotte) serves as a xenoanthropologist. Kirk had an adventure with ensign Nyota Uhura (Cecilia Rose Gooding) that led her to introduce Kirk to his future best friend Spock (Ethan Peck). Kirk also spends time shadowing Pike’s second-in-command, Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn) after being promoted to executive officer of the Farragut.
All that time has provided glimpses of the things that will make Kirk a Starfleet legend: He’s curious, charming, and he operates on instinct. But season 3’s “The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail” fully sets him on that journey, with the help of the younger versions of the original-series crew members. After two seasons of teasing Kirk’s future with alternate timelines, this episode makes his destiny real while reinforcing the strengths of Strange New Worlds’ core cast.
[Ed. note: This article contains major spoilers for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3, episode 6.]
“The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail” opens with Kirk’s personal log, demonstrating his impatience with the Farragut’s risk-adverse Vulcan Captain V’Rel (Zoe Doyle). Kirk is eager for some action, asking to lead an away team to get better data on the planet they’re observing. He gets an immediate lesson in why the bold approach isn’t always the best one when the planet is blown up and the impact nearly takes down the Farragut, too.
The blast does knock out V’Rel, forcing Kirk to temporarily assume the duties of captain of the Farragut. The Enterprise sends Spock, Uhura, Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush), engineer Montgomery Scott (Martin Quinn) and La’An to help. La’An beams back to the Enterprise with the Farragut’s tactical data right before the flagship is captured by a massive, ominous scavenger ship. That leaves Kirk and the crew members he will eventually lead in the ’60s Star Trek to come up with a rescue plan.
The Farragut is crippled, operating with a skeleton crew after V’Rel’s evacuation order. They’re dealing with a threat that’s nearly mythical, a mysterious ship that prowls the edges of known space stripping everything in its path for parts. The Enterprise couldn’t even scratch the ship’s hull. It’s the sort of impossible mission that Kirk will eventually be known for facing.
But the episode’s name references the Vulcan version of “the dog who caught the car,” and Wesley portrays a version of Kirk who’s nervous about his new responsibilities. He barely knows the Enterprise crew members he’s working with, and he needs them to trust him in spite of his lack of experience. Scott is especially skeptical of Kirk’s leadership, questioning his risky plan to push the badly damaged Farragut to its limits so they can race ahead of the scavenger ship.
As Kirk’s suggestion to land on the planet that was about to explode proved, his brazen plans are dangerous. Just as Kirk is starting to look confident sitting in the captain’s chair, the Farragut’s engines fail because Kirk ordered Scott to push them too hard. Presented with only terrible options for what to do next, Kirk refuses to choose. “That is a bold, and if you don’t mind me saying, highly unorthodox choice,” Scott says with contemptuous sarcasm, mocking the very traits Kirk is known for.
Kirk storms off the bridge, leaving the Enterprise crew to consider the possibility of stripping him of command. But Spock steps in to talk Kirk through his crisis of faith. Spock mostly knows of Kirk secondhand from Sam, who often mentions his brother’s willingness to throw his weight around, which leaves Spock surprised to see Kirk shaken. Throughout his career, Kirk has often been certain he was destined for greatness, because he thinks he’s always right. “The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail” shows what young Kirk looks like when he’s living with the consequences of being wrong.
Spock and Kirk are such a good pair because they represent opposite styles, and here, the logical Spock encourages Kirk to listen to his instincts and work with the command crew to turn things around. With a rousing speech, Kirk leads a brainstorming session, coming up with a wild plan to capitalize on the rogue ship’s greed to paralyze it and rescue the Enterprise.
Yet Kirk’s education isn’t over. “The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail” has a cruel twist: the scavenger ship is crewed entirely by humans, the remnant of a pre-warp space mission that was meant to represent the best of humanity. Blowing up the ship seems like a great victory because it stops a rampaging terror, but Kirk has to live with killing 7,000 people. “I didn’t think of them as people at all, until it was too late,” Kirk confesses to Pike in a debriefing.
Pike and Kirk’s first meeting in Strange New Worlds’ alternate future showed Pike driven by empathy, while Kirk followed his aggressive instincts. But the main-timeline Kirk is being guided by Pike to be a better captain through a hybrid style. “The next time you’re in that chair, you’ll remember that we’re often not that different from our enemy,” Pike tells Kirk. Strange New Worlds still has a fourth season and an abbreviated fifth season to introduce more of the original-series crew and put Kirk in command of the Enterprise. By then, he’ll certainly have earned the role.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is available to stream on Paramount Plus. Further episodes will be released weekly on Thursday.
