Captain Kirk gets in the captain’s seat this week, and I tell you what, this episode was exciting. If you haven’t watched it yet, you really don’t want to be here, because I’m going to spoil this whole thing.
I remember when I read the solicitation for the episode. I was like, wait, what? Is this wrong? And I’m looking around, and no, that’s the description of the episode. Okay. Right on. I don’t know what I expected, but this feels in line with what the season has done so far, and ultimately with where I believe the show is going.
This is Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, season 3, episode 6, “The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail.” I kind of dig that that’s the title, especially considering the sehlat, Spock’s pet, was at the time the only thing that came to us directly from The Animated Series. Now, obviously, with Lower Decks, we’ve gotten tons of things from that animated series.
A Planet Explodes and the Enterprise Gets Eaten
I don’t really do blow by blows anymore, so here’s the short version. The Farragut is on a routine geological inspection of a particular planet, an uninhabited M-class world outside Federation space, and Kirk is so deeply bored. He wants to go down and send an away team. Then the planet explodes, and you see this monster ship.
I immediately went, please tell me they’re not going to be doing that big giant cone-looking thing from the original series. I know Salty’s going to be like, “What’s the name of this thing?” And he’s absolutely right. I’m sorry. I just watched the episode, so you’re getting my first-blush review and ideas. Salty, Tim and I talk it through in more depth on Nerd Fights, after I’ve had more time to process it.
So the planet explodes, and the Enterprise arrives having received the distress signal. Communications are down, everything’s rough. They manage to get most of the injured over to the ship, and they send a rudimentary group over to help on the Farragut: Chapel, Spock, Scotty and Uhura. The best people in those individual areas, plus the nurse, Christine Chapel.
That’s when you see the scavenger ship. So it wasn’t the thing I was worried about. It literally looks like a giant mouth, like it’s a creature of some kind, with all these technical tentacles coming through. The Enterprise puts itself in the way and gets eaten by this ship, and the Farragut is pretty much ignored.
Everybody around Kirk is saying that under normal circumstances they’d have to leave, coordinate with Starfleet and head out. And he’s like, yeah, we’re not doing that. “Regulations would have us tuck tail and run back to Federation space. By the time we reach a subspace relay and get reinforcements, Enterprise will have been ripped to scraps.”
What a Prequel Is Supposed to Do
This episode is to Kirk what a lot of the other episodes we’ve seen have been for Scotty, for Spock, for Uhura. It’s about getting the character from his early days all the way to being the person we know him to be.
In the past, Star Trek fans have romanticized these characters, because we got to see them in their paragon form. We got to see them at peak. We got to see them being who they were in the original series, and it was wonderful and brilliant, and we’re like, well, clearly they came out of the womb that way. They didn’t.
What I’ve enjoyed is seeing the evolution of these characters toward that place. This show is really doing what a prequel series is supposed to do. It’s giving you context, and past the context it’s giving you really invaluable insight into how the characters moved from who they were to who they’re going to be. I really liked that for Kirk, this was the moment. This is him learning.
A lot of people will argue it’s just so convenient. Look, TV shows by their nature are contrived. Every episode, you’re saying this moment in these characters’ lives was interesting enough to be entertaining. It’s the exact same thing here. This is one of many moments where Kirk comes to understand what it means to be captain.
The Scavengers Were Human
You get it even at the very end, when Pike and Kirk are talking and Pike tells him: “Because the next time you’re in that chair you will remember we are often not that different from our enemy. And that knowledge from this moment on will continue to guide you.”
The scavengers were human. Ancient humans.
This is where Pelia comes in, and by the way, this is the episode where all the phone line things get used, and that’s from Pelia, of course. She number drops that she’s 5,000 years old, or well over 5,000 years old. Pelia was on Earth in the 80s, she was there through World War III, and she saw that crew go. “They were the best of us.” They went into space with no warp capability. This is before we met the Vulcans. And these are those people.
Kirk asks the question: how do you go from here to there? How do you go from the people you were in the beginning to this? And that’s the very journey we’re watching. There are a lot of philosophical questions in this hour that mirror what’s going on in the show itself. Good science fiction does that, by the way. I dug that.
Then You’re Going to Perform a Miracle
Once the Enterprise gets eaten, you get to see Kirk become very evaluative. There’s this really wonderful moment where he’s going at it with Scotty. He tells him what he’s got to have, Scotty’s telling him it’s impossible, and Kirk says, well, then you’re going to perform a miracle.
I’m okay with that. Most people would be like, screw you. Look, unless you’re that bitter at something resembling fan service, I don’t have a problem with it. To me, those are the kinds of moments that define character. This is all the right way to do stuff.
Mind you, I feel like if we’d got this 10 years earlier, we might have received it a little better. Right now we’re at the tail end of all this cynicism when it comes to storytelling, specifically about the Kurtzman-verse, if you will.
I do have one thing. I feel like Kirk looking like he was going to break felt a little out of character. “I don’t need chattering voices. What I need is to clear my head.” I’m able to look at that and evaluate it as a critic, but I’m a Star Trek fan first. This is my preeminent fandom. Before everything else, I was a Star Trek fan, and then I introduced everything else. So seeing Kirk really that despondent landed a little off for me.
What I do love is what comes out of it. Uhura, Spock, Chapel and Scotty are all talking, and they’re like, okay, someone should go talk to him. Who’s going to have that conversation? And Spock says it should be someone unemotional and unattached, and everyone looks at him, and he’s like, oh, yeah, I guess that’s me.
When he goes in, you see him start with, look, they need you out there to make commands, you’ve got to go do your thing. And Kirk keeps talking to him, and talking to him, and finally that’s when I feel like I witnessed Spock slip into the role he will be. “Your human intuition. It has gotten us this far. You’re all still here. I recommend you keep following it.”
He became encouraging, but in his own way. I dug the way they walked through that.
Scotty Didn’t Shift That Fast
Once Kirk is re-inspired to inspire, he comes out and says what he says. “I have no intention of giving up on rescuing the Enterprise. Not with the lives of both of our crews on the line.” And the minute he says he’s not going to abandon those crews, Scotty’s on board. “Thank you, sir. I needed to hear that.”
You can ask how Scotty shifted so fast. He didn’t shift so fast. What have we been watching from Scotty in the last several episodes? We’ve been watching trauma. Trauma bred from not being able to help his crew. Scotty’s on a journey, and at that moment he and Kirk collide, right at the intersection of I care for my crew and I don’t want to leave anybody behind.
So he’s in. He’s broken down the barrier that says this guy’s personality sucks, this stuff’s way more broken than he thinks, he doesn’t understand anything. Now he’s at, okay, the situation sucks, but I really respect this guy, and I’m going to do everything I can to figure out a way around it.
There’s a life lesson in there, and I’m not trying to go all philosophical on you. As leaders, we have to earn the respect of the people we’re in command of. And as people who have somebody above us, the minute you find a leader like that, I call that having someone you want to work for, which is a whole different thing from someone you just work for. In that moment Scotty became someone who wanted to work for Kirk. I love that.
And that’s what happens with a new mindset. When you have a positive outlook toward the situation, obstacles suddenly become puzzles to be figured out. That’s a great lesson on display in this episode. Especially because what Kirk poured into Uhura, Uhura pours into the group to get them involved. This is how you build the future relationships we’re going to see.
He Respects the Chair
I love that when the captain’s down, Kirk wasn’t just like, I’m sitting in the chair. He really struggled with the chair.
I don’t read that as him being unready for command. When I think about it, I feel like Kirk respects the chair to a place where he’s like, if I’m going to sit there, it’s not going to be because of an emergency. It’s going to be because I earned it, or because I belong there. And later on, when he finally does sit in it, I feel very much that it’s him starting to come to that place of I belong here.
Your mileage may vary. You might’ve got different things from it. If you’ve got the shattered glasses on, the ones that say I don’t like anything to do with this Trek, you probably won’t see the same things I saw.
Judged Against Itself
I try to come at everything as it is. I’ve got some friends on a podcast I used to be on who are very much of the mindset, I’m going to compare this to every other Star Trek episode. I don’t. I’m comparing this to itself. The most I might do is compare it to where it lives in this season, because I feel like these stories must be judged on their own merit. That’s why you can have a horrible episode two weeks ago and then this one, which I think really excels at doing what it does.
There are people who are going to complain that they’re stealing from better episodes. Which, by the way, I said two episodes ago, because I felt like it was very much true there. This one I feel lived up to the spirit of those things.
I’m sorry, this was pretty much an episode of the week from the old series. If you watch the old series, it was constantly a big alien thing, a space monster, or whatever. Those pieces are what made it Star Trek. So seeing them borrow from that ecosystem, I don’t hate. I’m actually kind of down for it.
The Verdict
Strange New Worlds “The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail” lands at a solid 9 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.
When you get to the end of this thing and you hear that conversation between Pike and Kirk, I feel like you have an idea of where the show can go. This was what Kirk needed. And they didn’t do wrong by having his captain go down. She’s coming back. But I feel like he’s ready.
What did you think of the episode? Did you like it, or were there things that bothered you about it? If my score didn’t add up for you, tell me why in the comments on the video above, and as always, keep it civil.
