Strange New Worlds S3E6: The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail
All of the “previously on” clips are characters discussing death, so that doesn’t bode well for the crew, but it’s not the Enterprise crew we need to worry about. We begin on board the USS Farragut, where her first officer, one James T. Kirk, is bored with his mission, and his overly-cautious by-the-book captain. Her caution is warranted, however, as just as Kirk suggests beaming down to the planet they’re scanning and getting their hands dirty, the planet explodes without warning.
The ship is damaged, comms are down, and the captain is badly injured. Cue a rescue party from the USS Enterprise. Kirk tells Pike that in the chaos after the explosion, he saw a glimpse of a massive ship. He thinks it fired a beam at the planet, causing the explosion. Before the two captains can decide on a course of action, the ship reappears, a mouth-like hatch opens, and it swallows the Enterprise whole, before flying off to parts unknown. Which leaves Kirk stranded on a crippled ship, with a handful of survivors, and a rescue party conveniently made up of his future Enterprise colleagues.
It’s a hell of a setup. Kirk and the Farragut have to get their damaged ship running well enough to rescue the Enterprise, while Pike and his remaining crew have to find a way out of the belly of the beast. Their captors are scavengers, who strip planets and ships for resources and discards the occupants — essentially a cruder equivalent to the Borg. And some of them have boarded the Enterprise to begin dismantling the ship.
We talk often about Strange New Worlds doing the classic Star Trek formula exceedingly well, and they have never done it better or more faithfully than this episode. We get daring rescues, firefights, fistfights, explosions, unlikely escapes, and everything you’d want from the action side of Trek. But we also get a young Kirk working through his doubts about the leadership position he’s been thrust into, and a crew who don’t yet trust him enough to follow him blindly.
We also get a heck of a lot of fan service — Kirk putting his faith in Scotty to do the impossible. Spock providing wise counsel. Kirk pontificating about being in the business of risk. Kirk rejecting all available options and finding an unlikely solution. But like the best fan service, it first and foremost serves the story. Yes, this is Captain Kirk’s First Command, the kind of moment prequels live for. But it would be no less of a story if we were meeting Kirk for the first time. It’s not some trivia about how Han Solo got his last name or whether Hannibal Lecter had any childhood trauma. The episode tells a story about stepping up into a leadership role, facing down death and, as an old country doctor once said, turning it into a fighting chance to live.
The real fan service isn’t that we get to see Kirk, Spock, Scotty, and Uhura working together. It’s that over and over again, the episode — and this series — remind us why we loved Star Trek in the first place. And that means we don’t just get a thrilling adventure, we get a philosophical denouement about what it all means. Making tough decisions and then living with them. Facing an enemy you can’t fully understand. Developing empathy, even for the people trying to kill you. They’re big, weighty themes. The kind that Star Trek — even Strange New Worlds — has only skimmed in the Paramount Plus era.
I’ve long been of the opinion that, if Paramount is going to follow up SNW with a spin-off, they’d be better served following Una, La’an, and Ortegas onto a new ship and new adventures, rather than continue running the franchise in tighter and tighter circles around the same few characters. I stand corrected. If “The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail” is in fact a backdoor pilot to Star Trek: Year One, it promises to be a hell of a show.
Stray tachons:
• One of several jury-rigged solutions to save the day involves centuries-old Pelia digging up some rotary phones she saved from 20th century Earth to build a communication system the aliens can’t jam. It’s the exact mixture of clever and stupid that’s as much a part of what makes Star Trek Star Trek as all the rest of it.
• Once again, several of the leads (M’Benga, Ortegas, Number One) are relegated to background roles. Once again, it hardly matters.
