Star Trek Strange New Worlds: The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail

"I am betting on us."

First Officer James T. Kirk of the USS Farragut was bored out of his mind with planetary surveys and longing to take command. Do you think maybe everyone needs to be careful what they wish for?

I'm so happy that we got to see Captain Kirk's first command under fire. And that his first crew consisted of four members of his future crew. And that they all connected. Especially Kirk and Spock, because of course they did.

Right out of the gate, Kirk gave the wrong orders, and Spock immediately pushed back. After Kirk left the bridge, unprepared and unsure and worried he was going to kill everyone with the wrong decisions, the crew started talking about how to remove Kirk from command. If Spock had made that choice, Kirk's first command could have been his last. Instead, Spock advised and encouraged and confronted. He pushed Kirk to be all that he could be. And Kirk came out of the ready room, um, ready. He got the best performances out of all of them and showed he was ready for the big chair.

(Paul Wesley did an adorable Shatner imitation when he sat down in the captain's chair for the first time, crossed his legs and smiled.)

This is the middle of season three. I like how long it took to bring Captain Kirk into this series without in any way cheating Captain Pike. SNW is Pike's story, after all. But, duh, it's also Spock's, Uhura's, Scotty's and Christine's. Uhura already had a positive experience with Kirk to build upon, and Christine pretty much did the best she could. It was Scotty who was the most argumentative, and I am loving Martin Quinn in this role. Gold casting stars, SNW people.

Meanwhile, on the endangered Enterprise that looked like it was being strangled by enormous pythons, communications were down and runners were passing messages throughout the ship while fighting the bad guys hand to hand until Pelia came up with... designer telephones. I almost can't express how much I loved the telephones. And how appropriate it was, considering the OG series is famous for introducing the concept of flip phones in 1966.

Original Star Trek was also famous for giving us the opposite of one-dimensional villains, for aliens who had motivations that made sense to them but not to us. The Scavengers seemed to be heartless, inhuman monsters, The Annihilator, Destroyer of Worlds. In the end, Kirk and Pike saved their ships and the hundred million beings on Sullivan's Planet, but Kirk caused the deaths of seven thousand humans, and he might never know why. Not an easy victory.

What happened to those astronauts and their families after they left Earth? What made them so destructive? Was there a reasonable explanation for the killing they did? How could there be?

Bits:

— No stardate given, Kirk's log. The USS Farragut was conducting a survey of Helicon Gamma, an uninhabited M-Class world.

— Interesting that Kirk's captain is a Vulcan when OG Spock was initially an oddity in Starfleet. I guess we've already wafted past too many continuity slip-ups already, so whatever.

— Kirk and V'Rel had an ongoing 3-D chess game. She always beat him. Interesting since in OG Star Trek, Kirk always beat Spock at 3-D chess.

— The aliens/humans in their huge, clumsy space suits reminded me of Robbie the Robot.

— Christine got her best hair so far. Could we stick with this one?

— I loved Pelia's quarters with Andy Warhol and 8-bit video games. I also liked the deliberate bit with La'an and the yellow computer disk.

— I also enjoyed the scene in the Enterprise bar with the crystals in the chandelier raining down, and the molotov cocktail.

Quotes:

Scotty: "What in Baird's name happened here?"
Christine: "Whose name?"
Scotty: "The Scottish inventor. Everyone knows John Logie Baird."
The guy sounds like a brilliant lunatic. Very much the sort of man Scotty would admire.

Mitchell: "The monster past the edge of the map."

Scotty: "You're not asking me to warp us past them, with the head start they've got? Look, I can give us warp power, but if you think this tub will hold together at high speed after the beating she just took, your bum's out the window."
OMG, I love him.

Pelia: "This may be the first time I'm glad to have lived through the nineteen-eighties."

Scotty: "I told you, I rechecked the numbers, and re-rechecked them, and all three times confirmed the warp engines are now giant paperweights."

Spock: "Good leaders know when to listen. And when not to."

Kirk: "My mom was fond of an expression: the dog who caught the car. Now that I've finally latched onto one, I have no idea what to do with it."
Spock: "On Vulcan, we have a similar expression: the sehlat who ate its tail. Though I would point out that you have a significant leg up over a quadrupedal beast: your human intuition. It has guided us this far. We are all still here. I recommend you keep following it."

Kirk: "I still feel funny being called that while V'Rel's alive."
Spock: "I promise to demote you at the earliest opportunity."

Pelia: "I haven't done this since I was a roadie for the Dead."
Ortegas: "Your species can communicate with dead people?"

I loved this episode. Four out of four pink princess telephones,

Billie
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

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