Star Trek: Strange New Worlds put Paul Wesley in the spotlight as “The Shelat Who Ate Its Tail” showed the first time James T. Kirk was in command, and it was a wild tale with a shocking twist!
We open with Kirk making his first log, only to forget the stardate as the Farragut is conducting a survey of an alien world, and “I am so deeply bored.” He finds Captain V’Rel overcautious as he wants to explore, not be by the book: “I just think the book would be more interesting if I got to write it.” Yep, even then, Kirk chafed for action.
He proves it by suggesting that the away team check out the planet. He’s cut off when, without warning, a massive eruption takes out half the planet and strikes the ship. Recovering in the chaos, Kirk sees V’Rel badly wounded, and something is blocking their comms, sending out a mayday.
The Enterprise warps in to blast away some of the debris as Spock leads a team onto the Farragut with a wounded crewmember claiming to have seen something huge. Chapel got to the sickbay to find the doctor was among the dead. V’Rel was eager to get back to the bridge, but Chapel refused due to her brain damage.
Kirk was ordering the Farragut moved despite the lack of sensors and was surprised to see Spock, Uhura, and La’an enter. Uhura was able to link the communicator to the Enterprise, allowing Kirk and Pike to share data. Kirk related that a huge object had sent out a beam that broke the planet apart. La’an remembers the old legend of a “destroyer of worlds,” as Kirk said. Most of the crew had escaped, but he’d kept on a skeleton crew. He was reluctant to leave but understood Pike’s orders.
La’an beamed back to the Enterprise with some data, only for the comms to cut out. They all stared in shock as a colossal ship resembling a huge beast attacked the Enterprise, using strange tentacles to pull the ship into its massive maw, and then warped away.
Chapel shared that she’d beamed V’Rel to the Enterprise just before the creature attacked. Thus, for the first time, James T. Kirk was the captain of a ship.
Kirk's first command gets off to a rocky start
The Enterprise was held in a massive hangar bay with the remains of other ships held by tentacles. Pike and Una knew life support was fading, with La’an sharing the legend of the Astrovore, a scavenger ship centuries old, swallowing ships and planets at will.
Kirk gave his first captain’s log, relating how he had to lead a crew he didn’t know or fully trust. He was interrupted by the rest giving data on the ship. Kirk, naturally, was ready to go after the Astrovore, citing his brother on the ship. Scotty suggested the only reason the Farragut was spared was that it was in too bad shape. Kirk ordered Scotty to start working some miracles to get them ready to follow the craft.
Back on the Enterprise, Pike and a small crew ran into Pelia and some engineers who reported how a large umbilical had flooded engineering with toxic gas and was siphoning away their power. Kirk and Scotty were having their own engineering “discussion,” which was Kirk ordering Scotty to do the impossible. It happened that the scavenger was heading toward a planet with a pre-warp civilization of over a million people. That pushed Kirk to demand that Scotty work a miracle.
Ortegas had to break the news that there was barely any power to get the engines going. While they could get the engines working manually, they’d be flying blind and, worse, couldn't communicate across the ship. Fortunately, they just happened to have an engineer who was 5,000 years old.
Pike, La’an, and a security officer found the umbilical only to get into a brief firefight with some of those armored scavengers. Amazingly, the Farragut was underway and closing in on the Astrovore with Kirk feeling pleased with himself, enough to finally sit in the captain’s chair. That confidence was ruined when the ship dropped out of warp, only to be without any engines and dead in space.
The only options seemed to be to play dead or abandon ship to contact Starfleet. Kirk refused both as he stormed out with the crew debating whether Kirk was even fit for command. Uhura defended Kirk helping her before, and they needed to back him up now.
Pike and La’an had to mourn the dead security officer before using some vodka to blast the scavengers away. Pelia rummaged through her closet to start pulling out old-style landline phones, which couldn’t be jammed.
The chase leads to a shocking twist
Spock found Kirk studying a chessboard that he and V’Rel had been using. Spock pressed Kirk on Sam, praising him with Kirk sharing how he’d spent so long wanting to be in command, only to make bad calls and leave them helpless. Spock brings up the episode title, which is the Vulcan version of “The dog caught the car,” and Kirk has to lead.
Inspired, Kirk pressed the crew for info, with Uhura pointing out the scavengers could never have enough energy. Kirk figured out they could use that against them by making the Astrovore believe they had a massive amount of aldentium and be irresistible to the enemy ship. He then warned that the rest of his plan was going to be even crazier.
Pike and La’an used some doors as riot shields to fight off the marauders, with La’an killing one who was about to shoot Pike, who was confused as to why the scavenger didn’t shoot him. He worked on breaking the cord while the crew used the phone lines to communicate with each other and get the engines online.
The Farragut arrived to face the Astrovore with Uhura, Scott, and Spock all in stations that would become very familiar to them under Kirk. The Farragut then dropped its warp nacelles, which the tentacles followed to its own hull, and thus the scavenger ship knocked itself out.
They managed to communicate with the Enterprise as the crew members played phone tag to get the engines going. Pike and La’an used some fuel to detach the umbilical and give the engines enough power to move, with Una pulling a smart move, depressurizing a hallway to aid the escape.
Pike and La’an were surprised to find the wounded scavenger had vanished. They had little time to worry about that as the Astrovore was waking up. As the Enterprise raced out of the maw, Spock fired some photon torpedoes into the heart of the beast, blowing the Astovore apart.
There were thousands of life signs of the ship's crew, but they were unable to beam any on board. Spock related that the life signs were all human as Pike found the dead scavenger with a human face. Getting a close look at the Astrovore’s hull, the crew was shocked to see the emblem of an American flag.
A quick historical search uncovered that in the mid-21st century, before First Contact, a pack of scientists, convinced Earth was dying, took a ship into space to find new worlds. The ship vanished as Pelia shared her memories of a brave pack of volunteers as they all wondered how their descendants turned into this race of murderous marauders.
Pike told Kirk that V’Rel would recover and thanked Kirk for his help. Kirk still felt the guilt over killing seven thousand humans as Pike told him how Kirk would always regret some choices, but had to live with them. He admired Kirk, feeling empathy for the scavengers as Kirk wondered if Starfleet could fall the way those explorers did. Pike said that as long as Kirk was not so different from the enemy, he would do well. He bid good night to Captain Kirk, leaving the younger man to his thoughts.
This was an exciting hour that gave us the early Kirk, a man who learned the hard way about being careful what you wish for. He got his shot at command to realize how jumping into things without taking in all the dangers. Yet it’s still the Kirk we know, coming up with a wild solution to save the day. The “old tech phones” bit was a clever idea yet the twist of these seemingly evil aliens being descendants of once noble Earthlings was an unexpected turn to solidify an exciting hour.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds airs new episodes Thursdays on Paramount+.