Strange New Worlds Just Made Its Best Pitch Yet For Star Trek: Year One

Beam us up and away from spoilers, Mr. Scott. This article discusses major plot details from the latest episode of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds."

"Star Trek" has always remained a property with one eye firmly set on the bright future ahead of us, but the latest episode of "Strange New Worlds" might've just given us our biggest and most intriguing glimpse into what could be ... potentially, at least. Season 3 of the "Discovery" spinoff series has picked up right where the second season left off, resolving the Gorn subplot in the premiere before going full-tilt into a number of episodic stories about (mostly) standalone adventures. This latest one happens to revolve around familiar face James T. Kirk (Paul Wesley) as the First Officer aboard the USS Farragut, documenting his first significant experience assuming the responsibility of acting captain during a moment of crisis. By picking these particular circumstances as the main storyline, however, the writing team might as well have made their best pitch yet for a sequel series fans and the creative team alike have clamored for — "Star Trek: Year One."

It all starts unassumingly enough. While exploring a distant world and running routine geological surveys, the ever-listless Kirk chafes at the lack of risks his captain and the rest of the crew are willing to take. Just as he makes an impassioned plea to actually put boots on the ground and see what might be seen, though, he's rudely interrupted by the entire planet exploding into atomized bits by a spaceship — one that's large and powerful enough to defy everything we thought we knew about the universe. Cut off from Anson Mount's Christopher Pike and left entirely on his own with a skeleton crew of bridge officers from the rescuing USS Enterprise, Kirk faces his initial make-or-break test since joining Starfleet.

What's his command style? Can he inspire a crew that hardly knows him? How will he handle the first of many no-win scenarios? Episode 6, titled "The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail," provides those answers. And when the smoke clears on this formative experience, it plants the seeds for what we all hope will be the successor to "Strange New Worlds" once it concludes.

As a prequel to "The Original Series," "Strange New Worlds" has had to take a deliberate approach to filling in the canon gaps; but, as we draw closer to the fifth and final season, fans will inevitably notice a shift that brings things in alignment with the "Star Trek" show that started it all. Of course, that means putting James T. Kirk in the captain's chair to replace Captain Pike, whom we know is doomed to suffer debilitating injuries in the line of duty a few years in the future. The long and winding series of events leading to that new status quo may have just been kick-started in earnest with the newest episode.

Thanks to some clever writing, Paul Wesley's version of Kirk has encountered the ship and crew that he'll one day call his own numerous times over the last few seasons. Though he's still the brash and trigger-happy officer we know and love (even if he's only intermittently been able to go full William Shatner on us), there's still a long way to go before he proves himself to be fit for command. For better or worse, he begins to learn this process on the fly when the alien vessel described as a "Destroyer of worlds" forces him to assume the role of acting captain and somehow use his half-working ship to save the day. It's not a coincidence that he's stuck with several bridge officers from the Enterprise he'll eventually take charge of — Jess Bush's Nurse Chapel, Martin Quinn's Scotty, Celia Rose Gooding's Uhura, and, most notably, Ethan Peck's Spock. But, at this point in the timeline, only Uhura is even vaguely familiar with his personality and leadership abilities.

In a clever twist, Kirk's arc in this episode takes the form of some serious growing pains. In what should be his moment of triumph, he completely falls on his face when he ends up "frozen" and unable to decide on the best of several bad options. Luckily, a pep talk with Spock (involving a game of 3D chess, no less) helps him regain faith in his own intuition. By the end, he's taken one giant step closer to the Captain Kirk of franchise yore ... but not before learning one more hard-hitting lesson.

As much as "Strange New Worlds" may be laying the groundwork for "Year One" sometime down the line, it wouldn't be a proper hour of "Star Trek" without imparting a lesson in morality by the time the credits roll. We soon find out that the scavenging vessel wreaking havoc in this corner of the galaxy is actually a group of surviving humans, descended from an ancient group of astronauts who set out from Earth in the 21st Century for the noblest of purposes. Ultimately, their mission became corrupted over the long centuries that passed and resulted in this monstrous crew ravaging the cosmos, seeking out unsuspecting victims of all species to plunder and destroy to fuel their own insatiable needs. All of this information reaches (acting) Captain Kirk too late, unfortunately, after he gives the order to destroy the scavenger ship and kill all those on board.

This horrifying turn of events gives "Strange New Worlds" the perfect opportunity to deliver some harsh truths to the main protagonist of this episode. The wise and experienced Captain Pike takes the tough love approach, gently but firmly informing Kirk that sitting in the captain's chair requires making the toughest of choices — and living with the consequences that follow. Suddenly, butting heads with the crew feels like small potatoes compared to the awfully sobering reality of holding the power of life and death in the palm of his hands. In classic "Trek" fashion, this becomes a teachable moment where Kirk realizes the power of empathy. Though not always depicted as literally as this episode, Starfleet's enemies are often no different than themselves. Anyone who's watched "The Original Series" or the various movies knows that this quality becomes a trademark characteristic in the future Captain Kirk. And, in its own unique way, "Strange New Worlds" has now brought us that much closer to the "Star Trek: Year One" we're all keen to see.

New episodes of "Strange New Worlds" stream on Paramount+ every Wednesday.