Strange New Worlds Season 3 Shows The Beginning Of Star Trek's Most Important Friendship

Spoilers for "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" follow.

Future Captain James T. Kirk (Paul Wesley) is a recurring face on "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds." The show has not been shy about hinting at his destiny, but it has been a bit coy in setting up his friendship with his future first officer and best friend, Spock (Ethan Peck)... until now. 

Kirk and Spock first briefly met a season ago at the end of the episode "Lost in Translation." Now in the latest episode, "The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail," they directly work together for the first time. The USS Farragut, where Kirk is currently first officer, is caught in a planetary disaster. The ship's Vulcan captain is injured so Kirk steps up into the big seat, while the Enterprise arrives to bring aid, beaming over a few of its crew — including Spock. But then, the Enterprise itself is captured by an enormous scavenger ship, putting the mixed crew on the Farragut in a race against time to save them.

Kirk, who has his first test of command under stress, shows signs of breaking and a tyrannical management style. Chapel (Jess Bush) and Scotty (Martin Quinn) discuss potentially removing him. But Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding), who currently knows Jim the best, has faith and says he just needs counsel. Spock, the least emotive person on board, is chosen to advise Kirk and counterbalance his hotheadedness. In the process, they realize they make a good team. 

But the Trekkies already knew that. The classic friendship between Kirk (William Shatner, whom Wesley recently imitated) and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) is one of the best-remembered parts of the original "Star Trek." A classic opposites-attract dynamic (one's a risk taker, the other utterly logical), Kirk has shown he would risk everything for Spock, just as Kirk is the one man who can make Spock smile (in "Amok Time"). The pair were the beginning of "slash" fanfiction, where fandom writers pair up imaginary romantic couples. The Kirk/Spock ship literally has its own Wikipedia page.

So, Wesley's Kirk and Peck's Spock finally got an extended scene together on "Strange New Worlds." But how does it foreshadow their legendary friendship?

In Kirk's quarters, he confides in Spock how he's wanted to be a captain for so long, but now that he has it, he's flailing about. Kirk invokes the proverb of the dog who caught the car he was chasing, which Spock compares to the Vulcan idiom that gives this episode its title. But Spock, unburdened by Kirk's emotional turmoil, is able to remind Kirk of how he wanted to be captain because he knew he could do the job.

In "The Original Series," Spock was always Kirk's closest advisor next to Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley); the Captain's task was balancing Spock's logic and Bones' emotion. In "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan," after Spock's (temporary, but still heartbreaking) death, Kirk's reading glasses are pointedly shown cracked. As prolific "Star Trek" video reviewer SFDebris noted, the broken glasses symbolize how Kirk has lost Spock, the one who always helped him see more clearly. 

Observe, too, how Kirk's musing in "The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail" happens while he's looming over a chess board. Spock and Kirk have a mutual love for chess and often played against each other in "The Original Series." During their very first scene together in the (intended) "Star Trek" pilot "Where No Man Has Gone Before," they're playing chess, and Spock is somewhat confounded by Kirk's "illogical" strategies.

In "Court Martial," when Kirk is on trial for seeming negligence that caused a crewman's death, chess is integral to Spock clearing Kirk's name. Spock can't dispute the computer record of Kirk's actions without direct evidence of a malfunction. So, to test if the Enterprise computer is working properly, he plays against it in chess. Spock wins four times in a row, which should be impossible, and thus he concludes the computer has been tampered with to frame Kirk. To Spock, the more logical conclusion was the computer, not Kirk, was wrong. There's no greater testament to his faith in his friend than that. 

The J.J. Abrams-directed "Star Trek" film depicted a young Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto) who initially hated each others' guts, but grew into being friends during a trial by fire. "Strange New Worlds" has been much more subtle in showing the beginnings of this legendary bond.

"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" is streaming on Paramount+, with new episodes of season 3 debuting on Thursdays.