Another week, another episode of Strange New Worlds Season 3 has landed! Today’s episode is (Episode 6) “The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail”, spotlighting James T. Kirk’s (Paul Wesley) journey to command, and the bonus of an almost complete TOS crew team-up. The USS Enterprise is captured by mythical scavengers, and chaos ensues. But wait… Kirk again? As the captain? During the third season of Strange New Worlds?
WARNING – Spoilers below for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 Episode 6 “The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail”
On the Farragut
Right from the cold open (as if all the teases on social media didn’t tee it up), we know we’re going to be spending a lot of time with Kirk this week. Thankfully, they’ve not moved him to the Enterprise just yet. He’s still serving on the Farragut, a ship that looks suspiciously like the Enterprise on the inside. Full of a nameless bridge crew that we don’t get to care about.
The Farragut’s on a standard mission, but it doesn’t take long before Kirk is essentially the last man standing. I understand needing to take V’Rel (Zoe Doyle) – the Farragut’s Captain – out of the equation to force Kirk into the chair. The sequence, however, was so contrived it bordered on ridiculous. Kirk’s hesitancy to take the center seat is a fine enough arc, focused on him coming to terms with being in command, but it feels so unnecessary this early on.
As you would expect, Jim receives an encouraging pep talk from Spock (Ethan Peck), which also serves as a convenient way to highlight the episode’s nonsensical title. Silly and convenient seem to be the core themes for this ‘bottle’ episode. From adequately broken sets to a frankly ridiculous and unsettling resolution.
Villains of the week
The Farragut is under attack from what will be revealed as a powerfully advanced scavenger ship. For most of the episode, the ship is shown as so strong that it can’t be touched by the Enterprise, even at full power. Enter a classic sci-fi trope, the ship is ultimately destroyed by 3 photon torpedoes in just the right spot. And it’s conveniences like this that are just the tip of the iceberg for this week’s episode.
The biggest inconsistency is that these villains of the week are humans, played for a last-act twist. Looking at the episode through this lens makes us ask why they don’t recognise key details like Federation ships’ systems being in English? Or maybe the big ‘USS Enterprise’ on the hull? Or keep up the killing and draining despite biological similarities (which comes into play just at the right moment…)? All of these things could be waved away by centuries of isolation, desperation, and scavenging. However, the episode doesn’t seem remotely interested in exploring what happened to them in any detail, merely keeping them as faceless adversaries until the reveal.
It’s this lack of exploration that makes the twist all the more bizarre. In such a small window of time, they’ve built a gargantuan ship with advanced weaponry, capable of taking down the Federation’s flagship. Of all the enemies to not give any depth to, not even a speaking role, this was certainly a choice. I’d have loved to hear more from them, but hey, maybe it’s fine for Starfleet to massacre a whole civilisation blindly before the rug-pull moment.
It’s a twist that ruins the episode, with the ending becoming this absurd display of American exceptionalism washed down with a bit of mass murder. And it has Pike, of all people, trying to dismiss it when trying to soothe Kirk’s mildly disquieted conscience. And where the season’s opening was silly for everybody living, this episode is equally silly for everyone dying. The morals are all over the place, and for a supposedly utopian future, and for Star Trek, it’s kinda soul-destroying for the series.
Going Retro
It’s not all bad, however. The real saving grace of this episode is Pelia (Carol Kane). She gives such a silly, goofy performance that brightens up every scene she’s a part of. Getting to dig through her eccentric quarters is a blast, filled with relics from her centuries-long lifetime. I may not love the incessant Original Series setup this week, but I adored Pelia talking about controlling 8-bit spaceships.
It’s actually these controllers, paired with old telephones, that form what’s easily the best sequence in the episode. It’s not the first time the Enterprise has been controlled with a joystick (looking at you Insurrection), though it’s probably the most entertaining. Not only is there the novelty of them needing to use ancient tech, but also failing to recognise it. Ortegas (Melissa Navia) definitely got a chuckle out of me there.
Forcing the use of the phone to have the crew talk to each other was really quite funny, too. It’s still a gimmick, and I do think Ortegas looked into the camera a bit too much for some reason, but it was a welcome shift from the usual technobabble from previous episodes. Pelia’s not a main character by any stretch, but she felt so authentically developed this week. It’s a shame that she hasn’t made more appearances this season.
The Best of Us
The final twist is played in one of the worst ways possible. The scavengers, in their convenient faceless helmets, are now dead or dying, and as they float around in space, are finally revealed to be human. And for some bizarre reasons, it’s not possible to save a single one. The idea that this makes the massacre more tragic, when it was wrong regardless, turns the episode into a broken morality play. That’s putting aside the World War 3 lore dump, featuring an American flag, and talk of how they’re the greatest country.
The major problem with this is that it’s in the middle of a season hellbent on othering the Gorn, treating them as little more than scary lizard aliens to shoot at. In a franchise as diverse as Star Trek, being human doesn’t make your life more valuable or more important. The scavengers being human or American doesn’t change the lives lost or their value. While Kirk’s a little haunted by this, curious about their lives, the episode doesn’t even attempt to explore this.
It even features a talk by Pike (Anson Mount), trying to help Kirk live with what he did. It contradicts everything we know of the character and diminishes Pike in the process. And it’s not the first time this season. As we saw just a few episodes ago, helping cover up a murder committed by M’Benga, justified as helping a friend. It’s just a slap in the face and a new moral low for the series. Not to mention the eyeroll-inducing musical crescendo as Kirk is called “Captain” for the first time. A setup for The Original Series has never felt so egregious or detrimental to the franchise.
When all’s said and done…
“The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail” is so close to being good on paper. The technobabble is firing on all cylinders; there are ships in danger, corridors to run down. All the ingredients of a decent Trek romp. The bottle episode budget doesn’t help, though. Where the episode completely falls apart, however, is in the criminally underdeveloped villains and ensuing morality fail. As well as the choice to sideline the show’s actual main characters by focusing on Kirk.
With the recent chatter about a “Year One” spin-off following Strange New Worlds‘ conclusion, it’s hard to see this episode as anything less than a backdoor pilot. What can and should have been the Pike show has chosen to use him as a player in Kirk’s rise to power. It’s sad to see the show so eager to set up TOS, effectively becoming a detriment to the characters and stories that SNW started so brilliantly with.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 premiered on July 17th (2025) and will continue weekly on Paramount+ in the US, UK, Canada, Latin America, Australia, Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and Japan. It is also available to stream on SkyShowtime in the Nordics, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, and Central and Eastern Europe.
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