This post may contain affiliate links, which earn us commission. Learn more.
This is a rip-roaring space battle action adventure with plenty of humor and an impossible situation to escape, but that’s where Captain Kirk (played by Paul Wesley), taking the captain’s chair for the first time, comes in. There are a bajillion insider Star Trek interactions between characters that are very nostalgic for ST:TOS fans, but you don’t need to understand them to enjoy this standalone episode. The conclusion and twist don’t make any sense and they spend too much time on exposition explaining something that doesn’t make any sense.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is currently #6 in our Best 100 TV Shows to Stream Now.
The plot is that there’s a giant alien spaceship that is wrecking planets with some sort of gravity beam and is also scavenging other ships and it generates some sort of interference such that communications don’t work, which happens in, like, every other Star Trek episode. In this episode, the failed communications require a very creative and funny solution, so it pays off in the end. The USS Farragut encounters the monstrous alien ship first and takes heavy damage, knocking out the captain, which means… First Officer Kirk is now Captain Kirk. The USS Enterprise attempts a rescue and manages to beam over some key crew to the Farragut (Spock, Scotty, Uhura, and Chapel), but the Enterprise is “eaten” by the scavenger ship to be torn apart for scrap. The scavenger ship warps out at a slow speed and now it’s up to the Farragut to rescue the Enterprise.
No spoilers, but the badly damaged Farragut does catch up to the scavenger ship because, you know, Scotty, but there are no good options for Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. None. Except Pelia (Carol Kane), who is thousands of years old and has technology from the 1980s (that she probably should have given to Goodwill centuries ago), that may help.
There’s a big plot twist at the end that is supposed to be profound and land hard, but it really doesn’t and is kinda dumb, and they linger on it for far too long. Don’t overthink it. Overall, the episode has action-packed-but-short (budget, you know) space battles, a boarding party, phaser battles in the corridors, some very good tension, a nice dose of humor, and… Captain Kirk, for the first time.
NerdScore
7.0/10
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds — “The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail” (S3E6, 2025) Review
A bittersweet, trope-bending hour that nudges Kirk’s legend while giving Spock and the crew a reflective, character-first detour—ambitious, if not entirely airtight.
Season 3, Episode 6: The Enterprise confronts a looping dilemma with personal stakes that ripple through Kirk’s future and test the crew’s resolve.
IMDb
8.4/10
Metacritic
75/100
Rotten Tomatoes
80%
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds streams on Paramount+.