See 3 Star Trek Icons Meet For The Very First Time
With today’s episode, “Lost in Translation,” Star Trek: Strange New Worlds‘ second season is officially past the halfway point. It also brings fans two historic meetings. The episode gives us the first meeting between Nyota Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) and James Kirk (Paul Wesley) as well as the first meeting between two Trek Icons who will go on to form the most consequential friendship in the franchise: Kirk and Spock (Ethan Peck).
Both Nyota Uhura and Spock meet the iconic James T. Kirk, their future captain, for the first time in today’s episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
We don’t get to see much interaction between Kirk and Spock after Uhura introduces them. Fittingly, the arrival of Spock — who will one day become Kirk’s brother in spirit — immediately follows the departure of James’ biological brother George (Dan Jeannotte), who is still furious at the more famous Kirk for outshining him in their father’s eyes.
Uhura initially thinks Kirk is hitting on her and, you know, considering his history it’s tough to blame her.
The latest Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode ends shortly after Spock joins Kirk and Uhura, so we don’t get to hear much of their conversation. But it’s clear right away that a mutual, organic respect and curiosity about the other exists between Kirk and his future first officer.
Really, it’s clear Kirk is intrigued with Spock much earlier than that, when he introduces himself to Uhura. Before offering to shake her hand, Kirk tells the ensign that she unintentionally disrupted the match of Tridimensional Chess between the Vulcan and Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush), and that Spock — who had been winning — is now about to lose.
Since he wasn’t sitting with the couple at the time, the fact that Kirk noticed so much about the game’s progress makes his curiosity clear.
The first meeting between Uhura and Kirk isn’t quite as cordial as the latter’s introduction to Star Trek’s most famous Vulcan. Uhura, suffering from what she believes are hallucinations — including a vision of a zombified Hemmer (Bruce Horak) attacking her in the turbolift — the communications officer is exhausted and confused.
Uhura initially thinks Kirk is hitting on her and, you know, considering his history it’s tough to blame her. But in the end, the man who will become the most famous captain in Star Trek proves to be her most useful ally in the episode.
Wesley’s version of Kirk has already proven to have a much bigger impact on the new season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds than he did on the first. In fact, in “Lost in Translation,” we get our first significant appearance by a version of his Kirk that isn’t from another timeline.
Wesley’s debut as Kirk was in the Season 1 finale, “A Quality of Mercy,” which showed us an alternate version of the 1966 Star Trek: The Original Series episode “Balance of Terror” in which Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) still captains the Enterprise.
He last appeared in “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow,” once more from an alternate timeline in which Earth is as a wasteland.
Where’s Scotty?
Speaking of “A Quality of Mercy,” we’re still waiting to meet a Star Trek icon we heard but didn’t see in that episode. English actor Matt Wolf was the voice of the miracle worker himself, future Enterprise Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, but we never see the character’s face.
There’s no word on whether Wolf or someone else has been tapped to play Scotty in Strange New Worlds in body as well as voice.
There’s still time for a new Scotty to make his debut this season. Four episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds‘ second season remain. New episodes premiere every Thursday on Paramount+.
