Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3.6: Chris and Jim

I was just talking with Sean Fodera yesterday on LinkedIn about how much I was enjoying seeing earlier versions of characters from the original Star Trek series on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds -- Sean was commenting on my review of SNW 3.5, which I just posted yesterday -- and little did I know that the most current SNW episode, 3.6, which I just got around to seeing last night, would have a remarkably excellent Christopher Pike/James Kirk story, indeed, one of the best episodes of the series so far.

[Some slight spoilers ahead ... ]

The basic story -- not to give too much away -- is the Enterprise and the ship on which young James Kirk is a Commander are involved in a mission in which both ships and their crews are threatened.  Kirk becomes (acting) Captain and must move in a hurry, in a damaged vessel, to save Pike and La'an who are fighting for their lives on the Enterprise.

One of my favorite scenes involves young Scotty and young Kirk, who orders Scotty to get their ship traversing space as quickly as possible.  In a scene we've seen many time in TOS, Scotty objects that the ship they're on is too damaged to move that fast without damaging the ship even more.  Now in TOS, Scotty almost always manages to get the ship moving at the speed Kirk wants, anyway.  In SNW 3.6, the ship indeed breaks down as it moves so quickly.  And this results in young Kirk having a crisis of self-confidence, and his leaving the Captain's chair, after he so significantly occupies it and crosses his legs.

Kirk feels he was wrong to order Scotty to get the ship moving so fast, over Scotty's objections.  (One question I had:  did the ship break down moving at that speed because Kirk's order was foolhardy, or because young Scotty just didn't have the know-how to get it moving safely? Maybe that question was the point.)  It's left to Spock to talk the situation through with Kirk, get him back to the deck to lead the life-and-death mission both ships are in, and therein begin to establish the relationship they'd have in the future, which was the mainspring of the original series and in effect everything that came after.

All in all, 3.6 did a really fine job adding a crucial chapter to the back story of Chris and Jim, as well as Spock, Scotty, et al, which deepened my appreciation of this saga now playing out on our screens for six decades.  You can't ask much more from a prequel series.

See also Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3.1-3.3: Gorn, Spock & Chapel, and The Walking Dead ... 3.4: Lots of Laughs and Serious Business ... 3.5: Endearing Pseudo-Science

And see also Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2.1: Nurse Chapel ... 2.2: Racism and Sexism in the Courtroom ... 2.3: Time Travel and Alternate Universes ... 2.5: Chapel and Spock ... 2.6: Jimmy Kirk ... 2.7: Pike, Spock, and Boimler ... 2.8: Ethically Wrenching ... 2.9: The Operetta ... 2.10: Young Scotty and Five Other Great Things about This Season 2 Finale

And see also Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 1.1-1.2: Great Characters, Actors, Stories ... 1.3: "Instead of terraforming planets, we modify ourselves ..." ... 1.4: The Gorn and the Wub ... 1.5 Going to the Chapel ... 1.6: Two Stories ... 1.7: The Kiss ... 1.8: Ends of the Continuum ... 1.9: Momentous! ... 1.10: Everything!

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