Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3, Episode 6 – “The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail”!Dr. Valerie Weiss returns to direct Captain James T. Kirk’s (Paul Wesley) most pivotal episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3. Weiss previously helmed “Ad Astra Per Aspera,” one of the most acclaimed episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which fans have called one of the franchise’s best courtroom episodes.
In Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3, episode 6, “The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail,” Lt. Commander Kirk goes on his first mission as a starship captain to rescue the USS Enterprise from a powerful and mysterious new enemy. It’s a monumental event in Star Trek canon that sets the stage for Captain Kirk’s future in Star Trek: The Original Series.
ScreenRant had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Weiss about her first time directing Paul Wesley, how she handled Kirk’s inaugural mission as Captain, and what it was like working with his future USS Enterprise crew. She also discussed the crucial lessons Kirk learns and the importance of her episode to Star Trek canon.
What Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 Episode 6 Is Really About
Valerie Weiss didn’t feel pressure to top her acclaimed previous episode, “Ad Astra Per Aspera.” “I was just really excited to be asked to do this particular episode,” Weiss says. “Because, as you know, on the show, they cast the episodes by director. It’s very specific, and as soon as I read it, I was like, I love it. I love it. It’s about so many themes that I care about. It’s about leadership. It’s about empathy, which the first episode I did for them was essentially just an empathy generator, like Akiva [Goldsman] loves to do.”
When I’m passionate about something, it tends to go very well.
Weiss points out that her episode “is also about sustainability. I’m very, very involved in the DGA, the Directors Guild’s sustainable future committee. I do a lot of work in the sustainable space. And as a former scientist, I care very much about how we treat our environment. And so, all of these themes in one, and to top it, it being such a canonical episode, I was like, what? I’m so excited. So I don’t know that I felt pressure. I was just very excited, because I was passionate about it. And I know when I’m passionate about something, it tends to go very well.”
Strange New Worlds Season 3 Episode 6 Is Captain Kirk’s Star Trek Spinoff Proof Of Concept
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds‘ executive producers and co-showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers have touted their hopes for a spinoff about Captain Kirk. Regarding her episode acting as a proof of concept, Valerie Weiss says, “Yeah. I read it, and I was like, wait, I think that’s what this is. And then I had to check with my even Trekkier experts. I was like, ‘Is that what this is? Is that what I think it is?’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah. This would be the first time ever that this has happened.'”
Along with Captain Kirk’s first mission in command of a starship, Weiss stressed that what was exciting about her episode is that “it’s the beginning of the Spock/Kirk relationship, like their real relationship. So for me, that was just as exciting, because I’m all about relationships and the heart.”
Akiva Goldsman instructed Weiss to “evoke TOS as much as possible, visually and however you want to do it. It’s okay to feel a little bit more retro. It’s okay to embrace the TOS of it.’ And so I loved that, because I started pulling stills from TOS and getting those exact shots on it, and making my staging work so that I could get those shots.”
Valerie also praised Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ composer Nami Melumad after Weiss pulled music from The Original Series for her director’s cut. “Nami, our composer, is amazing. She modernized it, but I really wanted you to feel it.”
Weiss is proud that her episode is not “tricky in terms of special effects or gags. It’s really like an updated version of TOS in that it tells the story the way it needs to be told. It doesn’t add a whole bunch of artifice between the audience and the characters. You really get to be in their point of view and be in their world. And so, that was really, really exciting to be able to be the one to get to do that.”
Paul Wesley & Valerie Weiss Got To Know Each Other Before She Directed Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3, episode 6, is the first time Valerie Weiss directed Paul Wesley, and they made a point of getting to know each other before filming. Weiss says of Wesley, “He’s the loveliest, the loveliest. I reached out a few weeks before we went up to Toronto and asked if we could have brunch. He was like, ‘Of course.’ And we got to know each other.”
“For me, it’s really just important to know the actor before we even talk about the episode,” Weiss continues. “And we both confided that this was a big deal, and there was a lot of pressure on both of us. And we’re like, well, we’re going to do this together. And so, for me, it was always about making sure we get the most vulnerable Kirk as possible, and that we show him with his foibles. We show him being an ass, being unsure, being stuck.”
Valerie calls Kirk’s coming of age as Captain “beautiful because being a leader is a journey. You don’t show up knowing what to do on day one. We rehearsed a lot. He suggested I read this book, The Autobiography of James T. Kirk. And this gave me some ideas and a common language, because I know it’s something he had read. And he wrote a beautiful inscription for me in that book, after we wrapped.”
Directing Star Trek Canon’s First Spock & Captain Kirk Scene
A pivotal scene in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3, episode 6, is Lieutenant Spock (Ethan Peck) helping Captain Kirk through his crisis of confidence. For Valerie Weiss, “It was very special to rehearse with Paul and Ethan, who I already knew, but rehearse the Spock scene, because it was such a special moment in history.”
In the scene, Spock gives Kirk back his mojo, and Weiss agreed that Kirk’s future best friend “needed to give him a talking to. I don’t know if there’s another moment where Spock really gives him the Hard Talk the same way as he does here, which is ‘Get your sh– together.’ You can see the beginnings.”
Weiss played up Spock’s enthusiasm when it comes to Kirk: “I love the moment when Spock is like, ‘Someone needs to talk to him, who has the right mindset,’ and everybody looks at him, and he’s like, ‘Yeah, it’s me’. And he’s happy, it’s him. I mean, he doesn’t show emotion, but in my mind, he’s psyched everyone recognizes he’s the man for the job to go in that room and talk to him.”
Captain Kirk Commands His Future USS Enterprise Crew For The First Time
It’s impossible to miss how Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3, episode 6, surrounded Captain Kirk with members of his future USS Enterprise crew. Amusingly, they wanted to mutiny and remove Kirk from command. “And they should, right?” Valerie Weiss agreed. “Because he’s not doing a good job.”
Weiss says she “loved getting to work with Scotty. Martin Quinn is so fabulous. He’s so talented and funny.” Valerie also followed Akiva Goldsman’s dictum to “really embrace the TOS of it all,” by finding “a way for Scotty to jump out of his little portal, because it was set with him standing outside of it. And I was like, ‘No, I want to set it with him inside and give him a reason to swing out and swing in, because that was such a signature Scotty move.’
“Anything I could do to have a nod to the original crew was really fun,” Weiss says. Valerie also reinforced the history of these characters on Strange New Worlds. “I said to Celia, who plays Uhura, ‘Kirk saved your life. He was really important to you.’ And so, while everyone else is throwing him under the bus, the reason you’re defending him is because you wouldn’t be here without him. I really reminded everybody of their historical connection to Kirk from this series as well, before TOS.”
Directing Carol Kane To Do Improv On Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3, episode 6, was the first time Valerie Weiss got to direct the legendary Carol Kane, who plays Command Pelia. “I loved working with her. So fun,” Weiss gushed of the Emmy winner. Valerie also enjoyed giving Kane the chance to perform improv.
“That last scene with Erica, where she’s flying the ship, and Carol’s next to her, I said to [writer] Bill Wolkoff, who was on set with me, ‘Can we just do some improv?’ He’s like, ‘Yes, because I love that stuff.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, Carol, go for it.’,” Weiss recalls. “I mean, God, letting Carol Kane improv, it’s a dream come true as a director. She was the best, the sweetest, so talented.”
The Lessons Captain Kirk Learns From Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Scavenger Villains
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3, episode 6’s ending comes with a devastating reveal that the villains are descendants of humans who left Earth in the 21st century. The episode holds a mirror up to the audience. Valerie Weiss says of the twist, “It was really heavy. And what I loved is that Carol’s character, Pelia, was the one who told the story. She was very funny and light throughout the episode, and to have her be the one whose eyes we’re seeing it through was so beautiful. It’s just such a credit to the writing and the producing of the series that it never gets too far-flung from heart and reality,”
Weiss also praised Paul Wesley’s performance in the climactic scenes: “There’s a line that Kirk says, ‘How do they go from that to whatever it is they became?’ And it’s amazing because he has just done this incredible voyage, his first run as a captain, so heroic, and yet, he’s like a little boy asking that question, right? It’s such a naive question, which reminds you he’s really at the beginning of his journey, and that really is what Star Trek’s all about. It constantly asks that question.”
Valerie points out her previous Strange New Worlds episode, “Ad Astra Per Aspera,” asked similar questions: “How did you know the Federation can go from what they were to what they became in that moment?’ Or ‘how did prejudice happen?’ It’s such a great question that gets answered in the next scene with Pike so beautifully, and vulnerably, when Pike says, ‘empathy is not conditional.’ I mean, what a great message for humanity.”
Weiss put a button on the lesson Captain Pike gives to Kirk: “You don’t get to pick and choose who deserves to live. And if you don’t always consider the humanity… the lives of the world around you, including the plants and flowers and animals, then you’re not really a leader. You still have to make hard decisions and decide one way is better than the other, but you have to always know the cost-benefit analysis of any important decision.”
Will Valerie Weiss Direct More Episodes Of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds?
Filming for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4 has wrapped, and production for the fifth and final season starts in the fall. As for whether Valerie Weiss will be back to direct more episodes, she says, “I don’t know yet. I know I’m busy through the fall, and I might do a movie, but I don’t know yet.”
New episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3 premiere Thursdays on Paramount+.
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