Warning: SPOILERS for the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode “Lost in Translation” are ahead!
While each Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode is notable in its own way, Season 6’s sixth episode, “Lost in Translation,” featured some especially big moments. For one thing, Celia Rose Gooding’s Nyota Uhura experienced strange visions of Bruce Horak’s Hemmer, the Enterprise’s former chief engineer who died in Season 1’s penultimate episode. Uhura helped during this stressful time by the First Officer of fellow Federation ship Farragut, James T. Kirk, with Paul Wesley finally getting to play the character in the main Star Trek timeline. While Uhura and Kirk meeting was certainly meaningful, it was an arguably an even bigger deal when Kirk and Ethan Peck’s Spock were introduced to one another, and Peck and Gooding reflected to CinemaBlend about how they felt shooting that major moment.
Ever since Star Trek: The Original Series premiered in 1966, James Kirk and Spock have been cemented as one of pop culture’s most famous duos, with the characters originally being played by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, respectively. However, The Original Series started off with Kirk and Spock already having a working dynamic together, so with Strange New Worlds taking place over half a decade before the show that kicked off this franchise, it was the perfect platform to show how they met. Starting off, Ethan Peck said the following to me when I asked him ahead of “Lost in Translation” premiering to Paramount+ subscribers (and prior to the SAG-AFTRA strike) about what it was like taking part in this scene:
For me, I never think of how a scene is going to be perceived externally, or really anything I’m doing on that show, because it brings too much pressure, it’s too distorting. So for me, it was just meeting this guy. Paul and I have a great rapport off camera, so he and I get along, we catch up and are friends off-camera. It was fun to load that moment with that chemistry. I would argue… I read a great article in The New York Times, I wish I could remember the name of the author, that was celebrating the occurrence of love at first sight platonically, and I think it’s a platonic love at first sight. I felt that there was an immediate respect and curiosity and skepticism and fear too, because these are just two very capable and incredible people, and I feel that moment was filled with that. And I just had the experience of that, and I didn’t think too much more of it. But yeah, it was nuts.
While 2009’s Star Trek did show Chris Pine’s James Kirk and Zachary Quinto’s Spock crossing paths for the first time, that movie and its sequels took place in the alternate Kelvin timeline. Strange New Worlds, on the other hand, operates in the same universe that all the other TV shows and the first ten theatrical movies take place in. And granted, Wesley and Peck did share some screen time in the Season 1 episode "A Quality of Mercy,” but that was in an alternate future where Pike was still captaining the Enterprise and Kirk was in charge of the Farragut during a different take on The Original Series’ “Balance of Terror.” So once James Kirk stepped foot on the Enterprise in “Lost in Translation,” it was only a matter of time that he’d see Spock.
As Ethan Peck explained, while he didn’t dedicate a ton of thought to Kirk and Spock’s meeting in terms of it being an important event in Star Trek history, he did enjoy working with Paul Wesley and acknowledged that these two characters make for an excellent pairing. The meeting did have added significance for Celia Rose Gooding though, as it was Uhura who introduced the two after Kirk had previously seen Spock play three-dimensional chess with Christine Chapel. Here’s what Gooding said about their character being the catalyst for such a major moment in this franchise:
It felt so right. It felt so good [laughs]. Especially after going through such an intense episode, it felt like a real gift for me and for Uhura to… after going through such a deep emotional moment… not even a reminder in the moment, but it gives her an opportunity when she’s older to look back and say, ‘I was the person who got these two together.’ It almost makes all of that emotional journey worth it. Especially for her, it makes it worth it, because she knows that she can do it and she knows that that’s not going stop her or break her emotional nature. As an actor, those moments of the reason why we had to have those dark moments was to make those light moments shine even brighter. And so to have that Spock and Kirk meeting in Uhura’s deep emotional episode I think was very purposeful and also very just beautiful and wonderful to have a piece of. I think we’re establishing a lot of wonderful canon for Trekkies to have and to look back on, so the timing of it… I enjoy it. I think it’s lovely.
Of course, it takes more than one meeting to establish familiarity, so although James T. Kirk and Spock now know about one another, we’re a long ways off until they have that unique dynamic on display in The Original Series. Still, between his brother Sam serving as one of the Enterprise’s life science officers and his new connections with Uhurua, Christopher Pike and La’an Noonien Singh (with the latter two having already versions of Kirk from other realities), it’s only a matter of time before he finds his way back on the Enterprise. The more that happens, the more he and Spock can get to know each other and build that friendship Star Trek fans love so much.
There are four episodes left in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2, with next week’s being the long-awaited Lower Decks crossover guest-starring Tawny Newsome and Jack Quaid as Beckett Mariner and Brad Boimler, respectively. Strange New Worlds has also already been renewed for Season 3, so keep visiting CinemaBlend for updates on the series’ future and other upcoming Star Trek TV shows, as well as to peruse our 2023 TV schedule.
