Every Star Trek fan knows that The Original Series debuted on NBC on September 8, 1966. But what gets forgotten is that the second pilot episode of Trek — and the first filmed episode that featured Kirk and Spock — was actually shot in 1965. That means, in 2025, we’re technically approaching the anniversary of the first time Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock stood on the bridge of the USS Enterprise together. Interestingly, the latest trailer for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 seems to know this. Because a prominent part of the trailer teases James T. Kirk (Paul Wesley) and Lt. Spock (Ethan Peck) standing together on the bridge of a starship (probably the Enterprise) as though Strange New Worlds is about to lead straight into The Original Series. But, does this work from a timeline point of view? How close are we to Kirk taking command of the Enterprise? The new Season 3 trailer gives us a lot of Trekkie joy, and teases, essentially, the exact same show that Strange New Worlds has been since 2022: An upbeat throwback series, spun out of the Discovery continuity which focuses on a colorful, optimistic version of Star Trek more aligned with style of The Original Series and ethos of The Next Generation. The 10 episodes of Season 3 promise to give us a lot more romance, plenty of action, and a few eyebrow-raising events for canon-obsessed Trekkies. Specifically, we get a few moments in which Captain Pike (Anson Mount) tells Kirk some hard lessons about being a starship captain.“The choices you make in that chair are yours to make and yours to live with,” Pike tells Kirk in one scene. We also see a pensive Kirk standing next to the command chair on the bridge (again, presumably on the Enterprise) during a red alert situation. Spock says to Kirk: “We await your orders, sir.”Spock (Leonard Nimoy) in “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” | CBS Photo Archive/CBS/Getty ImagesThe combination of Kirk and Spock in a tense situation is obviously about as classically Star Trek as you can get, but how close is this to the true moment in which Kirk takes over for Pike? Technically, SNW Season 2 ended in the year 2259, which means that it’s reasonable that aspects of Season 3 will head into 2260, this would put us only five years away from the beginning of Kirk’s tenure in “Where No Man Has Bone Before,” and six years away from Captain Pike’s accident that occurred prior the TOS episode “The Menagerie.” So, it seems very unlikely that we’re witnessing Kirk taking command of the Enterprise permanently in SNW Season 3. It’s also possible, that we’re seeing Kirk take command of a different ship, possibly the USS Farragut, which seems to be glimpsed a few times in the trailer.Kirk has been popping up on the Enterprise quite a bit before he’s supposed to be there. Not counting alternate versions of Kirk from Season 1’s “A Quality of Mercy” and Season 2’s “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow,” the canonical, Prime Kirk visited the Enterprise twice in Season 2; first in “Lost in Translation” and again in “Subspace Rhapsody.” In the former episode, Captain Pike was briefly promoted to “Fleet Captain,” an event which retroactively checks out with Kirk saying (in “The Menagerie”) that the two men met when Pike was “promoted to Fleet Captain.”Strange New Worlds, Season 3, Episode 6, seems to feature the return of James T. Kirk. | Paramount+“The Menagerie” seemed to imply that Kirk had only met Pike a few times, but SNW makes it seem like they met a lot more than they did. That said, the series has created a lot of backstory for other characters, too, including Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding), Chapel (Jess Bush), and most recently, Scotty (Martin Quinn), which may or may not completely match up with previous assumptions from TOS.However, SNW could, conceivably, at some point, end up becoming a kind of Star Trek: TOS —Year One. Because the only canonical episode that takes place in 2265 is “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” there’s a lot of unexplored time, even after Pike gives the Enterprise to Kirk.That handoff almost certainly won’t happen in Strange New Worlds Season 3. But, with Kirk and Spock standing on the bridge, ready for action, it feels like we’re closer to a big moment of transition than ever before. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 hits Paramount+ with a two-episode premiere on July 17, 2025.