Strange New Worlds S4E2: The Griffin Incident
On the surface, Strange New Worlds is a light, upbeat show. Our chummy, immaculately coiffed Captain goes on an adventure with a crew of legacy characters who we already know in advance are going to live long and prosper and go on many more adventures aboard the USS Enterprise when this series runs its course.
And yet, this is a show that isn’t afraid to go dark. While other Trek series could get unsettling or downright grim, Strange New Worlds embraces straight-up horror, whether zombies, body horror, or your classic haunted house.
The house in question is the USS Griffin, a ship that was presumed destroyed years earlier. Kirk, Spock, and La’an come across it while taking a shuttle back from a previous mission, nowhere near the Griffin‘s last known location. When they beam over to investigate, there’s no sign of a crew, living or dead, and yet the ship inexplicably has power (and conveniently for the show’s FX budget, gravity).
They run the usual scans and find no sign of what happened to the crew. No battle damage, alien diseases, poisonous gas, or usual Trek mayhem. The coast is disconcertingly clear. That is, until La’an spots an alien woman who simply says, “I’ve been waiting for you,” before vanishing around a corner.
Only then does the crew start to see signs something is amiss. Phaser burns on the walls. Ship logs talking about the crew acting erratically. Eventually they learn the crew started killing each other, before the bulk of them were beamed into space.
This being a horror story, our characters do the dumbest thing possible and split up. La’an becomes fixated on the mysterious woman’s recordings, which become increasingly disturbing, and begin addressing La’an by name. Kirk — feeling guilty at going on another mission while leaving his newborn son at home — starts hearing a baby crying somewhere on the ship. And Spock finds himself in a sickbay full of dead bodies, one of which rises and appears to be a completely healthy T’Pring, his ex-fianceé.
It doesn’t take long for the viewer to realize these are all hallucinations, but our isolated crew members begin to doubt their own sanity, and eventually buy into the reality being presented to them. Characters in horror usually split up so they can’t protect each other from the monster; in this case, they can’t reassure each other that what they’re seeing is just in their heads.
So they each have to face their own personal demons. Kirk worries (correctly, as longtime fans know) he’s going to be a bad parent because he’s too committed to the job. Spock wrestles with his Vulcan and human sides (and in true Spock fashion, never stops trying to analyze what’s happening). And La’an — whose unresolved childhood trauma has always been at the center of the character — starts to worry it wouldn’t take more than a small push for her to snap and murder everyone.
All three of these are on the nose for the characters — either things we’ve seen them deal with in past episodes or, in Kirk’s case, Star Trek III. But it’s effective here because all three stories take gruesome and unsettling turns. (If you’re not into seeing blood, red or green, this isn’t the episode for you) And the actors do a terrific job of selling their characters’ deteriorating mental states. Christina Chong in particular does a lot with only a little dialogue, as La’an unravels, and then when things are set right, tries to convince everyone else she wasn’t affected by the experience, without fully convincing herself.
That uncertainty also works well as a story choice because, while all three are shaken by the experience, we know Kirk and Spock turn out fine. We have no idea where La’an Noonien Singh ends up, which has allowed for a lot more character development then we’re allowed with the legacy characters. And on the heels of last week’s overt mention of her genetically-modified ancestry, the episode feels we’re building up to a bigger La’an storyline, and while the series has given us reason to doubt its story arcs, we’re cautiously optimistic about this one.
Stray tachyons:
• One thing that feels decidedly un-Trek-like is that, while the situation on the Griffin is resolved, it’s never explained. Usually we find out there was some incorporeal alien behind the hallucinations, or some alien virus that causes space madness. Instead the crew simply leaves it to someone else to solve the mystery.
• The someone else in question is Division 12, Starfleet’s office that investigates the unexplained. The franchise might be on its last legs, but they’re still planting spinoff ideas when they can.
• We’ve given up talking about why the show constantly sidelines its main cast in favor of Kirk, who really has no business spending this much time aboard an Enterprise he won’t be the captain of for several more years. (And it’s not like Pike or M’Benga don’t have trauma they could work through on the ghost ship). It would come off as gratuitous fanservice if Paul Wesley weren’t so good in the role.
• The rest of the cast do get at least one moment apiece, but this is essentially a three-character episode. Some of SNW‘s best episodes manage to make the most of its sprawling cast, but the day-to-day episodes suggest that the classic seven-leads formula Trek has relied on from the beginning no longer works in the 10-episodes-every-year-or-two streaming landscape. Lower Decks was able to focus more on its four leads and surround them with a rich supporting cast. Assuming we get any future Trek shows, a tighter ensemble might be the way to go.
