Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - Season 4, Ep. 2: An Abandoned Ship and a Standard Evil Mind-Messing Entity
As Star Trek: Strange New Worlds enters its second last season, genre writer John Kirk will preview new episodes weekly.
By John Kirk
Rating: B-
An episode that evokes a familiar voice of yesteryear Star Treks. As I wrote in my previous review, Season Four is characterized by echoes of The Original Series (TOS), The Next Generation (TNW) and others as it plays around with different genres and themes.
In this case, it’s the “abandoned ship” motif and the spotlight is on Kirk, Spock, and La’an – and sadly, the risk doesn’t pay off.
Something very scary is happening to Scotty (Martin Quinn)
The story: are in a shuttlecraft returning from a conference. Obviously as Kirk is still assigned to the USS Farragut at this time, it’s a convenient excuse for another Kirk episode.
Which I’m totally okay with. We need more Kirk. In fact, there will need to be even more as SNW moves towards the inevitable conclusion of re-setting the Enterprise with the complement of crew that we see in the first season of TOS.
Get used to the acronyms, folks.
As the shuttle makes its way back to the Enterprise, they encounter a derelict Starfleet vessel – the USS Griffin, declared lost and all hands dead. Of course, this is a chance discovery that must be investigated.
As one would expect, the ship is far from deserted and the trio begin to experience strange phenomenon that could only be considered supernatural.
Of course, whatever the mysterious presence on this ship is, it is definitely playing with the trios’ minds – but for a reason. It elicits their biggest fears and preys on the insecurities that have developed to this point in the series, thus allowing the characters’ character development to be displayed.
La’an is experiencing issues of enhanced aggression, possibly because of her augmented genes (Remember: she IS a Khan). Spock is still wrestling with the demands of his hybrid heritage and his relationship with La’an. Meanwhile Kirk’s relationship with David, his son by Carol Marcus, is a callback to Kirk’s struggles with career and family.
But it only really matters for Kirk and Spock, to be frank. If the show does continue with its move towards original canon status, then La’an is going to have to leave the ship at some point. Her character development is going to be oriented towards that departure which is definitely short term in nature. Kirk and Spock are obviously more pivotal characters and fans are going to be watching them very closely in this episode.
Wesley is growing into Kirk. Exploring Kirk’s past baggage is becoming a big part of this show and he is clearly embracing that. But Kirk’s early days with Carol Marcus are sad ones and we really don’t need to explore them more. Still, it’s important to see his relationships with other characters like Uhura, Scott and obviously Spock.
The threat turns out to be something so formidable that it overwhelms even Spock. But what’s disappointing in this episode is how ineffective and indecisive Spock is portrayed.
The episode promises a lot, but it falls down in a number of ways.
In the end, it’s a story that goes nowhere, which is a shame because the scary vibe was certainly achieved. Clearly, it’s a set-up and perhaps whatever is on the Griffin will come back to haunt us later.
The threat isn’t really identified. By the end of the episode, while we know more about what internal struggles our three intrepid adventurers are going through, we know little about the “what” that affected their minds.
Essentially, it’s an episode of character self-reflection. However successfully creepy the episode was, it doesn’t really reveal more than what we already knew about Kirk and Spock. As for La’an, we didn’t learn enough.
Ah well. Plenty of episodes to go in this season.
Season Four – Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - Episode 402: “The Griffin Incident.” Directed by Axelle Carolyn. Cast: Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, Jess Bush, Christina Chong, Babs Olusanmokum, Celia Rose-Gooding, Melissa Navia, Rebecca Romijn, Martin Quinn, Carol Kane, Paul Wesley
Episode 402, “The Griffin Incident” debuts on July 30 on Paramount Plus and CTV’s Sci-Fi Channel.