Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4, Episode 2 Recap and Review - What Horrors Lurk on the USS Griffin?

Spoilers follow for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4, Episode 2, “The Griffin Incident.”

Hey, what do you know? In the latest episode of Strange New Worlds, James T. Kirk (Paul Wesley) is bumming around with the crew of the Enterprise again. But man, did he pick the wrong week to play third wheel to La’an (Christina Chong) and Spock (Ethan Peck). “I can’t shake the feeling I’m in the wrong place,” he says in his log, even if he doesn’t realize how right he is about that statement.

“The Griffin Incident” is a full-on haunted house episode, a horror story set on a Constitution Class starship that has plenty of creepy-crawly moments as well as some big-time gore the likes of which we haven’t seen since Star Trek: Discovery Season 1, when that show was flirting with how far it was willing to push the sex and violence factor in the new-for-the-franchise streaming space. It didn’t take long for Disco to realize Star Trek didn’t need to lean into that stuff too much, but for whatever reason this episode of Strange New Worlds goes back to that well again, even if it doesn’t need to. It’s scary without the gore.

Things start with the three officers heading back from the “Future Federation Leaders Retreat” – those kiss-asses – only to come across a good old-fashioned mysterious signal that needs investigating. And that, of course, leads them to the USS Griffin, a long-missing Starfleet ship that they soon find out is chock-full of horrors.

Once aboard, they realize that everything is out of whack. There’s gravity and oxygen even if there shouldn’t be, there’s no sign that anything bad has happened onboard, and yet the computer is fracked and there are no crewmembers to be found… well, aside from the ghost lady who is walking around the ship and seemingly disappearing at will. This leads to a fun exchange between Spock and Kirk:

Spock: “There are faint traces of negatively charged ions.”

Kirk: “You mean a ghost?”

Spock: “I mean negatively charged ions.”

And really, that’s where this episode works best – in the character dynamics that are explored because of the horrors the trio encounter. As they begin to split up (this is a horror story after all!), they each encounter strange and horrible illusions that feed into – or are fed by – their subconscious. For Spock it’s the human vs. Vulcan debate, for Kirk it’s the abandonment of his family, and for La’an it’s the burden of her genetically-enhanced origins and the potential changes that were happening to her in regards to that even before she landed on the Griffin.

At times, the episode actually evokes the old Next Generation story “Night Terrors,” right down to the corpse in a body bag coming back-to-life moment that happens while Spock is trapped in sickbay. Bringing T’Pring (Gia Sandhu), or an illusory version of her, back to explore Spock’s anxieties is a nice touch, and it’s comforting hearing her say all the things you’d hope she would say to Spock – telling him she did not care for surprises was a mistake, she has sought therapy since their break-up, she did not love him as he deserved. But of course, this is Dream T’Pring, or rather Nightmare T’Pring, which means that cutting Spock’s ear tips off with scissors is also part of the deal. The lesson he learns from all this? Humanity is his greatest strength.

As for Kirk, the writers of the show continue to back-fill his history with more info on Carol Marcus, and now their son David as well. Kirk feels the gravitational pull of his career versus family life, and the tragic part of this thread is that we also know how this story will end. Despite however many trinkets Kirk brings back for David “like an apology for never being around,” as was the case with Kirk’s father, his relationship with David will wind up being even worse than his and Sam’s is with their dad. He won’t even know his son, and as illusory Sam predicts, “We’re gonna die out here in space alone like Kirks are born to do.” That will eventually happen to both Kirk and David, and La’an later spells out David’s fate even more explicitly: “Your little boy is going to die just like you, at the end of a blade, bleeding out in a dark corner of space.”

Packing in details of Kirk and Spock’s backstories is very delicate work. Knowing where Spock goes in the chronology of things, it kind of feels like the lesson he learns here is coming too early for the character, even if it’s dramatically satisfying in this telling. But the Kirk stuff really works for me; I appreciate learning about this absent father of his (Chris Hemsworth!?) and how it no doubt fed into the man Kirk himself became, and why things wound up the way they did between him and Carol and David. That the episode ends with his unanswered message to Carol and David only drives home that the Star Trek: Year One Kirk series showrunners Henry Alonso Myers and Akiva Goldsman were teeing up (and which surely isn’t happening at this point) could’ve been very interesting.

Over on the La’an side of things, the premise of her losing control of her augment side and giving into her famous ancestor’s conquering ways looks to be an ongoing story this season, and here the mysterious effects onboard the Griffin bring out an ugly aspect to her. She’s already bothered by the realization from last week that something is changing with her (Spock asking her if everything’s alright keys us onto that fact), but as she starts to identify with and/or become possessed by the ghost woman onboard – who turns out to be former Griffin security chief Rose Harper – the Jack Torrance-ing of La’an kicks in. By the time she tries to beam Ortegas (Melissa Navia) into herself (!), and finds herself holding a knife to Uhura, she seems to be completely lost. (No wonder Uhura never talked about her on the old show!) It’s only a last-minute rescue by the Enterprise that saves her and Kirk, who she had put that knife right through.

That the episode ends with La’an seemingly spotting Harper out on the Griffin doing the “shhhh” finger to the mouth thing is kind of frustrating, as is the episode’s unwillingness to answer the question of what really happened on the Griffin. Was it truly haunted, or was it just another outer-space weirdo incident? We’ll likely never know, but clearly La’an’s struggle has only just begun.

Questions and Notes from the Q Continuum:

• “You know, I never liked her.”
• Everyone’s heard of the Griffin it seems? I get Starfleet folks knowing about it. But T’Pring too?
• Kirk was a boy scout after all! Don’t forget, in Wrath of Khan when the adult David refers to Kirk as “that overgrown Boy Scout,” Carol replies, “Jim Kirk was many things, but he was never a Boy Scout.” Of course, we always knew she wasn’t strictly referring to the literal idea of the Scouts with that statement…
• Maybe it’s just taken me this long to notice this, but the transporter sounds in this episode sure have a “The Cage” vibe to them.
• What the heck is Division 12 and why have we never heard of it before? Apparently the ghostbusters of Starfleet – or the Mulder and Scully? – they’re mentioned enough in this episode that you’d expect to hear from them again later this season.
• Hey, Carol just got approved for a dream project. I wonder what that could be!
• Nightmare Sam pulls a Newborn from Alien: Resurrection. Ouch.
• Stranglings, stabbings, beamings into open space. Take your pick.