This is the official /r/DaystromInstitute reaction thread for "The Griffin Incident". Rules #1 and #2 are not enforced in reaction threads.
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Even though I was a chicken throughout this outing, I think this is one of the strongest SNW episodes for its eerie atmosphere and overall mystery. This is definitely a rewatch during the Halloween season. Props especially to Chong for really playing into the calm slasher persona with the knife.
If you appreciate the horror atmosphere then it’s probably a win for you. Otherwise, the underlying story is pretty bland. La’an, Spock and Kirk hallucinate. La’an is scared of where she fits in Starlfeet. Spock is scared of his mixed heritage. Kirk is scared about having a family. Nothing is new. The only step forwards in the story is that Kirk wants to be a good father but see’s he might not be. I appreciate what they tried, but it doesn’t hold up to the spectacle they put on last week.
If nothing else, this could possibly setup La’an’s exit from the Enterprise - that she needs to discover herself away from her heritage and Starfleet overall.
Fascinating, I had the complete opposite experience. Last week's episode was fine. Enterprise gets pulled back in time to the Sol system. Two new sentient species are introduced in the deep past. Pike has to make a bad call. It's not so much that nothing's new, but outside of Saffron Burrows doing a lot with what the script gave her, it's just a simple "Pike has to make a hard call" without really seeing or feeling the suffering of the Martians or understanding a thing about the insectoids from the fifth planet. "The Griffin Incident" on the other hand, is (in my opinion, of course) really solid genre filmmaking while not breaking the fundamental fact this is an episode of Star Trek. It's a classic haunted ship episode whereby whatever is happening is a twisted reflection of deep insecurities of each of each character. It's not the first episode of Trek inspired by the horror genre, but it's distinct from how Trek has handled this before in terms of not only gore but in centering it on character. I actually think I like this episode more than "Night Terrors" and "Schisms" which were my previous favorite Trek horror/paranoid thriller episodes.
that episode was peak horror trek. I was actually a bit freaked out.
I'm a horror enthusiast. Not much gets to me. I rarely get the hairs on the back of my neck getting all staticky and standing up. And I enjoy it when it happens. So. In the context of a horror movie this would be bland. But because it's Enterprise and a very special crew I'm invested in? Total creeps and I loved it. The little hairs went up a couple times, like a creepy kitten running around with her back up and bottle brush tail. I'm sure this was a budget recovery episode, but dang it was fun for me!
As a certified horror weenie, this episode really got me. It’s not afraid to get gory, it stays one step ahead of the Starfleet crew’s deductions, and its total control over their perceptions leaves us constantly guessing about what is “real.” The entity keeps breaking the rules in ways that feel like it could *almost* be understood, like how La’an attacking Kirk happened in exactly the same hallway where all the prior crews attacked each other. (The scariest moment, in hindsight, is that the entity’s “prophecy” about the eventual fate of Kirk’s son is actually completely correct.) Indeed, with Division 12 hauling the whole thing away with no real resolution, this is as close as Star Trek has ever come to something out of an SCP. Like so many episodes of Strange New Worlds, I don’t know if this is a concept that needs to be done more than once, but I appreciate the show continually trying new things even when it’s not for me. (However, Pike is now two-for-two this season on covering up the full story in his logs, and I’ll be disappointed if that isn’t followed up further down the line.)
Right? How does Kirk even let Pike get away with that? Surely my report if I’m Kirk will contain the bit about being stabbed by my crew mate who was suffering a delusion. Compound this with the fact that some people are about to haul this nightmare ship into a port somewhere and go poking around. We might want to let them know what they’re up against before that happens ya know?
I don't really have much stomach for horror, and hate that a lot of the cool ideas in film right now seem to be horror or body horror stuff because I just can't do heavy amounts of the visuals, but I felt like this stayed on the right line of suspense vs horror for me.
Is it just me, or the characters written to be oddly casual with one another, constantly calling each other by first names instead of ranks or the traditional naval styling of Mr. Surname? I was especially thrown off by all the times they call Uhura by her first name, mostly because they never mentioned it on screen until the 2009 film. Then there's Uhura calling Kirk "Jim" at the end. Might just be my inner Jellico, but I guess I prefer a level of formality to my starfleet officers.
Jim... Scotty... Bones... there was a lot of informality in the original series.
Might just be my inner Jellico, but I guess I prefer a level of formality to my starfleet officers.
Ironically Captain Jellico continuously called everyone by their first name.
Some Jellico quotes:
Do you prefer Will or William? [...] Where are my quarters, Will?
Deanna. Come in, come in. [...] I'm glad you brought this to my attention, Deanna.
I'm not interested in the specs, Geordi. [...] Then you'd better get to it, Geordi.
I want Geordi to analyse the readings from Beverly's tricorder.
There are more throughout the two episodes. His formality apparently only extended to rules and appearances.
I remember watching last weeks episode and thinking how the universe works in funny ways with the premiere heavily featuring dinosaurs just a week or so after Sam Neil’s passing. Little did I know they’d be following it up with an episode with big Event Horizon vibes.
Unpopular opinion: I hate horror. I especially dislike it when my non-horror tv shows decide to have horror episodes. It gives me extreme anxiety. I watched the majority of this episode with either the sound muted, or my phone playing jolly music over the creepy soundtrack. Having said all that, this is the second time that Division 12 has been mentioned. It makes me wonder if there’s a spin off idea in the writer’s minds. Im not against the idea of there being a show around the investigation of unexplained phenomena, but I suspect it’d likely be too spooky for me. Lol
I was thinking the same thing about Division 12. With the announcement that there's no Star Trek coming for the foreseeable future I'm deeply bummed. To quote The Greatest Gen guys, "Star Trek is a place" and something like a Division 12 show would be a great addition in the right hands.
I like horror, but did not like this episode. It must feel to me the way the musical felt to others. I don’t care for it in my Star Trek and could have done this episode with less gore. I didn’t catch the first Division 12 reference but it does feel like they’re going to try to take the general idea of Section 31 (clandestine, covert) as it’s referenced occasionally and reform that into Division 12 without all the negative S31 baggage. In any case it feels a little out of place in this episode. As if there were going to be a follow up focusing on D12 later.
Isn’t investigating unexplained phenomena literally one of the main things the crews of starfleet, especially of Enterprises, have always done?
There was already a Division 14 which had a similar job specifically related to medical mysteries that appeared in "Much Ado About Boimler," so there is precedent of Starfleet having special divisions for stuff that is too weird to solve in 40 television minutes.
I'm mixed on horror in general but I absolutely loved this episode. As someone noted below, it's a very straightforward story underneath the horror trappings, but usually that's the right call.
It nails something I called "Serling's Law" with my students: The more farfetched a concept or setting you ask an audience to accept in a very short period of time (like a TV episode or short story), the more simple the underlying plot needs to be.
A story can have both, and the legendary ones often do, but a writer usually needs more time than short-form work allows.
Also: If you know from where those intestines were very likely leaving Kirk's body, that death is now up there with Remmick's in S1 of TNG as the most grisly. Holy crap.
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There was a lot of really gruesome stuff in this episode but killing Ortegas with the transporter was somehow the gnarliest part and the hardest to watch
I know it’s very unlikely to happen, but imagine if that’s how the two characters had been written out of the show. Ortega is killed and thus is not in the original series, & La’an is held in a mental health/Federation institution similar to where Tuvok was in the finale of Voyager, pre-timeline change. Such an event would have massively loss and effects on the rest of the crew, and would explain why other members decide to leave the enterprise.
Obvious callback to weirdest scene in all of TMP, in which they kill off a character that had never been introduced to the audience and was only relevant to unproduced earlier versions of the script. It would be like if in the middle of season 7 of Voyager they said that the Aeroshuttle was offline.
Annotations for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 4x02: “The Griffin Incident” The stardate is 2903.9. La’An might be preoccupied because of her discovery that her Augment genes are asserting themselves as seen last episode. Kirk’s last appearance was in SNW: “New Life and New Civilizations.” The USS *Griffin* has the registry number NCC-1067 and appears to be a Constitution-class based on its configuration and crew complement of 300 (in contrast *Enterprise* has 203). *Griffin* disappeared “nine years ago”, which by my reckoning that the current year is 2263, places the disappearance around 2254, the same year as TOS: “The Cage”. Previously the number NCC-1067-M was assigned to the seed vault ship USS *Tikhov* (DIS: “Die Trying”) in the 32nd century, and it was said there that the starship’s predecessors dated back to the 23rd century. It is not clear if the 1067 number was reassigned to *Tikhov* after *Griffin*’s loss or if this is a continuity error. *Griffin*’s commander was Captain Taggert. In the affectionate parody *Galaxy Quest*, the captain of the fictional NSEA *Protector* was Peter Quincy Taggart. Kirk claims he was a Boy Scout. In *ST II*, Carol Marcus says, “Jim Kirk was many things, but he was *never* a Boy Scout.” Kirk refers to his son, David Marcus. Admiral William Smillie is the name given in the novelization of *ST IV* to the Commander-in-Chief of Starfleet in 2293, who was unnamed on-screen. The masks that the landing party are wearing more modern-looking version of those worn by the landing party in TOS: “The Squire of Gothos”. La’An’s saying how it seems like everyone took a coffee break echoes stories of the abandoned ship *Mary Celeste*. Arthur Conan Doyle’s account of the mystery of the deserted ship (“J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement") embellished it with fictional details such as the presence of still-warm cups of coffee and uneaten meals laid out, which have become part of the folklore. Division 12, which seems to be an X-Files-type branch of Starfleet, was first mentioned by Ortegas in SNW: “Terrarium”. La’An mentions “the *MLK*”. The USS *Martin Luther King Jr.* was the ship that rescued La’An when she was cast adrift by the Gorn. Una Chin-Riley was an Ensign on that ship (SNW: “Strange New Worlds”). A common belief among parapsychologists is that the presence of negative ions indicates the presence of ghosts. Kirk and Spock both appear to be familiar with this idea. With this, and the taking of ley lines and ancient astronauts as givens in“New Life” and SNW: “Through the Lens of Time” respectively, I’m pretty certain someone on the writing staff is into paranormal phenomena. The body bag Spock picks up is labelled LT Ta’Arn, a Vulcan. It’s a bit dark so I can’t make out the serial number. Kirk says that Carol has been approved for a “dream project”, which could refer to the Genesis Project. His noting that she fears for his safety in Starfleet echoes her dialogue in *ST II* where she tells him that she didn’t want David “chasing through the universe with his father.” LT George Samuel Kirk, Jr., however, is able to balance his Starfleet duties with his wife Aurelian and three sons (TOS: “Operation: Annihilate!”)… at least for now. Of note in CMD Rose Harper's file is that she was born in 6 February 2227 and is from Epsilon Delta V. The planet Epsilon Delta IV was featured in the 1979 novel *Trek to Madworld* by Stephen Goldin. She was valedictorian in her class at Starfleet Academy and served on the USS *Exeter* (TOS: "The Omega Glory"). There, she survived the Battle of Caprell and took over the ship when the captain and XO had been incapacitated. While on *Griffin* Harper noticed crew members exhibiting erratic behaviour and informed medical and CPT Taggert. This included violent outbursts, self-harm and delusions, although the file notes these reports were unsubstantiated (signed by Dr G’Har). Harper then became more paranoid, was relieved of duty by Taggert and confined to quarters. 13 deaths by stabbing and 8 deaths by strangulation followed. Then there is a notation that she became Acting Captain. 287 persons were transported off the ship, the destination indeterminate ("possible non-inclusive space" says the file, the computer clarifies verbally as open space). Harper took the safeties offline. La'An's summary largely aligns with this, although the computer says 13 *strangulations* and 8 *stabbings* instead despite the production art showing it the other way around. The rising of an apparent corpse from sickbay beds echoes a similar scene (a hallucination) from TNG: “Night Terrors”. Who Spock sees is his ex-fiancee T’Pring, last seen in SNW: “Charades”. The name of the party’s shuttle is *Alvarez*, probably named after Luis Walter Alvarez, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1968. Together with his son Walter, he came up with the Alvarez Hypothesis which sought to explain the extinction of the dinosaurs as resulting from an asteroid impact (SNW: “Valles Marineris”). *T’Pring* knows about the fact that *Griffin* is missing? How famous *is* this disappearance? The *kahs-wan* is an ordeal all Vulcan children must go through as a coming-of-age ritual (TAS: “Yesteryear”). T’Pring also mentions a Vulcan poet, Ka’nina. Hilariously, this is similarly pronounced to an expletive in the Chinese dialect Hokkien (translated as “f**k your mother”), although I suspect the writers may not be aware of this. Sam says Carol and David are headed to Epsilon V, which is vague enough a reference that it could be anywhere (Epsilon Eridani, Epsilon Hydrae, etc.). I mean, even Epsilon Delta doesn’t make much sense as a system name if you know standard stellar naming conventions, where the second word is the name of the constellation and if the first word is greek, the letter indicates a star within that constellation. And that’s before you add a Roman numeral to indicate which planet in that system. According to the Franz Joseph Constitution-class deck plans, Deck 17 is crew quarters in the secondary hull. T’Pring, in order to reach Spock’s heart, starts to go for the mid- to lower-right side of his torso. It was established as early as in TOS: “Mudd’s Women” that Spock’s heart is where a human’s liver should be, but the series has not always been consistent about this. Sam hears his son Peter’s voice - Peter Kirk is the only one of his sons named on screen (“Operation: Annihilate!”). Ortega’s agony in the transporter is similar to the transporter accident at the beginning of *TMP*. Sam says they’ll die in space, “alone… like Kirks are born to do.” Sam does die alone in “Operation: Annihilate!”. In *ST V* Kirk says that he’s always known he’ll die alone, but *Generations* has Picard with him as he dies.Prior to *ST 2009*, starship viewscreens were not actual windows but monitors that displayed the view outside. However, this has changed since the 2009 movie and DIS. Since Sam’s death here contradicts his actual canon death in “Operation: Annihilate!”, it’s our first explicit clue that what’s happening isn’t real. Pike talks about being “free of his fate”, referring to his knowledge that he will eventually become paralyzed due to exposure to delta rays (TOS: “The Menagerie”), a fate Spock is also aware of. As La’An prophecises, David Marcus did indeed die “at the end of a blade”, killed by Kruge in *ST III*, although not in a dark corner of space but on the Genesis Planet. Chapel refers to the brief Klingon-Federation War of 2257-2258 in which she served in a medical capacity together with M’Benga (SNW: “Under the Cloak of War”).
The kahs-wan is an ordeal all Vulcan children must go through as a coming-of-age ritual (TAS: “Yesteryear”). T’Pring also mentions a Vulcan poet, Ka’nina. Hilariously, this is similarly pronounced to an expletive in the Chinese dialect Hokkien (translated as “f**k your mother”), although I suspect the writers may not be aware of this.
I thought it meant "peace among worlds"?
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Harper then became more paranoid, was relieved of duty by Taggert and confined to quarters. 13 deaths by stabbing and 8 deaths by strangulation followed.
La'An's summary largely aligns with this, although the computer says 13 strangulations and 8 stabbings instead despite the production art showing it the other way around.
I sure hope someone got fired for that blunder.
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Division 12 "Starfleet analysts that run around investigating unexplained phenomena" is a much closer to a bang-me-on-the-head reference to "Majestic 12" as I could have imagined Star Trek ever providing...: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majestic_12 Whatever your take is on the ufo topic, leak or lore, the writers clearly want to lean into the ufo/uap phenomenon - (SNW writer Wolkoff is openly a ufo guy, no idea about others),
I did not like this episode. I hate an unresolved mystery and while I think pushing boundaries is cool I wasn’t a huge fan of the body horror and gore. I might have liked it more if the stab wound and ear cutting had been as imagined as the rest of it. It’s a horror episode and it does that as best as a series like this can, but I didn’t find it particularly scary or interesting. I assumed that when the boarding party arrived that was an hallucination. I had hoped for a quick summary instead of introducing Division 12. On the topic of Division 12 - why? Is this different from Section 31? I don’t understand why we needed to invent a special department for this particularly when the threat was very real. It seems that in any previous episode they would have figured out enough to decide to scuttle the Griffin and move on. Here we get an open ended and rather unsatisfying conclusion. Like it leaves itself open for another episode or mention down the line in a way but I doubt this is an area the franchise is gonna go back to. That said this show is a testament to the range of stories that can be told in Star Trek. Musicals, gore, puppets, Dinosaurs. I really do think this show is great and if they didn’t have a miss for me every once in a while they wouldn’t be trying hard enough.
Completely agree. I had high hopes going into this one, and they were unfounded. The whole "Griffin" episode was nothing more than a bad rip-off of the movie "Event Horizon" which itself was badly done and relied heavily on scenes of gratuitous gore, which might make you squirm, but do not make the show in any way authentically frightening.
Seems like section 31 are just the secret military intelligence, division 12 is the scientific unexplained division. You wouldn't really usually combine the two
I had to turn it off. Not what I want from Trek.
This episode didn't bring much to the table for the characters except the development of Kirk's relationships with Carol and David. I hate horror, so that's the only real takeaway for me this episode. The show refused to give us an explanation, which for worldbuilding is interesting (makes sense they can't always figure it out right away) but left me even more annoyed that I had to sit through a maudlin gore-fest with no plot payoff. However, it's interesting to speculate about what the explanation *might be*, so here are some questions to ponder. \* Were the Klingon, Vulcan and Federation phaser burns part of the illusion? Everything else on the ship being pristine already was at that point. \* If Harper killed everyone due to her own personal delusions, what explains the ship's capabilities to telepathically read people and cause hallucinations and violence? \* If there really was something affecting the whole crew, as well as Harper, were some of the deaths caused by other crew members? Would this explain how a single person was able to commit mutiny and space most of the crew, which normally you think there'd be guidelines against?
In the area of plausible explanations I think we are too heavily leaning on “entity” and not something pathogenic. We’ve seen inhibition lowering phenomena before, a phenomenon that induces psychosis and hallucinations seems at least as likely. I’m not even convinced that most of the scenes where La’an is watching the security chief were actually real and not also hallucinations. What seems so strange to me in this episode is the speed with which all of these three separate from one another to experience delusions unshared by everyone else. It might have been that the security chief did space everyone to prevent the spread of whatever it was, but I think it’s likely that her recollection of being ignored by the crew was part of her own delusion.
This was the episode Night Terrors should have been. Delightfully disturbing on so many levels, all the way through. I like that they left whatever malevolent thing was on that ship unexplained. Maybe we'll meet it again if another show gets greenlit.
I didn't like it. Production values were good. Suspense was good. But Scifi has always had a bit of a scooby do approach to it where by the end of the episode, you as the watcher, through the characters eyes, eventually got some kind of handle as to what is going on. Or a story is told with a moral quandary, or some kind of lesson that one can learn from how the plot resolved. This didn't. I'm sure they are going to follow up on this episode in a later episode this season and this is just part 1, so I'll wait to pass judgment until it all resolves. But I don't feel like we really saw any character growth, any confrontation of characters internal fears, any interesting twist, or anything that really that was the hook where I said "that was interesting". Things just happened, and it didn't have any explanation. This def does not sit on one of the episodes that I will be telling my friends "Hey, you have to give SNW a second chance, this episode was soooo goood' like I was saying with the first gorn episode in season 1. I really hope we get something to redeem this on S04E03 next week.
Another live action version of what would be a lower decks A plot just missing any of the B plot and the frenetic energy of a cartoon.
I absolutely loved the episode, but then again I love the horror genre. Interesting to see how it’ll affect La’An and her relationship with Spock.
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I pretty much “moved on” from horror and the undead when TWD let the Negan saga go on for way too long. So I *endured* this episode. There’s no resolution except “hallucination” and letting experts at Starfleet figure out what happened. I might’ve found this interesting if it could’ve been linked to the REM deprivation that befell the USS Brattain - but this time with a “cause” that wasn’t a Tyken’s Rift: a virus, a parasite, Ronin and that damn candle, a Ves Alkar-type doing telepathic trauma dumps… There was no payoff for me with this. Pretty sure it’s a bottle episode because some “OH WOW THEY SPENT *THAT* PRE-SKYDANCE PARAMOUNT MONEY HERE” episodes may be coming, but this one just wasn’t a good concept.
Yeah, was interesting to see a proper horror ep of trek, but the episode itself wasn't that interesting. We could get a better resolution if Harper causes more trouble that req's the enterprise crew to help/actually figure out the cause, but that would honestly be a waste of time with these season lengths
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The worst episode of Star Trek I have ever fast forwardes through in the history of the universe. Stupid. I would rather watch Burnham cry some more. No point, minor development, just ghost stories, but not for me. Skip.
I think they showed their hand too early that the Enterprise away team was never real by killing off Sam first, since he's one of the characters guaranteed to survive SNW (in order to die in TOS).
I thought it was telegraphed they weren't real when they showed up since it was established the message they sent shouldn't have reached the Enterprise yet.
To be fair, that'd almost be the case if they killed anyone, right? Pike, Sam, and Uhura are all gonna survive until TOS, and Una will probably survive until the end of SNW barring a big twist that hasn't been foreshadowed yet or talked about in the publicity releases.
This is what I've been wanting from Trek ever since the switch to streaming. Adult stories, body and psychological horror that couldn't be made on network TV. Why did it have to take until the last season of modern trek for it to happen?
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Second last, isn’t it? I thought we were getting a shortened season 5 for SNW.
That was legit the scariest Star Trek episode I have seen. I got a real mix of "The Shining," and the log segments from "Dead Space," in this episode. I was surprised by how little La'an had her phaser out. Maybe I am a wimp, but if it was me, I would have phaser out and at full load the whole episode, especially when I found out that the person I saw at the beginning of the episode got space madness. With the mention of Division 12 it brings up the question of what the other Divisions besides 14 do. We have the spooky space division and the weird medical condition division. It is possible that one of the divisions is the precursor to Temporal Investigations. What do you guys think? Kirk really should have warned the other two that he heard a hallucination back at the door. Every time one of them hallucinated that should have immediately been reason to leave then and there. Starfleet keeps up the proud tradition of nearly getting murdered because they are more curious than careful. These fools have never seen a horror movie and it shows.
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I was thinking about the divisions - maybe the other divisions are ones we've heard of, like Temporal Investigations or Internal Affairs (Division 1 could just be Starfleet Command?) but they tend to get referred to by their recognisable names rather than number, whereas 12 and 14 have longer more cumbersome names - something like Department for Investigation and Containment of Unexplained Phenomena - but no one came be bothered to say that so just refer to it as D12 (Also that would abbreviate to DICUP and maybe that wasn't something that starfleet personel felt happy saying...)
It was some pretty good Star Trek horror. Loved the body bag sitting up as a callback to TNG. I did laugh at the Hitchhiking Ghost at the end tho
I unfortunately didn't particularly enjoy this episode very much. About 2/3 of the way through my attention drifted away to something else without realizing it. It just didn't hold my interest this time.
What specifically detracted from your enjoyment? Not looking to stir the pot; just genuinely curious
I was in a similar spot. The initial tone and atmosphere worked, made things creepy, and kept me attentive. But at a certain point, that kind of went away and I wasn’t paying attention because the scares had hit a wall of same-same. There was a scare I missed that I didn’t learn about until the TrekCulture vid of Ups and Downs. Once the “Enterprise crew” beamed over, I went “eh, it’s not them” and was only half paying attention until Pike started chopping his fingers (talk about sentences you never thought you’d write). Kind of pulled me back by the end, but could have gone way further with the cosmic horror to really keep me rapt.
Something about the timing on a lot of the scares and interplay on this felt off or lagging. Not sure why, but the horror felt like a near miss for most of it. I do like the “it’s a mystery” thing, though I wish they gave us more weird “clues” to follow as it kinda ended up feeling like “we couldn’t close the loop so *we made it all a dream*”.
For me, it was the "let's split up" and calling Spock and getting no response and then going to Engineering and expecting him to be there without looking, etc. I get that if the characters in a horror movie are too competent, the movie can't happen. But part of the fun of Star Trek is that you are watching highly trained professionals do competence porn for an hour. Even given the characters were influenced by a Space Whammie, it felt like they weren't doing anything to avoid being in a horror movie plot. Nothing really forced them to board in the first place rather than wait for backup. Nothing really forced them to split up, etc. Sometimes it's bad for characters to be 100% proactive rather than reactive, if their proactive choices would mostly only make sense "so the movie could happen."
My nitpick is that I was surprised the Kirk, Spock, and La'An beamed onto the Griffen from their shuttle. I thought shuttles of this era didn't have transporters. I expected them to dock or land in the shuttlebay
I’m not sure about TOS, but both disco and SNW have had people beaming off shuttles. like in S1E1 when Pike beams aboard enterprise from the shuttle
The only thing I disliked about this episode was the lack of an explanation. Even if it’s just that the ship has been flooded with scarion particles, I like my Trek existing in a universe where things happen for a reason. That said, I’m somewhat okay because they hung a lampshade on it with the Divison 12 stuff. Some things aren’t explained in the moment, but don’t worry, we have a follow-up team to deal with it. I would absolutely read a Divison 12 book series.
pour les non aficionados de film SF , c'est un remake de event horizon. et tres bien fait d'ailleurs,
d'ailleurs si certains ont aimé l'épisode mais ne connaissent pas le film. je vous le conseille.
This episode was insane. I was just talking with friends recently about the "scariest" episodes of Trek and then this comes to demolish any competition. My watch kept telling me my heart rate and stress levels were too high. \- It amuses me that no Trek show can be consistent with flashlights. The palm beacons in TNG were absurd, the wrist beacons in Voyager were much more practical but would tire your arm out, and we reached peak light technology on Discovery where they were mounted on the shoulders. Now they go backwards to these giant ones from the 90s?? \- I can't figure out what the black and white part of the intro is supposed to be, anyone else? I also was delighted to see the dinosaurs make an appearance. \- I appreciate the efficiency of most Starfleet ships in the TOS era being Constitution-class, but it kind of takes away the "specialness" of the Enterprise for me. The Griffin has been lost for 9 years and we're still a few years away from Kirk having the Enterprise, so its basically over a decade old by the time he has it. That's pretty old by Starfleet standards! \- I don't think Division 12 has been mentioned before but I am in love with the idea of an X-Files bureau inside of Starfleet. I also dig the implications of Pike saying there's 2 cases of his personally that haven't been solved. Spooky as hell! \- Speaking of spooky, before this episode went fully ham, I was digging the classic Trek spooky vibe; unlit corrridors, flashing lights fritzing panels, etc. I was thinking were in for some good old-fashioned spooktastic fun. Then it uh, took a turn. \- La'an telling them to split up was an immediate eye-roll. First rule of spooky is no splitting up, dummies. \- I happened to be watching this alone and audibly yelled "NO" when that Insidious child like crab walked behind Kirk and La'an. What the actual hell man. \- The literal second (and maybe before) anything remotely weird happened, my phaser would have been out and set to vape. I can't believe it was like 3/4 of the episode before someone grabbed a phaser, and it was a ghost! \- When the body bag sat up and started unzipping I curled up in horror. One of my core trauma memories as a child are the body bags sitting up around Crusher in TNG, and this just brought it right back. Holy hell that was creepy af. \- The circumstances were a little rough but I was so happy to see T'Pring again! I loved her character and actress and I hope they find more excuses for us to see her before the show is over. \- The hallmark over-the-shoulder shots in horror movies (and this episode obviously) are so damn unnerving. I'm trying to pay attention to dialogue and plot while simultaneously trying to see/avoid whatever figure/face/demon is coming in behind them. I shuddered a lot. \- La'an grabbing the demon hand on her shoulder thinking it was Spock gave me the shivers. Absolutely horrifying. \- Addendum to my flashlight rant: who taught these people how to use flashlights!? They're waving them all over the place instead of focusing on obvious super dark spots or the location of the noise they're hearing. I wanted to yell at them. \- I did not think they were going to show Spock losing the ears and when they did my stomach turned. They truly went all-in on this and it was absolutely insane. \- Una's "I never liked her" got a big lol out of me. Pitch-perfect delivery. \- The transport sequence was equally horrific but I didn't understand what Uhura was trying to say. She set Erica to beam into herself? It didn't make much sense but the visuals sure sold it. \- That giant creepy-ass smile Pike gave Spock after he tied him back down is going to haunt my dreams. I did not like it one bit. \- My eyes almost bugged out of my head when Sam got his insides RIPPED OUT OF HIS ASS. What the hell is this?? Also, showing his body bounce around the debris made me worry that that one was real for a bit. I'm not a horror or gore fan but I 100% appreciate the massive swing they took on this, I was caught by surprise literally every time. \- That knife La'an had was brutal, it was basically a sword. She full-on gutted Kirk with it too, yeesh. \- Pike chopping his fingers got an equal cringe out of me as Spock's ears. The noise will not leave my ears. \- I can't tell if it was on purpose by La'an (or the writers), but her describing how David actually dies was terrifying and very sad. \- I scoffed out loud when Pike said they were coming to tow the Griffin to a facility. I would have launched every torpedo on the ship at it and then phasered the debris until it was clear space again. Are you kidding me? Like I mentioned, not a fan of horror in general, but this had me glued. Such a superb job on a franchise that notoriously gets a little goofy when they try to be scary. I believe I will be staying up until dawn tonight.
The ending is what got me annoyed, no answer, ghost lady smiling in the ship that is being pulled.
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I absolutely loved this one, though a teensy more certainty at the end might have been nice. I’m an on and off horror fan, less into the modern ultra gore stuff, but the surprise of some pretty shocking stuff (for Star Trek) such as Sam getting his GI tract sucked out a window, got my WHOAAA reflex satisfyingly in gear. I will admit to a little parental sadistic joy watching this with my teen, as he, not a horror fan, absolutely shrieked when Spock got his ears trimmed and Pike chopped his own fingers like carrots.
One detail that made me squeal and do the Decaprio fingerpointing: when Kirk spills out the contents of his travel bag and out pops a copy Patrick O’Brian’s “Master and Commander,” the basis of one of my favorite Star Trek films, part of a series of books featuring my favorite stand ins for Kirk and Spock.