Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode 4 Review – Memento Mori
This Star Trek: Strange New Worlds review contains spoilers.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode 4
The latest episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is officially in the books. It’s a high octane, tension-filled horror fest that manages to reinvent a classic Star Trek villain. The episode allows almost every one of our favorites a moment of true, genuine bravery.
Star Trek: Deep Space is one of the few sci-fi shows that embraces hope and empathy and compassion in the face of tragedy.
The crew discovers a remote colony has been attacked and abandoned. The Gorn are an intergalactic scary story come to life as they attack the ship taking injured survivors to the Enterprise.
“Memento Mori” is essentially a La’an episode. Her experience as one of the few survivors of a Gorn attack provides a necessary perspective. The fact that she’s still so traumatized by their attack says something truly horrifying about what kind of monsters they must be.
The Gorn are the most purely evil creature in the Star Trek universe. It’s rare that we get a villain in this franchise that’s truly full-on evil. How will Pike deal with an enemy that goes against everything he values? And how far is he willing to go to defeat them?
Despite the constantly looming threat of the Gorn, the show smartly never shows us their take on these creatures. Instead, it allows us to fill in the gaps with our own ideas about what scares us most. But, mostly, isn’t it always more frightening when you can’t clearly see the thing that’s chasing you?
“Memento Mori” is Strange New Worlds’ most action-oriented episode yet. Pike and the bridge crew are trying to come up with a way to escape the Gorn ships. M’Benga and Chapel are basically triaging patients in sickbay using “ancient” science.
Reviewer calls it “claustrophobic and oppressive in a way that would be frightening enough without the whole being hunted by an alien race thing”.
Viewers have to wonder if Pike feels some level of preternatural confidence that his death isn’t waiting for him there.
But I suppose you could also argue that just because he saw the moment he’d become disfigured and paralyzed as a fixed point doesn’t mean that he couldn’t get hurt before then does it? Either way, I’m not entirely sure it matters, since Pike is also the sort of man who just trusts his crew wholeheartedly and the strength of his belief in them is honestly enough to make those of us watching along at home believe in them too.
At one point, Pike tells his bridge to get creative, that they’re the best of Starfleet, and that they can do anything because of that. And, honestly, at this point, I think he’s probably right.
