“Doctor Who” may have a reputation for making kids hide behind the sofa, and the “Alien” franchise famously sold itself on the futility of screaming in outer space, but “Star Trek”‘s traditional “story of the week” format has also provided numerous opportunities to bring sci-fi scares to starship corridors.
But few of the franchise’s horror outings have been quite as overt as “The Griffin Incident”, the latest episode of “Strange New Worlds“. In it, Spock (Ethan Peck), La’an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong) and James T Kirk (Paul Wesley) are making their way back from the Future Federation Leaders Retreat (sounds like a blast) when they receive a mysterious signal in uncharted space.
SPOILERS AHEAD! ANYONE YET TO WATCH “THE GRIFFIN INCIDENT” SHOULD PROCEED WITH CAUTION TO AVOID VIOLATING TEMPORAL PRIME DIRECTIVES.
It turns out the communication originated from the USS Griffin, a starship that went missing with 300 souls on board nine years earlier, so — being the conscientious Starfleet officers they are — the trio beam aboard to investigate. It’s a decision they quickly come to regret, as they realize they’ve stumbled on a haunted house floating through the darkness…
This unashamed ghost story soon becomes a chilling mix of psychological terror and body horror, as Kirk hears the cries of his young son David, Spock unexpectedly comes face-to-face with his spurned fiancée, T’Pring, and La’an becomes closely acquainted with the Griffin’s ghostly chief security officer, Rose Harper (Sorika Wolf).
As in “Event Horizon” (originally pitched as “‘The Shining’ in space”), the ship is a malevolent force preying on its victims’ insecurities: for Kirk, it’s the fear of being an absent father; for Spock, it’s the conflict between his human and Vulcan heritage; and for La’an it’s the growing fear that her previously latent Noonien-Singh DNA might be stirring something dark within her.
In the tradition of many of “Star Trek”‘s scariest missions, “The Griffin Incident” puts a sci-fi spin on classic tropes. Indeed, as far back as “The Man Trap” (the very first Original Series episode aired), the franchise has been transporting recognizable genre conventions light years beyond the confines of planet Earth.
“The Man Trap” is essentially a vampire story, albeit with a “monster” that feasts on salt rather than blood. Meanwhile, “The Enemy Within” (which materialized a few weeks later) is a 23rd-century take on “The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”, in which a transporter malfunction splits Captain Kirk into a good and bad version of himself — two William Shatners for the price of one.
There have also been several captain’s log entries concerning close encounters of the zombie kind, from the re-animated corpses of “Strange New Worlds”‘ “Shuttle to Kenfori“, to the Borg in “Star Trek: First Contact” — despite their quest for technologically enhanced perfection, the movie’s cyborg hordes wouldn’t look out of place in “The Walking Dead”.
And the horror callbacks don’t end there. The parasites who infiltrate the upper echelons of Starfleet in “The Next Generation”‘s “Conspiracy” are “The Wrath of Khan”‘s Ceti Eels given “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” delusions of grandeur. And “Deep Space Nine”‘s own enemy-within episode, “The Adversary”, features a shapeshifting Founder hiding in plain sight — think “The Thing“, but with less of the ick.
But the franchise’s move to streaming has undoubtedly allowed “Trek” to become more extreme than it was in the syndication/network days of the ’80s, ’90s and ’00s. That’s not to say “Trek” didn’t push the censors’ limits back then — the aforementioned “Conspiracy” was heavily edited by the BBC in the UK, who decided a “Scanners”-like exploding head wasn’t suitable for teatime viewing.
In the main, however, the horror was more likely to be built on psychological scares than full-on gore — REM sleep deprivation driving everybody mad in “TNG”‘s “Night Terrors”, for example, or crews becoming alien test subjects in “TNG”‘s “Schisms” and “Voyager”‘s “The Scientific Method” — the latter storylines could almost have been lifted from “The Twilight Zone”. Even the Vidiians, a race of aliens who borrow heavily from the David Cronenberg playbook with their frequent body modifications, are portrayed in a resolutely PG way.
Fast forward to the present, and “Strange New Worlds” has given the Gorn — who famously looked like a guy in a crocodile suit in the Original Series — a new lifecycle, including an “Alien”-style penchant for impregnating humans with their parasitic offspring. An unwanted Gorn infestation subsequently paves the way for Captain Marie Batel to become the Beholder, protecting the galaxy from the horror movie-worthy Vezda.
“The Griffin Incident” is a continuation of this push towards R-rated horror territory, in which T’Pring cuts off the tips of Spock’s ears with scissors, and La’an stabs Kirk so enthusiastically you’d think she was auditioning for the next “Scream” movie.
Crucially, however, “Trek”‘s latest mission makes a significant departure from most of its horror predecessors in not attempting to provide a quasi-scientific explanation for the Griffin’s transformation into the scariest destination in the entire Alpha Quadrant. Instead, Captain Pike delegates the investigation to Division 12, a mysterious branch of Starfleet that specializes in unexplained phenomena.
Expect the descendants of Agents Mulder and Scully to have a field day with this one — assuming, of course, that the truth really is out there.
New episodes of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” debut on Paramount+ on Thursdays.