The next incorporates spoilers for “Star Trek: Unusual New Worlds” Season 4, Episode 2, “The Griffin Incident.”
There’s few issues that creep me out extra in science fiction than characters discovering an deserted spaceship (assume “Alien” or “Useless Area”). Area is frightening sufficient due to how empty it’s, and the thought of being locked in a large metallic can, surrounded by that vacuum, with one thing sinister on board that desires to hurt you? No thanks!
Sadly for me, the most recent episode of “Star Trek: Unusual New Worlds” is about simply that. Jim Kirk (Paul Wesley), Spock (Ethan Peck), and La’an (Christina Chong) are getting back from a convention in a shuttle collectively. On the best way, they occur throughout the USS Griffin, a protracted misplaced Starfleet vessel that disappeared below mysterious circumstances. They beam aboard, and not one of the Griffin’s crew are there – however one thing remains to be on board.
“The Griffin Incident” performs out like a haunted home film; the characters see apparitions, they begin behaving erratically and doubting their very own sanity, and so forth. This being “Star Trek,” you anticipate some sort of scientific or rational rationalization for all of this. However there is not one. On the finish of the episode, we nonetheless do not know what occurred to the Griffin’s crew, and it is implied our heroes have been actually being haunted by a malevolent spirit.
The outright supernatural uncommon in “Star Trek.” Watching “The Griffin Incident,” Trekkies may assume again to the primary time “Star Trek” tried gothic horror: “Catspaw,” named for the presence of a scary black cat. “Catspaw” was scripted by Robert Bloch, a horror writer most well-known for writing “Psycho,” and it initially aired on October 27, 1967, days away from Halloween. Now, it may need the corporate of “The Griffin Incident” as any Trekkie’s go-to Halloween episode.
The Griffin Incident takes Star Trek into supernatural horror a la Catspaw
“Catspaw” shouldn’t be Robert Bloch’s solely “Star Trek” writing credit score. On the unique collection, he additionally penned “What Are Little Ladies Made Of?” and “Wolf within the Fold,” each of which hewed on the creepier aspect. “What Are Little Ladies Made Of?” featured a mad scientist (Michael Sturdy) making an attempt to exchange flesh-and-blood beings with androids, whereas “Wolf within the Fold” was a homicide thriller that exposed Jack the Ripper was an evil alien being, Redjac. “Catspaw” goes even additional.
“Catspaw” begins like a traditional “Star Trek” episode, with the Enterprise in orbit over a planet they’re scouting. Then a crewman from the away workforce beams up, falls over useless, and a disembodied voice emanates from the corpse, calling for the Enterprise. Kirk (William Shatner), Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Bones (DeForest Kelley) beam right down to rescue their different crewmen and face their creepiest journey ever.
They arrive throughout three witches, as if out of “Macbeth” (as a result of “Star Trek” loves Shakespeare references), a mysterious black cat, and ultimately awaken within the dungeon of an historical citadel. The inhabitants are a warlock, Korob (Theo Marcuse), and a witch, Sylvia (Antoinette Bower), a shapeshifter who was that black cat which lured Kirk and co. inside.
In the end, “Catspaw” folds below the budgetary constraints of ’60s tv. Take the climax, the place Sylvia transforms into a large cat, terrorizing the heroes as in the event that they have been mice. However the impact is proscribed to shadow methods and unconvincing footage splicing, so it barely stirs a fright. “Star Trek” has come a great distance in 60 years and “The Griffin Incident” is really as scary because it needs to be.
The Griffin Incident is as scary as Star Trek has ever been
“Catspaw” falls into a popular twist of “Star Trek: TOS” — Korob and Sylvia are literally superior aliens. Their “magical” illusions spells are as a result of they’ve a tool that may manipulate matter, and so they pulled the crew’s hallucinations from fears buried deep within the human psyche.
Personally, I feel there have been loads of later “Star Trek” episodes that did horror and surpassed “Catspaw.” “Unusual New Worlds” itself has executed so, like within the H.P. Lovecraft-esque Season 3 episode “By way of the Lens of Time.” “The Griffin Incident” is the scariest “Unusual New Worlds” has gotten but, exactly as a result of it resists a sci-fi rationalization like “Catspaw” supplied.
The episode even ends with La’an staring out of the Enterprise, on the Griffin, because the digicam pushes in on the ghostly safety officer standing in entrance of a hull window. She raises her finger in a shushing movement, after which the episode smash cuts to black. That is probably the most horror movie-ish ending possible, one which unsettles you by displaying the horror has solely been forestalled or escaped from, not defeated — and that stated horror now has its eyes on you.
“Unusual New Worlds” may theoretically return to the Griffin, however it might be scarier to depart this thriller open. Close to the top of the episode, Captain Pike (Anson Mount) shares a narrative to reassure La’an; when he was a child, he as soon as tried sleeping in his uncle’s barn, rumored to be haunted by a scythe-wielding ghost. When the younger Pike heard metallic dragging and a whisper, he ran, and to at the present time he nonetheless cannot clarify what occurred. If the supernatural exists in “Star Trek,” it could be a realm finest left unexplored.
“Star Trek: Unusual New Worlds” is streaming on Paramount+.
