I know there are some people who say that Star Trek should only be about space battles and exploration but I like it when it gets a bit genre-bending.
The Next Generation was the biggest fan of this with holodeck-based episodes that allowed the series to become a film noir with its Dixon Hill episodes, detective with the various Sherlock Holmes episodes, gothic horror with Sub Rosa and even a full-on Western in a A Fist Full of Datas. We also had the old-fashioned serials in Voyager’s Captain Proton holodeck episodes.
One of my favourite genre-bending episodes though was the season 7 horror episode Genesis which was directed by none other that Gates McFadden, the sex-candle loving Doctor Beverly Crusher herself.
So we know Star Trek can do horror and do it well, which is why I felt The Griffin Incident was a bit of a let down.
But before I get into why I think this, let’s take a look at the episode itself.
What’s The Griffin Incident About?
Spock, Kirk and La’an have been to a “future Federation leaders retreat” and are in a shuttle on their way back to the Enterprise when they come across the hull of a lifeless ship, it’s the Griffin that went missing with all 300 hands 9 years ago.
The three of them enter the ship and start to have a look around. It’s eerily deserted as if the crew just got up and left mid-activity. After running some scans Spock can’t find any anomalies or viruses and declares the ship safe. But is it?
They bring life support back online but after floating in space for 9 years, the Griffin only has an hours worth of power left that they can use to run the ships systems in order to solve the mystery. Exploring the ship there’s no sign of any of the crew at all — that is until they stumble across a pasty looking woman in a Starfleet uniform who exclaims “I’ve been waiting for you!” before disappearing off around a corner. The trio give chase but she has disappeared even though there has been no transporter activity and she can’t have walked through a solid bulkhead, right?
The only sign that anyone was there are traces of negatively charged ions which Kirk incredulously asks Spock if he means a ghost had been there.
They find a sealed door which indicates that others had been on the Griffin before them, barricading the doors and sealing something in the room behind, and looks someone else had tried to get the barricade open. But who?
Reaching the bridge, Kirk and La’an discover the woman roaming the halls is the ship’s security officer Rose Harper. She’d made numerous reports stating that the ship’s crew had been showing erratic behaviour but when they were examined they were all found to be fit for duty.
The ghostly crew member isn’t the only odd event plaguing them: Kirk keeps hearing the faint cry of a baby and thinks it’s his new born son, David. Spock has strange visions in the sickbay and La’an, who bears striking similarities to Harper, begins to unravel.
The crew might only have minutes of power left, but can they even last an hour on the Griffin without losing their grip on sanity?
When Art Imitates. Poorly
Red Alert! Spoilers for the episode from this point on — you have been warned!
The Griffin Incident had the makings of what should have been a great episode but it fell wildly wide of the mark.
I don’t know what it was but the cinematography, lighting and editing were just so pedestrian it just felt like any other Star Trek episode. There was no tension, no suspense, no horror and most importantly, no scares. This is highly ironic as the director, Axelle Carolyn, is the author of “It Lives Again! Horror Movies In The New Millennium”.
The only saving grace was the excellent score from Nami Melumad, but even that failed to create the suspense and terror that this episode needed to make it work the way it was intended.
The setting of an abandoned ship would have lent itself well to creepy lighting thanks to the power being out or creepy angles thanks to low gravity — a Dutch angle or two would have really changed things up.
What we got instead were a load of close-up shots which are usually used to convey claustrophobia — something the crew didn’t have to deal with thanks to the massively empty ship — and a ship that was somehow lit even more brightly than the USS Titan-A even though they had minimal power and only 3 flashlights.
What we also got was some completely unoriginal writing: an unsolved mystery and (I am assuming) a set-up for an X-Files version of Star Trek with Division 12 if Paramount ever pulls its head out of its backside to create more Trek — and of course we’ll get something like this instead of Legacy which absolutely everyone wants.
I don’t know if the writers and producers of Star Trek think that the audience is stupid or that we’ve never even watched Star Trek before but the vast majority of us have and we get the references AND the blatant knock-offs.
Take this scene in sickbay from The Griffin Incident:
Now take this scene from The Next Generation season 4, episode 17 Night Terrors:
Notice anything?
So if you’re going to rip off a previous episode then why not use that episode’s plot as a basis for yours instead of half-arsing it and giving no explanation at all?
Or the aforementioned erratic behaviour? Where have we seen that before?
Star Trek: The Original Series — season 1, episode 4 The Naked Time
Star Trek: The Next Generation — season 1, episode 2 The Naked Now
Again, you HAD THE PLOT AND THE EXPLANATION RIGHT THERE!
What an absolute wasted opportunity.
Kurtzman has stated that shorter seasons allow them to avoid “filler episodes” and this was nothing but filler from start to finish.
I don’t know if it was incompetence, sheer laziness, ignorance of Star Trek lore or all three but the lack of a concrete explanation to the “mystery” left me feeling that the whole episode was completely pointless.
Enough of my gripes with the episode as a whole, let’s talk about the characters.
Illogical, Captain
What on Earth are the writers doing with Spock here? He started out in Strange New Worlds being the horniest being in the galaxy and now somehow he’s the most illogical.
Where is his logic here? Where is the raised eyebrow and the “fascinating”? You can’t tell me that in 3 years Spock somehow goes from a horndog under Captain Pike to the most logical being in Starfleet under Captain Kirk.
Make it make sense.
The writers seem to have issues with Vulcans, and Spock in particular. Firstly you have the aforementioned excessive libido, then you have the way that they make him somehow “lesser” than other Vulcans because of his human half (see the overtly racist season 3, episode 8 Four-and-a-half Vulcans for example) and because of this we’re supposed to assume that he’s in no way logical and will just take everything that’s happening on the Griffin at face value?
He’s a Vulcan for goodness sake! Where is the deduction? Where is the logical train of thought that leads us to a conclusion?
There isn’t one, because there can’t be one as the mystery has no solution!
I suspect because the writers are a) being too clever for their own good b) focusing on the previous backdoor pilot idea for Division 12 or c) they couldn’t come up with a satisfactory ending so ignored even putting one it.
Fake Fan Service
If you thought the way that Spock was treated in this episode then you’ll love what they’ve done to Kirk. That was sarcastic by the way.
This is a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario I think. When we see Kirk in The Original Series he was a bit of a ladies man — presumably because Spock had calmed down enough to give Kirk a chance.
The question is: Did Kirk become a ladies man because Carol was the one that got away? Or did Kirk lose Carol not just because of his career and not being there but also because he already had a wandering eye?
We already know that Carol is pregnant with the child that will become David when Kirk reveals the reason why he can’t be in a relationship with La’an (Subspace Rhapsody — season 2, episode 9). It seems like he wants to be there for Carol and his child and yet at the start of The Griffin Incident he’s already blowing them off to attend a conference.
Sure, this leads to the guilt that is the driver behind Kirk’s experiences on the Griffin but it’s like the show wants to have its cake and eat it when it comes to Kirk’s character.
Is he a man trying to make the best of an awkward situation and be there for his (ex?) partner and their son? Or is he a space slut? It can’t be both.
This is the issue when dealing with canon characters: we know what path they’re going to take and so you have guardrails and guidelines in place to ensure that the character reaches a point that matches up with their original portrayal.
At least that’s how it should would. It seems like NuTrek just wants to take a flamethrower to established canon so Kurtzman can write the characters how he feels they should be.
I’d like to take a moment here to call out Paul Wesley’s portrayal of Kirk too. Now, I know the script wasn’t much to work with and I doubt the director was of much assistance either but he was so flat and monotone in everything he did it was just ridiculous.
I get that he doesn’t want to portray Kirk as William Shatner did. BUT. Strange. Word. Spacing-and-inflections. Aside. You can show that the character has some emotion — heck, I think even Spock was more emotional this episode.
I’m just not seeing Wesley as Kirk. It’s weird as sometimes I think he’s absolutely nailing it (The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail — season 3, episode 6) and then other times I’d rather watch paint dry.
But, as it looks like Paramount is shuttering TV production of Star Trek for the foreseeable future after season 2 of Star Trek Academy and season 5 of Strange New Worlds I guess I don’t need to worry about seeing much more of Wesley’s Kirk.
La’aaaaaaaaaaaaaan!
We get it.
She’s got augment DNA and is (somehow unexplainably) related to Khan Noonien Singh.
She has the capacity to be evil.
WE. GET. IT.
They’re really laying this on thick aren’t they? Last episode she smacked a dinosaur in the face and didn’t feel anything, this episode she goes all homicidal maniac.
Now, we know that La’an isn’t on the Enterprise when Kirk takes over (or if she is, she’s hiding with Chekov in the lower decks) but I think they’re telegraphing what’s going to happen so obviously they may as well be hitting us over the head with it Wile E. Coyote style.
Here’s how I think they’re setting this all up — spoilers obviously:
La’an’s recessive augment DNA seems to have been reactivated from the resequencing that took place when she was turned into a Vulcan/Romulan and that side of her is slowly becoming more dominant.
At some point she’ll go full Khan and try to take over the ship/a space station/planet/galaxy/universe and the Enterprise crew will have to stop her.
She’ll be in full-on augment genius mode so it’ll be up to Spock to outwit her and this will lead to her death by his hand/phaser/torpedo/libido.
Spock will be so distraught by this he goes full-on Stoic Spock, eschews the pleasures of the flesh and embraces his logic over emotion becoming the Spock we see in TOS.
This is why in The Original Series he doesn’t do anything about Chapel’s advances — been there, tapped that and doesn’t want any more emotional involvement.
La’an’s now out of the picture, Spock’s his usual emotionless self and Kirk… Well, wouldn’t he now know who Khan Noonien Singh is when they find The Botany Bay? Well I guess I can’t fix every plot hole!
I just hope they tone down the “I AM SUPERIOR AUGMENT BOW BEFORE ME PEASANTS” plot points, although I think these writers skipped over the dictionary entry for subtlety.
Final Thoughts
This episode had the makings of being a classic: A spooky abandoned ship, a mystery surrounding the crew’s disappearance and an ghostly figure stalking the corridors.
The Griffin Incident had so many ways it could have told a spooky tale: real ghosts, aliens, infections, alternate universes, pocket dimensions, subspace rifts, phasing technology, experiments gone wild.
The possibilities were endless.
Instead what we got was a half-arsed filler episode that only served to show La’an becoming more murderous and the knowledge that Kirk has essentially abandoned Carol fulfilling the legacy of The Wrath of Khan.
Maybe it’s because one of my favourite films is Event Horizon and this episode tries so hard to be that and fails so miserably, maybe it’s because I recognised all of the rip-offs like Alien: Resurrection and The Exorcist as well as the other Star Trek references that it fell so flat for me.
I had high hopes for the penultimate season. I thought they’d pull out all of the stops and go out on with a bang, but it’s looking like I was very, very wrong with that prediction with the first two episodes failing to live up to my modest expectations.
Let’s just hope that the next episode is more fun than filler.
