Strange New Worlds' Haunted House Story Throws Back To Star Trek's First Horror Episode
The following contains spoilers for "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" Season 4, Episode 2, "The Griffin Incident."
There's few things that creep me out more in science fiction than characters finding an abandoned spaceship (think "Alien" or "Dead Space"). Space is scary enough because of how empty it is, and the idea of being locked in a giant metal can, surrounded by that vacuum, with something sinister on board that wants to harm you? No thanks!
Unfortunately for me, the latest episode of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" is about just that. Jim Kirk (Paul Wesley), Spock (Ethan Peck), and La'an (Christina Chong) are coming back from a conference in a shuttle together. On the way, they happen across the USS Griffin, a long lost Starfleet vessel that disappeared under mysterious circumstances. They beam aboard, and none of the Griffin's crew are there – but something is still on board.
"The Griffin Incident" plays out like a haunted house movie; the characters see apparitions, they start behaving erratically and doubting their own sanity, etc. This being "Star Trek," you expect some kind of scientific or rational explanation for all of this. But there isn't one. At the end of the episode, we still don't know what happened to the Griffin's crew, and it's implied our heroes were literally being haunted by a malevolent spirit.
The outright supernatural rare in "Star Trek." Watching "The Griffin Incident," Trekkies might think back to the first time "Star Trek" tried gothic horror: "Catspaw," named for the presence of a scary black cat. "Catspaw" was scripted by Robert Bloch, a horror author most famous for writing "Psycho," and it originally aired on October 27, 1967, days away from Halloween. Now, it might have the company 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" is not Robert Bloch's only "Star Trek" writing credit. On the original series, he also penned "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" and "Wolf in the Fold," both of which hewed on the creepier side. "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" featured a mad scientist (Michael Strong) trying to replace flesh-and-blood beings with androids, while "Wolf in the Fold" was a murder mystery that revealed Jack the Ripper was an evil alien being, Redjac. "Catspaw" goes even further.
"Catspaw" starts like a normal "Star Trek" episode, with the Enterprise in orbit over a planet they're scouting. Then a crewman from the away team beams up, falls over dead, and a disembodied voice emanates from the corpse, calling for the Enterprise. Kirk (William Shatner), Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Bones (DeForest Kelley) beam down to rescue their other crewmen and face their creepiest adventure ever.
They come across three witches, as if out of "Macbeth" (because "Star Trek" loves Shakespeare references), a mysterious black cat, and eventually awaken in the dungeon of an ancient castle. 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.
Ultimately, "Catspaw" folds under the budgetary constraints of '60s television. Take the climax, where Sylvia transforms into a giant cat, terrorizing the heroes as if they were mice. But the effect is limited to shadow tricks and unconvincing footage splicing, so it barely stirs a fright. "Star Trek" has come a long way in 60 years and "The Griffin Incident" is truly as scary as it wants to be.
The Griffin Incident is as scary as Star Trek has ever been
"Catspaw" falls into a favored twist of "Star Trek: TOS" — Korob and Sylvia are actually advanced aliens. Their "magical" illusions spells are because they have a device that can manipulate matter, and they pulled the crew's hallucinations from fears buried deep in the human psyche.
Personally, I think there were plenty of later "Star Trek" episodes that did horror and surpassed "Catspaw." "Strange New Worlds" itself has done so, like in the H.P. Lovecraft-esque Season 3 episode "Through the Lens of Time." "The Griffin Incident" is the scariest "Strange New Worlds" has gotten yet, precisely because it resists a sci-fi explanation like "Catspaw" offered.
The episode even ends with La'an staring out of the Enterprise, at the Griffin, as the camera pushes in on the ghostly security officer standing in front of a hull window. She raises her finger in a shushing motion, and then the episode smash cuts to black. That's the most horror movie-ish ending imaginable, one that unsettles you by showing the horror has only been forestalled or escaped from, not defeated — and that said horror now has its eyes on you.
"Strange New Worlds" could theoretically return to the Griffin, but it would be scarier to leave this mystery open. Near the end of the episode, Captain Pike (Anson Mount) shares a story to reassure La'an; when he was a kid, he once tried sleeping in his uncle's barn, rumored to be haunted by a scythe-wielding ghost. When the young Pike heard metal dragging and a whisper, he ran, and to this day he still can't explain what happened. If the supernatural exists in "Star Trek," it might be a realm best left unexplored.
"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" is streaming on Paramount+.