TL;DR – It is time to get our Horror on as something creeps in the dark, waiting to strike. Oh, and the Klingons are here too. 

Disclosure – I paid for the Paramount+ streaming service that viewed this episode. 

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Review –

One thing you need to know about Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is that it is not afraid to take wild swings in tone and also go “how about we do an ‘insert x’ episode? The sort of episode that makes no sense being in a Star Trek show, but goodness, do they pull it off more times than not. Sometimes this can be a musical episode, but today it is time to dip our toes in some straight-up horror.  

So, to set the scene, back in Hegemony Part II, Captain Batel (Melanie Scrofano) caught a bad case of Gorn larvae, and while they thought they had cured the infection, unfortunately, the Gorn are resilient. She didn’t have much hope left, save for one Hail Mary, a Chimera flower only found in Kenfori. There was once a Federation research base on the planet, but it was evacuated during the Klingon-Federation War. Now, it is in the Restricted Zone drawn up after the war. Which means they must undertake a black ops mission, and Pike (Anson Mount) and M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) take a shuttle down to the surface. The research station is still there, and so is the flower. But why is there no animal life on the planet? And why is there a Klingon beacon blasting a warning above the planet? Now, from here, we will be looking at the episode as a whole, so there will be [SPOILERS] ahead.

Okay, so let’s rip the band-aid off right away and talk about Star Trek’s first real Zombie episode, well, depending on how you classify Enterprise’s Impulse, oh, and come to think about it, there was also Lower Deck’s Second Contact. But I digress. So, how do you make Zombies work in a Star Trek setting? Well, through some excellent technobabble, that is how. And to be honest, it kind of works. You have an abandoned lab that was doing genetic experiments, which was caught up in a sudden war, leading to a containment failure. It all tracks. The design of the moss-zombies was also solid, with us getting a better look at Klingon anatomy than we have gotten before.

The question then becomes: do they add anything to the episode? Unfortunately, this is where they fall down. After that first initial reveal, they don’t really add anything to the proceedings, given that ‘being hunted by the Klingons’ was probably a good enough motivation for the episode. It also hurts that characters feel a bit laissez-faire when it comes to the zombies at times, so they didn’t have the impact they needed, even if Klingons were getting eaten alive. It probably didn’t help the proceedings that the two Federation characters are two we know have to survive the episode, so there was no real tension.  

While the Zombies were a bit of a wet towel, thankfully, they are not the main emotional throughline for the episode, so they don’t torpedo the narrative. Interestingly, this episode works as a sequel to Under the Cloak of War, with our lead Klingon, Bytha (Christine Horn), on a mission of revenge. That was such an interesting part of the story that I do feel it had the narrative strength to hold up the episode on its own. It also helps that Christine Horn knocks it out of the park with her performance, so much that I was a bit sorry that she does not survive the episode.

What this episode does really well is fully nail down the Klingon redesign that Strange New Worlds has been slowly working towards in the last couple of seasons. This is something that I am genuinely immensely grateful for. Now, I understand entirely why Star Trek Discovery and the Kelvin Movies before that made some major redesigns with the Klingons. Watching a bunch of white actors walk around with dark brown face make-up on, even as aliens, is not something that has aged well. But Season One of Discovery course corrected too far. While they started to walk it back in Season Two, and Star Trek Picard made its own way in this space, Strange New Worlds has been able to nail the updated design that still feels like it is in conversation with the Klingons of the past. A good example of this is Nami Melumad’s musical score that didn’t just slap the Klingon theme over the fight scenes but was clearly still speaking the same musical language. Oh, and I see you brought back Marc Okrand, and I respect it.

While what was happening on the planet was our main A-Story, what was happening back up on the Enterprise was just as interesting. Because it focused on two core pillars. The first being how well everyone works as a crew, and also what happens when one of those crew members is not working as a team. With Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn) in charge, with an odd new wig which I assume stems from her filming the next Avengers at the same time. The crew needs to workshop how to get closer to the planet once they realise the Klingons are there. I loved this scene because everyone came together to workshop the issue. However, I also like that Una and La’An Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong) also picked up on something being very wrong with Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia).

Back in Wedding Bell Blues, we discovered that the injury that Ortegas suffered in Hegemony Part II had left a mark. Or after this episode, and what we learn from Batel, it might have left more of an issue than we first thought. But whatever the case, Ortegas is not acting like herself, and the crew pick up on that because they care. Even when Una is disciplining Ortegas at the end, you could tell that it was coming from a place of genuine concern. Ortegas is a character who has felt underserved in the show up to this point, and I am glad that they are giving her a lot more to do. Also, I love that Pike has an image of the Phoenix and the Enterprise NX-01 in his ready room.             

In the end, do we recommend Star Trek: Strange New Worlds – Shuttle to Kenfori? Yes, we do. While not every element hit its mark, the episode offered plenty to appreciate. But I did enjoy what we got this week. I love that the show is still taking chances, and from the looks of it, next week will be no different on that front. Have you seen Star Trek: Strange New Worlds – Shuttle to Kenfori yet? Drop your impressions in the comments below.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Directed by – Dan Liu
Written by – Onitra Johnson & Bill Wolkoff
Created by – Akiva Goldsman, Alex Kurtzman & Jenny Lumet
Based On – Star Trek Created by Gene Roddenberry
Production/Distribution Companies – CBS Television Studios, Roddenberry Entertainment, Secret Hideout & Paramount+
Starring – Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, Jess Bush, Christina Chong, Celia Rose Gooding, Melissa Navia, Babs Olusanmokun, Martin Quinn & Rebecca Romijn with Christine Horn, Melanie Scrofano & Chris Myers and Ishan Davé