RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Finally: a horror-themed episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds . As a horror-loving girl, I was way excited for this episode. It was predictable, but I didn’t care. Horror !
But first, we start with the set up. Kirk, La’An, and Spock are on their way back from a Future Federation Leaders retreat—which was a success. They detect a mysterious signal from an unknown region of space, so they go investigate. They come across the Griffin , a Starfleet ship that went missing without a trace nine years ago. The main theory is that the ship was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Klingons got to it, destroyed it, and covered it up. Spock has his own theory, that a stellar flare hit it during warp, scattering it across many light years. Either way, that doesn’t explain what they are seeing here.
They go check out the Griffin . The first thing they notice is that they aren’t floating. There is no scientific reason the ship has gravity. “It’s like everyone took a coffee break and never returned.” Kirk thinks he hears a baby cry; no one else hears anything. Spock is getting no signs of anything worrying. Suddenly, the computers all flash on, and most importantly, life support is on. They have 60 minutes to figure out what happened before life support shuts off. Sounds like they are setting up a real-time adventure: the 60 minutes is exactly how long the episode is. Unfortunately, they don’t. They just take off their masks and start exploring.
There are no escape pods or shuttles—maybe that’s how they left? But no, there is no record of the pods leaving. As the three of them walk, they see a ghostly pale woman who whispers, “I’ve been waiting for you…” They give chase, and she disappears within seconds. There is not enough power to transport out of the ship, according to Kirk. Spock does, however, find there are faint traces of “negatively charged ions,” which makes Kirk jump to conclusions: “You mean a ghost?” Of course he doesn’t, Kirk!
They find phaser marks on the wall, surrounding a boarded-up door. Starfleet, Klingon, and Vulcan phaser scars are all identified. It looks like someone was locked into the room, and someone else tried to break them out. La’An and Spock begin working to get into the door, while Kirk is distracted by the sound of a baby crying. He begins to wander off, but La’An shakes him from his reverie.
They make it inside the room, which turns out to be the med bay… where they find a stack of empty, folded body bags. For some reason, this is where they decide to split up, which is always a bad idea in horror movies. La’An and Spock do kiss before she goes with Kirk to the bridge, so that’s something. Spock stays behind in the med bay to try to look up records… when one of the body bags falls. He picks it up and sees it says “Vulcan” on it.
Kirk shares some details about his wife and son, Carol and David. Carol had never been a fan of Starfleet, afraid he would die alone somewhere in space. As if summoned, a creepy body slinks behind them, moving like a disconnected marionette. When they turn to look, it is gone, and La’An does not get a reading for negatively charged ions.
Meanwhile, Spock has been getting details about the crew. They were not boarded, and not hit with a disease or any cosmic anomaly. The bodies were removed by Chief Security Officer Rose Harper (Sokira Wolf), who had filed a number of security reports of erratic behavior, but everyone was fully checked out and medically cleared to return to work. In the end, there were thirteen strangled crew members, eight who had been stabbed, and 287 were transported to open space while still alive. Suddenly, the door slams closed, locking Spock into the med bay. And even more suddenly, there are corpses on the tables, zipped into the body bags.
La’An is watching a video of Harper. It is glitchy, but she believes something is taking over the ship. She tells Kirk they have to get off the ship. But out the window, he sees their shuttle, in pieces. They only have twenty minutes of life support (but over thirty minutes of episode left). Kirk thinks he can get an SOS out if he can get more power to the comms.
Behind Spock, one of the bodies sits up and unzips the bag. Inside is T’Pring (Gia Sandhu), Spock’s former fiancée. She insists that she is not an illusion. She explained how, when she was hiking, she was injured, and animals started circling. She had a panic attack (or what humans call a panic attack), and began repeating a Vulcan poem to center herself. It brought her back, and she survived.
La’An has moved to engineering in the hope of redirecting power. She watches another video of Harper, who insists she can’t let whatever is happening there spread among Starfleet. Someone—or something—sneaks up behind La’An and puts a hand on her shoulder. It’s Harper.
Kirk is on the bridge when he notices a little wind-up toy marching across the floor. He had bought it for David because he was supposed to spend the weekend with him, but then he got a call about the retreat, and bought the toy for his son to make up for his absence. Yeah, that’s a crappy gift for blowing off your son. But then he hears the baby crying again, and he moves forward, looking for the sound. He sees a hand come up through the computer cables.
T’Pring takes the blame for ruining her relationship with Spock. She does not know what happened between her and Spock, but she thinks she can get them back together. She shoots him. Yep, that’s exactly how I want to be won back.
La’An is still with Harper, who is speaking to her softly. Suddenly, she is surrounded by ghostly people like Harper. “You are not a monster,” Harper says, then the lights go up and reveal their spooky guests. “You are one of us.” They don’t appear to be trying to attack La’An, or moving at all, but their existence is still unsettling.
Spock wakes (stun FTW!) and finds he is tied up on a bed. T’Pring realized what is holding Spock back is his Vulcan side. So she takes a pai...
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