Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Review: Memento Mori (Season 1 Episode 4)
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1 Episode 4, “Memento Mori,” brings back a classic antagonist that forces La’an to confront her traumatic past.
Ever since the Gorn were mentioned on the first episode of the series, it was inevitable that they would make an appearance in some way, at some point. For this, Strange New Worlds goes back to the classic well of what works for Star Trek.
The problem here is two-fold; the first being that once you see what the episode is riffing off of, it’s impossible not to see it, and also that it is less successful than the things it is referencing back to. It’s the big issue with shining a light on a reference: you force the audience to automatically compare the two.
The first point of similarity is perhaps unavoidable given the choice of villains and that is Star Trek: The Original Series Season 1 Episode 18, “Arena, where the Gorn were first introduced. What makes these two episodes so similar to one another is that this is a chase involving the Gorn through space.
What makes this different is that “Arena” swiftly turns into a physical fight to the death where we actually see the Gorn and what they look like, shoddy 60’s costuming notwithstanding. That is partly what holds “Memento Mori back. We get that the Gorn exist and they’re hunting the Enterprise but we don’t get much of a sense beyond that.
They are blank, faceless ships chasing after them with sparse amounts of specificity. We aren’t shown what they are but rather told to us by La’an through exposition. To be fair, it’s in service of her character through this episode but it lacks a certain kind of grace.
The second point that is too familiar is the extended sequence surrounding the black hole, which is a straight lift from Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, which does a very similar but iconic scene in a nebula with limited technical capabilities. This is specifically where it is explicitly a less successful version of what has come before.
In truth, it isn’t a huge problem that Strange New Worlds is harkening back to the earlier stuff. You just don’t want it to be symptomatic of something greater when the show at large is so nostalgic and carving out a lot of the same road that The Original Series has already done.
Even if it’s not at the level that the previous works have executed these things, it’s still not necessarily bad. It’s merely a bit lackluster when you shine a light up to it.
To quote an old friend: imperfect Star Trek can still make for very good television.
What did you think of this episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds airs Thursdays on Paramount+.
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Drew Koenig
Drew has an ongoing, borderline unhealthy obsession with pop culture, but with television in particular. When he's not aggressively trying to get out of a perpetual state of catching up, he can be found passionately defending the ending of Lost. More of his online work can be found at The Lost Cause and he also co-hosts The Lost Cause Pod.