Review: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 303: “Shuttle to Kenfori”
After the lighthearted wedding festivities of last week, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds plunges into a grittier, more suspenseful narrative with “Shuttle to Kenfori.” This installment takes an unexpected turn, echoing The Walking Dead in its tone while serving as an unsettling follow-up to a pivotal season two episode.
Zombie Horror in the Final Frontier
Things are seemingly back to normal for the Enterprise, except for Captain Marie Batel (Melanie Scrofano), who is dealing with lingering issues following her Gorn infection. Things take a turn for the worst as Batel’s infection flares to a nearly terminal point, meaning Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) – the person who is falling more and more in love with Batel – and Doctor Joseph M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) must travel to Kenfori, an off-limits world that initially housed a Federation research station before the Klingons invaded during the recent war. Pike and M’Benga’s unsanctioned, desperate mission is simple: find the chimera blossom, the only thing in the galaxy that will save Batel’s life.
Initially, Batel opts for Spock (Ethan Peck) to accompany M’Benga, but Captain Pike being Captain Pike asserts that any dangerous and illegal mission will be his responsibility, and therefore pairs himself with the doctor as the Enterprise sneaks to Kenfori. Upon taking a shuttle from the Enterprise to the Federation research station on the planet’s surface, the pair find a few warning signs that something is amiss, including:
- A Klingon communications beacon saying visitors to this world should turn back or die.
- The lack of animal lifesigns on a planet otherwise overwhelmed with plant life.
- The discovery of a Klingon killed not by warfare or natural causes.
- Creepy sounds in the research station that aren’t caused by any living animal.
- Pike finding the chewed-off remains of somebody’s leg.
It’s all quite strange, but Pike’s determination to find the chimera blossom never wavers.
This episode wastes no time in building up Pike and M’Benga’s existing relationship.
While we can’t say the friendship of this duo was ever front and center in this show, “Shuttle to Kenfori” makes it seem like the pair have been lifelong friends. Just a few examples of this relationship building includes:
- M’Benga and Pike sharing a laugh remembering a particularly rough shuttle ride they once shared.
- The pair fondly wishing they made more time for flyfishing instead of always being on missions.
- Pike asking to learn about Batel’s condition not because he’s the captain, but because he is M’Benga’s friend.
Most of this seems a bit forced and inorganic considering the delicate nature of their mission. Moreover, Pike asks M’Benga in a non sequitur about his thoughts on the Roger Korby-Christine Chapel situation, which seems like an out-of-place conversation starter within the context of this episode. This exchange feels solely designed to prompt M’Benga’s revelation about his multiple divorces and self-perception as a “work in progress.” While intended to build character depth for a later reveal, its placement feels clunky and detracts from the immediate narrative.
The pair find the plant they are looking for easily enough, but things get more complicated when a Klingon shuttle destroys Pike and M’Benga’s ride, leaving the pair stranded on the planet and playing a game of cat and mouse with Klingons in the creepy science facility.
The Klingons corner Pike and M’Benga and capture them, but the group is immediately attacked by what appear to be zombies before anything can be said or done. Yep, Strange New Worlds joins Enterprise as the only Star Trek show to experiment with zombie-related horror (that Enterprise episode being “Impulse”). Here, the zombies are fast, aggressive, and out for blood, but how did these zombies come to be? The answer ultimately comes from M’Benga, who knows more about the plant they seek – and Batel’s infection – than he lets on.
The soft-spoken doctor reveals a shocking truth: the blossom won’t simply cure Batel; it will fuse her Gorn infection with her human physiology, creating a hybrid. This drastic treatment was kept secret from Pike, with Batel fearing his “alarming” reaction. It’s also revealed that the Federation scientists, experimenting with the blossom, inadvertently became the first undead, a fate later shared by the Klingon invaders.
Pike’s fury and fear upon learning of Batel’s condition are palpable and entirely justified. His anger extends to M’Benga, who defends his secrecy with doctor-patient confidentiality. Yet, this reasoning rings hollow. M’Benga, with Batel’s consent, planned to create a Gorn-Human hybrid on the Enterprise – a monumental security risk that absolutely warranted the captain’s knowledge. Beyond the personal threat to his love interest, Pike has every right to be frustrated by the lack of transparency surrounding such a dangerous, experimental procedure. One also has to wonder: did Batel truly believe Pike would never discover her dramatic transformation?
Before more can be said about Batel, Pike and M’Benga are overwhelmed by zombies and hide in a cabinet, only to soon be rescued by the Klingons. Upon reaching the research facility’s rooftop, M’Benga, Pike, and the remaining Klingon are once again faced with a zombie horde, and a super-convenient forcefield allows them to ignore the zombies (for now) and focus on why the Klingons wanted to capture the Starfleet away team.
The Klingon leader (Christine Horn) reveals her true motivation: not revenge for her slain father, Dak’Rah, who met his end in a questionable confrontation with M’Benga in “Under the Cloak of War,” but a duel for honor. Shunned by her own people due to her father’s dealings with the Federation, she sought to kill Dak’Rah herself. Now, she demands satisfaction from M’Benga, his assassin.
This narrative sharply contradicts M’Benga’s long-held assertion that he killed Dak’Rah in self-defense. Under duress, with Pike’s life on the line, M’Benga finally tells the unvarnished truth: he killed Dak’Rah willingly, unapologetically. This revelation understandably stuns Pike.
“I lied to protect the monster that still lives inside me should the day come when he is needed again.” – M’Benga
M’Benga defeats the Klingon in combat, but in a moment of self-restraint, chooses not to kill her, opting not to unleash the “monster” within himself. This angers the Klingon, who, valuing honor above all, sacrifices herself to distract the zombies, buying Pike and M’Benga time to escape to a Klingon shuttle – though they are ultimately beamed away by the Enterprise.
Back on board, Pike confronts M’Benga. While he won’t report the unauthorized assassination, citing their off-the-books mission, Pike expresses his disappointment in M’Benga’s secrecy. All things considered, M’Benga has, perhaps, dodged a significant bullet.
The Helmsman’s Defiance
The B-story in “Shuttle to Kenfori” is a decidedly Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia) affair, as the young helmsman’s demeanor and personality have changed a bit since her traumatic encounter with the Gorn in the season premiere. Here, Ortegas isn’t shy about advocating for her preferred way of rescuing Pike and M’Benga on the planet below, or how to deal with the Klingon ship that enters the system. Ortegas, as we well know, is an excellent pilot, a skill she reminds the audience of when the Enterprise needs to traverse a dense ice field surrounding Kenfori.
Ortegas doesn’t make mistakes when she is piloting the ship, and this perfection leads to her downfall in this episode. Much to the chagrin of Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn), Ortegas subtly disobeys Una’s order to implement Spock’s plan to sneak by the Klingon ship, and Ortegas initially claims she made a simple mistake. But Una knows her pilot better, and realizes that by sabotaging Spock’s plan, Una had to go with Ortegas’ idea to warp the Enterprise into Kenfori’s atmosphere. Una, rightly, is mad, and she takes Ortegas off her normal duty shift. Ortegas is changing, and not for the better, so we’ll have to see how this plays out for her.
By the way, how ridiculous is Spock’s plan to reach Kenfori to rescue the away team? His plan involves gliding by the Klingon ship while most systems on the Enterprise are shut down. But some systems are up on the Enterprise, and the two ships cross within 100 kilometers (62 miles) of each other – basically no distance at all in space. The visual of the Enterprise coasting by the close Klingon ship just didn’t pass the straight-face test for us. There’s just no way the Klingon ship wouldn’t have seen the Enterprise if they were so close, ice cloud or not.
Elsewhere in the episode, Spock endeavors to help Batel manage her pain via a special kind of mind meld. The trick works, but Spock and Batel experience a kind of shared trauma, some kind of burden that lives within Batel. The pair think it might be Gorn related, but they aren’t sure, and no more light comes from this experience in this episode; it’s definitely not a good sign. After getting back from Kenfori, Pike reconciles with Batel about what he learned about her condition, and both end the episode scared over what might happen following this highly risky treatment.
The Conflicted Heart of “Shuttle to Kenfori”
This episode stands as a commendable Star Trek installment thanks to its willingness to delve into darker, more morally ambiguous corners of its characters; namely, M’Benga and Ortegas. And by venturing into zombie horror, it pushes the boundaries of what a Star Trek story can be, injecting genuine suspense and a sense of visceral danger rarely seen in the franchise.
The episode uses this intense backdrop to explore the Pike-M’Benga relationship, culminating in M’Benga’s shocking confession about Dak’Rah – but really, who among us didn’t harbor some doubts about M’Benga’s official story anyway? This reveal challenges Pike’s view of his friend and forces a confrontation with the brutal realities of war and the compromises even good people make, demonstrating Star Trek‘s enduring capacity to examine difficult aspects of the “human condition” through a speculative lens.
However, “Shuttle to Kenfori” also stumbles in ways that detract from its overall effectiveness as a Star Trek episode. The forced and inorganic attempts at showcasing Pike and M’Benga’s friendship often felt shoehorned, undermining the emotional connection it sought to establish. More significantly, the significant breach of protocol regarding Batel’s Gorn-human hybridization, kept secret from the captain of the ship, feels like a dramatic contrivance that prioritizes shock value over logical character behavior and the established chain of command within Starfleet. Such narrative choices, while aiming for high drama, can at times feel like a departure from the thoughtful, character-driven consistency often expected from the best of Star Trek.
Stray Thoughts:
- We appreciated director Dan Liu’s approach to action scenes in this episode. Such scenes aren’t cut to pieces like so much action in TV nowadays. There’s time to discern who is where and what is going on, and this approach is even more effective when it allows the viewer to absorb the gruesomeness of zombie combat in “Shuttle to Kenfori.”
- We like how each episode since Scotty’s (Martin Quinn) introduction gives us a glimpse of the engineer we come to know and love. In this episode, Scotty suggests during a staff meeting how the Enterprise can glide through a planet’s atmosphere to rescue Pike and M’Benga, and then later he laments how he needs to actually pull the trick off. You can’t become a super-confident miracle worker overnight, after all.
- The visual of the Enterprise traveling through the atmosphere is striking, but we think a bit more VFX work should have been included to allow us to see the ship come out of the planet’s atmosphere and back into orbit near the Klingon ship. Without this context, the transition from the Enterprise descending to the planet and then suddenly facing the Klingon ship again is jarring.
- Surely the Klingon Empire is going to complain about the Enterprise’s presence at Kenfori?
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