In Review: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (S1 – EP4) Momento Mori

Synopsis: In Momento Mori, Captain Pike must find unconventional Starfleet methods to deal with a malevolent force that attacks the Enterprise.

The Story

While investigating a Colony whose people have gone missing. The Enterprise crew and a few survivors from the Colony find themselves being hunted by The Gorn. This brings about a situation where Captain Pike must make use of Security Officer La’an Noonien Singh’s past experiences. It also calls upon each and every crew member to trust in one another as The Enterprise plays a dangerous game of Cat and Mouse.

The Acting

We get a lot of great acting performances in this episode and lots of great character development. Christina Chong gets to build on her character as we witness La’an have to battle her own fear and PTSD in order to help Captain Pike and the crew navigates a real crisis. Her scenes with Pike (Anson Mount) and the mind-meld scene with Spock (Ethan Peck) are just a couple of the highlights of this episode in what is another standout performance for Chong.

We also get some great moments from Celia Rose Gooding and Bruce Horak as Uhura’s Engineering exam under the Guidance of Hemmer turns rather deadly. As the Cadet and teacher are forced to work on a real Engineering emergency. Further complicating matters is the fact that Hemmer loses the use of his hand, which means Uhura has to follow exact instructions to try and save the ship.

Added to this is some highly charged Medical drama that sees Dr. M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) and Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush) having to adopt a back-to-basics approach as all the medical equipment gets damaged.

Overall

Momento Mori is perhaps one of the strongest character-driven episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds to date. As we get to see how most of the key crew members operate in a real-life and death struggle. We get a further exploration of La’an Noonien Singh’s character as she relives some of her deepest fears and winds up finding that she can trust that her fellow crewmembers have her back.

In some ways, this episode is what the original series story ‘Balance of Terror’ would be like if it was made with today’s visual effects. The acting from all the cast was superb as a real sense of tension was created. The moment where the computer is counting down the seconds to whether or not Enterprise can be seen or not by their Gorn opponent is a real butt clencher. As are the scenes where Hemmer is instructing Uhura on how to repair the ship.

We also get some pretty nice visuals as Enterprise gets away from the Gorn ship. However, we do not actually catch sight of an actual Gorn, which might indicate further encounters with them down the line, which would be fun given that they are one of the least developed original series villains.

Overall. A really solid episode witch allowed us to get a better sense of who the new crew of the Enterprise is.