See Picard, this is how to do titles. Call your episodes something but translate it to Latin, use a line from a poem, or as we’ll see next time use a bit of wordplay. Directed by Dan Liu, best known for some Walking Dead, Shadow and Bone, and Picard, Davy Perez & Beau DeMayo’s “Memento Mori” finally gives us some La’an.

Perez you probably know best from a lot of Supernatural before moving on to Strange New Worlds. DeMayo has written some League of Legends shorts, some Witcher episodes, (and the Nightmare of the Wolf film from Netflix) Moon Knight, and as of 5 minutes ago to me, his many topless pictures on Instagram.

If we’re counting this as a retcon, I think it is possibly one of the best retcons of the entire franchise. Put simply, the Enterprise is set to install an upgrade for the colony on Finibus III that would allow the colony to survive. However, due to “rain on fire” the Enterprise finds ruin and horror. A small cargo ship with about 100 people survived, but only barely. Following La’an on Starfleet Remembrance Day, those that have been following the story know what is coming next. Meanwhile, Hemmer has taken Uhura under his wing while she does her engineering work on the way to becoming a bridge crew member.

60s Trek hasn’t aged well, and I’m not talking about the Roddy Piper cosplay. By the time we got to Worf, the questionable Klingons were gone, and Burnham brought back another hate crime in their redesign. Other than green women, big bald-headed play-pretend gods, and other simplistic creatures, the rubber lizards that were the Gorn of yesteryear look downright cartoonish now and have for 50+ years. Believing them to be genuine creatures of terror on par with the Daleks, Borg, and Weeping Angels feels unrealistic. They desperately needed a face-lift and someone to give them true pathos.

This is similar to Sisko and Shaw bringing the scale of humanity following Wolf 359. La’an’s backstory of the SS Puget Sound involves being captured by the Gorn while she was a child, taken to the Gorn breeding planet with her family, and her being the only survivor discovered by USS Martin Luther King Jr where ensign Una Chin-Riley was stationed. That brings humility to the story and later we get a greater depth to that when directly confronted by their redesign. It has taken a honking clown and turned it into a xenomorph with one simple change.

I feel like I’ve said it a lot these last couple of episodes but Strange New Worlds feels like the adults in the room. Where Discovery was the children becoming adults, Picard is the old man rediscovering himself, and Lower Decks is already there from a different perspective, Strange New Worlds is the maturity that people herald TNG, DS9, and Enterprise for. Pike isn’t screaming at everyone the second trouble arises and there isn’t a sense of panic, but there very much is concern. For example, in a crisis, he’s asking questions of everyone. Yet when La’an needs direct guiding, he’s there and firm with that too.

Don’t let any of that say “It’s a perfect episode,” in fact, I’d go as far as to say that for an episode remembering death, it does its fair share of having it and having some things I’d rather were put to death. While the techno-babble does its job of covering for the almost Fast and Furious nonsense scenes such as surfing a Black Hole (without Beastie Boys), some of it dances on the edge of “You just want to explain away the madness you want to do next, don’t you?” I don’t dislike the stupid fun and I don’t absolutely hate the explanation, it just felt like a science lesson for those in the back.

I’d have also liked a little more out of Hemmer and Uhura, as their B plot more or less did the bare minimum in the episode. It was enjoyable to see the young Uhura prove herself even if it wasn’t in a field she’s known for. It more or less just gave us a little bit of Uhura and the tiniest bit of Hemmer for what I think I’d like. We got his character, but I wanted to explore that a little more since I know the direction we’re going. That direction is a target that was painted in this episode.

The implementation and impact of Starfleet Remembrance Day could have been handled a little bit better. I’d argue it is akin to the UK-centric Remembrance Day and the wearing of poppies being replaced with badges. There was a hint of that “why do I have to wear it?” showcased in La’an’s story but it continues to be a very minor point that is almost skipped over to say she’s got redemption, so now she’ll wear it. That is never the point. The point surrounding these things is the expectations and pressure surrounding the wearing of it, like a fashion accessory/seasonal wear. If you don’t conform to it, it is seen as disrespectful.

The truth of the matter is, while it was a story that could have been its own plot point to hammer home that individuals mourn and remember in their own way, it ends up getting lost. On top of that, it becomes perfunctory to the point it was seemingly set out to be there for. La’an doesn’t need a pin to remember who she lost, she knows due to her psychological trauma every day. The argument could be had that she has come to some sort of peace with those losses when she finally wears it, but it feels more to do with Pike and Spock than anything else.

With Una seeking medical attention from M’Benga and Chapel, La’an becomes acting Number One again. Despite her trauma, Pike needs her to understand reinforcement from higher-ups to keep the lower-ranking staff together in a crisis. Meanwhile, in a mind-meld, we get a brief clip from Burnham and how the official records don’t state that Lieutenant Spock has a sister. It is very much the argument “No, you will wear it, even if it isn’t for yourself, it is for others,” which I think defeats the point of the original story and is very much a saccharine Americanism of an otherwise important concept.

“Memento Mori” does a much better job of exciting and engaging you before the final third of the episode unlike “Ghosts of Illyria” as we come down from the action. I think some might take the game of cat and mouse suspense as a waste of a horror episode, but this is exactly what is needed when doing sci-fi horror or simply horror in general. We’re told that it is the Gorn and we see the effect it has on everyone from Pike and La’an, Una, M’Benga, and Chappel, right down to the lower decks kid that saves his crewmate as the bulkheads are being sealed.

Never seeing the Gorn is actually one of the points I give Dan Liu credit for holding back on. He never pushes for something to explicitly say “This is the Gorn,” it is all from La’an and those of Finibus III that were attacked. For us, it is a secondhand experience which makes it more suspenseful as we’re hearing people’s real fear speak volumes. It is a proper spark of horror that we don’t often see as everyone hears “show don’t tell,” misinterpreting it as showing the monster under the bed accompanied by the saucepan orchestra.

Despite some of the more minor features of “Memento Mori” lacking their potential, Perez, DeMayo, and Liu bring an episode that beautifully captures what sci-fi horror should always be. They also manage to reinvent, reimagine, and genuinely make something of comedic fodder in the canon something to actually fear. I’d have liked more with Hemmer and I’d have liked a greater purpose to Starfleet Remembrance Day, but the true purpose of the episode stood head and shoulders above many Picard or Discovery episodes, maybe even quite a large portion of Strange New Worlds too.

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Strange New Worlds "Memento Mori"

9

Score

9.0/10

Pros

• Fantastic sci-fi horror.
• The best retcon of the franchise?
• Hemmer and Uhura's story is great.
• No Beastie Boys on the stupid-fun.

Cons

• The remembrance day story could have been more.