Star Trek: Strange New Worlds just confront James T. Kirk with the greatest tragedy of his life – 23 years before it happened. Strange New Worlds is an unusual prequel series, because its main character – Anson Mount’s Christopher Pike – knows his fate. Set early on in the Star Trek timeline, the show wrestles with the Enterprise’s own destiny. Paul Wesley’s younger James T. Kirk has gradually become one of the driving characters, as we watch him progress up the command track.
This Kirk has no idea how important he’s going to be to the entire galaxy. He dreams of making captain, but he doesn’t really understand it will be the Enterprise he captains; and though there have been plenty of time travel episodes in Strange New Worlds, none have really given him any clues. Until, that is, “The Griffin Incident.” Though Kirk doesn’t know it, this experience includes a chilling prophecy of his greatest tragedy.
Strange New Worlds Season 4, episode 2 is a chilling episode, the closest Star Trek has ever gone to horror. In this episode, three members of the Enterprise crew stumble across what appears to be a literal ghost ship, and they undergo psychological torture by a monstrous entity. Each of the three is put through the wringer; La’an experiences a breakdown as her Noonien Singh legacy rises to the fore, Spock is faced with an ex who cuts off his Vulcan ears, and Kirk… well, Kirk is faced with questions about whether he’s a good father.
It all comes to a head in a brutal confrontation, when La’an stabs Kirk with a Klingon blade. “Your little boy [David] is going to die just like you,” he’s told. “At the end of a blade. Bleeding out in a dark corner of space.” By the end of the episode, Kirk has resolved to put it behind him; but there’s a catch. The tragedy, though, is that we already know these words were prophetic; this is indeed how David is destined to die, in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. These words weren’t just psychological torture, they were also an accurate prophecy. I can’t help wondering if, years later, Kirk ever remembered the Griffin Incident and wished he’d taken the prophecy on board.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 is increasingly focused on time travel and destiny, and it’s fascinating to see Kirk face an aspect of the future that he chooses to deny. The concerning question, though, is whether or not other aspects of the Griffin Incident were accurate too. La’an is wrestling with her own nature, after all. If some of that entity’s warnings were correct, does that mean she too is destined to fall to the Noonien Singh genome?
