- Title: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds – Memento Mori
- wiki: link
“Memento Mori” has the feel of a submarine battle deep under the ocean which also works as a callback to the memorable space battle in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. We begin on Starfleet Remembrance Day with the Enterprise arriving to offer support to a settlement that has been attacked, unaware the survivors are only bait left by the Gorn. Offering a tense and action-packed episode, “Memento Mori” follows the trend of using the story to explore the past of a specific member of the crew. This time its Lieutenant La’an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong), one of the few victims of the Gorn ever to make it out alive.
We’re given a classic Star Trek alien in the Gorn that gets a bit of updating (no rubbber-suited reptiles here). One of the best choices made in the episode (and there are many) is to never show the lizard men, even in La’an’s memory, which works to further paint them as mysterious boogeymen with unusual ship design and a cruelty rarely encountered by Starfleet. With the Enterprise crippled by the Gorn’s attack, Pike (Anson Mount) hides in the ship in the gaseous brown dwarf, buying time for the crew to come up with a plan. The episode is also notable for Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) doing a rotation in Engineering where she’s put to work by an injured Lieutenant Hemmer (Bruce Horak) in preventing further catastrophe to the ship.
