An Instant Classic: SNW scores with "Memento Mori"

Enterprise under pressure

Wow. That was intense.

"Memento Mori", episode 4 of Star Trek: Strange New World's inaugural season, is a thrill ride from start to finish. It's an instant classic, taking its place among the best Star Trek episodes of all time.

Ortegas proves herself again

Writers Davy Perez and Beau DeMayo pay homage to two classic TOS episodes -- "Arena" and "Balance of Terror" -- while adding some of the strongest features of the 1957 Robert Mitchum film, The Enemy Below, upon which "Balance of Terror" is based.

With Dan Liu's skillful direction and some amazing sound work by Supervising Sound Editor, Matthew E. Taylor, and his team, this SNW episode "Memento Mori" does more than pay homage -- it does justice to those earlier television masterworks.

Even more remarkably, the creative team manages to deliver a deeply suspenseful episode while incorporating significant character development without slowing the pace.

I am sorry to admit how much this delights me but the creative team also manages once again to suggest that Star Trek: Enterprise is NOT CANON.

In "Into a Mirror, Darkly", Berman and Braga's catastrophically awful series, Enterprise, brings a Gorn on board the ship and Captain Archer actually wrestles with it. This earlier in-person encounter with the Gorn does not come up at all in "Memento Mori". 

Chapel and M'Benga get creative

No one on Pike's Enterprise, except Noonien-Singh, knows what a Gorn looks like. The data bases have no visual records.

Noonien-Singh states categorically that, other than herself, the only members of Star Fleet ever to see a Gorn died shortly after seeing it. These facts make it clear that Archer's exploits are not part of Star Fleet history, or records.

"Memento Mori" represents the first time we see Pike, his ship and his crew under intense, unrelenting pressure -- Pike consistently assures his team that "Enterprise can take it" but it is his crew, as much as his ship, that proves itself under pressure.

Archer wrestles a Gorn: Best left forgotten

Uhura and Bemmer overcome fear and injuries and learn to work together to deal with a crisis in Engineering. M'Benga and Chapel reach for every tool in their medical bag (including some that belong in the 20th Century) to keep injured crew members alive. Ortegas embraces hope and innovation in proving herself, once again, one of the best pilots in the fleet.

And Spock and Noonien-Singh combine forces to develop new strategies, new innovations, to help take down an overwhelming, unrelenting foe.

"Memento Mori" also introduces to Star Fleet tradition "Fleet Remembrance Day" -- the day each year when Star Fleet crew wear the insignias of previous ships upon which they have served to honour the crew mates, scientists, explorers and civilians who have been lost in the service of human exploration of the galaxy.

Bemmer and Uhura -- Teamwork

Based on the British Commonwealth tradition of "Remembrance Day", upon which people in Canada and other commonwealth nations take a moment to remember members of our military, as well as civilians, lost in war, "Fleet Remembrance Day" adds a certain formal depth to Star Fleet and its history.

I thought it played well in this episode and now wish it had appeared in Star Trek series that have already been completed.

Facing her past

As I write this post, I worry that I have become so enamoured of Strange New Worlds that I am less critical of it than I have been of other Star Trek series. But it has been a long time, a very long time, that I have spent a week actively anticipating the next episode of a television series, that I have set aside time to watch it uninterrupted, to savour it thereafter.