‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' Pulled Off Something Better Than a Classic Zombie Story

Gizmodo

24-07-2025

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds loves itself a trope, and sometimes that really is a 'for better or worse' kind of situation. So when this week's episode, 'Shuttle to Kenfori', revealed that its antagonists were some very fast-running plant-based zombies (The Last of Who?), I braced myself to hit all the very well-worn marks of the genre. But thankfully 'Kenfori' surprised me, and sidestepped a thematic cynicism to deliver a surprise sequel to one of season 2's standout episodes.'Shuttle to Kenfori' sees the Enterprise facing an off-the-books mission to a demilitarized zone between the Klingon Empire and the Federation, when it turns out that Captain Batel's not-so-happily-cured of her Gorn infestation as last week's premiere largely handwaved. Needing the aid of an exceedingly rare plant being studied by Federation agri-scientists before the outbreak of the war with the Klingons as Batel's only hope, the Enterprise is forced to watch from afar as it sends off Dr. M'Benga and Captain Pike to the abandoned research station on the titular planet to find the chimera plant before any passing Klingons discover Starfleet's flagship violating peacetime treaties.
'Shuttle to Kenfori' jukes and jives as it reveals its true layers. At first you think you're getting another episode about the aftermath of Discovery's Klingon war, especially with the pairing up of M'Benga and Pike to contrast the doctor's experience on the front lines with Pike's relative distance from the events of the war—and especially when a (wonderful-looking) Klingon D7 drops out of warp above the planet and sends a scouting party and promptly blows up their shuttle. But as Pike and M'Benga prepare for a shootout, we're hit with our first twist: the station's research into using the chimera planet to hybridize sustainable crops led to a viral outbreak that consumed all living matter on the planet, Federation and Klingon alike, leaving running, clawing, moss-covered zombies in its wake.
So in quick succession, we get all the typical zombie story hallmarks. There's plenty of gross-out horror, from Klingon disruptors vaporizing the undead, to smushed body parts, and even one of the Klingon scouts getting swarmed and eaten alive—gut-ripping galore that doesn't go quite into full horror, but still makes you squirm. M'Benga admonishes Pike over his use of 'the z-word.' Tensions about Batel's conditions get put aside the second Pike stands next to a viewport that practically screams 'a zombie is about to slam on this for a jumpscare,' only for exactly that to happen. And then, of course, differences are put aside when the one remaining Klingon offers to work together with the Starfleet duo in order to try and make it off Kenfori alive.
If this was all 'Shuttle to Kenfori' was, it might be a bit of a letdown. For as much as the show loves playing with genre tropes, at its best it does so by doing more than what 'Kenfori' does here with zombies, largely pointing at things and situations you'd expect and shrugging as it puts a veneer of Star Trek over it. But thankfully, there's another twist in store. When the Klingon, M'Benga, and Pike get to the top of the research station, with a Klingon scout ship waiting to take them to freedom, the Klingon reveals her true intent. It turns out their vessel wasn't patrolling the demilitarized zone, it was hunting for M'Benga—and that she is Bytha, the daughter of Ambassador Dak'Rah, the Klingon turncoat who had some very personal history with M'Benga and Nurse Chapel's wartime experience in last season's 'Under the Cloak of War'.
Bytha, it turns out, wants vengeance, but not for the death of her father. She wants to kill the person who killed Dak'Rah—something 'Shuttle to Kenfori' has M'Benga be much more specific about, compared to the fascinatingly morally vague conclusion of 'Under the Cloak of War'—to try and regain her family's honor in the eyes of Klingon society, their house diminished for Dak'Rah's allegiance with the Federation after the war. On a dime, the episode turns again, now not about ticking off zombie tropes but bringing a fascinating extra layer to that prior episode, and to M'Benga again. But not in the way you'd expect 'a zombie episode' to be about that idea.
If anything, especially by having M'Benga at least fully admit, to the shock of Pike, his role in Dak'Rah's death, you might think we're about to get into that whole 'humanity (and Klingons alike) are the real monsters' kind of deal, as M'Benga and Bytha engage in an honor duel to the death. But in a stark contrast to the season opener's view of the Gorn, instead we get a much better parallel to 'Arena' here than any of Strange New World's Gorn episodes have managed to deliver so far: a Starfleet hero dealing with their capacity for violence and darkness, acknowledging it, but also learning to go beyond it.
Even as M'Benga remarks about his blasé relationship with his part in the Klingon War (he even says to Bytha, when she asks if he recognizes her, that he's killed so many Klingons that he pays no attention to specific identities), the duel becomes a fight for him to move past that history, the history that saw him lead to a violent continuation of that cycle in confronting and killing Dak'Rah, and show her that he has become a better person. In doing so, he is willing to accept an amicable understanding of Bytha, and of Klingon rituals around honor, sparing her from their duel but respecting that she chooses to sacrifice herself to the zombie hordes to buy M'Benga and Pike time to escape with their chimera plant sample in tow. It trades the dark ambiguity 'Under the Cloak of War' ended on when you'd expect a tropey zombie story to revel in that kind of darkness, and offers instead a perfectly Star Trek message: that even having been touched by darkness, this is a future that represents a possibility that people can grow and become better versions of themselves.
So it's interesting then that what 'Shuttle to Kenfori' ends on isn't really M'Benga reconciling with the progress he's made, but the slipping of another member of the Enterprise crew. While all the zombie action on Kenfori has been playing out throughout the episode, back aboard the Enterprise, the bridge crew (among whom all the women have suddenly got their hair tied up, the hilarious reason for why revealing itself in a brief moment where the bridge loses artificial gravity—I guess no one on production wanted to deal with floating hair!) have been playing a bit of a space-submarine game with the Klingon battlecruiser.
Not wanting to be seen violating the treaty, and getting into a risky fight that could stop them from rescuing M'Benga and Pike, Una approves a plan to slowly enter Kenfori's orbit, cloaked by an asteroid field, rather than Ortegas' risky, loud move of trying to warp into orbit, beam the away team out at speed (with a bit of help from Scotty, who of course will have history with that kind of risky maneuver!), and warp back out. Things go awry when the D7 notices Enterprise anyway, leading to the crew falling back to Ortegas' original plan… only for Una to realize that Ortegas, who has her own troubled history as a veteran of the Klingon War, purposefully disobeyed orders to force a potential conflict with the Klingons.
It's clear that, despite suggestions to the contrary, her traumatic encounter with the Gorn has left Ortegas in a vulnerable state, one that is going to be antagonized by Number One's punishment of her by taking her off the bridge roster for weeks. Not only is it an interesting continuation of Ortegas' arc this season (at last, she has something to do, even if she's just been punished by being given nothing to do!), it's a fascinating parallel with how M'Benga's arc develops this episode.
After all, journeys of learning and healing aren't linear paths: there is progress and setbacks, recoveries and slips. But Star Trek is about the potential of allowing people the chance to go on those journeys in the first place, to grow into a place among societies that have managed to do that on interstellar scales. Placing that utopian ideal at the heart of a zombie episode is perfectly Star Trek, and far better than just playing the shambling hits.
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