The crew of the USS Enterprise warp towards season four of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds with mixed emotions. The Season Three conclusion ties-up loose ends and gives Captain Marie Batel (Melanie Scrofano) a heroic send off. It’s been a season of monster episodes with writers leaning hard into the horrors found in deep space. But the crew’s map of the new frontier provides them and the audience with some needed joy and hope for the future. 

The third season is a rollercoaster of emotions, an opinion shared by fans on social media. Fans can experience fear, sadness and love, even finding moments of whimsy across the 10 episodes. This ebb and flow of emotional states directly connects to Captain Batel’s life. She begins season three in despair about her medical situation. She eventually finds happiness with Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) and earns her position as Judge Advocate General. All this happens before her heroic yet tragic confrontation with the monstrous Vezda in the season finale. 

All Ends Have A Beginning

The Season 2 cliffhanger ‘Hegemony, Part I’ gives us Batel’s first brush with monsters. During the Gorn attack, she is infected with their eggs. In ‘Hegemony, Part II’ the Gorn fetuses grow inside Batel’s body. The very thought inhabits the psyche of key crew members. Everyone on the ship worries about the moment when the Gorn will break free of Batel. They lay the Captain inside a stasis field in sick bay, for her protection. Then Nurse Chapel and Spock attempt to find a way to remove the Gorn infection without killing her, and everyone else.

The infection the Gorn inflicts brings new Gorn to life—as the young eat their way out of hosts bodies. The horror of this unnatural birth rightly gives the audience the heebie-jeebies. Batel, though, wants to die so that she won’t be the cause of a Gorn infection on the ship. She references Lieutenant Hemmer’s (Bruce Horak) own sacrifice in the season one episode ‘All Those Who Wander’. He too was infected with Gorn eggs, and chose to die to save the rest of the crew. 

To stave off the infection, Batel receives a transfusion of Una Chin-Riley’s (Rebecca Romijn) Illyrian blood. This transfusion allows her human immune system to fight the parasites. At the same time, she gains heightened physical abilities. This, of course, is not enough to defeat the Gorn growing inside her. In ‘Shuttle to Kenfori’ Pike and Dr. M’Benga (Mabs Olusanmokun) seek out a chimera blossom. The reason, to attempt to hybridize Batel with the Gorn. This hybridization eventually allows for Batel to become something different–a sentry called the Beholder.

Horror At Home

Batel’s lack of body autonomy when it comes to the Gorn upset some audience members, however. It is not uncommon for supernatural (and science-fiction) horrors to mirror those found in daily life. Star Trek is not typically known for overly horror-based or monster story constructions. But it often uses the motifs of the horror genre when telling important character narratives, like Batel’s story arc. Using horror is, of course, not new for science fiction (see Alien). What feels newer for Star Trek, though, is its use of gore.

In ‘Hegemony, Part I’, Pike and Admiral Robert April (Adrian Holmes) discuss the Gorn. During the conversation, Pike describes the violent race as monsters, and April urges caution. Despite Pike’s stereotyping, audiences soon learn that the Gorn can be more than that. This is brought to life when Lieutenant Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia) must survive on a hostile planet with a Gorn “monster” in ‘Terrarium’. 

The Gorn And The Vezda

Season three, though, uses horror as a member of the cast. The stories this time around focus on the Gorn and the Vezda. The Gorn, since the Original Series in “Arena,” appear as a horrible hybrid of reptile and human – a literal monster. From Enterprise forward, the aliens have become more xenomorph-like. Gorn ships, advanced technical wonders, spiral through space and outmaneuver opponents. Their deadliness in space is mirrored on the ground, as they harvest humanoids for food or fuel for their ships.

The Vezda, on the other hand, appear as another form of parasite and are enemies of the Gorn. In the episode ‘Through the Lens of Time’, the Vezda possess Ensign Gamble (Chris Myers) by gouging out his eyes. The away team arrives at the heritage site in an attempt to understand the past. They plan to do this through the medical anthropological study of resurrection and reincarnation, based on science. Then the sacred site becomes a hostile setting. Eventually, one of the Vezda is released and kills Gamble, using his body and voice against his will.

The possession of Gamble functions a bit differently than Batel’s. Batel is used for breeding, which could easily be argued is a natural behaviour for the Gorn. Gamble is used in an attempt to free all the Vezda imprisoned on Vadia IX, a calculated and insidious plot. Of the two, which sounds more like the monster?

The Monster Inside

The horror Gamble endures is akin to Batel’s infection – they both carry aliens inside them. Gamble’s blindness and bloody eye sockets up the ante in the horror department. His empty eyes are visible to the audience every time the character appears. Zeperez, the entity possessing Gamble’s body, even gauges out the eyes of others so that freed Vezda may possess them. In contrast, Batel’s pustules and internal Gorn eggs hide generally hide from view. The exception is momentary glimpses through Spock’s mind meld, or during surgery.

The Vezda and the Gorn are vicious enemies, as seen in Episode 5 ‘Through the Lens of Time’. The meeting between the possessed Gamble and hybridized Batel erupts into a fight for survival. This telegraphs some of the events of the season finale, ‘New Life and New Civilisations”. The Beholder defeats Zeperez, before taking up her unending post as a statue guarding the Vezda prison. 

Before this ending, however, Batel (as the Beholder) gives Pike a gift – a whole lifetime, witnessed in a single moment. In this fantasy, Batel marries Pike and the two live an idyllic life together. They have a child they watch grow up and fall in love. However, this happily ever after gives audiences a gut-punch. Just like the one The Next Generation fans receive after viewing ‘The Inner Light’. The season conclusion gives Pike a vision the life he is canonically denied, while allowing Batel to become a memory on a pedestal.

A New Mission

Season 3 has certainly had its ups and downs as it’s explored not just new civilisations, but new genres. However, any core A-plot that exists focusses on a horror style. The stories are filled with monsters, both alien and mythic. And though it may feel rushed at points, good overcomes evil in the end.

But what next for Pike and the Enterprise crew? The Gorn are in hibernation, and the Vezda are contained once more. Does that mean the crew can voyage across the final frontier on their original mission of exploration? Or will Season 4 be a continuation of Season 3’s creative exploration of which genres work alongside science fiction? We’ll have to wait to find out!

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