Strange New World Season 3 offers a major horror film first for the Star Trek franchise
Pike and M’Benga lock themselves inside the abandoned outpost, sifted by a horde of zombies trying to enter. One of the klingons chasing the pair is invaded by the zombies, torn and devoured. (I can’t imagine that the Klingons consider that An honorable way to go.)
Since “Night of the Living Dead” by George Romero transformed the zombies into film monsters, their screen performances have varied. Kenfori-zombies are the fast type, not the terrads at the farm. Binding their origin to plants also feels from the “last of us”. In this video game / television series, the zombies are not really living dead. Instead, the story suggests what would happen if the real mushroom of Cordycepts went from the possession of ants to the possession of human beings. The whole of the abandoned outpost on Kenfori, filled with vegetable growth containing half-deflected human remains, resembles both “The Last of Us” and the science fiction film of Alex Garland “Annihilation”.
The existence of films in the future of “Star Trek” is controversial. In the 24th century, cinema seems to have lost all cultural relevance in favor of the interactive narration of Holodeck.
Given the familiarity of Pike and M’Benga with “The Z-Word”, it must be assumed that zombie films (or at least books) still exist in the 23rd century. “Star Trek: Enterprise” has shown that, at the very least, humans are still watching James Whale’s “Frankenstein” films in the 22nd century. Are they still looking at George Romero’s photos in the 23rd?
Wherever Pike and M’Benga learned the zombies, it was not their “real” world. Yes, in one way or another, “Star Trek” has never made zombies of appropriate undead previously. The franchise has made vampires, witches (“catspaw”) and even devils (“Devil’s due”), but not zombies. The closest thing to Zombies in “Star Trek” before “the shuttle for Kenfori” was in the episode “Company” “the episode”. In this episode, the crew of the Enterprise NX-01 meets a destroyed Vulcan ship, the Seleya. The ship discovered a mineral, Trellium-D, which is toxic to Vulcans, making them less intelligent and violent. When the company arrives at the Seleya, the crew degenerated into a relentless horde.
Like how the “Kenfori shuttle” seems to be influenced by “The Last of Us”, “Impulse” (broadcast in 2003) nods at “28 days later” then recent with its fast zombies which are not really zombies, just people infected with a “rabies virus”. “Star Trek” A and will always be in the future, but it connects its audience in the future by relying on their present. You can follow this by which films that the “Star Trek” series chooses tribute.
“Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” is in trouble on Paramount +, with new episodes of the third season during the first season on Thursdays.
