3. Storytelling with bite
Directed by horror filmmaker Axelle Carolyn, “The Griffin Incident” is so effective because of its total dedication to its tone, which is firmly established by writer Robbie Thompson's script. The story starts with the well-known ghost ship premise and keeps raising the stakes until the tension becomes oppressively high.
The Griffin is discovered eerily abandoned, the crew appears to have vanished without explanation, and the ship’s state only deepens the sense that something impossible happened here. The narrative is clever enough to avoid giving out simple solutions right away, and the visuals are intense.
The episode’s late-game revelations about the Griffin’s fate and the nature of the boarding party's visions make the horror land even harder, because the answers are as disturbing as the mystery itself. That refusal to neat-pack the mystery is precisely why it works. Whether it’s supernatural forces or psychological collapse, the focus stays on the raw dread the crew feels.
Instead of rushing toward an explanation, the episode forces the audience to sit in discomfort, showing just how good SNW is when it fully trusts its own concept. By the end, the horror lands not because everything is explained, but because the explanation is almost worse than the uncertainty.
“The Griffin Incident” feels like a confident left turn for the series. It’s eerie, character-driven, and more than a little brutal, but it never loses sight of why we’re watching these people in the first place. It’s a horror episode that still feels unmistakably Star Trek, proving the franchise doesn’t have to abandon its ideals to tell a genuinely frightening story.
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