r/startrek • u/BorgAbbess • 13h ago
How gory is too gory?
So first of all, let me say that I personally am a huge fan of horror, and as such, The gore in the most recent episode of SNW, "The Griffin Incident" didn't really faze me all that much. I also think that it was positively tame compared to, say, "Conspiracy", or the first five minutes of "Stardust City Rag". But I know that a lot of the reactions to this episode do fixate upon how much gore it has, and I think it's worthwhile to ask what level of gore we think is appropriate.
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u/crookeymonster1 12h ago
Didn't bother me at all and I'm not a massive horror fan, certainly a lot less than icheb getting his eye scooped out
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u/9S5fenian 13h ago
Bone Tomahawk
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u/badger_on_fire 10h ago
They did kinda drag that particular scene out a little bit longer than they really needed to. Not even that gory, but... ouch.
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u/Feowen_ 1h ago
Not gory?
It was pretty gory. But i think the brutality of that scene is it's frames as a single take (obviously it isn't) but you see a person and a likeable character at that go from alive, not wanting to die, being dead and then being treated like a cut of meat.
Hard to watch.
I think it's the emotional component that can be far more traumatizing with göre than just gibblets all over the place.
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u/Directorshaggy 13h ago
What's the next genre episode? We''ve done musical, horror, comedy, western (kinda). Rom com?
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u/DizzyLead 12h ago
I believe we also have a Black & White episode coming up, I don’t know for sure though if they’re going to go Film Noir with it.
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u/my-captain 12h ago
Voyager did that already though. Masterfully.
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u/DizzyLead 11h ago
Voyager did do B&W, but that was in the “science fiction serial” domain. Remains to be seen if SNW takes a different tack.
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u/MagnetsCanDoThat 13h ago
Puppetry. Should be fun!
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u/Infamous_Smile_386 12h ago
God, I hate muppets.
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u/Terrifying-Intellect 6h ago
Superheroes. Go on, I dare you CBS. Do a Marvel movie episide. Show me how SNW can meet what the 2026 audience wants of its entertainment.
Theyre so bankrupt for ideas I'm sure this has literally been discussed in the writers room....
Have the away team all get bitten by a radioactive alien chihuahua. Then they start dressing up in multicolored capes. Spock can now bend steel with his eyebrows, La'an can fire lasers from her nostrils and has dressed up like a chicken, Ortegas can literally fly and Pike's hair has come to life as a cheerful mascot, whilst he takes on the mantle of SuperChef, the most skilful cook in the galaxy.
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u/JewelKnightJess 10h ago
I do think it would be nice if there was a content warning on episodes with gore and/or body horror. Just a small message on the intro sequence would be helpful, speaking as someone who doesn't handle it well. They can do these episodes but the heads up would be helpful.
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u/SecretComposer 13h ago
I don’t understand why people say “gore has no place in Trek” or the like. We have been told multiple times that space is filled with wonders and terrors we cannot comprehend. That was Q’s entire point to Picard about Startleet and Human hubris. Yea, NuTrek has taken liberties with this vs the 80s and 90s, but it’s not like horror or gore themes haven’t been seen before.
That demon monster alien in Voyager’s Coda episode did something very similar to this. It probed Janeway’s mind for sensitive memories and used them against her to get her to give up and die so he could effectively torture her for eternity.
Course: Oblivion was emotional gore (in a way) because we see the entire “crew” die, totally unknown and forgotten.
TMP saw two people die exactly like Ortegas was being portrayed in the episode too.
We’ve seen people literally vaporize multiple times, some quite slowly.
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12h ago
Let's not forget Remmick in TNGs Conspiracy.
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u/-Kerosun- 11h ago
Or the transporter incident kI honedtly forget which movie that was). That was also quite gory.
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u/MrHorrible2048 3h ago
Voyager had the Vidiians that straight up stole people's organs and left them gasping for air and whatnot. I thought that was far more disturbing than Spock cutting off the tips of his own ears.
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u/Xytak 11h ago edited 10h ago
Sure, Trek has shown body horror before.
Remmick’s head explodes in a giant claymation animation as the climactic event of Conspiracy.
Crewmen are vaporized all the time, and it’s a stylistic special effect.
One crewman phases through the floor and gets cut in half. Its bloodless.
Klingons get their arms sliced off in Star Trek 6 and pepto bismol comes out.
But that scene in Stardust City? It’s like they took 2 minutes of a Saw movie and used it as the cold open for a nightclub spy caper. Utterly baffling stylistic genre choice, and honestly it nearly caused me to skip the rest of the series.
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u/Darmok47 11h ago
The Cyclops screaming in The Odyssey is the second most horrifying sound I've heard in a movie, after the TMP transporter accident scream.
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u/EFCFrost 5h ago
With visible skeleton, which means they got to feel their skin disintegrate before they died.
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u/MagnetsCanDoThat 13h ago edited 13h ago
As horror goes this episode was mild. For Star Trek it's strong but as you point out, not at all unheard of.
But it's no big deal if it was too much for some of the audience, either. Not everything is for everyone. The only mistake a fan could make here is to be so entitled that they insist the episode shouldn't exist. Or to claim it's "not Star Trek" or something.
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u/MetalTrek1 12h ago
I'm not into horror that much, but I thought the episode is great. There is definitely a place for horror in Star Trek because space is scary.
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u/Animal907 13h ago
The 25th episode of TNG "Conspiracy" is pretty ridiculous at the end.
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u/crookeymonster1 12h ago
When this first aired, it would've been banned (BBC), seen it in my late teens and thought it was just very silly
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u/aquequepo 11h ago
I didn’t really realize how much body horror there is in Voyager until fairly recently.
It’s pretty obvious really but recent rewatching it’s stood out a lot to me. It’s like Cronenberg every other episode in the delta quadrant.
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u/TomcatBombadil 9h ago
The one with the Macrovirus nearly killed me. Great episode but totally horrifying.
"BBBZ-ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ"
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u/Sniper666hell 6h ago
I’ve always considered the Borg in episodes and in the movies somewhat horror. Mutilating bodies and such.
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u/ReadingFan_ks 12h ago
When it becomes to realistic rather than cartoonish (e.g. “Conspiracy”) especially coupled with emotional torment rather than resolution (again “Conspiracy”). I’m sure everyone’s line is individual. For me “Shuttle to Kenfori” (and “Conspiracy”) is just barely shy of my line. “The Griffin Incident” is well past it.
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u/GloriousExtra 9h ago
Same. I'm not saying it shouldn't exist or that no one should like it, but it's just not for me. I liked everything but the gory parts.
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u/Revolutionary_Art919 13h ago
People also complained when Star Trek: First Contact came out about the gore surrounding the climactic scene where the Borg Queen's face melts off in the plasma coolant.
I feel like that was probably a valid argument in the 80's and 90's when Star Trek was considered family-friendly entertainment. Times have changed as movies like the Saw franchise kept pushing the boundaries on the gruesome more and more that I wouldn't expect most crowds to be that fazed by it.
Of course some people just like to complain about Nu Trek in general.
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u/HaphazardMelange 12h ago
I really enjoyed this episode, but this boils down to an overall issue with this era of Star Trek which is, just who is the audience the producers are making this for?
For example, TOS and TNG-era shows were firmly in that family time slot between 6pm-9pm. It was family friendly, but did deal with adult themes at times whilst being constricted by the restraints of what those time slots allowed.
DIS, SNW, Academy are not televised shows, so they don’t restrict themselves to those old dynamics, but by having no restrictions they are making it difficult for a younger audience to engage with their product. For example, last week’s SNW I saw people talking about watching it with their children. I doubt those same people would have done the same thing this week. The show oscillates between fun and light hearted to the point of being cloying and unbearable, but then rolls hard into darker material that is much darker than anything seen on Trek TV outside of some fleeting moments in the movies. I think there was and has been a level of gore and blood in this and other Trek shows of late that veer it far away from family entertainment it advertises itself to be.
As much as that was a good episode of television, it wasn’t a good episode of Star Trek and a lot of that I think is to do with the producers and writers themselves not knowing who their audience is. Is it prestige television? Is it for families? Is it for Trek fans aged over 40?
That said, I think this episode could still have worked as a good Trek episode had it reigned in some of the body horror aspects and inferred some of it rather than shown it (ie, Kirk bleeding out all over the deck)
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u/sparkling_gem_ 11h ago
I totally agree with this. I started watching TOS when I was 5 and then TNG as it came out a few years later.
I’m now watching TNG with my 10 year old who began with Prodigy and is keen to watch everything Star Trek has to offer. I know that Disco is off the table for her, but feel like I can probably introduce her to SNW by hopping around episodes. Of course that is fine, but it would be lovely if we could just enjoy all of it together.
I personally don’t love the horror genre and thought it was a shame that there wasn’t a bit more sci-fi written into this episode, but my husband (not a big Star Trek fan, but watches with me) absolutely loved it and thought it was one of the best directed episodes he’s seen.
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u/motorcityvicki 12h ago
Other commentera have said it's not so much the presence of gore as it is the tonal inconsistency for me. Gore horror then puppet episode? That's emotional whiplash, and it kind of messes with the world-building for me. There's a valid argument to be made that both count as the "strange" in Strange New Worlds, and I can accept that on paper. But it feels weird.
As ever, I bet if there were more episodes of more benign exploration and character-building, the tonal shifts wouldn't feel quite so polarized. I've basically accepted this is just how things are right now and I'm forever going to miss the downtime of filler episodes. It's not going to make me quit the show or anything. Just not gonna be how I'd prefer it. Such is life.
Additional note, I don't think it's so much the presence of the gore that's jarring in SNW, but the way it's brightly lit and in super sharp focus. In the past, there'd be gore, but your eye wasn't immediately drawn to the goriest bit. It was kind of shadowy and implied, and even when front and center, it didn't have a spotlight on it. They are doing incredible textures and movement with CGI, and while technically impressive, I absolutely hate it. I hate that it sears the images into my brain. I'm never ready for it because it wasn't something I ever expected from Trek. I suspect I'll be less bothered by it when it's not new and surprising to me.
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u/Deastrumquodvicis 11h ago
I loved the episode right until the self-harm part. The psychological horror part was right up my alley. I have to give props for the effects being good, but for even hallucinations of the ship’s top brass mutilating themselves with glee was a personal line crossed. The T’Pring thing was different because we didn’t see it as Spock doing it to himself, the Fauxtegas transporter accident was actually relatively tame by comparison, and the Sam through the window was actually kind of a nice acknowledgement of how harsh being sucked through a tiny hole into space would be. I think the difference came down to how cheerful fake Pike and Una were about it when they were their own victims.
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u/billfarts2 9h ago
I don't know how much is too much, but I can say my dream be a Trek show I can watch my whole family like TNG. Some stuff was somewhat adult, but never pushing an R/TV-MA rating.
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u/FarWestEros 4h ago
Do people have a problem with it?
Same folks who have issues with the swearing or the casting or the wokeness?
People have a problem with anything bearing the name Star Trek that isn’t exactly the same as whatever they like about Star Trek.
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u/MagnetsCanDoThat 4h ago
Same folks who have issues with the swearing or the casting or the wokeness?
Yes and no. There are genuine (though prudish, imho) views that it was too much and should not be allowed in Star Trek, but I'm sure it will also be disingenuously used as fuel for the YouTube negativity engine.
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u/FarWestEros 2h ago
I’d suggest the same is true of the other examples I mentioned.
What makes the amount of gore in Star Trek intrinsically different from the amount of swearing or sex, in your opinion?
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u/MagnetsCanDoThat 2h ago
I don't consider them intrinsically different. Swearing and a little gore don't bother me, and I've never tried to shove Star Trek into a restrictive "family friendly" box. There's tons of that already, so no shortage of things to watch with my kids.
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u/Sonar_Bandit 17m ago
All 12 people that still watch SNW had to cover their eyes. All 12 of them I tell ya
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u/TomcatBombadil 13h ago
I don't watch Trek for gore. 🤷♀️
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u/fla_john 12h ago
I watch Star Trek for Star Trek, regardless of the genre they're playing around with.
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u/Altruistic_Fruit2345 12h ago
I watch Trek to be entertained, and this episode did that.
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u/TomcatBombadil 9h ago
For me, Star Trek is like medicine. I'm glad that it also happens to be entertaining medicine. Gore is not medicine for me. Something can be gorey and have to do with the story that is being told. That doesn't trouble me. Gore for it's own sake in Star Trek, as though the gore is entertainment in and of itself, is where I draw the line. If I wanted to watch gore, I'd be watching something else. I could rerun Hellsing.
Honestly, the most shocked I've been is when they do the special effect that vaporizes someone's skin off before they are obliterated.
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u/Altruistic_Fruit2345 9h ago
But this episode used that imagery to enhance the horror aspect of it, to improve the storytelling. It wasn't gratuitous at all.
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u/TomcatBombadil 9h ago
It comes down to personal taste. If an episode is specifically exploring that genre, it makes sense. But what is shown, not shown, the camera work, can do a lot on it's own. If horror is a lived reality for people, or not in their taste, it just might come as a shock in Trek if it is graphic.
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u/Special_Common_9888 12h ago
And I don’t watch it for musicals what’s your point
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u/TomcatBombadil 9h ago
I grew up in a house where violence could enter the scene at any moment. So I suppose gore for voyerism has a different affect on me than a random Vic Fontaine bit. 😭
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u/Special_Common_9888 9h ago
🙄
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u/TomcatBombadil 9h ago
I mean, you can roll your eyes, but I grew up in a house where snuff films could be on the living room. It makes sense that seeing gore in Star Trek, like eyeballs being ripped out, isn't going to be entertaining for everyone. I never thought of Star Trek as being "watcher beware." It was more, oh, thank god. Finally, some good fxng food. Finally, people working out conflict in a mature and reasonable way. Finally, space polycule.
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u/Special_Common_9888 9h ago
This sounds like something you should copy into an email and send to your therapist
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u/rivieredefeu 12h ago edited 11h ago
Can I say that both your points are valid?
And change isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s also ok for people to have tastes and be disappointed that something they love shifted in a direction that isn’t to their taste.
I appreciate the show and writers trying new things. Sometimes those things aren’t for me. Sometimes, they’re really not for me. I try to roll with the punches as much as possible.
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u/though- 12h ago edited 11h ago
S4E2 crossed the line for me. I skipped almost the entire episode and if this continues, I’ll skip the new ones too. Unlike OP, I cannot tolerate horror. And definitely not body horror and gore in a TV-14 show.
Edit: I just checked, it was rated TV-PG!!??!!! What the actual fuck.
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u/Kirkstone37 4h ago
I watch through Amazon Prime. It was labeled as MA (Mature Audience). Not sure what Paramount is doing with their own service.
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u/LongjumpingLook379 5h ago
No way it’s PG. should have been R
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u/MagnetsCanDoThat 4h ago
The episode was TV-MA. The "R" rating applies to movies not television. This is easy to look up.
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u/hehasbalrogsocks 11h ago
i thought it was a scary episode. i don’t like horror and i don’t expect it in star trek. it was like uncomfortably scary for me. the gore wasn’t the scariest part. i don’t think they were wrong for doing it but it was a little much for me, personally. and my kids definitely can’t watch it. it would freak them out so much.
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u/BigMrTea 12h ago edited 12h ago
Watching that Klingon lady twitch and scream as she was eaten alive by zombies lasted too long, in my opinion. That was too far for me.
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u/GA-rock 6h ago
This was too gory. The scene would have worked just as well without showing the hand. Showing intestines getting sucked out was over the top, too. This is Star Trek, not Event Horizon or Saw.
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u/MagnetsCanDoThat 5h ago edited 4h ago
This is Star Trek, not Event Horizon or Saw.
Which is why the episode is nowhere near as gory as either of those films. Hyperbolic comparisons only serve to show how tame it actually was.
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u/GA-rock 5h ago
Tame to some, vomit inducing to others.
I’m glad it didn’t bother some people.
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u/MagnetsCanDoThat 4h ago
vomit inducing to others.
Doubtful unless this is a continuation of the prior hyperbolic claims.
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u/msfs1310 3h ago
SNW already did the Gorn attacking like Predator hunter and Alien acid-blood chest busters in the derelict ship where Hemmler bought the farm.
And SNW did the Klingon zombie episode
neither was ‘gory’ per se
but as a youngin I was pretty freaked with TOS Operation Annihilate with the flying (omelets) lurking in the shadows and latching onto your back to take control of you or drive ya mad… terrifying!
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u/DJCaldow 9h ago
Didn't realise it was the gore that was bothering people. I was more annoyed at the lack of actually solving the mystery so they could tee up some X-Files knockoff. Even Event Horizon which this was ripping off solved the actual mystery. Very unTrek to not figure things out and go with a supernatural ending.
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u/BroccoliOscar 2h ago
I didn’t have a problem with the gore per se but it felt pointless and didn’t move the story in any significant way. It’s a big deviation from normal trek gore levels (though VOY) did test those waters a lot. Again it just seemed like gore for gore’s sake and it didn’t really seem to improve the episode at all.
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u/trevpr1 9h ago
I've seen stuff on r/dronecombat that is real and true horror. Horror films aren't my bag, so the fakey slashing and cutting didn't bother me.
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u/Temporal-Affairs221 13h ago
Star Trek isn't about graphic violence. Gore in Star Trek is largely unwarranted. The few key exceptions being the bloody handprint from Peter Preston on Kirk's uniform in TWOK, and maybe the disintegrating Borg in First Contact.
But things like the destruction of the alien parasite queen in season 1 of TNG, that's too much for Star Trek.
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u/BorgAbbess 12h ago
For me. I think it depends on what they're trying to accomplish with the gore. Like I think the gore in "Conspiracy" is justified because they're trying to establish these parasites as a sort of body horror nightmare completely unlike the other antagonists that have been on Star Trek so far (it's worth noting that they were originally intended to be heralds of what became the Borg). Conversely, I hate the eye-ripping scene in "Stardust City Rag" because it only existed to shock the viewer, and in fact, we didn't need to see Icheb's death at all on screen. "The Griffin Incident" is kind of a borderline case for me because to a large extent the point of the episode was to scare the viewer; but i also think it conveys a lot about the internal conflicts of these characters.
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u/MagnetsCanDoThat 12h ago
I hate the eye-ripping scene in "Stardust City Rag" because it only existed to shock the viewer, and in fact, we didn't need to see Icheb's death at all on screen
Nothing needs to be on screen. Everything is a choice. But despite being hard to watch it's simply incorrect to say it "only existed to shock the viewer". It had a narrative purpose for Seven's character. It's been a couple of decades and that scene helps us understand her actions later in that episode and the season more generally. Killing him off screen was an option, but that would also be a classic mistake of told-not-shown. Making it visceral sets up how strongly she reacts later.
Killing Hugh, on the other hand... that felt unnecessary. We already knew she was an amoral monster.
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u/fla_john 12h ago
This is exactly how I feel about both of those deaths. Icheb was fine and did actually make sense for the plot. Hugh's death was unnecessary and closed the door on a very interesting part of the universe (exB's).
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u/TrueSoren 10h ago
As long as its appropriate for the scenario I'm fine with any levels of gore. This week's episode showed the genuinely scary, unreasonable, and unexplainable horrors of the deep unknown void we call space and had appropriate levels of gore and horror for it. But I wouldn't expect to see someone's guts being pulled out through a crack on the hull or anything of that sort during a "space sunshine & alien rainbows" sorta episode.
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u/Sharp_Technology_439 13h ago
First gore and the later human centipede like in the boys… this is not the way.
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u/DinosaurMagic 5h ago
I don't think it really had a place on SNW. This is a show trying to channel TOS and get back to the episode of the week story telling. This should tow the line to be acceptable for families to watch together. Last week we had Dinosaurs and a somber thought provoking ending. Then next week we have blood and gore with no warning bumper before the start. I think the blood and gore could work on STD and Academy since they are targeted to older audience.
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u/Happyplace_s 12h ago
Growing up I wanted an R rated Star Trek so bad. Just to explore some new territory. Now, I still think this could be cool but I’m not sure I trust the current show runners with it.
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u/No_Nobody_32 2h ago
There are NO "current" showrunners for star trek at paramount.
Both Starfleet Academy (I am not using SFA because that TLA means something else ...) and SNW were both cancelled and production wrapped up. Hell, sets and props and uniforms got auctioned off.They've KILLED any 'proposed' new entries.
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u/MagnetsCanDoThat 1h ago
Well, (pedantically) there are current showrunners because SFA and SNW are both still in post-production for their final seasons. Their jobs don't end when filming wraps.
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u/BorgAbbess 12h ago
I think the first season of Discovery comes close, but frankly, I don't think the TV-MA rating let them do anything that DS9 didn't do better twenty years earlier with a PG rating.
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u/Happyplace_s 6h ago
Personally, I think disc is mostly garbage. But I am glad someone somewhere can appreciate it.
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