I'm going to get this out of the way right away, and I acknowledge this impacts my rankings a little bit, but I'm not a big fan of zombies. I've never watched a zombie movie, I don't play or watch The Last of Us, I didn't watch The Walking Dead, and the one other outright zombie episode I remember watching (Enterprise's Impulse) was not among my favorite episodes of that series. Lower Decks had a couple of episodes with zombie portions (Second Contact and Starbase 80?!), and while those episodes as a whole were pretty good, I felt like the zombie portions dragged the story down a bit.

So much so am I not a fan of zombies, that I didn't catch the 2 very clear zombie references in this episode that foreshadowed the coming of the zombie storyline. The episode title itself is a reference to a zombie movie called Train to Busan, and the name of the planet and system, Kenfori is a nod to actor Ken Foree from the 1978 Dawn of the Dead movie. Had I picked up on either of those references, perhaps I would have been more prepared when this became a mini zombie movie.

All of that said, the fact that this is a zombie episode is not the only reason I rate this episode so low. The episode isn't bad (a reminder on our scale, "Ensign" is C-Tier and maps to "Average Episode," meaning neither good nor bad).

Strange New Worlds has been kinda billed to us (and has been) much more episodic than a lot of modern Trek has been. There are still arcs, and still through-lines, but each episode mostly stands alone. And while this episode stands alone in some ways, as the zombie episode, everything except the zombie plotlines is about larger arcs setup in the season premiere and earlier episodes.

The whole reason Pike and M'Benga go to Kenfori in the first place (and thus have to face a horde of human and Klingon zombies) is to get a flower that could help cure Batel from the Gorn infection she received in Hegemony. Ortegas' storyline of being insubordinate seems to be based on the PTSD (or potential Gorn mind control) from her injury in Hegemony Part II and hinted at at the end of Wedding Bell Blues. Even Pike's concern for Batel is building off of storylines in the previous seasons. And finally, the confrontation between M'Benga and Bytha is a direct follow-up to Under the Cloak of War as the reason Bytha wants to kill M'Benga is because M'Benga killed General Dak'Rah.

Under the Cloak of War was also an episode I wasn't a huge fan of, and bringing it back here doesn't really excite me. While I've loved M'Benga overall as a character, Under the Cloak of War was the episode that made me not care for M'Benga as much, because it taints his character a bit.

In a similar vein, Ortegas' plot. I love Ortegas as a character, and I like that she's given more time in this episode, but to have that be to make Ortegas an insubbordinate officer who is snapping at her friends and colleagues makes me worry about her as a character. I don't have a problem with showing PTSD, it is a valid thing that should be addressed, but I'm hoping that's what this is, and that she'll get over it, rather than it being Gorn mind control making her more agressive.

Ortegas does have the prescident of being a bit speciest. That previous episode Under the Cloak of War she bordered on insubbordination, again because of her hatred of the Klingons after the Klingon war, and in the otherwise excellent episode, A Quality of Mercy, Ortegas filled the role of a character from the TOS episode Balance of Terror. In Balance of Terror, Lieutenant Stiles makes a number of bigoted comments towards Romulans and the fact that Romulans resemble Vulcans, and in Quality of Mercy, Ortegas does exactly the same thing, even using the same lines.

All of this to say, I'm worried about one of my favorite characters. I wanted to see more of Ortegas, but I want more of Ortegas the sassy pilot who cares deeply for her friends, not more of Ortegas the space racist who hates Klingons, Romulans, and Gorn so much that she can't make rational decisions and breaks direct orders. It isn't enough to make this a bad episode, and not enough to make me stop liking Ortegas, but I'm worried about her character.

In any case, this episode will not rank high on my list of favorite episodes, but that's ok, it isn't a bad episode, it is just one of those episodes that when it comes up in a re-watch I'll feel rather "meh" about. Final ranking, Ensign (C-Tier)

HD3 Episode Rank: Ensign (C Tier)