star trek gorn xenomorph

• Mirror Universe

The Gorn were a warp-capable , bipedal reptilian species from the Beta Quadrant . Their interstellar government was known as the Gorn Hegemony .

• 1.1 Life cycle
• 2.1 Mirror universe
• 2.2 Alternate reality
• 3.1 Starship classes
• 5.1 Appearances
• 5.2 Background information
• 5.3.1 Video games
• 5.4 External links

Biology [ ]

A Gorn skeleton

Gorn were a cold-blooded species, with green , rubbery skin , red blood , and an average height of approximately two meters . They tended to be many times stronger than most humanoids . While young Gorn were very agile and fast, adults tended to be slower and less agile but with greater stamina. Nonetheless, a single adult Gorn was able to dispatch a fully armed Starfleet landing party with ease. They, like most cold-blooded species, preferred warmer temperatures and hated the cold. The Gorn had at least two genders : male and female . Despite being reptilian , Gorn females appeared to have breasts , which were generally found on mammals . ( TOS : " Arena "; ENT : " In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II "; LD : " Veritas "; SNW : " All Those Who Wander "; et al. )

Some Humans had an instinctive revulsion to the Gorn, as they were a type of reptile , and thought them primitive or unintelligent. This was unwise, as the Gorn were at least as intelligent as Humans.

Through the eyes of a Gorn

Gorn ears were simple holes on the sides of their skulls , while their mouths boasted an impressive array of sharp teeth and their hands and feet possessed vicious claws . In the mirror universe , Phlox quipped that the Gorn were comparable to that of the extinct Velociraptor , based on one Gorn's size and bite radius . ( ENT : " In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II ") Some Gorn displayed eyes that were silvery and faceted, much like the compound eyes of insects , while others had typical humanoid eyes complete with pupils.

They also possessed incredible durability and were able to take an extreme amount of punishment. During a skirmish between Captain James T. Kirk and a Gorn captain , Kirk hurled a boulder at his opponent, only for it to bounce off the Gorn's skin. Later, he caused a giant boulder to roll down a mountain and hit the Gorn captain. Though this temporarily stunned him, he was not injured. Kirk finally managed to wound and disable the Gorn with a primitive cannon comprised of rope -wrapped bamboo as a barrel , with raw diamonds as projectiles and a homemade gunpowder mixture as propellant. ( TOS : " Arena ")

Life cycle [ ]

External effects of parasitic Gorn eggs

The Gorn hatched from parasitic eggs that incubated inside humanoid hosts. The maturation cycle varied depending on the species of the host, lasting months within an Orion but days within a Human . When ready, the hatchlings or younglings would rip their way violently from the body of their host.

A Gorn youngling

Newly emerged Gorn were white in color; they became green as they fed voraciously and grew rapidly in size, molting their skin in the process. The hatchlings were quadrupedal and exceptionally fast and strong, and possessed prehensile tails . They were uncontrollably aggressive toward other lifeforms and even members of their own species, fighting each other for dominance, which ensured that only the strongest and smartest survived. Even before they were fully mature, the hatchlings developed ducts by their mouths that enabled them to spit venom , which not only blinded their prey but also infected additional hosts with eggs. Because of their biological makeup both eggs and hatchlings were invisible to sensors . Despite their bestial nature, the hatchlings were highly intelligent and could prevent themselves from being sensed telepathically – evolutionary advantages that made them dangerous hunters.

The Gorn maintained breeding planets where they deposited sentient beings to be used as breeding sacs or hunted as food by the hatchlings. Adult Gorn periodically returned to the planets to harvest their young. ( SNW : " Memento Mori ", " All Those Who Wander ")

The Gorn could also become pregnant with live young, and Caesarean sections might be indicated. Births of eight children were known. The infants were apparently highly aggressive even when born in this manner. ( Star Trek Into Darkness )

History and culture [ ]

A Gorn wedding ( 2380 )

Like many humanoid species , Gorn got married as well, as they had weddings , just as Humans and Vulcans did. ( LD : " Veritas ")

Of the Gorn, Orion privateer Harrad-Sar said in 2154 , " The less said about them, the better ". However, he did concede that the Gorn brewed the finest meridor in the five systems . ( ENT : " Bound ")

In 2256 , Captain Gabriel Lorca had a Gorn skeleton in a USS Discovery laboratory . ( DIS : " Context Is for Kings ")

Unconfirmed First Contact report for the Gorn in the personnel file of La'an Noonien-Singh

Although unconfirmed at the time, the first encounter between the Humans and the Gorn occurred in the 2230s or 2240s , when the colony ship SS Puget Sound was captured and the entire ship's complement was deposited on a planetary nursery . According to La'an Noonien-Singh 's accounts, the Gorn would eat some of their captives alive, while other captives would have their bodies slit open and used as "breeding sacks,” and some captives would be hunted as a sport before being fed to infant Gorn. In accordance with some sort of ritual , the final survivor would be spared, only to be placed in a life raft and abandoned in space. The survivor was not expected to live. ( SNW : " Strange New Worlds ")

La'an explained to Captain Pike that there had in fact been multiple contacts with the Gorn by 2259 – including the attack on Finibus III that the USS Enterprise dealt with in that year – but they hardly ever left survivors and were therefore still listed as never officially encountered. ( SNW : " Memento Mori ") That same year, the USS Peregrine fell victim to Gorn hatchlings that unexpectedly emerged from refugees rescued by the crew. The hatchlings were neutralized by a landing party from the Enterprise . ( SNW : " All Those Who Wander ")

La'an, who had survived being hunted on one of their planetary nurseries, described the Gorn as "plain evil" and impossible to empathize with or come to an understanding with them, unrelenting when they hunt. Gorn considered warm-blooded species their prey. They employed ambush tactics and used injured prey as bait to lure in more. For example, they would allow a group of survivors to escape while attacking a Federation colony so they would call for help and bring in more prospective prey. They were even willing to sacrifice one of their own (or even one of their ships) to force their prey to reveal itself while it was hiding from them. Gorn were also willing to kill their own if they became weak or one of their ships became compromised by an enemy, making sure only the strongest survived. ( SNW : " Memento Mori ")

A Gorn in an EV suit battles Lt. Spock aboard the USS Cayuga

Later that year, a Gorn attack ship was identified near the Galdonterre system , causing Admiral Robert April to fear that a war between the Federation and the Gorn was coming. ( SNW : " The Broken Circle ") This was part of a larger buildup of Gorn forces on their border with the Federation as tensions increased between the Federation and the Gorn Hegemony . In response, the Federation developed better weapons and technology to combat the Gorn and the Gorn protocols which Lieutenant Erica Ortegas dubbed "break in case of Gorn." ( SNW : " Hegemony ")

Eventually, the Gorn attacked the colony of Parnassus Beta which was just outside of Federation space, destroying the USS Cayuga in the process, although most of the crew were on the planet's surface at the time. The Gorn Hegemony then sent a message to Starfleet Command with a demarcation line through the system, placing Parnassus Beta on their side of the line. With Starfleet wanting to avoid possibly triggering a war over a planet that was out of their jurisdiction, the Enterprise snuck a landing party down by having it play dead amongst the Cayuga 's debris field. On the surface, La'an noticed that the Gorn were exhibiting strange behavior such as their juveniles cooperating instead of fighting each other for dominance, suggesting that something else was going on beyond usual Gorn activities. The landing party encountered Lieutenant junior grade Montgomery Scott who had been aboard the USS Stardiver one system over studying solar flares when the Gorn had attacked and destroyed the ship. As the system's red supergiant had begun emitting coronal mass ejections right before the Gorn had attacked, Scott suspected that something about the flares had lured them out while Sam Kirk compared it to locusts having their swarming instincts triggered by environmental factors. With the Gorn communicating through light, Kirk suggested that they had some kind of an ingrained sensitivity to it that somehow triggered their actions.

Eventually, Lieutenant Spock and Nurse Christine Chapel were able to restore comms and transporters by crashing the wrecked saucer section of the Cayuga into the Gorn tower . However, a Gorn destroyer and several hunters attacked the Enterprise with more ships on the way. Although the Enterprise tried to beam out the surviving colonists and the landing party, the Gorn got to them first, leaving Pike with a tough choice as Starfleet ordered the Enterprise to withdraw immediately. ( SNW : " Hegemony ")

Kirk fighting the Gorn captain

In 2267 , the Gorn attacked, with impunity , the Federation colony and outpost on Cestus III . The Gorn saw the strike as a preemptive move, since they regarded the Cestus system as part of their territory. The Enterprise pursued a Gorn starship from Cestus III into a previously unexplored region of the galaxy, near 2466 PM . There, both starships were immobilized by the Metrons , who transported Captain Kirk and the Gorn captain to a planet's surface where the two captains were instructed to settle their differences in a "contest… of ingenuity against ingenuity, brute strength against brute strength." Although the Gorn captain was physically stronger than Kirk, Kirk was able to construct a makeshift cannon out of materials on the planet's surface and defeat the Gorn. When Kirk showed mercy to his defeated opponent, the Metrons sent both captains back to their respective ships and transported the Enterprise out of the area. ( TOS : " Arena ")

While on the Enterprise in 2268 , Benjamin Sisko admitted to Jadzia Dax that he would like to ask Kirk about the fight with the Gorn captain during this encounter. ( DS9 : " Trials and Tribble-ations ")

A Gorn served on the ruling council of the pocket dimension Elysia , in the late 23rd century . It is unknown how long members of his species had been trapped in that universe . ( TAS : " The Time Trap ")

A Gorn chef on Starbase 25

By the 2380s , relations between the Federation and Gorn had seemingly improved. By 2381 , some Gorn resided on Federation Starbase 25 , including a Gorn chef who operated the restaurant Mr. Krada Leg . ( LD : " An Embarrassment Of Dooplers ") In 2384 , a Gorn starship was among those that came to the aid of Federation vessels hijacked by the living construct . ( PRO : " Supernova, Part 1 ", " Supernova, Part 2 ")

In the wake of The Burn , the Gorn attempted to artificially create a wormhole , resulting in the destruction of two light years of subspace . ( DIS : " That Hope Is You, Part 1 ")

Mirror universe [ ]

In the mirror universe , a Gorn named Slar was a slave master working for the Tholian Assembly in 2155 . He was in charge of the workers assigned aboard the USS Defiant until the crew of the ISS Enterprise took it over following the Battle of Vintaak . Slar was suspicious of Terrans and vicious when it came to dealing with them. He was ultimately killed by Jonathan Archer . ( ENT : " In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II ")

A century later, in 2257 , a Gorn skull was on display aboard the ISS Shenzhou . ( DIS : " The Wolf Inside ")

Alternate reality [ ]

In the alternate reality , first contact between the Gorn and the Federation had taken place prior to 2259 , as Dr. Leonard McCoy recalled having performed a Caesarean section on a pregnant Gorn. ( Star Trek Into Darkness )

Technology [ ]

As of the late 23rd century , much of Gorn technology was on par with that of Starfleet . A Gorn ship was almost as fast as a Constitution -class starship , which would have to push its engines to a dangerous point to overtake a Gorn ship.

Their weapons were described as "like phasers , only worse" by a survivor of the Cestus attack. This description may have been colored by fear, as they were later described as disruptors .

Gorn ship-to-ship communication

Gorn ships would employ visual communication in the form of light signals when in visual range of each other. ( SNW : " Memento Mori ")

Gorn shields were capable of enduring an initial full barrage of phaser and photon torpedo fire, with little or no appreciable damage.

They had transporter technology, and possessed voice duplicator equipment that was at least good enough to fool a casual listener.

Gorn ground tactical units utilized powerful disruptors, capable of completely disintegrating targets at ranges of between 1,200 and 1,500 yards . Their sensor technology may have been less effective than that of the Federation, as they had some difficulty targeting a landing party during their ambush at Cestus III.

The Gorn were able to home in on signals from a tricorder , allowing them to "bracket" the user with fire. ( TOS : " Arena "; SNW : " Memento Mori ")

Starship classes [ ]

• Gorn destroyer
• Gorn hunter
• Gorn starship
• Gorn warship ( mirror universe )
• Slar ( mirror universe )
• Unnamed Gorn

Appendices [ ]

Appearances [ ].

• TOS : " Arena "
• TAS : " The Time Trap "
• ENT : " In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II "
• " Context Is for Kings " (skeleton only)
• " The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry " (skeleton only)
• " Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad " (skeleton only)
• " Much Ado About Boimler " (model only)
• " Veritas "
• " No Small Parts " (model only)
• " Mugato, Gumato " (model only)
• " An Embarrassment Of Dooplers "
• " The Inner Fight "
• " Memento Mori " (ships only; no visual contact)
• " All Those Who Wander "
• " Hegemony "

Background information [ ]

The original Gorn without its outer costume

The cast list in the final draft script of "Arena" described the Gorn as " a large (six foot four) lizard-like creature, well-muscled, very strong. " When the Gorn first appeared in the scripted events of the episode, the description of the alien read, " It is a lizard, who walks like a man… two-legged, two-armed, a thick glistening scaly hide, the size of a man with outstanding musculature… a wide mouth full of sharp teeth, a ridge of hard plate running down his back, even a prehensile, thick, strong tail. He is wearing a garment like a short robe [....] He does not wear shoes of any sort. " Detailing other aspects of the Gorn's anatomy, the script later referred to the creature as having shoulder blades as well as eyes that at one point "glitter[ed]" and the script further stated, " He has two tiny earholes on his head, where a Human being's ears would be. " The script also described the Gorn's voice, as heard through his Metron communicator , as "harsh, whistling, hissing" and deemed his strength to be comparable to that of a grizzly bear .

The original Gorn was played by several people, including Bobby Clark , Gary Combs , and Bill Blackburn . The voice was provided by Ted Cassidy .

The Gorn's costume was designed by Wah Chang , who also created the M-113 creature (aka the "salt vampire"). ( The Art of Star Trek , p. 34; et al. ) The Gorn captain in "Arena" was intended to not be particularly agile, with the episode's script stating about the Gorn, " It moves slowly, awkwardly, " and referring to the creature as "sluggish" and "lumbering". " He's big and awkward… That all fits the costume, " said Bobby Clark , who wore the reptilian suit. " Because the costume was thick rubber, it had big muscles – you couldn't bend your arms. You couldn't walk fast because the feet would hold you back. You couldn't run, because you'd be walking like you had two swimming fins on your feet. And we were walking in brush a lot, so that was tough… [The producers have] said several times that, in their estimation, it was the slowest fight they'd ever seen. Well, yes, it was slow. If it was fast, it would've been the funniest fight they'd ever seen. " ( SFX , issue #200, p. 135) Michael Westmore attributed the slowness of the alien to the makeup design for what he termed "the lumbering Gorn." Westmore commented, " For all his mobility in Wah's costume and props, the Gorn, because of the heavy rubber appliances and the thick wet suit, is relatively slow and cumbersome […] even though the Gorn was a very advanced creation for his time. " ( Star Trek: Aliens & Artifacts , p. 43) Dan Curry agreed that the Gorn suit "was very bulky and very hard for the actor to move around in." ( Inside the Mirror Episodes , ENT Season 4 DVD special features)

A Gorn appears on the cover of A Child's Garden of Lifeforms in Our Galaxy , a book that was designed by Doug Drexler for DS9 : " Time's Orphan ". ( Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion , p. 579)

One day shortly before 14 May 2001 , someone asked Archer actor Scott Bakula about the Gorn. " I hadn't thought about him in a long time, but oh, my gosh, it was just so terrible, " said Bakula, remembering the relatively primitive special effects used to depict the alien in "Arena". ( Star Trek: Communicator  issue 135 , p. 25)

The Gorn were originally planned to be featured as the villains in the 2001 Star Trek: Enterprise first season episode " The Andorian Incident ". One reason why their role in the story was replaced with the Andorians was that the Gorn, unlike the Andorians, were considered to be unable to talk. ( Star Trek: Communicator  issue 136 , p. 37) Near the end of Enterprise 's first season , staff writer Michael Sussman offered, " Before we decided to have the Andorians, we all talked about doing the Gorn [....] But when we looked at the show, it was decided by Rick [Berman] and Brannon [Braga] that it was pretty clear that Captain Kirk's run-in was the first time anyone had seen a Gorn. So, as much as we would love to use them, it doesn't fit with what's been established, so they're kind of off the table for us. " ( Star Trek: The Magazine  Volume 2, Issue 11 , pp. 48-49) Subsequently, Berman didn't, however, completely rule out the possibility of including the Gorn in Enterprise . On the contrary, he declared, " The Gorn are certainly a possibility. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 101 , p. 18) In fact, prior to the Gorn's appearance in " In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II ", Enterprise 's writing staff spent much time trying to find some means of including the Gorn into the series without violating continuity. ("In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II" audio commentary , ENT Season 4 DVD ) David A. Goodman was one production staffer who spent a lot of time developing a Gorn episode of Enterprise . ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 118 , p. 15)

The mirror universe setting of the "In a Mirror, Darkly" two-parter finally allowed for the Gorn's inclusion in ENT. ("In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II" audio commentary , ENT Season 4 DVD ) " Yeah, we had to get a Gorn in there, " noted Manny Coto . " I always wanted to do a Gorn. " ("Before Her Time: Decommissioning Enterprise , Part Two: Memorable Voyages", ENT Season 4 Blu-ray special features) On the other hand, Garfield Reeves-Stevens remembered, " The Gorn is the one [alien] they almost didn't have [in the 'In a Mirror, Darkly' two-parter] and we put on an impassioned plea to have it and Manny capitulated. Manny wondered if it was integral to the story and we mounted a defense for it. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 37, No. 2, p. 69)

As described in the final draft script of "In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II", the Gorn were "giant reptiles" with three clawed fingers and "razor-sharp teeth." Slar was also scripted to be wearing "the Gorn equivalent of an EV undersuit." As for Gorn language, the script commented that, immediately before being shot by Archer, Slar was "cursing at Archer in his own tongue."

Initially, the production crew were perplexed as to how they would create the Gorn required for "In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II". Michael Westmore explained, " With the Gorn… in the beginning, they didn't know what direction we were gonna go in. Are you going to put a man in a suit? And if we do, what modifications are you going to make, so it doesn't look like the original one […] which was very bulky and very hard for the actor to move around in? We played around with the idea, and we all came… Basically, all of us came to the same conclusion. If we want to do something that's new and that's still à la Gorn, it's going to have to be an optical – not a man in a suit. " ( Inside the Mirror Episodes , ENT Season 4 DVD special features) This method of creating the modernized Gorn would allow it to have much more freedom of movement than had been possible with its predecessor in the original series. ( ENT Season 4 DVD text commentary )

A starting point for creating the ENT Gorn was concept artwork by Dan Curry. " We looked at the Gorn from the original series, " he explained, " and then I did some sketches on how the Gorn might look more reptilian and made anatomical changes in the skin [....] After I did the sketches we turned that over to the makeup department under Mike Westmore's supervision and Earl Ellis sculpted a maquette of the Gorn. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 37, No. 2, p. 69) The maquette created by Ellis – a sculptor in Westmore's makeup department – measured eighteen inches and was made from clay. This potential Gorn design was further developed with input from producers Manny Coto, Rick Berman and Brannon Braga . Westmore later echoed their advice, saying, " 'Well, maybe it should be a little bit more of this. The shoulders should be a little bigger. Maybe the chest should be a little bigger. It looks too much like a Human. Can you extend the torso?' " As the final maquette was a very useful starting point for the creation of a digital model, the maquette was given to Dan Curry who, in turn, gave it to digital effects supervisor John Teska at Eden FX . Teska was then able to transform the design into a fully animated computer-generated Gorn. ( Inside the Mirror Episodes , ENT Season 4 DVD special features)

Meanwhile, footage of Stunt Coordinator Vince Deadrick, Jr. , playing the Gorn – dressed in a fitted black leotard outfit that had white grid marks on – and acting alongside Scott Bakula , was filmed. ( Inside the Mirror Episodes , ENT Season 4 DVD special features) After the same shots were repeated without Deadrick playing the Gorn, the computer-generated version of the alien was added into the shots, replacing Deadrick's movements. ( ENT Season 4 DVD audio commentary ; Inside the Mirror Episodes , ENT Season 4 DVD special features)

For close-up shots of the Gorn's alien hands, a pair of Gorn gloves were especially designed by Michael Westmore's makeup effects department. ( Inside the Mirror Episodes , ENT Season 4 DVD special features)

Ultimately, Manny Coto had mixed feelings about how successful the Gorn in "In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II" had been. " I wish our little Gorn had looked a little better than it did, " he critiqued, " but I would have loved to have done more Gorn stuff in season five, which would have been fun to explore [....] I think we had talked about doing Mirror-Universe Gorns. Uh, you know, expand that whole thing. " ("Before Her Time: Decommissioning Enterprise , Part Two: Memorable Voyages", ENT Season 4 Blu-ray special features)

The Gorn were referenced in an ultimately omitted line of dialogue from the first draft script of Star Trek Nemesis , in which Picard, delivering his best man's speech at the wedding of Riker and Troi , recalled that Riker's bachelor party had included "three Andorians, two Tellarites and a Gorn." According to an interview given by John Logan to Star Trek Communicator ( citation needed • edit ) in 2003, the scene was not in the final version of the film.

The Gorn prisoner cut from Star Trek

A Gorn was among multiple individuals Barney Burman and his company, Proteus Make-up FX Team , created for Rura Penthe prison scenes in the film Star Trek , footage that was ultimately cut from the movie's final release . Including the Gorn was the idea of Sculptor Don Lanning , who had spent the past year and a half sculpting surgeries for television series Nip/Tuck . " I immediately wanted to revisit the Gorn from 'Arena', " he said, " because I had just spent a lot of time sculpting realistic stuff, so I was ready for some hard-core fantasy! " Hired onto the production in the role of key sculptor, Lanning was permitted his wish of furthering a redesign of the Gorn. This developed into one of two sculptures which he worked on whenever he got some down time, the other being the M-113 creature . " The Gorn was our best effort to revisit the original material, " observed Lanning, " and I think it was very successful. " Lanning was left with the impression that the Gorn was removed from the film because Director J.J. Abrams and others on the production staff wanted the upcoming film to concentrate on newer aliens. ( Star Trek Magazine Special 2014 , pp. 135 & 137)

Gorn EV suit

The Gorn EV suit was also discussed in TRR : " Hegemony ".

Apocrypha [ ]

The Star Fleet Battles and Federation Space board games, published by Task Force Games , indicated that a Gorn confederation formed when three separate but nearly identical sentient species, each having developed on a different planet (Gdhar I, Gdhar II, and Gdhar III, presumably in the Gdhar system) joined into a single political entity. The Gorn are a civilized and cultured race. The Star Fleet Battles game universe refers to an initial brief conflict between two hotheaded starship captains over what was then considered a misunderstanding (an indirect reference to the events in "Arena"). This conflict was resolved peacefully and led to the Gorn being a close ally of the Federation. It is said to be one of the few alliances in the SFU that is apparently based on mutual trust, respect, and desire for friendship as opposed to political convenience (see also Star Fleet Universe ).

The graphic novel The Gorn Crisis is the story of Jean-Luc Picard 's attempt to ally with the Gorn in the Dominion War despite a Gorn civil war . The novel Articles of the Federation followed up on this and stated that the Gorn fought in the Dominion War on the Federation's side. The crew of the USS Enterprise -E helped to convince them to join the fight against the Dominion . In A Singular Destiny , the Gorn joined the Typhon Pact ( β ) – an alliance including the Romulan Star Empire , the Breen Confederacy , the Tholian Assembly , the Tzenkethi , and the Kinshaya ( β ) which was set up in competition with the powers of the Khitomer Accords .

Sisko gets to meet the Gorn captain from "Arena" in the short story "Where I Fell Before My Enemy" that was published in the first Strange New Worlds anthology.

According to The Worlds of the Federation reference book, the Gorn homeworld is called Gornar, also known as Tau Lacertae IX.

The Gorn appear in the FASA RPG adventure book Demand of Honor , where their government is called the Gorn Alliance and their homeworld is called S'sgaron.

In the Star Trek: The Original Series - Core Game Book , the Gorn homeworld was called Agornu.

In the twenty-fourth issue of the Star Trek: Ongoing comic series set in the alternate reality , the Gorn return following the events of the 2013 game. The Gorn featured were a more peaceful faction who separated from the Armada during the Milky Way invasion where they settled on the planet Parthenon 559, but came into conflict with a Federation mining team there. After learning the settlers attacked first and that the Gorn only attacked in self-defense, Kirk placed the planet under quarantine , deciding it was best to leave the Gorn alone.

According to the Star Trek Adventures - Beta Quadrant sourcebook, there are multiple species of Gorn. The Ssessekh are the Gorn seen in The Original Series and the Russth are the Gorn seen in Enterprise . Agornu, Garag, Gornar, Koreb, Shekkis and S'sgaron are all names for the Gorn homeworld used by different Gorn species.

Video games [ ]

The Gorn are playable races in several Star Trek video games. These include Star Trek: Starfleet Command , Star Trek: Tactical Assault , Star Trek: Klingon Academy , and Star Trek Online . The game manual for Star Trek: Bridge Commander mentions the Gorn were allied with the Dominion during the Dominion War.

In Star Trek: Klingon Academy , the Gorn are available as a playable race in Skirmish and Multiplayer modes. According to the game's manual, their government is referred to as the "Gorn Kingdom", rather than the more common Gorn Confederation. They are engaged in a mutual exchange agreement with the Federation, and as such their vessels are equipped with similar technologies, such as phasers and tractor beam weapons. Like the other non-campaign races in the game, the Gorn possess fewer ship classes than the Klingons or the Federation.

The Gorn are also a playable race, and allies of the Klingon Empire , in Star Trek Online . When designing a Gorn character, only the male gender is selectable. Gorn are also the enemies faced during many Federation missions, and some employ a rock-throwing attack reminiscent of the battle between Kirk and the Gorn captain in "Arena". Furthermore, in Star Trek Online , the Gorn engaged in late- 24th century war against the Klingon Empire. The Klingons eventually prevailed – allowing the Gorn to maintain their rule over their space – but, in exchange, made allies. In this continuity, the insect-like eyes seen on the Gorn captain from "Arena" are explained as a set of eyepieces that give a tactical heads-up display. The tie-in novel The Needs of the Many reveals that the difference between the Gorn seen in The Original Series and Enterprise is part of a caste system; the silver-eyed, five-fingered Gorn are from a warrior caste, while the gold-eyed, three-fingered Gorn are members of a technological caste.

The Gorn of the alternate reality

The Gorn are the villains of the 2013 Star Trek game set before Star Trek Into Darkness , featuring fifteen varieties of male and female Gorn ranging in size, intelligence, and color, designed by Neville Page . [1] They are depicted as originating from another galaxy which they have conquered by the time they reach the Milky Way Galaxy via a wormhole created by a terraforming device on New Vulcan . The Gorn utilize a mind controlling virus to turn enemies on each other, practice bio-enhancement , and just as in the film, McCoy mentions they are viviparous . He recounts Hikaru Sulu having stunned a pregnant female while on the surface of the Lymax planet, necessitating McCoy's medical intervention to deliver the babies.

External links [ ]

• Gorn at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• Gorn at Wikipedia
• 1 Daniels (Crewman)

Star Trek just changed Gorn canon with an Alien -inspired twist

Writer Davy Perez gets into all the nitty-gritty details of Star Trek’s big swing at starship horror.

In the final frontier, no one can hear you scream. In the penultimate episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1 — “All Those Who Wander” — the crew of the Enterprise are dropped into a nail-biting starship horror story, with heavy influences from the 1979 classic Alien . Along the way, we learn a lot more about a certain alien species. Episode writer Davy Perez gave us the scoop on why these aliens are different, and what it all means for the canon of The Original Series and the future of Strange New Worlds . Spoilers ahead.

In Episode 4, “Memento Mori,” the Enterprise crew had a close encounter with the nefarious Gorn, a lizard species. No one actually saw the Gorn, but this week, while looking for survivors on the crashed USS Peregrine , our Starfleet heroes encounter horrifying Gorn babies. The big news is that these Gorn reproduce by popping out of the bodies of other lifeforms, just like the gory xenomorph chestbursters from Alien .

It’s a big change for Trek. Other than one glimpse in the Mirror Universe back in 2005 on the prequel show Enterprise , the only “adult” Gorn we’ve seen is still the classic lizard person from The Original Series episode “Arena.” So, how do these baby Gorn fit in? As with “Memento Mori,” writer Davy Perez felt that “Arena” offered a good amount of “wiggle room” in terms of what Kirk and Starfleet actually know about the Gorn.

Kirk versus the Gorn in the 1967 Star Trek episode, “Arena.”

“Kirk’s idea of the Gorn is different from what he is being told by the Metrons,” Perez tells Inverse, referring to the powerful aliens who force the two to fight . “The Gorn he’s meeting in ‘Arena,’ doesn’t sync with his expectations of them. It was a personal choice I made in my own headcanon that allowed me to have fun with the writing. Viewing it that way creates more possibilities for Gorn stories to continue.”

While the classic rubber monster suit Gorn, designed by Wah Chang in 1967, is iconic, Perez points out that it’s clear in TOS that the Gorn was a “one-off,” meaning some canon trickiness was bound to emerge. The loophole Perez points out in “Arena” is the fact that Kirk’s phrasing in the original episode is specifically vague: “Weaponless, I face the creature the Metrons called a Gorn.”

The classic episode takes place in 2267, while Strange New Worlds happens in 2259. So, if Kirk knows what Pike and the crew know, then the lizard-man Gorn doesn’t really check out with the Velociraptor meets chestburster critters in Strange New Worlds .

“Maybe Kirk has never seen them, he could even be one of those people who still doubts the stories, or maybe even he has seen them and they don’t look the same,” Perez says. “I think the safest thing to say is we have no idea what the Gorn are really like.”

Over the years, various fan theories — and material from Star Trek roleplaying games — have suggested the existence of a variety of Gorn subspecies. In “All Those Who Wander,” Dr. M’Benga discovers the Gorn are “genetic chameleons,” which is why they don’t show up on sensors. Perez points out that, even after this episode and La’an’s childhood experience with these aliens, “we quite literally don’t know very much about the Gorn at all… and that’s what makes them so hard to fight.”

The Enterprise crew investigates the crash of the USS Peregrine, echoing the crashed alien ship investigated by the crew of the Nostromo in Alien .

Outside of all the TOS canon-weeds, the obvious thrill of “All Those Who Wander” is the way in which the episode brings the flavor of Alien, and other sci-fi horror classics, to Star Trek. There’s never quite been a Trek episode like this.

“Yes, Alien was something I’ve been inspired by many times in the past, and here especially,” Perez says. “It’s hard not to draw the comparison when writing a ‘horror story in space.’ Even back when discussing Episode 4 we started talking about Alien , and not just in what we liked about it, but more how to avoid retreading it wholesale. Our story is unique and specific to Trek, similar inspirations but different in execution.”

But it’s not just Alien that Perez and the SNW team drew upon for inspiration. When Nurse Chapel is chased by the tiny Gorn we get to see the latter’s point of view, which is evocative of Predator . And Perez notes the influences run from the obvious, like John Carpenter's The Thing , to the less obvious.

“You might laugh, but Gremlins !” Perez says. “Think about it, tiny monsters that roam around wreaking havoc with these ‘rules’ that mean the difference between life and death. Baby Gorn are just more deadly Gremlins. Or more aptly put, Tribbles with teeth.”

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is streaming now on Paramount+.

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What Do the Gorn Represent on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds?

The second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds came to a close with “ Hegemony, ” a season finale that ended with a classic Star Trek cliffhanger.

If nothing else, the episode cements the Gorn as Strange New Worlds ’ primary antagonists. Although those reptilian aliens debuted in the classic Star Trek episode “ Arena ,” they have only appeared fleetingly since then, most notably in the Enterprise two-parter “ In a Mirror, Darkly .” Nevertheless, like the Tholians from “ The Tholian Web ,” the Gorn are a striking and memorable alien design, and so have popped up frequently in a variety of non-canon material, from video games to advertisements .

Most Star Trek shows tend to have one or two alien species that they focus on as a potential antagonist. These are often new species, but they can also be an underdeveloped race from an earlier show. The original Star Trek had the Romulans and the Klingons. The Next Generation had the Ferengi and the Borg. Deep Space Nine had the Cardassians and the Dominion. Voyager had the Kazon. Enterprise had the Suliban and the Xindi.

Owing to the franchise’s general trend towards nostalgia, the newer shows don’t tend to focus as much on new aliens. Discovery returned to the Klingons. Picard focused on the Romulans and the Borg. Lower Decks pulled something of a deep cut with the Pakleds, a much-maligned alien menace that had only really been the focus of a single (bad) episode of The Next Generation , “ Samaritan Snare .” To its credit, Prodigy introduced its own new species, the Vau N’Akat.

Strange New Worlds has chosen the Gorn as their alien focal point. The Gorn served as the antagonists of two separate first season episodes, “ Memento Mori ” and “ All Those Who Wander .” In the second season, the show has repeatedly suggested that a cold war is brewing between the Federation and the Gorn, as reflected in the closing scenes of “ The Broken Circle ” and in the building of Starfleet infrastructure in “ Lost in Translation .”

Strange New Worlds places great emphasis on the Gorn. La’an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong) has a traumatic backstory tied to her unlikely survival on “a Gorn breeding planet.” More than that, the cliffhanger ending of “Hegemony” is obviously structured to evoke “ The Best of Both Worlds ,” a choice that draws an implicit comparison between the Borg on The Next Generation and the Gorn on Strange New Worlds . Those are some sizable shoes to fill.

With all of that in mind, there is still one lingering question that remains unanswered two full seasons into Strange New Worlds : what exactly do the Gorn represent? They are undoubtedly a cool visual. The show works hard to build them into a credible threat. They are perhaps even genuinely scary. However, what exactly is the show using them to say? What is the point of the Gorn? What function do they serve beyond providing an antagonist for the heroes to overcome?

On Star Trek , alien species almost always represent something . They are metaphors for some underlying anxiety or uncertainty, a way for the franchise to make some commentary about the state of the world. Sometimes, they can be stand-ins for a particular group or nation. The Klingons were obviously created as an expression of anxieties over the growing influence of Communist China , to the point that the script for their first appearance describes them as “ Oriental, hard-faced .”

Sometimes the metaphors were more abstract. The Romulans were always more hazily-defined than the Klingons, coded as “ the Roman Empire in space .” However, the original Star Trek was populated with a number of evil societies modeled on the Roman Empire, such as the Terran Empire in “ Mirror, Mirror ” or Planet 892-IV in “ Bread and Circuses .” These depictions arrived at a point in time when America was working through its own imperial anxieties, likening itself to Rome in decline .

The spin-off shows adopted a similar approach. On The Next Generation , the Ferengi were introduced as monstrous capitalists , albeit with some uncomfortable subtext . The Borg were initially positioned as a metaphor for the horrors of communism, and after the Cold War ended the fragmenting of the Collective in episodes like “ Descent ,” “ Unity ,” and “ Unimatrix Zero ” played as metaphors for the challenges facing the countries that had emerged from the fractured Soviet Union .

These aliens don’t have to map on to any real-world entity. On Deep Space Nine , the threats tended to be more abstract ideas, unsettling political philosophies manifested. The Cardassians represented a totalitarian and fascist worldview. The Dominion were a mirror of the Federation, down to their smooth-skinned leaders and their ambiguously psychic pointed-eared administrators, reimagining the central political alliance of the Star Trek universe as a monstrous and oppressive force.

Of course, this approach didn’t always age well. During the early seasons of Voyager , the Kazon were intended as a commentary on gang violence in Los Angeles, to the point that early story documents referred to them as the “Bloods” and the “Crips.” This subtext here is horrendously ill-judged , even before subsequent revelations that the Kazon were once an enslaved people who reacted to their freedom by unleashing a wave of lawlessness across the Delta Quadrant.

This is how Star Trek has always worked. Even minor races can frequently be read as allegories. On Voyager , the Vidiians provided a way for the show to engage with the AIDS epidemic while the Malon could be used to make environmental commentary . On Enterprise , the Suliban served as a metaphor for Middle Easterners caught in the midst of the War on Terror and the Xindi were another mirror of the Federation, an alliance of different races proving the enemy is not so different.

These meanings weren’t always fixed. They could shift. These alien species could mean different things at different points across the franchise’s long history. The Klingons went from representing Communist China during the original Star Trek to embodying the détente-era Soviet Union in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country . By Enterprise , the Klingons had been repurposed as a metaphor for American foreign policy hawks . Discovery used them as a stand-in for ethno-nationalists .

Strange New Worlds certainly has recurring thematic preoccupations. The show is fascinated by the idea of gender and performance, notably in episodes like “ Spock Amok ,” “ Ad Astra Per Aspera ,” “ Charades ,” and “ Subspace Rhapsody .” The show also consciously exists in an era of political and social fragmentation. The show’s first episode played footage from the Capitol Riots, and this divide informs episodes like “ Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow ” and “ Among the Lotus Eaters .”

However, the Gorn don’t really fit into any of this. If anything, Strange New Worlds presents the Gorn as similar to the monsters from the Alien franchise, animals that act on instinct and “swarm” like “locusts” compelled by “coronal mass ejections.” Like those Xenomorphs, the Gorn plant their eggs inside other species, forcing them to birth “younglings.” In the Alien franchise, this is a metaphor for sexual assault . Strange New Worlds doesn’t lean into that reading.

On Strange New Worlds , the Gorn seem to exist as a suitably monstrous enemy that the characters can kill without any moral qualms. Historically, the Star Trek franchise has tended to treat the loss of any life, however necessary, as regrettable. Deep Space Nine extended a great deal of sympathy to the death of Jem’Hadar soldiers in episodes like “ Rocks and Shoals .” When the Dominion War turned Cardassia into a mass graveyard, the Starfleet officers were saddened by the carnage .

Strange New Worlds has no such hesitation. While characters like Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) and Robert April (Adrian Holmes) might pay lip service to the possibility of communicating with the Gorn, the show isn’t too preoccupied with the idea. “All Those Who Wander” celebrates the crew’s survival as they kill the Gorn stalking them. In “Hegemony,” Noonien-Singh ambushes and kills a Gorn youngling in the middle of the street, effectively executing a child. The Gorn don’t look humanoid, so the imagery isn’t as shocking.

The Gorn on Strange New Worlds seem to exist largely as a monstrous alien “other” for the crew to fight. It seems likely that the show is building to some revelation that the Gorn are “not so different,” recalling the ending of “Arena.” In classic Star Trek fashion, the crew will likely come to understand the Gorn. However, even ignoring the possibility that Strange New Worlds may take several seasons to reach a conclusion that “Arena” hit in 50 minutes, this still feels shallow. Twenty episodes in, it plays like an unironic take on Starship Troopers .

This lack of definition may be the point. Reflecting its preoccupation with the polarized and fractured modern moment , Strange New Worlds is obsessed with the idea of communication and how difficult it can be to understand one another. “ Children of the Comet ,” “Lost in Translation,” and “Subspace Rhapsody” are explicitly about communication signals and translations. “ Under the Cloak of War ” brings this theme down to a personal level, suggesting there is a limit to people’s capacity to understand one another.

At a time when it seems like many people living in the United States literally cannot understand one another , maybe the Gorn are a manifestation of that fear: the anxiety that there exist antagonistic forces with which there can be no reasoning or no compromise . However, if this is the argument that Strange New Worlds is making, advancing it through animalistic monsters somewhat undercuts the point. It projects that sense of alien disconnect onto a convenient externalized non-humanoid scapegoat.

As it stands, the Gorn lack any specificity. There is none of the detail that allowed aliens like the Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, and eventually even the Ferengi to become franchise stalwarts. Two seasons into Strange New Worlds , the Gorn seem to be monstrous just for the sake of being monstrous. They don’t seem to say anything meaningful about the world in which Strange New Worlds exists, except that sometimes it’s nice to have giant reptile monsters to shoot.

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‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ races to its conclusion with a spot-on ‘Aliens’ riff

'all those who wander’ swerves into horror and lands a perfect hit..

The following article includes significant   spoilers for All Those Who Wander.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has never been ashamed to tip its hat to the stories it’s riffing upon , some more obviously than others. This week’s episode, All Those Who Wander, might as well just have been called “Screw it, we’re just going to do Aliens .” Thankfully, it’s so good that you won’t have time to care about the xeroxing from James Cameron’s 1986 original. This is the best episode of Strange New Worlds yet, raising the bar, and the stakes, for next week’s finale.

We start with the welcome and now familiar sight of the Enterprise crew hanging out around Pike’s captain’s table. It’s such a delight to see the crew spending time together and having fun, as the show puts in the hours to show that these people generally like each other. Ensign Duke gets a promotion, while cadets Chia and Uhura are given a send off as they end their tour of duty on the Enterprise. But the levity is punctured, first by Uhura still not sure if Starfleet is right for her, and second by an ominous message from headquarters. A Federation starship has gone missing while surveying an unstable planet, and Pike needs to go looking for it.

But the Enterprise already has an urgent mission to deliver power supplies to starbase K7, so Pike decides to handle a rescue mission with shuttlecraft. Dr. M’Benga, Chapel, La’an, Spock, Hemmer, Lt. Kirk and Duke, as well as cadets Uhura and Chia join him. Number One and Ortegas, meanwhile, take the ship on its original course, meaning this is the fifth or sixth episode this series where Number One has barely featured. Perhaps Rebecca Romijn negotiated far fewer filming days each week given her higher profile than the rest of the cast.

When the shuttles reach the planet, landing in the shadow of the crashed USS Peregrine, it’s not long before the episode switches into high horror. Corpses litter the ground, and the ship itself is covered in the sort of bloodstain made when someone’s trying in vain to cling to the ground while being dragged away. And despite the fact that this is another episode shot mostly on the standing Enterprise sets , clever lighting and direction make them feel altogether more like the sinister LV-426 from Aliens .

Then there’s Newt Oriana, a young girl who has learned to survive previous Gorn attacks by going partly feral. This episode, much more than the flat Memento Mori, is designed to rehabilitate the Gorn from the comedy rubber suit seen in the ‘60s and the awkward CG from the early '00s . Now, they’re the Trek version of the eponymous Xenomorph, complete with acid bile, quadrupedal motion and body horror reproductive process. Worth mentioning that this ain’t the sort of episode you can watch with your kids, especially not when the blue-shirted Cadet Chia succumbs to a chestburster.

It helps, too, that the Gorn are rarely glimpsed properly, despite some excellent creature design, the shadows are always a better way to experience a villain like this. The episode’s conclusion sees the crew taking an Alien3 -style chase through corridors as they lure the Gorn to a trap. Choosing to shoot from the Gorn’s perspective helps amplify the sense of dread and tension, too, since our crew is being stalked from all corners.

But the best moments are when the crew, trapped in sickbay, start to feel the screws turning on them. La’an starts berating Oriana, the child that she sees so much of herself in before Dr. M’Benga snaps at her to leave his daughter… his patient alone . Lt. Kirk, meanwhile, starts lashing out at Spock for his lack of empathy, not long before Spock lets out his own emotions in order to entrap the Gorn. And, best of all, this all feels entirely earned and in character as we’ve gotten to see how these people got these particular scars. Finally, the promise of emotional continuity comes good as we start to see the Enterprise crew almost break under pressure.

Of course, we have to offer additional praise for Hemmer, who once again gets paired with Uhura for some grace notes. The fact that even Uhura has given them a compound name (Hemura!) speaks to how delightful it is to watch the pair interact. And when Hemmer reveals that the blob of alien spit he received earlier in the episode means he’s loaded with Gorn eggs too, it’s a massive blow. I feel like Hemmer was already a figure we’d fallen in love with, and his departure hurts, even if he gets a graceful, Alien3 -esque swan dive death for a sendoff. Give Bruce Horak his own spin-off, or something, please.

(I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who noticed that Duke, Chia and Hemmer’s death means we’ve had a Yellow, Blue and Red-shirt demise in a single episode. Hacky standups will need to look for a better punchline to their Star Trek jokes in the future.)

Also, I feel like I’ve been neglectful in not offering enough praise for this cast, and especially Jess Bush. Bush often has to sell a whole bunch of stuff in her limited screen time and does so with ease. Here, as in The Serene Squall, she shows Chapel adapting to survive against a threat, and sells it so well.

The episode ends with plenty of fallout, Uhura decides to stay on board after Hemmer’s valediction encourages her to put down roots. La’an takes a leave of absence to try and reunite Oriana with her family, and Spock’s emotional outburst has left him scarred. Pike, meanwhile, must be headed for trouble given how freely he treats his life knowing that his future is already set in stone But again, all of this feels earned in a way that prior episodes haven’t quite achieved, and I’m excited to see how we land in the finale from here.

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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 Sets Up A Terrifying Conflict We've Never Seen In The Franchise Before

Spoilers for "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" follow.

In the season 2 premiere of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" — "The Broken Circle" — Spock (Ethan Peck) gets his shot at commanding the Enterprise. Specifically, while Captain Pike (Anson Mount) is away, Spock and his command staff commandeer the ship to intercept a distress signal from La'an Noonien Singh (Christina Chong) in Klingon territory. Along the way, the Enterprise crew prevents a war with the Klingons from igniting.

Admiral Robert April (Adrian Holmes) lets Spock off with a warning. The episode's final scene reveals this wasn't just in recognition of the crew's good work or because the Admiral was feeling magnanimous. No, Starfleet needs all hands on deck because a Gorn attack ship was spotted entering Federation space.

The Gorn are a reptilian race dating back to the Original Series episode "Arena," where Captain Kirk (William Shatner) battled a Gorn captain. After being mostly left out of past "Trek" iterations, "Strange New Worlds" has given the Gorn more spotlight . They are depicted as savage raiders who reproduce like Xenomorphs (i.e. with living beings as incubators). La'an's backstory is she was abducted in a Gorn raid and then rescued as a child.

The Gorn were the villains of two season 1 episodes — "Memento Mori" and "All Those Who Wander" — so further conflict with them makes sense. As for "Arena" treating the Enterprise's encounter with them like a first contact? "Strange New Worlds" uses canon as only loose guidelines .

If war does break out between the Federation and Gorn later this season, this won't be the first time "Star Trek" has chronicled an ongoing war. The last two seasons of "Deep Space Nine" were taken up by Dominion War, about an alliance of the Federation, Klingons, and eventually, Romulans fighting against the Cardassians and the eponymous invaders from the Gamma Quadrant. "Star Trek: Discovery" also featured a brief war between the Federation and Klingons; that war and its lingering scars are the crux of "The Broken Circle."

However, both "Deep Space Nine" and "Discovery" were rather dark, serialized series; a war plot fit into the pre-established show. The question then becomes, what kind of "Star Trek" show does "Strange New Worlds" want to be? So far, it's been back-to-basics; the series is about the Enterprise having adventures on the edge of the galaxy, encountering heretofore undiscovered phenomena along the way. The problem the Enterprise crew faces in any particular episode is what's important, not the connective tissue between those episodes.

We've never seen the Federation and Gorn at war with one another in "Star Trek" before. With what "Strange New Worlds" has been like so far, I'm willing to bet that record won't be broken — at least not for very long.

"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" is streaming on Paramount+.

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Interview: ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Effects Supervisor J. Alan Scott On Reimagining The Gorn

| August 14, 2023 | By: Anthony Pascale 154 comments so far

The season 2 finale, “ Hegemony ,” featured the return of the Gorn to Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and provided the first look at an adult Gorn on the series. The award-winning team at Legacy Effects has been working with the producers of Strange New Worlds since season 1 to create aliens and creatures using a combination of practical and digital effects. For the season 2 finale, this involved building a full suit for the adult Gorn. TrekMovie had a chance to talk to Legacy co-founder J. Alan Scott about what it took to make the Gorn and what we might expect to see in season 3.

You guys have been with Strange New Worlds since the beginning; do you consider the Gorn to be your biggest challenge?

It’s one of many, one of the biggest ones. My favorite things are when we start to mix up animatronics and makeup and puppetry, and it’s something the franchise doesn’t do a lot of. So it really excites us to bring that to the table. I love hybrid animatronic characters like Buckley or the Shepherd . But there’s something very satisfying about the subtlety of redoing Spock or redoing the Klingons. They all have their own challenges and responsibilities, but the Gorn is definitely one of the biggest ones, because it’s got such a pedigree and such a history, because that was the big monster in The Original Series . And to bring it into a horror, really terrifying arena was really exciting. But as I often say, when you have to do something like that, that is so loved, you really can only screw it up. The fan base is so fanatical that you have to be really in tune with trying to get it so that it’s an upgrade without diminishing anything, and that it fits in the franchise. And that’s where the writing team and the producing team were really aware of canon and where the directions go on all the shows, way more than I would be able to keep in my head. So we may present ideas and designs and they’re like, “That’s amazing, but not right for the Gorn, not right for the Klingons, but really cool.” So let’s save that and let’s use that for something else. So as we were developing the Gorn and where they wanted it to go visually, they were always coming back with, “Let’s bring this in, let’s take that out,” and really hone it into where they wanted it to be a new reimagining of the species.

Buckley in “All Those Who Wander”  (Paramount +)

The original Gorn was famously a guy in a rubber suit, and on Enterprise they went with all CGI for the Gorn. How much did those designs factor into your thinking, or did you start from scratch?

It was a dictate from day one, you have to discuss how are we going to execute it because you can design anything, but then it’s a matter of how are we going to deliver this on camera? Is it going to be all one or all the other? It’s going to be a guy in a suit? Is it going to be all digital? Because that changes how you present things. Or is it going to be a hybrid? That then starts getting into conversations about budget. That gets into the conversations of both what we bring to the table and then what digital brings to the table and whether the show can afford it—early on, because the idea is that these are the new bad guy, you have to assume that they’re going to be recurring characters. And then what does that mean? And so from a business perspective, that’s where the business and the finance meet the artistry [and] you have to be respectful. Because if you bite off more than you can chew, then you may not deliver with all the artistry. You are going to run out of money or they can’t afford to finish it in digital work. So those are complicated conversations to have. But they’re critical to do up front so that you know you’re designing something you can execute. Either we do it completely, or digital does it completely, or we share in the responsibility of bringing it to life.

I think this approach, because it’s going to be a recurring character, you want to capture as much of that on camera as possible. And not just a gray guy in a gray suit. You want to give the audience and the actors that you’re interacting with as much as possible. That’s our philosophy, to interact with on set and bring as much as you can, shoot as much as you can, and then when it’s not quite right, then let digital take over, and either augment what you’ve done or even if you have to replace what you’ve done, as long as you’ve had the conversation up front. The last thing we want to do is make something that’s really cool, but it doesn’t deliver and it has to be replaced. It’s irresponsible to do that. And it happens to everybody at one point or another. It’s just not right when the design is changed, or the thoughts change or after they see it as like, “Yeah, that’s not exactly what we need.” But you want to put your best foot forward and I think the fact that it was all practical, and then they went all digital and now that it’s a hybrid between the two, I think is the perfect place to be, because you get that intensity of close-up work that we can provide with the movement and things that we just can’t do. Like in the case of the adult Gorn, the tail. We made a tail. It may work in one shot. But once it starts to have to telescope and do things that we can’t do, it’s a perfect place for digital to come in and augment what’s great-looking on set with Warren [Scherer – the Gorn stunt performer] in the suit.

Behind the scenes on “Hegemony” (Paramount +)

So when Spock is being strangled by the tail, that’s practical, but when the tail is whipping around, that’s digital?

Yeah, and it’s not all practical. We just made the part that he was interacting with, so he could touch it. And then when it came around behind his head, that’s a digital tail. So we just made parts of it. And then they may even go over it at some point. But it gives you the ability to have something that’s tactile with Spock, and you’ve got the hand that’s right on the face and they’re face-to-face, and you get the light. The nice thing about having something practical on camera is that you get the combined experience of the DP and the director and props, and now you’ve got these magic moments and you don’t have to reinvent everything, it’s there. And it’s reacting to light. And now it gives digital something that’s real, that they can enhance their performance of it. Because if they have to create everything from scratch that’s tremendously hard and tremendously expensive. So once you have something that’s there, that now informs how they create their additions or their digital character, because there’s a full digital Gorn, and there’s partial digital Gorns that are added or Gorn components that are added to ours. So they all have to look like each other. And I think that’s the best place where the magic trick works. Your audiences are very savvy. They can look at anything and know almost immediately how it was achieved.

I understand that even though we didn’t see adult Gorn in season 1, you had one designed and worked backwards for the younger Gorn.

So we have now seen the adult Gorn in a spacesuit, but does that mean you already designed what the adult Gorn looks like outside the spacesuit?

Yeah, we had to. That was a big push from us. How can we design the hatchling and the youngling without knowing where it was going to go? We wanted this life cycle to make sense. You have to have some things that tie it together so the audience realizes, “Oh that became that, and that became that” And it doesn’t just have to be dialogue, there needs to be visual cues. It’s like evolution, it works like change from one thing to another. It starts as a pure animal, a pure feeding machine, and eventually becomes something that’s more intelligent. So that has to make sense in the life cycle. It can’t just suddenly be standing there and talking and operating a spaceship. How can it be that it was just nothing but a bloodthirsty creature? So they’ve actually designed whole life cycles for their society as well. And then that informs our creature design. Because we made these really, really horrific creatures. And then we were like, “That’s too much like an animal.” What does it look like when it stands up? What does it look like when it has clothing when it operates machinery? Can it do that or is it too animal? So we had to actually tone some things down and we had to bring some other stuff up. And so you continue to experiment with like, how would it create this technology? How does it have space travel? What weapons does it have? How does it do that? Where does it put them? It doesn’t have to be exactly what we have like a holster on its thigh, but what is it? So it’s kind of cool how designing a society informs the creature a little bit.

J. Alan Scott of Legacy Effects

So if the Gorn were to speak, that can be done with the practical animatronic headpiece you already have?

That’s the idea. Because that’s part of the conversation. Does it speak? Or is it going to be clicks and other kind of guttural noises that are subtitled? Is there going to be some dialogue that they don’t understand? Because they have translators, so what’s that going to be? Does that mean we need lips? Or is it more like ultrasonic and it opens its mouth and guttural clicks? So yeah, those are things that we continue to explore. And we’re going to visually see them next season. But for this one, this is as much as we want to reveal right now. And it needed to be immediate, like “Oh my god, there it is.” That’s what they’ve all been hinting at and hearing stories of and legends of. The audience knows where it’s supposed to be going to be The Original Series Gorn. But it’s nice that we get incremental reveals, much like a horror story.

Ready Room visits Legacy Effects

For more from J. Alan Scott, check out the latest episode of The Ready Room where Wil Wheaton visits Legacy Effects.

All episodes from season 2 of Strange New Worlds are available on Paramount+ in the U.S, the U.K., Australia, Latin America, Brazil, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Season 2 is also available on SkyShowtime elsewhere in Europe. The second season will also be available to stream on Paramount+ in South Korea, with premiere dates to be announced.

Keep up with news about the  Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com .

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They botched the Gorn. It’s as simple as that. The Gorn were never meant to be Xemonorphs. They were never meant to be bloodthirsty animals. And they, in “Arena,” were the victims of a perceived human invasion. The Gorns are the worst thing about Strange New Worlds.

That is purely your willful misinterpretation of “Arena” and a complete lack of understanding of warfare in order to throw a public tantrum. It’s as simple as that.

Many wars and conflicts started due to perceived invasions, but does that necessarily mean that it is true? No. And does that mean any reactions against such justified? No.

If they aren’t brutal to a certain level, they wouldn’t have bombarded Cestus III. They would have attempted to communicate. Are you seriously implying that a species who would raze a foreign outpost to the ground without warning will have zero chance that it is also a bloodthirsty or brutal species?

Just because a duck camped on your backyard doesn’t mean that you have to shoot them in the face to make them go away. And just because you shot them in the face doesn’t mean that you aren’t also going to grill them for dinner. If the Gorn sees other species as dinners because they interpret sapience differently than us, it’s perfectly plausible that they are “bloodthirsty”. We eat plenty of intelligent species ourselves too.

The unmoderated comment section here that is allowed to fester into a miserable pit of whiners is the worst thing about this website.

LOL. OK, drama queen.

Says the guy saying they ‘botched’ the Gorn?

Everyone’s entitled to an opinion. Don’t fret if it doesn’t match yours.

I too think the Gorn are the worst thing about this wonderful series.

It’s also obvious that Pikes lady friend is going g to sacrifice herself to the Gorn to save everyone else.

I don’t think they’re the worst (I think what they did to Spock is the worst) but I don’t think the Gorn are great.

I still like the show. I just wish they hadn’t completely fucked these guys up.

I don’t think they’re the worst (I think what they did to Spock is the worst)

Ah, the smorgasbord of choices available to us.

All right, that did get a chuckle out of me.

Yes, says me. Relax. So much angst.

You are the Kirk-unit. You will assist me.

See, you know Sir Neighs-a-lot is right because you couldn’t offer anything more than a childish rebuttal to his comment. Grow up and log off.

Arrogance and being an obnoxious ass is being right? I’m thinking Lorna D. took the high road because he doesn’t have the time to waste arguing with children. By the way, anyone who says grow up… well never mind.

Thank you for that. I appreciate it. Life’s too short to deal with these types of people.

Well you’re welcome. It’s not that I enjoy sticking my head into other people’s business, but this kind of behavior has to be called out.

You’re being way too kind…

Brutality is, rather than in the eye of the beholder, more a matter of who gets to write the history. Certainly atrocities get committed by all sides in war. But was there anything on the scale of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (and committed by the ‘good’ guys?) Maybe Dresden. And targets that were specifically civilian ones at that.

There’s no indication that the Gorn ever attacked a planet with millions of deaths, so the scale of their barbarism in the Cestus attack seems calculated, not the work of berserkers driven by sun worship or whatever the SNW retcon is threatening to turn into. For all we know, the Gorn running that attack may have been their Napoleon, committed to the concept of ‘total war.’ But there was at least a suggestion that this was based on misunderstanding, which also implies that a common ground solution is possible.

That’s all WAY more sophisticated than what we’re seeing now. Not that it is all that sophisticated, but by comparison to those doing the writing on SNW, well, Gene Coon is a god, Spock’s Brain notwithstanding.

I don’t think it happens all that often (or maybe I’m confusing poster names), but I stand mostly with DUNE on this one, though there are way too many terrible things on SNW for the Gorn to be the worst of the offenses.

After two seasons, this show is batting between .150 and .200 for me. Better than DSC, which means nothing, but this one at least had potential.

Thank you for this incredibly arrogant drivel. Feel better now? And who the hell are you to presume to analyse the Gorn’s intentions? They are Gorn. No one can tell why they do what they do. It is perfectly reasonable and logical to assume that mass-killing is perfectly justifiable to them, if they thought they were being invaded. Maybe this offends your sensibilities, but Gorn have as much right to be Gorn with all that this entails, than you have a right to be you. In other words, this behavior can be perfectly OK to them and you don’t have to agree or even understand it. And this doesn’t mean you won’t see them at a negotiating table later on trying for peace.

The worst thing about the Internet ( not this website), is people lie you who are unable to put things in perspective and understand the basic precepts of adult discussions.

My comments don’t seem to have slipped through, but I think yours did a better job of addressing Neighs shortcomings

Perhaps a slight over-reaction? ;-)

No, an eye for an eye. You’re so moderate…

It should be moderated. Then I wouldn’t have to read your dismissive, impolite missive. This is a forum for Trek Fans. Everyone has a right to their opinion. One may disagree but that doesn’t confer license to denigrate, humiliate or otherwise impune the I integrity of anyone else. So in other words, be nicer.

That is purely your willful misinterpretation of “Arena” and a complete lack of understanding of warfare in order to throw a public tantrum

Speaking as someone who has actually held several foreign policy-related positions as a practitioner, and who came damn near to doing a PhD in international relations, I agree with Lorne Dune, and I’d like you to explain why you believe her argument betrays “a complete lack of understanding of warfare.”

Citations to actual IR experts like (Jervis? Nye? Walt? Huntington? Bueler?) might be actual icing on the cellular peptide cake.

Got Mirror?

Nice reply to the hyperventilating Lorna :)

It’s no worse then us being led to believe Starfleet has been apparently communicating with the Gorn here, or so April says, not sure how they could do that without calling each other? They are just sending maps? And are we meant to believe Sam Kirk, who now has seen Gorn up close, will never mention how they look like to his own brother???

It’s 2023 not 1966.

Yeah, but you seem to be raining on most parties like it’s 1999.

I too have problems with the Gorn in SNW from a story perspective. No problems with any aesthetic changes, just like I didn’t have problems with TMP Klingons nor the SNW lovely Enterprise.

I am getting tired of trying to have an intelligent gripe with the monsterification of the Gorn, contrary to the underlying message of Arena (regardless of whether Arena happens later in the timeline or not) – it’s a philosophical issue with the story they are trying to tell here being contrary to the ethos of Trek. I pity the Mission Log crew trying to find morals, meaning, and messages in this.

Only to find oneself shouted down as a whiner and having ad-hominem attacks lobbed instead of engagement. There’s a sliver of a decent argument in Neighs-A-Lot’s response, but the need to attack others trying to have an opinion is what is actually causing the miserable festering pit. Not those of us trying to have an intelligent conversation about what we think is being written in the show.

Not going to cast any shade on the effects, guys. They have done fine work. It’s the story that is misserved here.

You’ll get no argument from me on this one.

I don’t think they’re going to stay that way. I think something is ‘wrong’ with the Gorn. Plenty of Chekhov’s Guns were laid in dialogue referring to an unexpected cause behind the Gorn behavior, possibly having to do with the uncommon Coronal Mess Ejection patterns. Take a liiiiil breath and maybe consider that there’s an arc in play here!

I hope this is the correct answer. That they are laid out as “wrong” in order to be fixed. Like they did with the Vulcans in ENT (though I admit that was Coto fixing an error rather than something planned from the get-go).

And in an opposing opinion, I don’t care. I have no issue compartmentalizing TOS for a storytelling arc sixty years after the guy in the rubber suit appeared. Nothing that’s happening now diminishes my enjoyment of TOS, just like todays Godzilla doesn’t lessen the Godzilla of old.

The irony being this new gorn is also partially a guy in a suit. So lets not be too hasty to dismiss “cheesy” 60s stuff yet.

Totally agree with this

They also were not not meant to be Xenomorphs – their stages of life are a complete blank slate for what SNW or another series wants to do with it.

Maybe they claimed to be victims of invasion, but what if tomorrow, after Cestus 3, they decide that the Vulcans have invaded their world too? If there is no discussion, and you leave no markers or colonies, what makes it your terrritory?

SNW is doing a good job of carrying forward some of the characteristics we know from Arena – highly intelligent, highly advanced technologically, cunning, deceptive in trapping prey.

Also, love how the little drop of Boimler’s about the exploding tricorder – which the Gorn caused Spock’s tricorder to explode in Arena.

Sure, they were mean to be painfully slow vertical lizards with permanently frozen grin — plus, misunderstood killers with hearts of gold (think The Minus Man with Owen Wilson).

Agreed. And not saying that as some TOS purist. SNW co-opted an existing alien race instead of creating something original. It’s really difficult to imagine these creatures beyond their SNW personas (hungry, baby making, vicious) as creating technologies such as they have. They’re “Alien/Aliens” knock-offs, in a sense. SNW wanted to introduce horror into their Trek universe; the SNW Gorn are definitely that.

I respect the fact that you don’t like this version of the Gorn, but may I address the idea of what the Gorn “were or were never meant to be?”

We have extremely limited information in canon about the Gorn. “Arena” didn’t tell us anything about their biology, lifecycle, culture, or civilization; all we knew is that they slaughtered a Federation colony without warning.

The Gorn seen on screen was a man in a rubber lizard monster suit that only let him move in very slow steps, likely also with zero visibility, clad in a belted sleeveless mod sundress.

We don’t see any Gorn in canon again until the “Through A Mirror, Darkly” episodes of Enterprise , where Slar is overseeing slaves captured by the Tholians, who are busy ransacking the prime-universe USS Defiant for future technology after it falls through interphase (“The Tholian Web”), and… it’s a pretty basic, and honestly still rubbery, if more muscular, CGI version of the 1960s original.

(We get a mention of the Gorn in the Kelvin Timeline where McCoy notes that he once had to do an emergency C-section on a pregnant Gorn, and that their young bite, though the canonicity of this is debatable as it’s a throwaway line and we don’t actually see this.)

So all we have to go on is:

• they’re reptilian in their adult form
• the adult form can communicate
• their civilization has technology comparable or superior to the Federation
• they have been known to attack first, without warning

and…that’s it!

As to whether they were “victims,” a colony being established on an empty world with no evidence of prior territorial claim is very different from an “invasion,” because the latter implies a military conflict and conquest, perception or not.

As others have noted, the Gorn could have opened diplomatic relations and told the Federation to remove the colony, but they didn’t.

From a story perspective, the writers of SNW have taken some pretty bare threads based on an alien-of-the-week from over 50 years ago, and woven a much more complex backstory that is quite compelling.

They are truly alien, because they are clearly an intelligent species, but their behaviour appears savage and animalistic; the motivations for their behaviors – instinct? culture? – are unknown and possibly incomprehensible to us.

Their reproductive process (or at least one reproductive process) is parasitic, undetectable and lethal to the host; their young mature rapidly and fight each other for dominance; they have incredible speed and agility and are powerful predators. Their civilization maintain “breeding planets” where they use captives as hosts / food for their young. (It does raise the question – are the Gorn genderless?)

Now that, to me, is worthy science fiction. Not just because the new facts about the Gorn make them viscerally frightening, but because their alien-ness sets the stakes high for the ideals of the Federation.

Can the Federation’s philosophy of respect for other lifeforms and civilizations bring them to some sort of understanding and detente?

Or is this the paradox of “we cannot tolerate intolerance,” i.e. we cannot accept the Gorn’s worldview and actions as legitimate and must reject them?

Or is it more, what do we do when an entire civilization is hostile, implacable and cannot be reasoned with? i.e. what if the Planet Killer is alive?

To some degree, yeah… this borrows ideas from Andromeda’s Magog or the Star Wars Legends ideas of the Yuuzhan Vong. That’s fine! Exploring those kinds of ideas within the Star Trek framework is exciting.

True. And it is due to this and what they did with Chapel (who I cannot see turning into the character played by Majel Barrett on TOS anymore) that honestly, while I can even buy Discovery being in continuity, I can no longer believe that for Strange New Worlds. This is another universe, not the one that leads to TOS and TNG and the rest. Even when Enterprise brought in the Borg or the Ferengi, they did not botch things up this badly. If they had just used the Gorn but left them like Slar looked like and acted in Enterprise, it would have worked.

Enjoying The Gorn, So Far.

I’m impressed by how much thought they’ve put into this, that they have to design a whole SOCIETY in order to make the costumes make sense. That’s so cool!

“And to bring it into a horror, really terrifying arena was really exciting.” I wonder if he used that word intentionally 😏

Thanks for this interview, TrekMovie!

Could you also interview Kay Hanley and Tom Polce? I’d love to know more about how they wrote all those fabulous songs. How much did they get from the writers of the episode, how much Star Trek have they seen, did they hear the actors sing to get a sense of their voices and ranges before they started writing?

I YEARN to interview them. I want to know all of those things too and I am obsessed with the musical.

Still signing huh?

Still singing. Still dancing. Still rewatching. Still listening. Still driving my family insane. Still waking up with the songs in my head.

It’s funny you sound like you haven’t been very impressed with the season as a whole but you seem you truly love Those Old Scientists and the musical. I’m happy those two episodes brought you such great joy at least.

Yeah, I loved those two episodes and I have definitely had my struggles with many of the other episodes. I think there have been a lot of great scenes and moments in each episode but I get frustrated by what I see as missed opportunities, story holes, and specific choices. Those two episodes won me over, though. It’s not just the genre change, I think there was a lot more crafting in those two episodes in terms of how everything should fit together (even though the scientific explanation for the singing made zero sense, ha). I plan to do a rewatch of the whole season, so maybe I’ll be more chill this time. Who knows?

lol, glad I’m not the only one!

There are a lot of us.

You’re definitely not the only one!

I’ve listened to the soundtrack so much that even my husband — who’s mostly been bemused by my obsession with this episode — decided he had to watch a YouTube video of “Status Report.” :-)

Yay! I’m obsessed with “Subspace Rhapsody,” too. I keep watching it over and over; watching it seems to be the only thing I actually want to do, which really alarms my husband, since my interests are usually a bit broader than that. :-)

I hope you do get to interview them! There’s so much I’d love to know, and they did such a fabulous job of writing songs that bring us great character development and that also stick in one’s mind. Hanley and Polce should get to tell THEIR story about the episode, not just the characters’.

Yep… my family is going a bit mad from my need to rewatch the episode and listen to the soundtrack. I really want to interview the songwriters and the episode writers too, to see how it all came together.

My understanding is that the episode writers can’t talk about it while they’re on strike, but the SONG writers probably aren’t in the scriptwriters’ union. So they, at least, should be interviewable now!

Turns out they’re in SAG! Ah well.

Oh, darn! Well, thanks for checking into that.

My understanding is that Gorns only have tails when they are at war – like Klingon hair.

The lizards in my yard grow them back.

Skinks and Alligators….as a matter of fact, there are tiny alligator lizards running around at the moment. Not much more than an inch (or a couple of centimeters) long.

It’s a cool critter design, but departs too much from the original to not be jarring. As with a lot of the visuals. But hey, it’s not this father’s Trek anymore. I’m getting used to being in age bracket that is undesirable except to be sold supplemental insurance and medical appliances. (I kid, a little.)

Maybe the Gorn in “Arena” was much older (he was a captain) and as they age they get slower… and lose their tails…

Not to mention the obvious rheumatoid arthritis!

Is that why they’re trying to sell you supplemental insurance and medical appliances? Won’t be long for me…

Frank “Gorn” Thomas….does low T have you losing your tail?

TIL I’m a Gorn Captain

All that sunlight exposure gets the skin all think and rubbery. Off topic (slightly), the rubber Gorn has a bit of a uniform. Mugato’s are naked. How do you tell the boys apart from the girls?

Female Gorn wear sequins.

Maybe they wear their victim’s eyelids as nipple pasties.

In Lower Decks female Gorn had breasts. We did see a wedding… Of course, now we can argue which new Trek show that often completely ignores continuity and canon is now canon, LOL.

I have no problem with the Gorn or how they look. Looking back at the TOS episode, the costume is what it is for the ’60s. The CGI in Enterprise was just plain horrible. I can live with the new look of the Gorn. Imagine how laughable if they put a guy in a rubber suit again! And those that are saying they should have used a different alien or something new. Well, with something new, there wouldn’t have been any mention of this alien species in TOS or TNG, etc. I understand what they wanted to do… it was always the Klingons or Romulans… so why not take up an alien species already in canon and use them as the big baddie. I have no issue with that.

Klongons, Romulans, Tholians, Andorians, Cardassians… all been done before. The Breen… boring. So, if not the Gorn… then who do you fellow geeks suggest?

The Xindi were nev…well…maybe that’s a bad example…. ;)

That is the problem with bringing in new aliens. Enterprise brought in the Xindi and what they did to Earth – but there is nothing about it in TOS, TNG, etc. When you add a new alien into the mix in a prequel – you have a hard time explaining why they are never mentioned again. I have no problem sticking to the Gorn.

Yeah, Picard shouldn’t have been clueless about the Borg, because of ‘Regeneration’ from Enterprise. I find it better to ignore these continuity hiccups…

Well not if Starfleet kept it classified. And it was a single incident from 200 years ago.

The Gorn is a bigger issue because all of this is happening with literally the same characters who will encounter them again in Arena. And Starfleet has made it clear the Gorn is on their radar now. And the weirdest thing is they already know Cestus III was in Gorn space years ago before Enterprise encountered them in the Broken Circle which negates the entire point of Arena.

None of it flies at all at this point.

Why would Starfleet classify that?? We found something bad in the Artic, our weapons are pretty ineffective, maybe we should warn the fleet that if they find any more of this space junk out there to give it a wide berth? It’s apparently stupid easy for the Borg to time travel…..oh, wait, another damn continuity problem again.

I’m apparently willing to suspend disbelief more than most regarding the Gorn. If we ever get to season three, I’m sure that stuff Scotty and Pelia were tinkering around with down in engineering will resolve the immediate dilemma, Uhura will figure out some way to communicate, and some agreement will be arrived at were both parties agree to leave each other alone. Starfleet imposes another Discovery level classification, or the Metrons show up with a massive memory wipe, or some other deux ex machina solution gets imposed that doesn’t upset the canon apple cart too much. It’s not like Trek hasn’t done that before.

But this is not Earth in the 24th century where aliens are everywhere. It’s still Earth where humans are still hesitant about aliens, especially one that is so dangerous and deadly and not want to alarm anyone.

Now that said, I will admit it makes no sense to classify it 200 years later but let’s also remember when the Borg first appeared in Q Who they didn’t assimilate anyone so they may not have even put two and two together it’s the same species that was found in the Artic.

But that’s still 100 times easier to buy than what we’re seeing with the Gorn. Starfleet didn’t know if they would ever see the Borg again and as said it centuries later when they finally did show up. In the case, I’ll repeat it, Starfleet already knows who the Gorn is and that Cestrus III is in Gorn space. So how in Kahless name would anyone be shocked when the Gorn attacked it in Arena? That’s a major plothole they can’t get around and yet they created it lol. Even if you can buy some massive classification/memory wipe, etc, WHY would they make that so known in the first place? Maybe they have some big plan to explain it all but I remember that said about Discovery and we saw what they did to handle that show;s canon issues lol. So I don’t have much faith it will be anything more than just a big shrug. It’s why I wish they just avoided prequels so we can stop these arguments from happening over and over again.

It may not have been StarFleet, it might have been Section 31

Yep. Given that James Kirk seems to be hanging out on the Enterprise every second episode, it is hard to believe his own xenobiologist brother did not mention the Gorn to him yet. By Arena’s time, he should know. Also, Starfleet would probably remove all their colonies from Gorn space after this event, even from the borders.

Archer’s crew never heard the name “Borg” and I don’t think they even saw a drone. ENT was actually pretty good about Canon

Nah, I just watched that episode some months ago. They were never greeted by the Borg, but they were on the assimilated ship, and engaged in a firefight with the drones – heck they even tried to save some of them – before they were forced to blow up the ship.

The problem I have with using the Gorn is that, so far, they can’t be allowed to progress beyond monsters, assuming the writers don’t want to contradict Kirk’s realization and mercy in “Arena” that is. So, where does this story go? Is it just going to be people fighting growling, hissing beasties with space ships? Because I’m finding that a bit dull at this point. Even the Borg were humanized in their third appearance with Hugh. They took them in new directions.

But can there be new directions with the Gorn, other than ripping off Alien and treating them as vicious monsters? Because that’s just as boring as the Breen, in my opinion. Say what you want about the Gorn designs in TOS and Enterprise, but at least they had lines. They could talk. Bad guys need a voice, you know.

Oh, I do agree, but you have to realize a couple of things. First, a season is 10 episodes and second, there are mostly stand-alone episodes unlike a season long arc like Picard or Discovery. There will still be season 3 to flesh out and go into more detail. I think if SNW was more of a season long arc – they would have done more. The Klingons in TOS were never really fleshed out either. It wasn’t until TNG that they really dove into the Klingon culture.

Right, but how do they go into the Gorn as a people with a culture without bumping into “Arena,” which is what that episode’s big revelation was — they’re not just monsters, they’re people with a territory that we invaded. Essentially the same message as the one with the Horta. Mindless monster? Not really.

Anyway, TNG didn’t have that problem. It wasn’t a prequel to anything, so they had the freedom to explore the Klingons and any other culture however they please.

Exactly. Why it’s always better to just go forward OR just say its a reboot and you can do anything you want there as well.

Yeah, I cannot see Pike having a dialogue with these… things. They don’t just look like monsters, they act like it, using intelligent species as incubators, attacking and capturing them without provocation. They are also really stupid, considering they could be fooled by lights… some of the worst ship to ship communication system ever. Compare this to the Gorn Captain’s offer of “mercy” and his indignancy about the Federation “invasion force”, showing they attacked for a reason. Or Slar’s genuine attempt to bargain with mirror Archer to be allowed to leave alive. He was brutal and used his reptilian talents to kill his enemies, but he was not a monster but a person you could have dialogue with. Hard to do that when even the adult Gorn we saw had no interest in anything but hissing and growling and trying to really stupidly kill everyone with his bare claws instead of weapons.

Imagine how laughable if they put a guy in a rubber suit again!

Based on the pictures and the interview they did put a guy in a rubber suit for the adult Gorn. It just looks better than what was possible in the sixties.

“if not the Gorn… then who do you fellow geeks suggest?”

Something original and creative

While it may not be original, rogue Xindi Reptilians or the mysterious aliens from “Silent Enemy” (which beta canon calls The Elachi), would have worked just as well.

they probably don’t have the cash do pay Niven for the Kzinti but that could have been interesting, the tech is there to do them well, and showing how we get to the Treaty of Sirius mentioned in TAS

But they are already using the Kzinti in Lower Decks. So clearly they have the rights to them.

Agreed. They could have introduced any other species. TNG added aliens like the Nausicaans or the Tamaranians or Terellians. Just make them a smaller power that does not take up like 25% of the starmaps…

I’d prefer the Enterprise CGI Gorn. With today’s CGI he would look more believable. Mostly, he would not look like a wannabee xenomorph gigerian monster. The problem is not just the design, it is this nonsense about how they rerproduce, and how they are little more than hungry monsters looking for humanoid hosts to breed. You have to wonder, if they always need hosts for breeding, how the hell did the Klingons or the Romulans did not come into conflict with them already? Those races would not be squeamish about attacking them after such a slaughter of their colonies.

What I don’t understand, and what no one (not even Akiva Goldsman) has ever been able to explain, is why was it necessary to use the Gorn? Why was it an inherent story need for this to be the Gorn instead of the Kzinit or the Tzenkethi or something that’s never been mentioned before?

To me, that’s what make no sense. When you make this the Gorn, IF they care about continuity and staying consistent with TOS at all, it boxes them in storywise. So why not just create your own new species without any baggage that’ll be SNW’s big threat.

Yes,the Tzenkethi would have been an ideal choice; the backstory is already there, in the 24th century, but not filled out in the slightest. They’d have had so much leeway to do whatever they wanted.I guess they maybe didn’t want to have to pay Ira Behr or whoever wrote that DS9 episode for the use of the name. Dayum, though. The use of the Gorn in SNW just reiterates to me that it’s a basically a reboot —not that I cannot live with the idea it’s a reboot.

He did explain it, it’s one of his favorite species and it’s only been shown twice in the franchise so they wanted to develop them more. It’s not a grand mystery, that’s simply it.

They also said they will ignore canon if they think it’s good enough story and apparently they seem to believe that. But I agree with you, if you wanted to do the Gorn, then make them the big villains in Picard or Discovery, NOT a prequel where it just makes Arena a total non-factor.

Or yes just come up with a new villain and then do whatever you want. But crazy thing is out of the five new shows it’s only been done once, which is Discovery. All the other shows it’s just been legacy species like the Borg, Klingons,Romulans, Changelings, Pakleds, etc.

Oops, I meant Prodigy, not Discovery that introduced a new villain species.

And they did it so much better, since A: it is in the future after Voyager so does not upset continuity, and B: even the actual villains come from a future timeline of that planet, not the present.

Akiva Goldsman has said several times that he’s obsessed with the Gorn, and that’s why.

The Kzinti would have been a good choice. They’re incredibly vicious but intelligent and now part of the Federation. This could have been a good storyline to explain how it happened. Imo they used the Gorn to attract the interest of fans, nothing else. Goldman is BS-ing.

it would be better to say at least that he’s obsessed with the monster. Not the Gorn.

I don’t think having one ensign on Lower Decks means they are part of the Federation. Tendi is a Starfleet member too, but Orions are not a part of the Federation. Most likely that guy is a defector or was raised by humans, like Worf was.

Yeah, and the Kzinti would have been a far better choice, seeing as they only appeared in TAS before (and now Lower Decks). They are also warlike and xenophobic, if that was the type of race they wanted to use. I know little about the Tzenkethi, they were just mentioned here and there until the online game turned them into big dragon anthro creatures, overdoing it as they usually do (like the Iconians looking like anime energy people). They could have done anything with that concept since the online games are not canon.

The Gorns are one of the best things about Strange New Worlds.

I love what they have done with the Gorn on SNW and I am really liking them as the big villains of the show. I really don’t have any canon complaints because I am enjoying the show for what it is, and it keeps me coming back for more. If I am feeling nostalgic and want to see the slow-moving guy in the rubber suit, I can watch Arena at any time.

I love what they have done with the Gorn on SNW and I am really liking them as the big villains of the show. I really don’t have any canon complaints because I am enjoying the show for what it is, and it keeps me coming back for more. If I am feeling nostalgic and want to see the slow-moving guy in the rubber suit, I can watch Arena at any time.

EXACTLY. People need to chill out on this. The original Gorn is laughable now.

I really don’t think anyone (including Star Trek purists) are arguing that the original Gorn in TOS is NOT laughable or that the suit was even somewhat ridiculous for the time it was made. I grew up watching TOS nearly 20 years after Arena originally aired and found it somewhat humorous even as a kid. By my teenage years, it seemed to be an in-joke with Trekkies and I think most people never really took the Gorn representation seriously.

The problem is not in updating the Gorn. The Klingons were also updated and took some getting used to, but at least that was an improvement. Here, it doesn’t feel like an improvement at all and I don’t think it made any sense to try and put a square peg (new Gorn) in a round hole (old Gorn). Just create something new! And I know there’s been some argument in a previous post that creating new aliens makes it hard to fit in with past shows, but we saw MANY alien species in TOS that we NEVER encountered again. In fact, SNW could wrap it up somehow and in such a way that it makes sense to not encounter the same aliens again.

I just still have a hard time understanding why a show called “Strange New Worlds” can’t seem to create any truly strange new worlds/species/characters/concepts.

Agreed. They updated the Gorn for enterprise, they updated Klingons and Romulans for TNG, they updated Tellarites and Andorians for Enterprise as well. But save for Klingons now being a honorable warrior race instead of mustache-twirling soviet-mongol analogues, they did not change the race completely as to being unrecognizable. They could redesign the Gorn to be able to move faster, give them a tail too for all I care, Slar on Enterprise showed it works even though he had no compound eyes anymore like the TOS design. But he was not eating people’s faces off and laying his eggs inside them.

Not very related to thread except that it involves effects work, but there is a snippet of an article on the otoy / roddenberry virtual work over at the beforesandafters website. (I think there are a few pics I haven’t seen elsewhere, but the main gist of it is to try to get you to buy the full print magazine for the rest of the story.)

The guy who does this site is truly devoted to visual effects in all forms, and I’m still trying to justify buying up all the print issues just because he is doing such a good job of becoming a vfx historian (plus, unlike me, he can network like you wouldn’t believe.)

https://beforesandafters.com/2023/08/10/otoys-virtual-journey-into-the-world-of-star-trek/

I like what they’ve done with the Gorn. It makes them more interesting an “real”. Imagine had they used the original costume? I think we’ll be seeing a lot more about the Gorn in Star Trek moving forward.

I had to watch it again. I feel better about all of it now, and see a lot of the positives, including the pacing.. It’s too bad we will have to wait two years for the next episode…

I think what a lot of these episodes do suffer from is being too short, which is a consistent Star Trek problem – and probably half the reason there is so much other content.

I also think, upon rewatch, Pike isn’t as much filled with indecision as we are seeing the very clear process of actually thinking. Which is so rare on nu-Trek.

Anyway, it was more fun the second time.

There’s a happy medium on time when it comes to episodes, and I just don’t think any of the new Star Trek shows has found it yet. But, to the opposite point, there’s also making something too long just for the sake of taking advantage of the streaming format. I’m a fan of the Orville, and Seth Macfarlane made it very clear that one of the things that they wanted to do when they moved from Fox’s broadcast network to Hulu was lengthen the episodes and use that to flesh them out more. But in my opinion, the season on Hulu had multiple episodes that were WAY TOO LONG and the length often came from extended VFX shots or extra scenes or scenes just going on beyond the point of interest. They certainly aren’t the only show guilty of this, but I personally think SNW feels better than a lot of the Hulu season on Orville.

I would actually argue that older Star Trek handled the shorter episode length A LOT better than SNW, and I feel like I got more out of those episodes. Yes, the pacing could be quite hasty at times, but I feel like that has to do more with writing than run time.

I think what this cliffhanger needed was a few moments where Pike was shocked to find 200 survivors, and if we got to see some of these people. They are not even given a voice. That would balance out Pike’s more personal motivations. Or have one moment where Ortegas and M’Benga and a third silent Cayugah crew member handle a colony survivor.

The whole idea in TOS is that in a moment like this, Kirk would want to know what he had to work with. He was a little detached.

Great point! One thing I think has been missing nearly this entire season is the voice of people beyond the Enterprise crew (and Kirk and Patel). The older series seemed to do a very good job of letting the aliens or guest stars of the week tell their story, giving them a connection to the primary crew (Kirk, Picard, Riker, Janeway, Spock, etc.). Rarely does SNW really let the other characters beyond the crew shine, and it’s hard to feel like we’ve made any connections to them – and I think I’m primarily talking about season 2. Season 1 seemed to allow for more story involving third party characters, but this season was so focused on personal development of the main crew that the story was just there for set dressing. There was a lot of possibility of deeper development with the colonists and Cayuga crew, and extra time could have helped. But even thinning down a little of the Scotty interaction and the Pike and Marie interaction in this episode could have made space within the run time. It wouldn’t have taken much to make us care more.

I love it when people in the comments says its not a guy in a suit anymore while it is literally in the interview itself that mentions that they have a stunt guy in a suit. I actually like the fact that they aren’t going full CGI in creating the gorn. The classic methods still do work and I have always been a firm believer in using CGI to enhance things and not create them from scratch. I also think that they could have created a new species instead of the gorn (personally I wished they were the conspiracy aliens from TNG) but since they decided to use them I think I can live with the approach that they are taking to developing the species more.

Only the adult Gorn is a guy in a suit. The other Gorn are a combination of puppetry and CGI. And the costume they built for the stunt guy definitely looks a lot more complex and less comical than what was possible on TOS. So I guess when people talk about “a guy in a rubber suit” what they really mean is “a guy in the ridiculous costume they used in Arena”.

It’s always interesting to see which canon violations fans accept (and sometimes even prefer over the original) and which they get stuck on and just can’t move past. It varies from person to person. It’s not like the original Gorn was an integral part of what defined TOS. But fandom isn’t rational, it comes down to emotional reactions that are highly subjective.

I was thinking that a radical redo of “Day of the Dove” would kill me.

it’s not about the costume. You’re right; the Gorn itself was not a huge aspect of TOS outside of that episode (heck, really, just half the episode).

What *was* a huge aspect of TOS that is very present in Arena (and thus, is associated w/ the Gorn) is that the solution to the underlying problem was not killing the ugly scary monster of the day or even continuing to be scared of it at all. (Man Trap notwithstanding…. – they tried to talk to it….a bit…sorta…).

Rather: empathy, understanding, mercy, going beyond your biases. That is the heart of it and what they are seeming not to get at all. Akiva just sees the scary monster and thinks, “Oh we can make it so much cooler and scarier!!” – but yeah, he “loves” the Gorn while entirely missing the theme of the episode and the larger ethos of the series it inhabits.

He just wanted to remake Alien(s), it seems.

There is definitely the wish to bring an element of horror to the show. But it also seems like the producers are playing a long game with the Gorn. While I don’t think the adult Gorn will get to look much closer to the TOS original they could take the story to a point where a level of understanding can be reached.

I’ll start by saying that the effects with the Gorn in the finale were good. I thought they looked better than some of the other effects this season, and for the purpose of villains, they looked pretty – well – villainous.

But I’ll also restate something that has already been said here (and many more times elsewhere): Why the Gorn? Why take a species from TOS that clearly doesn’t have much in relation to what we see in SNW and use them instead of creating something new? The lack of creativity shown by the writers (Scotty – Really? Another TOS character?) to actually create any new characters or species blows my mind. Using the Gorn and then turning them into something so far from their roots and only to create sci fi-horror in Trek doesn’t make sense to me. It didn’t last season, and I’m not any happier with it here. But at least we didn’t get another full-on Alien remake.

The other thing that’s strange to me is how the writers, producers, show runners, etc. are all supposed to be HUGE Trek fans and yet seem to miss the point of the Gorn in the first place. Wasn’t Arena all about misconception, stereotyping, and prejudice? Wasn’t it about pointless fighting/war because you don’t know your enemy or their intentions? And didn’t the episode end by proving that humanity has the ability to show mercy and empathy and not just be a “dangerous, savage, child race”?

I get this is supposed to be an earlier point in the timeline before Arena, but between Kirk versus Pike (at least SNW Pike), who seems more likely to want to dig deeper and go beyond preconceptions and play the mediator card? It seems like Pike would do more to try and mend fences with the Gorn. Yes, he has his current love interest to defend, and there’s times he gave me some hope. But overall, it just seems like the writers are stuck on the Gorn being the “big bad” and leave it at that.

It’s funny that you (and others) complain about a “lack of creativity shown by the writers” when the writers have basically created a whole new species that (so far) has nothing in common with the original beyond the name. So they have been creative. Naming the species differently wouldn’t make it any more or less creative, it would only avoid a contradiction with TOS.

I would even argue that bringing in TOS characters is not necessarily a sign of a lack of creativity either. Sure, they are building on something that other writers created before. But they always bring something new to the TOS characters (sometimes quite drastic changes), which means they always have to work out how what they do with the characters fits to what we know about the characters later in their lives. So it’s making their work harder, not easier.

I think it is more a matter of a lack of competence rather than a lack of creativity (though a lack of competent creativity is showing!) The writing is, to quote Khan, ‘quite honestly inferior.’

I wish they would have just bought the rights to any number of quality novels. For example, they could have done the excellent Cold Equations trilogy for 3 seasons of a “Picard,” and with some slight modifications, it would have scratched every itch they were clearly wanting out of Picard but like a poor-marksman…well, you know the rest.

The lack of creativity comes in the form of not creating “Strange New Worlds” – which in my opinion includes new species, new characters, new concepts, etc. It’s LITERALLY in the name of the show, but the writers, producers and show runners have pretty much avoided that fact throughout season 2. Also, there is no creativity in turning the Gorn into monsters. Yes, there are hints that maybe they are something more, but right now, they are on the same level as previous sci-fi movie monsters, with last years introduction of the “whole new species” being a direct rip-off of the Alien franchise.

As for the TOS characters, I don’t necessarily have a problem introducing them in the show IF IT MAKES SENSE. But at this point, it feels like fan service at best, and at worst taking fan favorite characters and slowly ruining them (Spock). At this point, the only SNW original character who seems to have had any worthwhile development this season is La’an, and even then it was totally dependent on a TOS character that honestly seems out of place (Kirk). Second in line is Pelia, and that’s not saying much at all. And then there’s Ortega’s who showed some glimmers of development in this episode, only to be sidelined by the halfway point. In other words, it’s like the only characters they even try to use are existing characters that don’t require anything more than a few plot points and development and they call it good. But even the actors performances are defined by others who came before them, sidelining their ability to truly create an original character.

I’m not sure how else to say it, but other than making Star Trek not really Star Trek, I’m not seeing much in the way of creativity at all.

Episode 1 introduced a strange new world with mining planet Cajitar IV, even though it was inhabited mostly by known species. In episode 2 Pike fetches Una’s attorney from a strange new world, and I don’t think we had seen the world Una grew up on either. Of course, the main part of the episode was the trial. Episode 4 revisits a strange, although not quite new world. Episode 5 introduces a new and definitely strange species with the Kerkohvians. Episode 6 has a strange new species that somehow lives in deuterium and communicates through hallucinations. The portal that transports Boimler and Mariner to the Enterprise in episode 7 is on a strange new world.

Most of this is a stretch. The first episode was basically a Klingon planet.

Second episode had zip to do with exploring and they clearly know who the Illyrians were.

Episode four is not new lol. It’s very established they been there before.

Episode 5 is the first actual new aliens…but they are the B story and not actually explored. But thats something at least.

Episode 6 also presented new aliens, but never saw or heard them.

Episode 7 was nothing but a portal on a desolate planet.

And with the exception of, oddly, episode 7, none of it dealt with real exploration. I think is a big reason why people were disappointed in this season. OK, you only have 10 episodes, but at least make TWO of them about going out there and making real first contact with someone. All these these examples show just how little this season dealt with it.

The first episode was basically a Klingon planet.

Following that logic, any planet (however strange it may be) that has humans on it would simply be a human planet.

I acknowledged that the main focus of episode 2 wasn’t exploration (it was the trial) but they still managed to put in a strange new world.

Uhura and that other crewmember communicated with the aliens in episode 6, and we saw and heard how they experienced that communication. Of course, we cannot actually see a species that somehow lives in deuterium.

You cannot claim that SNW does not do strange new worlds and then when shown that they actually do simply go “Oh, that doesn’t count”.

Yes, the characters arcs often take precedence over the plot of the week. Doesn’t mean there are no strange new worlds at all.

I think you’re missing the point here – the argument is that that they are ignoring the focus of the name of the series. In almost every example given, there’s not much strange and in some cases nothing new. And overall, season 2 used all of the examples to just further relationships among the crew – not to explore the potential new planet, alien, or concept. In my opinion, almost none of the new or strange things introduced in season 2 are memorable. And, to be frank, we’re not really supposed to remember any of the worlds, aliens, or concepts introduced. We’re supposed to remember how the crew grew and developed this season. If I were to sum up season 2, here’s what is memorable:

• Christine & M’Benga had a rough time in the Klingon War and are badasses.
• Una is Illyrian and shouldn’t be discriminated against due to her genetics.
• La’an is totally into James Kirk because he makes her feel special.
• Pike is willing to seriously injure anyone (including former crew members) if he thinks his loved ones are in danger.
• Spock is apparently only part-human when the plot calls for it. Oh, and he hooks up with Christine.
• Uhura misses Hemmer and apparently has a physiological abnormality.
• SNW would almost be better if it was animated.
• Even Star Trek can’t avoid a musical episode.
• Xenophobia continues into the 23rd century, and Pike can’t make a decision to save his (or anyone else’s life).

“Following that logic, any planet (however strange it may be) that has humans on it would simply be a human planet.”

Well yeah, normally those would just be called Earth or Federation colonies like we got in the finale. The first episode was going to a Klingon colony and was to help a crew member. It had zip to do with exploring or discovering anything new.

“Uhura and that other crewmember communicated with the aliens in episode 6, and we saw and heard how they experienced that communication. Of course, we cannot actually see a species that somehow lives in deuterium.”

Yes they met new life, I’m only saying that was purely by accident and we didn’t learn anything about them other than they were being killed by Enterprise’s actions.

“You cannot claim that SNW does not do strange new worlds and then when shown that they actually do simply go “Oh, that doesn’t count”.”

What is being said is this is highly misleading. None of these examples has zip to do with exploration of any kind. Very little of this is actually discovering anything new. With the exception of two species everyone else they ran into were very known to them.

What is mission statement in the opening, ‘to seek out new life and civilizations.’ How many times did they actually do that this season?

People want to see real exploration again. Going to a place completely foreign like the first episode of the show, appropriately titled Strange New World. Nothing about that episode was very unique in itself, it could be any typical TOS, TNG, VOY or ENT episode, but that was also the point. People just want to see more of what classic Trek did an abundance of. Again, I don’t think anyone expects it to be half the season and with only just ten episodes, but at least one or two episodes would be nice. They didn’t do it a single time in this season.

For the record, I genuinely liked season 2, but it’s frustrating it focused more on personal relationships than its actual mission.

Sorry but this feels like a cop out to me. Updating old characters is not the same as creating something completely new that can stand on its own with it’s own mythology and back story.

Yes, they updated old aliens but it’s still very much a lack of creativity when the show hasn’t created one new long term race yet after two seasons. We’ve gotten a few aliens of the week but overall not a single new species that is part of the show yet. Is a HUGE deal, no, but again for a show titled Strange New Worlds, it would be nice to introduce 1 or 2 unique aliens that can part of the story like they did with so many of the classic shows, friend or foe. That used to also be a thing, introduce a new alien as a member of the crew and they didn’t do that here as well.

Yeah, that was the point, and it will be very hard to see Pike do that after (very likely) losing his girlfriend to the Gorn’s ravenous way of reproduction. The show missed the point that the Gorn looked terrifying (well, by 1960s standards, look at monster movies of the era) but were intelligent beings you could talk with. Here, Spock and Chapel do not even try talking to that Gorn, why would they when it is a scary horror movie monster that just tries to stalk and kill them.

remember when the ferengi were suppose to be the new bad guys for TNG in season 1? and the kazon were the big baddie for VOY? each show tries to force a new alien bad guy.

i’m fine with the Gorn becoming xenomorphs, but i think season 3 premiere will expand on them (hopefully) and hopefully they’ll give them more depth and background

I have pointed this out multiple times myself and that what I really miss about the classic Trek shows they really tried to come up multiple villain species. Not so today and SNW is not alone with this since Prodigy is the only new show that has introduced a new villain while DIS, PIC, LDS and as mentioned LDS has not. I’ll go one farther and say all those shows haven’t introduced a lot of new evidence in general.

A few eras here which I can’t correct since it seems like something is wrong with the editing function.

LOL errors. Ugh, I hope it gets fixed soon.

Addressing the actual content of the article and not any opinions about canon, it is fascinating to see how VFX artists work, and how many disciplines have to come together to make a believable alien appear on screen.

Everything from speculative biology / anatomy, concept sketches, 3D visualization, clay sculpting, digitization, 3D printing, resin and silicone casting, costume design and fabrication, remote-controlled mechanical design and implementation, lighting, 3D shader and texture work, CGI skeletal design, character animation, rendering, compositing, and as noted here, combining CGI with practical on-set effects.

Not to mention sound design, and remembering there’s an actor underneath there who has to perform the alien with believable movements, in concert with people just off-camera who are controlling things like eye irises, eyelids and other things.

Let’s take a moment to actually applaud the effort that the team has done to bring this to fruition, on a limited budget, shall we?

Legacy’s history going back to when it was the Winston Studio is pretty fantastic. The work they do on the SW TV series is always top-notch, and one thing they always seem to have on hand in abundance is as good a batch of creative design artists as they do folks who can execute … so the brilliant designs don’t get dumbed down, and sometimes even get plussed up. About the only time I can remember their stuff not measuring up (and this was way back at the beginning, around 1980) was a couple of old-age makeups Winston did for THE FINAL COUNTDOWN that he even admitted in print were fails. Pretty much all of the prosthetic makeup biz seems to have come through there on their way to bigger things, like the Amalgamated Dynamics guys, who I used to interview every few years, just because they did so much (and so well.)

off-topic, but a week or so after the fact, I saw a post you made on a thread (and I’m thinking this was the better part of a month ago now) where we had gone back and forth on some stuff, and while I can’t remember where it was or what it was about now, I do want to say that your final reply — filled with info I didn’t know plus intelligent speculation — was seriously impressive. I think the only reason I didn’t acknowledge it then was not so much that I was late to note it, but that I didn’t really know how to concede whatever the point was in a graceful manner. Anyways, so there.

Oh, thank you, that’s very kind! I appreciate your in-depth knowledge of the biz, it’s always enlightening!

Hey, has anybody here ever seen the WING COMMANDER movie? Because in terms of appearance, these things really remind me of the little-scene Kilrathi villain-aliens in that seriously terrible movie (apparenty the critters looked different in the video games but I never saw or played any of those, whereas I had to write a story about the movie (I think this may be the only Cinefex article of mine that is online anywhere now that the Edward Norton site seems to have taken down the FIGHT CLUB article: https://download.wcnews.com/files/wcm/Cinefex77-April1999-Wing_Commander_Article.pdf )

I watched the Wing Commander movie, honestly its a guilty pleasure for me. It is a horrible movie but for some reason I love watching it. Yeah they do remind a bit of the Kilrathi, but the kilrathi in the movie was quite different from the kiltrathi of the video games. I’ve played the video games too. I heard that there were some budget problems with the movie and that’s why they couldn’t really get too many kilrathi on screen.

Hey, I love ACTION JACKSON and the last half of IRON EAGE, so I can’t bitch if somebody has a guilty pleasure.

They only had double the money for the WC film that they had for the most recent game (IV?), and that was still just 27 mil. Plus they had a real FX fiasco, where the producer had one group working but it was the director’s group that actually did all the rushed finals The producer on that film was a real piece of work, he was the guy trying to get a GALACTICA movie made where the ship gets blown up halfway through and it becomes a PEGASUS movie if you can believe it. I think his major credit is the Jamie Lee Curtis VIRUS, which was 92 mil that looked like about 14.

They had a very good supporting cast of character actors, but the young stars didn’t do anything for me at all — Freddy Prinze had a scene where he was coming off as lame as KyleM in BLUE VELVET when he is whining about why are there people in the world like Frank, asking about what it means to be a pilgrim. I just starting laughing in the theater and couldn’t stop, but there was almost nobody there to complain.

I think the Wing Commander aliens were just anthro lion people. The movie did try to redesign them somewhat.

However one feels about the way SNW is incorporating the Gorn, I feel like we should all appreciate the incredible artistry and inventiveness that goes into these (strange) new alien designs! The effects supervisor didn’t write the story, so it seems a little strange to be arguing about canon in a post about his work. I think they’re doing a great job!

One problem I see with turning the Gorn into xenomorphs is that they’re trying to freshen up a tired old franchise by taking elements from another tired old franchise. Mileage with vary on how scary the xenomorphs still are, but they stopped being unique ages ago.

Drat, that should be “Mileage will vary…”

What’s up with the edit feature on this site lately?

If I were the Federation I’d send Linus and the Saurians to engage with the Gorn. You know, reptile-to-reptile over some brandy…

That’s… that’s damn good plan! (I want to watch that now)

There is a thin line between reimagining and completely rebooting. Enterprise just redesigned the Gorn in the Mirror Universe episode, the one we saw was still a sentient being and not a rampaging xenomorph that lays its eggs in people, and can only growl and not talk. The Strange New Worlds Gorn are so monstrous and bestial, I am really unsure how this cannibalistic species ever created any technology, and how if they breed so horribly, were not yet attacked by the more militaristic Alpha Quadrant empires and wiped out?

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How STRANGE NEW WORLDS Transforms the Gorn, an Old STAR TREK Enemy

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In its first season, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds reinvented one of the franchise’s oldest alien adversaries, the Gorn. They gave this classic antagonistic species an upgrade by injecting some blood from two of cinema’s most deadly extraterrestrials. We’re talking about Gorn inspired by the xenomorph from the Alien franchise and the Predator. In the season two finale of Strange New Worlds , “Hegemony,” the Gorn returned. And these aliens destroyed a Federation starship, along with most of a human colony. So how did Strange New Worlds update this alien race once thought of as a silly product of its 1960s time? First, we’ll tell you all about Star Trek ‘s Gorn and why they haven’t appeared much for five decades.

Who Are the Gorn, Star Trek ‘s Race of Reptilian Aliens, and Where Have They Been?

First appearing in the original Star Trek series episode “Arena,” the Gorn Hegemony was a warlike reptilian race who decimated a Federation outpost on the planet Cestus III. When Captain Kirk chased the enemy Gorn ship deep into space, an advanced species called the Metrons forced Kirk and the Gorn captain to fight for survival on a remote world. This fight scene, with a man in a very fake-looking alien lizard suit, became the subject of parody. It was even parodied in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey . Perhaps because of that, Star Trek has seemingly almost totally avoided the Gorn, beyond cameos and name drops across different series. The Gorn popped up briefly in CGI form on Star Trek: Enterprise in 2004 and in the 2013 Star Trek video game, for which the Gorn and William Shatner reunited for a silly promotion.

Strange New Worlds Reinvents the Gorn

But Strange New Worlds changed everything about these aliens, making the Gorn intergalactic boogymen. In the episode “Memento Mori,” we learned that La’an Noonien Singh (Christina Chong) had some serious PTSD based on her childhood trauma of surviving a Gorn massacre. During her childhood, the Gorn attacked and captured the SS Puget Sound, a colony ship, and left its crew on a Gorn breeding planet. The survivors, including La’an, were hunted for sport or eaten alive by their newborn hatchlings. Only a young La’an Noonien-Singh survived and told her tale to Starfleet. This was the first documented encounter with the Gorn on Star Trek , although it was not considered an official first contact. As La’an says, “Many people have seen the Gorn, but few live to tell about it.”

In “Memento Mori,” the Gorn only appeared in their Star Trek space vessels. We don’t actually see them in the reptilian flesh. Their vicious ways were only spoken of by Lt. Noonien Singh. In fact, they are described and treated as the shark in Jaws . When La’an described her childhood encounter with the Gorn and their lifeless eyes, it’s almost like hearing Quint talk about the shark that killed his crewmates on the U.S.S. Indianapolis . But in Strange New Worlds season one, episode nine, “All Those Who Wander,” we truly saw the Gorn for the first time in this Star Trek series. And they owe their newest incarnation to two classic sci-fi adversaries, the Xenomorph and the Predator.

The Gorn Become Terrifying Foes in Star Trek ‘s World

When the Enterprise responded to a distress beacon from a crashed Starfleet vessel, the U.S.S. Peregrine , they found the ship in shambles on an ice world and the crew of 99 officers dead. The logs showed that they had picked up three stranded refugees, all infected with Gorn eggs. They found a human girl (shades of Newt in Aliens ) and an unknown alien in the wreckage. Despite initial scans showing nothing unusual, the Gorn eggs were hatching inside one of the aliens.

Just like in Ridley Scott’s Alien , the hatchling busted out of the victim’s body and scampered off. Two others then emerged from the body of another victim. The four hatchlings quickly became two as they killed the others and fought for dominance. The POV shots of the Gorn hatchlings looked extremely similar to the heat signature vision of the alien hunters from the Predator franchise. Their reptilian appearance was also like the Predator, although that predates the movie, as the Gorn first appeared in 1967. Like the Xenomorph from Alien, the Gorn matured at an exponential rate, but the Enterprise crew managed to kill it before it grew to full size.

But the Enterprise crew took a heavy casualty when they fought the Gorn. The Gorn hatchling spit a type of venom onto Chief Engineer Hemmer (Bruce Horack), similar to the Dilophosaurus in Jurassic Park. But this was more than venom. La’an revealed that this is how the Gorn lay their eggs. Hemmer took his own life before allowing the Gorn to take hold of him. In the two separate episodes of season one, they did not show a full-grown Gorn.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season Two Reveals a Full-Grown Gorn

In season two’s “Hegemony,” the Gorn attack the human colony world Parnassus Beta, and decimate most of the population. Only a few survive. They also destroy the U.S.S. Cayuga . The episode shows that the Cayuga’s Captain, Marie Batel, has been infected with Gorn eggs. We finally see an adult Gorn in this episode, in a space suit no less. Unlike their Star Trek: The Original Series counterpart, this Gorn has a tail. Although Spock kills this particular Gorn, at the end of the episode, the Gorn Hegemony has the upper hand over Pike’s Enterprise , leaving us with a massive cliffhanger ending.

Of course, this sets up certain continuity issues. Technically “Arena,” the episode where Captain Kirk fights the Gorn in The Original Series , takes place about eight years after Star Trek: Strange New Worlds . Spock and Uhura don’t seem to know anything about the Gorn in The Original Series , which doesn’t make much sense. You’d think with their experiences in these Strange New Worlds episodes, they would have a few thoughts about this particular enemy. But it’ll be interesting to see how Strange New Worlds deals with this all of this, as we are no doubt going to see the Gorn continue to be a significant threat to Pike and his crew as the show continues to unfold.

Originally published on July 1, 2022.

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The history of ‘Star Trek’s’ Gorn, from styrofoam rocks to big green xenomorphs

The Gorn. Since debuting in the 1967 Star Trek episode “The Arena,” they’ve been called a lot of things. “Weird.” “Iconic.” “Weirdly iconic.” Thanks to their striking combination of Ferrigno-green slabs of thigh beef and Spirit Halloween-level facial features, the Gorn have taken up a special place in the hearts of Trekkies, representing a threat whose level of seriousness lay somewhere between tribbles and that Riker clone who disguised himself by wearing fake sideburns.

Like Daleks, Cruella De Vil, or any fictional monster with the staying power to stick around for six decades, the Gorn have gone through a fair few reimaginings. Here’s a quick rundown of every take on the Trek villains.

Part One: The Gorn Identity

Star Trek had only been a thing for four months when the Gorn made their first appearance. Episode 19 of the original series aired in January of 1967, spinning a yarn about a Federation outpost on an exotic world getting pretty well smooshed.

The smooshers, who follow up their smooshing by luring Kirk and company into a smoosh trap, are an unknown alien species — cold-blooded reptilians, according to sensor readings, but difficult to get a bead on. After a quick exchange of explosives, the aggressors and the Starfleet personnel make their way back to their respective ships, and a high-warp chase ensues.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, the Enterprise and the alien ship wind up driving through sort of a galactic speed trap. They’re forcibly pulled over by powerful space narcs called Metrons, who don’t cotton to gunplay and irresponsible starship maneuvers in their neck of the woods. The Metrons’ dim view of violence leads them to decide that Kirk and the captain of the alien vessel should get transported to a quiet spot where they can kill each other with primitive weapons. It’s kind of like when you were a kid and you’d fight with your brother, so your parents would give you both all of the ingredients to make gunpowder and then watch you shoot each other with cannons. 

Materializing on the planet, Kirk and the audience get their first look at the Gorn. The tricorder readings from earlier got a few things right: The creature in front of Kirk is definitely reptilian. What they couldn’t have predicted, though, was just how much the alien captain would look like what would happen if Vince McMahon encouraged a Sleestak to start taking some injections to further his career.

The fight is one for the ages. The music is classic. The rocks are uncharacteristically bouncy. Kirk is faster than his sluggish opponent, but the Gorn captain is incredibly strong — not as strong as Khan from the second movie about Khan , but at least as strong as Khan from the first movie about Khan. On a related note, Star Trek is kind of a mess. That’ll be relevant in a minute.

When the Gorn captain finally communicates with Kirk, he’s high-octane arch. He offers to kill Kirk quickly if he stops moving around so much, then lets him know that the outpost he and his crew smooshed earlier was on a planet that the Gorn had called dibs on. This leads to Federation officers, perhaps for the first time, considering that maybe they can’t just park their stuff in people’s yards without asking. 

Kirk wins the fight, pulls a classic hero move, and announces that he won’t kill a helpless super-strong lizard man with a taste for annihilation. Everyone goes their separate ways. Spock and Uhura don’t mention anything about having hung out around Gorn before, inadvertently dropping nerds in the future into a never-ending echo chamber filled with continuity errors, but again, we’ll get to that in a minute.

Part Two: Here today, Gorn tomorrow

It’s uncharacteristic for a species with such an iconic debut to go missing for long stretches of time, but the Gorn didn’t show up again through the rest of the original series. Aside from a cameo in Star Trek: The Animated Series and a deleted scene from Nemesis, the species fully ducks out of the franchise for just shy of 40 years.

The next time we see the Gorn is a full four series later in a 2005 episode of Star Trek: Enterprise. “In a Mirror, Darkly, Pt II” introduces a fresh take on the Gorn — an ambitious new look, fueled by optimism and creativity and maybe a little bit too much faith in how far CGI could get you on a television budget the same year that Sharkboy and Lava Girl hit theaters.

This go-round, the evil counterpart to Captain Archer faces off against a Gorn in the Mirror Universe. This isn’t the sort of Gorn you remember. This guy is slinky and ceiling-crawly. The compound eyes of the creature seen in the original series are replaced by reptilian lizard peepers. This reimagining of the Gorn would look right at home in a video game cutscene made by a studio that’s been struggling for a while. Brought low by a targeted gravity beam, the defenseless lizardman gets a close look at how dark and gritty this timeline is when Archer pew-pews him full of special effects blasts. The only thing strong enough to kill CGI is CGI.

In point of fact, OG Gorn in their rubbery glory would only make one more appearance on screen, during an ad for 2013’s Star Trek: The Video Game. The commercial sees William Shatner and the Gorn he fought back in ‘67 arguing over their couch co-op sesh. 10 years later, it remains the only fondly remembered aspect of a game that made a whole generation ask, ”How big is anything supposed to be?”

Part Three: I Know Gorn When I See It

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is a peculiar thing. While it mostly veers toward humanistic optimism about bright-eyed, hard-working explorers, it can’t always escape the black hole of dourness left by its Discovery parentage.

(As a quick, related side note: Captain Lorca had what sure looked like a Gorn skeleton in his office on Discovery. The producers said it was a Gorn, then realized that the Federation hadn’t made contact with the Gorn by that point in history, then walked it back and claimed that it wasn’t a Gorn at all. Discovery was a real mixed bag.)

Case in point: The even newer, even darker, even CGI-ier Gorn, alluded to and kept just offscreen for most of the first season before making their wet first appearance in the episode “All Those Who Wander.” 

The new Gorn would have been unrecognizable to a Star Trek fan in the ‘60s, and suspiciously recognizable to anyone working on the movie Alien in the ‘70s. The days of lumbering were over. The bug eyes were kaput. Now, Gorn — albeit very young ones — looked like a cross between Gremlins and those guys from Dead Like Me that stuck people’s heads in revolving doors. Folks who’d encountered them were petrified of a second run-in, a detail that’s made up about a third of La’an’s dialogue throughout the series, and with good reason. The new Gorn had a habit of sneezing acidic propagation snot on their victims, impregnating their exposed skin with exploding sacks of smaller Gorn. Gorn gestation wound up being what took out fan-favorite Chief Engineer Hemmer, who sacrificed himself to stop the bloodthirsty buns in his oven from cooking. It was a tough pill to swallow, but it went down a little easier thanks to the fact that it gave Carol Kane’s Pelia a chance to join the crew.

The Gorn made one more appearance on SNW as the antagonists in the season two finale, “Hegemony.” Fully realized, fully terrifying, and for the first time since the series premiered, seemingly capable of escaping the trap of being to Strange New Worlds what the Ferengi were to the first year or two of Next Generation, the Gorn are finally primed to take their place as a Star Trek villain worth not laughing at hysterically. 

Oh, shoot, speaking of which.

Part Four: Never Gorn-a Give You Up

Star Trek: Lower Decks is silly. It’s some of the best Star Trek in recent memory for fans of the old days who don’t mind treating a show about spaceships less than reverently, but also just hyper goofy. It’s Rick & Morty if Rick & Morty had been licensed by Paramount and the Roddenberry estate. It’s what everyone expected The Orville to be, but funnier.

So it can be easy to forget that it’s also canon. More than a wacky side project for Trek nerds, it’s a series of stories that take place in the wider Star Trek universe, the same way-too-serious place where those guys from Picard treated Borg victims like they were in a Hostel sequel, and where that lady from TNG died from melting into the floor. All of those stories are just as valid to Trek continuity as the time when the crew of the USS Cerritos was hunted by an anthropomorphic Starfleet insignia named Badgey. Either it all counts, or none of it does.

And so, there’s one last detail about the Gorn that we can pull from Star Trek lore. According to the Lower Decks episode “Veritas,” the Gorn have extravagant weddings. The brides wear white dresses, and the guests sit in uncomfortable-looking folding chairs, and the whole thing is eerily similar to the ceremony for your partner’s hayseed cousin that you got stuck at last summer, only with a flaming mouth-shaped cave instead of a bespoke apple orchard as a backdrop.

This franchise really went off the rails.

Spock, Kirk, Gorn — Oh My! How ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Breathed Thrilling New Life Into the 56-Year-Old Franchise

SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot developments in several episodes of the first season of “ Star Trek : Strange New Worlds,” including the season finale, currently streaming on Paramount+.

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In its first season, “Strange New Worlds” ranks with “The Mandalorian” in striking a wildly successful balance for a new iteration of a legacy franchise between nostalgic fan service and bold, unexpected storytelling. Which isn’t to say that the series has pleased all the people all of the time.

Set on the U.S.S. Enterprise roughly a decade before the events of the original “Star Trek” TV series from the 1960s, “Strange New Worlds” includes vividly rendered younger versions of several classic “Trek” characters, such as Spock (Ethan Peck), Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) and Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush), and it’s breathed robust new life into characters from the original “Star Trek” pilot, namely Capt. Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) and his first officer, Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn) — known as only Number One for decades until “Strange New Worlds” gave her a full name.

“When someone hands you a ‘Star Trek’ show, you can’t treat it like you’re going to break it all the time and only do what you think is safe,” Myers says. “If you do that, you’re not going to do a good show. That said, choosing to do things that might push the boundaries is going to bug people. I just don’t want that to scare them away.”

To get there, Myers, Goldsman and their team of writers had to learn how to transform one of the most common complaints fans have for a legacy series into an advantage.

“People will sometimes feel like you’re playing with people’s childhoods,” Myers says. “What has been a real freedom for me is to say, ‘I’m not playing with your childhood: The things from your childhood haven’t happened yet.’ I have to act like I don’t know what’s going to happen. Uhura doesn’t know who she’s going to be. Spock doesn’t know who he’s going to be. If you can accept that, you can understand that their experience is real and interesting and happening now .”

In an in-depth interview with Variety , Myers reflected back on some of the biggest highlights and challenges of the first season of “Strange New Worlds.”

“We’re Just Gonna Try to Do Classic ‘Trek'”

When CBS All Access (now Paramount+) re-launched “Star Trek” as a television enterprise in 2017 with “Star Trek: Discovery,” it’d been 12 years since a “Trek” show was last on the air. In that time, serialized storytelling became the dominant narrative model for streaming dramas, especially genre ones; “Discovery” has followed suit, telling a single, ongoing story every season. Starting in 2020, “Star Trek: Picard,” a sequel series to “Star Trek: The Next Generation” starring Patrick Stewart, has done the same.

Fan response has been mixed. “Trek” has ventured into serialization before, with the 1990s series “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,” and “Discovery” and “Picard” have taken full advantage of the opportunity to paint on a broader narrative canvass. But the original “Trek” series and “The Next Generation” remain among the most beloved — and re-watched — “Trek” series because they adhered to the old school, episodic structure of a brand new adventure every week.

“Telling a really long overarching story is so challenging,” Myers says. “You don’t often get little downtime moments.”

“Strange New Worlds” has forged a middle path, with each episode telling a self-contained story while threading longer character arcs that span multiple episodes — or occasionally, the whole season.

“The other ‘Star Trek’ shows are doing bigger, broader experiments, which I think are cool,” Myers says of “Discovery” and “Picard.” “They’re definitely trying to open up the sandbox and do different kinds of things with ‘Trek.’ We’re sort of the opposite. It’s a little easier to be like, ‘We’re just gonna try to do classic ‘Trek.'”

Most episodes of “Strange New Worlds” focused on one or two characters as the central driver of that week’s episode, and the self-contained storylines allowed the writers more breathing room to allow the characters to simply bounce off each other. “I love genre storytelling, but when it skimps on character, it just never works, and when it delivers on character, it makes everything work,” Myers says. “We get to relish the downtime moments. It’s the comforting part of television that you don’t always get out of movies. If we focus on character, the action will feel like it has more stakes, the romance will feel like it actually matters, and the humor will be funnier, because it’s coming from people that we know and like to hang out with. I think that that’s the thing that we’ve gotten to do a little more than other [‘Trek’] shows.”

“ We Didn’t Know if We Would Be Able to Get Kirk”

One of the most inflexible pieces of “Star Trek” canon is that until the original series episode “Balance of Terror,” it had been 100 years since anyone in the Federation had seen or heard from the Romulans — one of the most lasting and resonant “Trek” villains ever. The “Strange New Worlds” writers solved that problem with its season finale, “A Quality of Mercy,” which transported Capt. Pike into a future, alternate timeline in which he , not Capt. Kirk, was leading the Enterprise during the events of “Balance of Terror.”

The episode, Myers says, was the marriage of two ideas floating in the “Strange New Worlds” writers’ room. Idea one: “What if we took a classic ‘Trek’ episode and changed the timeline so we’re retelling that episode with our characters in a high-budget context?” Idea two: “What if your future self comes back and says, ‘Don’t do what you’re about to do’ — how would you respond?”

In the original series, we learn that Pike suffered a horrific, debilitating accident that removed him from command, allowing Kirk to take his place. On “Strange New Worlds,” Pike knows of his eventual fate, and in “A Quality of Mercy,” he tries to change it, causing his future self to appear and show Pike what will happen if he takes that path.

Placing Pike at the helm of the Enterprise when Kirk was meant to captain it also presented the tantalizing prospect of having the two men share the same scene — but that meant finding an actor to play Kirk. Myers says that after extensive auditions, they ended up offering the role to “The Vampires Diaries” star Paul Wesley , but the decision came down to the wire.

“Part of that episode ended up being about the differences of command the differences between Kirk and Pike and how they approach things very, very differently,” Myers says. “But there was a brief moment when we didn’t know if we would be able to get a Kirk. I wrote two versions of the script, one with Kirk and one without.”

“There’s a Reason People Haven’t Touched the Gorn”

The reptilian aliens made their debut in an episode from the first season of the original series, “Arena,” in which Capt. Kirk (William Shatner) is pitted in a fight to the death on an alien planet against a Gorn captain. Since then, the species has occupied the fringes of the “Trek” universe, showing up again only fleetingly over the years, most often in animation. That’s because on the original series, the Gorn looked like, well, a man in a giant rubber lizard suit.

“You couldn’t do the Gorn now the way they did the Gorn,” Myers says. “I think audiences would have an instinctive organ transplant rejection to the classic version of the Gorn. Audiences now are sophisticated, they expect a certain level of effects work, of verisimilitude.”

But Myers says that Goldsman “has wanted to do something with the Gorn forever,” and made resurrecting the species a goal for Season 1 of “Strange New Worlds.”

“I mean, look, I love ‘Arena.’ ‘Arena’ is a great episode. But there’s a reason people haven’t touched the Gorn much since then,” Myers says. “They’re extremely hard to do. It’s expensive, it’s challenging. You have to reimagine them.”

Doing so meant bending “Trek” canon a bit, and reconceiving the Gorn as at once highly intelligent and yet feral in their primal, ferocious aggression. It also meant keeping the species largely off screen, since making them look realistic to 21st century eyes required a full, and costly, CGI redesign. The result maintained the feeling from “Arena” that the Gorn were unrelentingly dangerous while deepening their mythology enough to place them on par with the A-list of “Trek” alien adversaries.

“I’m aware of some of the the canon challenges,” Myers says. “Knowing that you’re going to have to change them is an opportunity to try to do something different.”

“We Wanted to Show That There Were Stakes”

Characters die all the time on “Star Trek,” but it remains exceedingly rare that it happens to a member of the main cast — and even then, it’s because the actor involved wanted to leave the show. That wasn’t the case with Hemmer (Bruce Horak), the irascible chief engineer on Enterprise who sacrifices himself at the end of Episode 9, “All Those Who Wander,” after his body is implanted with Gorn offspring. The writers knew from the start that they were going to kill Hemmer off.

“When we cast Bruce, we told him,” Myers says. “He was like, ‘Great. I’m down. This is awesome!'”

The issue, Myers explained, was that “Strange New Worlds” had to make clear the characters were at real risk. “One of the knocks on a prequel is that we know Uhura’s going to make it, we know Spock’s going to make it,” he says. “We wanted to show that there were stakes in this show.”

Don’t worry: While Hemmer is dead, the actor who played him is not gone. “We are finding and have currently found ways to have Bruce circle back in our universe in a very classic ‘Trek’ way,” he says. “It won’t be the last you see of Bruce Horak.”

“It Was All About Telling the Story About Spock”

Perhaps the most surprising twist in Season 1 of “Strange New Worlds” was the revelation that Spock’s fiancée T’Pring (Gia Sandhu) is unknowingly overseeing a Vulcan prison that houses Spock’s half-brother, Sybok. The character was introduced as the main villain in the 1989 feature film “Star Trek V: The Final Frontier,” as played by Laurence Luckinbill (after Sean Connery couldn’t do it), but the movie is widely considered one of the worst “Trek” films ever, and the character has since faded into obscurity. (It didn’t help that Spock had never mentioned Sybok before “Star Trek V,” either.)

Myers can’t remember who had the idea to bring Sybok back into the “Trek” fold, but says it grew out of the conception of Episode 7, “The Serene Squall,” which centered on Angel ( Jesse James Keitel ), a nonbinary space pirate who befriends — and then betrays — Spock in an (initially successful) attempt to commandeer the Enterprise.

“We wanted to do a villain that harkened back to classic ‘Trek’ — a really fun, scenery-chewing villain who you just want to see again and again and again, but also could be a villain that we can only do now ,” Myers says. “In doing a story about someone who’s nonbinary, it really tied into the story about Spock reckoning with his identity. The Sybok piece was an interesting way to tie into Spock’s past, and to reclaim a piece of ‘Trek’ lore.”

Despite Sybok’s dubious origins in “Star Trek V,” Myers and the writers liked that the character’s decision to forsake logic and embrace his emotions contrasted with Spock’s dogged pursuit of pure logic.

“You know, look, that movie is, uh — let me just say it’s not my favorite of the ‘Trek’ movies,” Myers says with a laugh. “But even in the ‘Trek’ movies that don’t work as well, there’s always something interesting. I liked that character, and the idea of a Vulcan who is wrestling with emotion. Science fiction is about playing with ideas. We’re not just moving chess pieces around.”

Sybok appears only from the back at the very end of “The Serene Squall,” and that’s the last we see of him in Season 1. But Myers is tight-lipped on when, or whether, he may show up again. “Sometimes you do these things in TV where you pull the thread just to see where it gets you,” he says. “You don’t have to wrap everything up. We wanted to throw out some more ideas that may come back and intersect with the show in the future.”

“This Is the Pike Show”

The future of “Strange New Worlds” is, at least in part, already written: The series wrapped production earlier this month on Season 2, and will feature Wesley as Kirk years before he becomes a Starfleet captain.

When Mount, Peck and Romijn were first cast, it was for Season 2 of “Discovery” — with no sense at the time that they would ever be spun-off into their own show. Now that Myers has actors for Kirk, Spock and Uhura, however, it’s hard to ignore the prospect of continuing the “Star Trek” story into the era of the original series.

“Look, I would love nothing more than to then to go all the way forward to the future, and eventually do that with them,” he says. “But there’s a lot of stories before that. I’ll tell you what Kirk isn’t: He isn’t the replacement captain. This is the Pike show. This is the Spock show. This is the Number One show. We have a lot of stories yet to tell with them. That said, who knows what the future holds. We would be so lucky to have that Enterprise.”

He pauses, and answers with a knowing glint in his eyes. “I think that that would be an unbelievably interesting experiment,” he says. “But I don’t want to put the cart before the horse, because I love this show. And I hope we get to do it for a while.”

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The History of ‘Star Trek’s’ Gorn, From Styrofoam Rocks to Big Green Xenomorphs

Star Trek had only been a thing for four months when the Gorn made their first appearance. Episode 19 of the original series aired in January of …Google Alert – "Star Trek" Read More

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Editor's note: The below article contains spoilers for Episode 4 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has established a pattern in its first season: each episode features a standalone adventure that focuses on a member of the U.S.S. Enterprise. That pattern extends to this week's episode, "Memento Mori," which features the return of the reptilian race known as the Gorn . While helping the inhabitants of a colony find refuge on the Enterprise after their home is attacked, security chief La'an Noonien Singh ( Christina Chong ) realizes that the attack bears all the signs of a Gorn assault. The Enterprise is attacked by a trio of Gorn warships, and its crew has to resort to unorthodox means in order to survive.

While this isn't the first time that Strange New Worlds has tackled characters and concepts from Star Trek: The Original Series , "Memento Mori" puts a unique spin on the Gorn. According to La'an, no one who has ever seen the Gorn lives to tell the tale — with herself being the sole exception. As if that wasn't frightening enough, the Gorn never make a physical appearance in the episode. The only thing that's shown of them is their ships, which have a predatory edge to them. And those ships even move like predators, as they cripple the Enterprise and lie in wait for the kill.

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"Memento Mori" also reveals what happens to the Gorn's victims, and it isn't pretty. The lucky ones wind up as food for the reptilian aliens. The unlucky ones are implied to be carted off for breeding purposes. In short, they're less like the rubber-suited dinosaur man that Captain Kirk fights in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Arena" and more like the predators that appeared in the Star Trek video game based on the Kelvin timeline films. And with the way the Enterprise's crewmates speak of them in hushed whispers, as well as their tactics, the Gorn make other races like the Klingons and Romulans look downright cuddly.

Writers Davy Perez and Beau DeMayo , alongside director Dan Lin , stage "Memento Mori" as a mini-horror movie of sorts, making for a rather tense hour of television. The Gorn are dogged in their pursuit of the Enterprise; they cripple the ship's weapon systems and heavily damage other systems including the medical bay and shields, which leaves the ship at their mercy. The Enterprise crew has to resort to various tricks in order to stay ahead of the Gorn, including flying into the orbit of a black hole which could potentially kill them. For all intents and purposes, the starship's essentially playing the role of the "final girl" in a horror film by doing whatever it takes to survive.

Keeping in line with the horror elements, the episode focuses on La'an's repressed trauma as the sole survivor of a Gorn attack on her colony ship. When Spock ( Ethan Peck ) mind-melds with her in order to gather intel about how the Gorn communicate, he (and by extension, the audience) see the damage the Gorn are capable of: bloody bodies litter the ground and smoke clouds the air. The episode also continues the series' exploration of La'an as a character by breaking down her emotional walls. The prior episode, "Ghosts of Illyria," revealed that she was a descendant of the genetically enhanced tyrant Khan Noonien Singh and was ostracized for it. "Memento Mori" has her confronting her fears, as well as attempting to put an optimistic spin on the Enterprise's chances of survival —despite those chances being very, very slim.

The Enterprise manages to finally defeat the Gorn ships, but the reptilian aliens still remain a major threat to Starfleet. With Strange New Worlds hitting its halfway point, it remains to be seen if the Gorn will make another appearance in the season's back half or the upcoming second season. Hopefully, "Memento Mori" serves as an example of what to do with the Gorn going forward, not just in Strange New Worlds but in other Trek media.

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The Gorn are one of the most recognizable alien species in Star Trek . First appearing in The Original Series episode “ Arena ,” the Gorn have, so far, just over a dozen canon appearances throughout the franchise, but their impact in popular culture has been substantial, nonetheless.

A bipedal reptilian race, the Gorn have butted heads with the Federation on multiple occasions. But by the 24 th century, much like with the Klingons, relations with the Gorn seem to have cooled down. In the meantime, the Gorn have always represented a formidable opponent.

Despite their monstrous appearance and aggressive demeanour, they are cunning, intelligent, and technologically advanced. Today, I’d like to examine the biology, history, and culture of the Gorn, comparing them to our expectations about aliens in real life. I’d also like to explore how their relationship with the Federation has evolved over time. Let’s get started.

Origins and Early History

The Gorn’s interstellar government is called the Gorn Hegemony. Its domain includes a region of space called “the five systems,” referenced by Orion privateer Harrad-Sar in the Enterprise episode “Bound.”

However, Harrad-Sar says of the Gorn, “the less said about them, the better.” More information about the Gorn’s potential origins is revealed in the non-canon 2013 Star Trek video game, which is set in the alternate reality introduced in the 2009 movie. In this game, the Gorn are said to have originated from another galaxy which they have colonized under the banner of the Gorn Armada.

The Gorn reach the Milky Way via a wormhole and begin expanding into the Beta Quadrant, just outside the borders of both the Federation and Klingon Empire. Much like in other non-canon sources, this game and subsequent IDW companion comics emphasize that the Gorn are not one species, but rather, an alliance of genetically similar reptilian aliens.

One of these factions which have settled on the planet Parthenon 559 is depicted as rebelling against the Gorn Armada, suggesting Gorn are not of one mind when it comes to politics. Either way, the existence of these multiple species, which other sources additionally depict as strict castes, is used to explain the disparities between different canon depictions of the Gorn.

The videogame Starfleet Command explains that Gorn society is organized into a hereditary monarchy. Gorn mythology speaks of a Mistress of Fertility, S’Yahazah, who saved young Gorn eggs from being devoured by a figure called “The Great Father.” Clearly, this is a reference to the Greek goddess Rhea saving Zeus from being devoured by Cronus.

Star Trek Online expounds upon Gorn history by speculating they may share a common ancestor with the Saurian species, dating back about 15,000 years. This ancestor race may have inhabited planets in the Kassae system, some 40-60 light-years from Earth. Other sources cite Gorn space travel as far back as thousands or even millions of years ago, and between these various accounts, there’s no consensus as to whether the Gorn evolved on the same homeworld or separate homeworlds.

All of this also seems to contradict Gorn activities beyond the Milky Way Galaxy, but ultimately, there’s no telling where they first came from. They could have originated in the Milky Way or another galaxy first, travelling between the two via a mechanism like, say, the Mycelial Network. In any case, what’s clear is that they have achieved warp travel by the 22 nd century and developed a violent reputation among various other Beta Quadrant civilizations.

New Homeworld?

We’re never explicitly told what kind of star the “new” Gorn homeworld orbits, though in beta continuity, it’s the ninth planet in a triple star system consisting of three K-type orange stars.

While the habitable zone around a K-type star, a type of star usually cooler than the sun, is about 60% the size of Sol’s habitable zone, the triple nature of the star may mean the ninth planet is further out in a tightly packed system.

K-type stars’ habitable zones are also generally stable as they emit less light in the ultraviolet portion of the spectrum, which normally has severe effects on DNA molecules. It’s also worth noting that planets orbiting multiple stars in a “P-type” orbit are generally stable if they orbit at least 2-4 times the distance separating the stars themselves.

The name “Tau Lacertae” for the star system is thrown around by various non-canon sources, Lacerta being a real-world constellation whose name means “lizard” in Latin. GET IT??? And tau, of course, is the nineteenth letter of the Greek alphabet.

But there is no such star called “Tau Lacertae.” And there are no notable K-type triple systems in Lacerta. But we can gather that even if the Gorn didn’t originally evolve on Tau Lacertae IX, they no doubt selected it because of its environment. The planet, also called Gornar, has a surface gravity of 1.4g—implying it has a higher mass, radius, and possibly density compared to Earth—and is largely covered in tropical jungles and swampland. It has two Class D moons, which would have a major influence on the planet’s tides.

The Gorn homeworld’s average surface temperature is likely higher than Earth’s, which would create a suitable climate to support the biology of a cold-blooded reptilian species. And indeed, their cold-blooded nature isn’t their only connection to the Terran order of animals…

Biology Overview

Much like many Earth reptiles, particularly crocodiles, the Gorn possess scaly green skin, red blood, simple earholes with no external cartilage, and vicious claws. They also have mouths full of sharp teeth unsuitable for chewing—indeed, the teeth of reptiles are generally undifferentiated in size and shape compared to mammals, whose teeth are more specialized.

Gorn eyes are often depicted as silvery and faceted, much like the compound eyes of insects, suggesting a considerably different evolutionary path. Indeed, compound eyes have rather poor image resolution but possess a larger viewing angle and the ability to detect fast movement. Still, others have typical reptilian eyes with slit pupils, like the Tholian-employed slavemaster Slar in the Enterprise episode “In a Mirror, Darkly.” They have at least two genders, male and female.

Gorn has an average height of approximately two meters and tends to be many times stronger than most humanoids. Adult Gorn is slower and less agile than humans on average but possesses more durability and stamina. Unaided by the universal translator, their language sounds to most humanoids as a series of clicks and growls. And as far as their lifespan, one source indicates they can live for up to three hundred years. This brings me to the discussion of the Gorn’s life cycle…

In the Gorn’s earliest appearances, their growth and maturation cycle has never been explored deeply—or, actually, at all. Star Trek Into Darkness has an offhand line of dialogue indicating Gorn can become pregnant with live young, a phenomenon in nature known as viviparity.

This is not so unusual for a reptilian being, as some Earth snakes and lizards don’t lay eggs. Caesarean sections may be necessary to deliver Gorn children in such a way, with births of up to eight children at a time known to have occurred. The infants are apparently highly aggressive even when born in this manner. In season one of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds , however, we are treated to a much different, more thoroughly detailed explanation as to how the Gorn reproduce. And indeed, this is just one of a number of things about the Gorn that are a notable departure from previously established canon…or so it might seem at first.

In the fourth episode of Strange New Worlds , “Memento Mori,” the character La’an Noonien-Singh recounts how, as a child, she escaped from a Gorn breeding planet. On these planetary nurseries, Gorn deposit sentient beings for use as breeding sacs or to be hunted as food by Gorn hatchlings.

The adults will periodically return to these planets to harvest their young. As we see in the series’ ninth episode, “All Those Who Wander,” Gorn hatch from parasitic eggs that incubate inside humanoid hosts. This is in contrast to the previously mentioned viviparity—pointing towards different methods of reproduction and/or the existence of, once again, different species of Gorn.

Their maturation cycle depends on the species of the host, lasting months in some cases but days in others. When ready, hatchlings will rip their way violently from the host’s body in a clear homage to the xenomorphs from Alien .

Newly emerged Gorn are white in colour—they become green as they feed voraciously and grow rapidly in size, moulting their skin along the way. Both the eggs and hatchlings are biologically invisible to sensors—rather conveniently—and despite their bestial nature, hatchlings can prevent themselves from being sensed telepathically.

Gorn hatchlings are quadrupedal, and they are exceptionally fast and strong in clear contrast to their adult forms. Not only are they uncontrollably aggressive towards other life forms—they are also aggressive towards members of their own species. Competing for dominance, only the strongest and smartest survive. Juvenile Gorn develops ducts that enable them to spit venom, which can infect additional hosts with eggs. As some have speculated, many of these other advantageous traits could indeed be the result of genetic engineering.

So, how can this more fearsome depiction of the Gorn be reconciled with their other appearances throughout Star Trek ? Well, the most straightforward answer is that Gorn hatchlings are simply more rambunctious and appear to, well, mellow out as they mature. Of course, “mellow out” only in a comparative sense. Also, keep in mind that the “intelligence” of human babies is nothing remarkable, being on average slightly under that of an untrained domestic dog.

“Trained” dogs are ones that work for the police, the armed forces, on movie/TV sets, as guide dogs, shepherds etc. And feral dogs are, logically, somewhat more intelligent than most regular, coddled pet dogs, simply because they must be due to their unfortunate circumstances. As humans mature, of course, our IQ goes up as we train our minds by learning things and practising new skills.

Something that should be further emphasized as well is that many animals’ “final forms” are quite drastically different from their infant or even adolescent stages. I talk about one type of biological transformation, metamorphosis, in detail in my video about the Metroids from, well, Metroid …another species that Strange New Worlds ’ lil’ baby Gorn is reminiscent of. While we don’t exactly know how many times a Gorn moults its skin, this process is just one example of how the Gorn metamorphose during its life cycle.

And their assumption of an upright posture later in life is, once again, perfectly in line with the maturation of an intelligent lifeform. Besides humans, bipedal locomotion is common among birds, the descendants of avian dinosaurs—and as I also demonstrated in my video about the Chozo from “Metroid,” birds are some of the smartest nonhuman terrestrial animals, another indication that the evolution of a sapient reptilian species is more plausible than one might think.

Plus, if you’re looking for further evidence connecting the familiar Gorn with their quadrupedal counterparts, let’s not forget Lorca had a Gorn skeleton as part of his “menagerie” aboard the starship Discovery —a show that directly predates Strange New Worlds and which shares the show’s overall design language.

Federation-Gorn Relations

Regardless, in Strange New Worlds , Gorn is referred to on occasion as “monsters.” Humans are merely prey to them, La’an emphasizes, and she dismisses the idea that they can ever be reasoned with—some things in the universe, she says, are simply evil. Of course, this is through the lens of one character’s traumatic childhood experiences.

It should be noted that such a roughshod, antagonistic approach to dealing with an enemy is not entirely out of character for a Starfleet crew in the mid-23 rd century, and it’s up to the discretion of individual captains as to how to deal with such matters. Besides, we do ultimately see that, evidently, La’an isn’t correct that the Gorn can’t be reasoned with…more on that later.

In terms of the Federation’s other dealings with the Gorn, despite multiple unofficial contacts between the two powers by 2259, the Gorn have never been listed as “officially” encountered. This is primarily because the Gorn hardly leave survivors.

In accordance with ritual, when Gorn hunt captives for sport on their breeding worlds, one survivor is spared and placed in a life raft jettisoned into space. The survivor is not expected to live, though La’an obviously did.

The first “official” contact between the Federation and the Gorn does occur in 2267 when the Gorn attack a Federation colony on the planet Cestus III. The Gorn view their attack as a preemptive move since they regard Cestus as part of their own territory. The USS Enterprise pursues a Gorn starship into unexplored space, where both ships are immobilized by the super-advanced and mysterious Metrons, who pit Captain Kirk and the Gorn captain against each other, against their will, in a contest of strength and ingenuity to the death.

Kirk spares the brutish Gorn’s life after Kirk is victorious, and the calculating but high-principled Metrons send both captains back to their respective ships and transport the Enterprise light-years out of the area.

Given how intelligent the Gorn are, they are surely keenly aware of the Federation’s perception of them up to this point. So, it’s likely that this very encounter in “Arena” was an instrumental stepping stone in the thawing of Federation-Gorn relations as both cultures began to appreciate each other’s perspectives and moral systems more fully.

This is why, by the 24 th century, the Cestus conflict is more or less resolved…the Federation colony has been rebuilt, and Benjamin Sisko speaks of the Pike City Pioneers baseball team that hails from this planet’s capital. This doesn’t mean the Federation and the Gorn have to be best buds, but once again, like the Klingons, open hostilities have apparently been reduced to a minimum.

And even more has been done in recent Trek instalments to, in a word, further “humanize” the Gorn. In Lower Decks , we see a Gorn wedding reception, and a Gorn chef works at a restaurant on Federation Starbase 25.

A Gorn is even referenced as having attended William T. Riker’s bachelor party in an omitted line of dialogue from the first draft script of Star Trek: Nemesis . While admittedly a lot of work must be done, both in-universe and out-of-universe, to bridge this more peaceful depiction of the Gorn with their depiction as loose analogues to Alien ’s xenomorphs, the point is, the groundwork has already been laid for such a transition. So, no, Ms Noonien-Singh, the Gorn can be reasoned with. Much like has happened with the Romulans and multiple other antagonists in Star Trek , given enough time, an enemy really can become an ally—even a friend.

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Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode 9 - "All Those Who Wander"

The Gorn return in terrifying fashion in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode 9, but the revelations of the alien reptiles borrow too much from the Alien and Predator films. In Strange New Worlds episode 9, "All Those Who Wander," Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) leads a landing party to the frozen world of Valeo Beta V in order to investigate a distress signal from the USS Peregrine. The USS Enterprise's crew find themselves stalked by baby Gorn, who infected one of the survivors. The horror-themed episode ended with the tragic sacrifice of Chief Engineer Hemmer (Bruce Horak), who killed himself to save his friends because there were Gorn growing inside him.

Strange New Worlds  season 1 reintroduced the Gorn as fearsome adversaries to Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets. Lt. La'an Noonien Singh (Christina Chong) and her family were abducted by the Gorn when she was a child. The Gorn ate her parents and brother, but they allowed La'an to escape, expecting her not to survive. Instead, La'an was rescued by Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn), who inspired her to join Starfleet. Even though La'an is also the descendant of Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalbán), the Gorn has been the primary focus of La'an 's tragic backstory. The Enterprise's Security Chief also became Starfleet's expert on the Gorn, who La'an aptly described as "monsters."  Through La'an's memories, Strange New Worlds retconned the Gorn, who were only seen previously in Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: Enterprise .

Related: Strange New Worlds Just Hinted At Major Star Trek Canon Changes

The Gorn attacked the Starship Enterprise in Strange New Worlds episode 4, "Memento Mori," and it was a combination of La'an's knowledge of the reptiles and Captain Pike's tactical daring that allowed them to survive. However, the Gorn weren't seen in episode 4, and Strange New Worlds episode 9 marks the first time the rebooted Gorn have been sighted in canon in the 23rd century since Strange New Worlds predates TOS by about 7 years. While the Gorn have been retconned into a genuinely scary threat, Strange New Worlds ' changes are also weirdly derivative of other sci-fi franchises.

How Strange New Worlds Changed The Gorn From TOS

Strange New Worlds episode 9's Gorn retcon borrows too heavily from the  Alien franchise's Xenomorphs. The Enterprise crew discovers, to their horror, that baby Gorn gestate inside host bodies and then burst out, killing their hosts, exactly like young Xenomorphs due. One change is that the Gorn are natural chameleons that can evade Starfleet's tricorders and sensors. But once born, the baby Gorn are animalistic, mindless killers who climb walls and hide in ceilings like Alien Xenomorphs. The Gorn also quickly turn on and kill each other, battling for dominance until there's one alpha left. The Gorn can also see in the dark and their ability to sense heat signatures is extremely reminiscent of the Yautja in the Predator franchise.

Further, to infect other species and implant their young, the baby Gorn spits bile, which is also similar to the Dilolophosaurus in the Jurassic Park movies. The Gorn also chase their prey like Velociraptors. Hemmer was caught by the Gorn bile, which instantly infected the Aenar with Gorn eggs. The baby Gorn's growth process is also determined by the host; with some alien species it can take days, but in Strange New Worlds , the baby Gorn rapidly aged in a matter of hours.

Why Strange New Worlds' Gorn Change Doesn't Work

Strange New Worlds' Gorn retcons effectively turn the aliens into the horrific monsters that La'an describes, which made for a tense, action-packed episode 9. But in the grander scheme of how the Gorn Hegemony must operate, Strange New Worlds ' Gorn retcon doesn't logically hold up. As they're presented in "All Those Who Wander," the Gorn are ravenous, animalistic creatures. But how, then, are the Gorn also capable of building starships and traveling through the galaxy? Perhaps the Gorn evolve in intelligence as they get older but how does their civilization thrive if, upon birth, they murder each other and deplete their population's numbers?

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The Gorn warrior that Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) faced in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode, "Arena," was a humanoid reptile who was intended to be a monster (in spite of the limited and laughable lizard suit from the era). But the Gorn Captain was also intelligent, capable of speech, was a skilled tactician, and had a code of honor. The Gorn Kirk fought in TOS is a far cry from the mindless animals in Strange New Worlds , and it doesn't entirely line up that they are the same species. Strange New Worlds episode 9 also blows the long-repeated mantra that "no human has ever seen a Gorn" out of the water.

There are certainly possible explanations for Strange New Worlds ' Gorn discrepancies. The Gorn seen in Strange New Worlds ' episode 9 could be a less evolved version of their species or the Gorn could be born very different depending on the races of the alien bodies they gestated in. It would be logical to assume that not all Gorn are alike and the ones Pike and the Enterprise crew faced in "All Those Who Wander" are a particularly horrible subset of the reptiles. As scary and effective as Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode 9 is, it's also hard to ignore how blatantly derivative the Gorn are of Alien , Predator , and even the Dilophosaurus and Velociraptors of Jurassic Park .

Next: Strange New Worlds Explains Star Trek's First Space God

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds ' Season 1 Finale streams Thursday, July 7, on Paramount+.

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