star trek lower decks gorn

Star Trek: Lower Decks Brings Back an Iconic Original Series Alien Race

In the latest episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks, Rutherford's mission with the Command crew brings him face to face with a classic TOS alien race.

WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 1, Episode 8, "Veritas," now streaming on CBS All Access.

In the latest episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks , Lieutenant Shaxs and Lieutenant Commander Andy Billups recruit Ensign Rutherford for a daring secret mission. However, since the mission requires expert knowledge of Romulan Bird-of-Prey spaceships, Rutherford has to perform an update of his cybernetic implant. Unfortunately for the Ensign, this update requires multiple system reboots. As a result, Rutherford shuts down and falls asleep on multiple occasions, only to wake up later to discover that he is now in a whole new location in the middle of Shaxs and Billups' mission.

This leads him from the lower decks of the U.S.S. Cerritos to a museum, and from a space walk to a desert planet. And it's on this desert planet that Rutherford comes face-to-face with a classic Star Trek alien race: the Gorn.

RELATED: Star Trek: Lower Decks Debuted Its Version Of A Famous TNG Character

The Gorn are anthropomorphic reptile-like aliens that first appeared in "Arena," an episode from  Star Trek: The Original Series Season 1. In the episode, Captain Kirk faced off in battle against a Gorn, a scene that is now recognized as one of the most famous and iconic in the franchise's history. Because of this, the Gorn became a classic part of Star Trek , and the alien race has gone on to appear in Star Trek: The Animated Series and Enterprise . While a Gorn skeleton appeared in the first season of Star Trek: Discovery , their return in "Veritas" marks the end of a long absence.

After his ship crashes on a desert planet, Rutherford finds himself in the middle of a Gorn wedding ceremony. The joyous occasion is rather unexpected for the reptilian alien race, but they quickly show their ravenous side -- the one we are familiar with. Upon Rutherford's interruption of the ceremony, they viciously attack the Ensign, who once again shuts down. When he comes to again, he is horrified to see he is still being attacked by the Gorn.

RELATED: Star Trek: Lower Decks Indirectly Involves... TNG’s William Riker

While we don't see what happens after this, Rutherford is then presumably rescued by Shaxs and Billups. The Gorn's full-fledged return in the Star Trek universe may be brief, but it's still a noteworthy return for one of the franchise's oldest and most iconic foes.

Star Trek: Lower Decks stars Tawny Newsome as Ensign Beckett Mariner, Eugene Cordero as Ensign Rutherford, Jack Quaid as Ensign Brad Boimler, Noël Wells as Ensign Tendi, Dawnn Lewis as Captain Carol Freeman, Jerry O'Connell as Commander Jack Ransom, Gillian Vigman as Doctor T'Ana and Fred Tatasciore as Lieutenant Shaxs. The show premiered on CBS All Access on Aug. 6.

KEEP READING: Star Trek: Lower Decks Takes A Page From The Thing

What Are the Gorn in Star Trek? A History of the Alien Characters

G ene Roddenberry's space opera franchise Star Trek is filled with iconic aliens: Klingons, Andorians, Romulans, Betazoids, Orions, Changelings, Vulcans, and the Borg, to name a few. Many of them have been explored in great detail through various Star Trek series and films. Still, one particularly infamous and hostile species remains relatively unknown in live-action media: The Gorn . First introduced in Star Trek: The Original Series , these reptilian humanoid aliens are best remembered from the 1967 episode "The Arena." It is one of the most notable episodes in Star Trek history, mainly due to the slow and sluggish movement of the creatures' leader and its over-the-top combat with Captain Kirk, which rendered the scene unintentionally comedic.

Update August 13, 2023: This article has been updated by Mona Bassil with additional information following the season 2 finale of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and with information from the series Star Trek: Lower Decks.

This cemented the Gorn as one of the most memorable aliens in the Trek universe. Despite that, the franchise has typically avoided bringing them back. While it makes sense for prequel series not to include them, it is odd how later Star Trek shows, like The Next Generation , Deep Space Nine , Voyager , and Prodigy, never featured the Gorn. One of the more recent series, however, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds , which premiered on Paramount+ on May 5, 2022, has not only given an update on the Gorn but has also explored them in more detail and plans on making them an overarching threat for the series. Here is everything to know about the Gorn species.

Gorn History in the Star Trek Series

The Gorn are first introduced in Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Arena". They are still a mysterious species to the Federation, and Captain Kirk is forced to do battle with the Gorn leader in a fight to the death. Kirk believes the Gorn to be a violent and savage race that eradicated an entire Starfleet colony. While he has the chance to kill their captain, he spares him after he realizes that the previous attack on a Starfleet Outpost was simply an act of self-defense and that the Gorn and humans have more in common than they realize. This marks the official first encounter the United Federation of Planets has with this species.

Related: 23 Coolest Alien Characters in the Star Trek Franchise

The Gorn would later appear in an episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series , as well as on Star Trek: Enterprise , which marked the first time the creature was portrayed with GCI. In order not to mess with the continuity of the original series and the subsequent first contact with Kirk, the Gorn seen on the prequel show, Star Trek: Enterprise , is set in the Mirror Universe, an alternate universe in Star Trek where everyone is either evil or has an entirely different character.

How Strange New Worlds Redefines the Gorn

The Gorn were planned to appear in both Star Trek: Nemesis and 2009's Star Trek reboot but were scrapped for unknown reasons. In Star Trek Into Darkness , Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy makes reference to performing a C-section on a pregnant Gorn, indicating they may have encountered The Federation earlier on in this new timeline.

The next major appearance of the Gorn would be in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, where they are a recurring foe. Set ten years before the events of TOS , Strange New Worlds slightly retcons the original series. Here, the alien species are a large part of the backstory for La'an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong), who is the sole survivor of a Gorn attack when she was a child. This marks an unofficial first encounter with the species in the series.

The USS Enterprise , under the command of Captain Christopher Pike, first encounters a Gorn ship in the episode Memento Mori . The creatures are not seen, which seems to indicate that the aliens would be a recurring unseen foe throughout the series. But they reappear later in the season, in the episode "All Those Who Wander " , where various members of the Enterprise crew, including Spock, come face to face with the aliens. Unlike in the original series, these Gorn are depicted as smaller, more agile, and more animalistic. Henry Myers, the show's executive producer, told Variety , "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.” He was, of course, referring to the fact that the Gorn on TOS looked like giant lizards in fake rubber suits.

Related: Star Trek: How the 3 Animated Series Stack Against Each Other

The Season 2's action-packed finale, "Hegemony", it features the species decimating a human colony at the edge of Federation space, which they believe is part of their territory. They also plant a device that prevents any starship or shuttlecraft from beaming up trapped survivors, thus demonstrating superior dampening technology. While the episode begins with Captain Pike very clearly seeing the Gorn as monsters, the episode also looks to try to build the foundation for the Gorn being seen as a more advanced species in The Original Series.

Not only do the Gorn have their own fleet of ships, the young Gorn also appear not to be killing each other for dominance like it was believed they do, but instead working together. Pike comments on how there is more for them to learn about the Gorn. Audiences will likely learn more in season 3 as the finale of season 2 ended on a cliffhanger. Pike must decide between following Starfleet orders and retreating or going to save the rest of his crew who were beamed aboard the Gorn ship, including La'an Noonien-Singh.

The Gorn on Star Trek: Lower Decks

More recently, the species also appeared on the adult animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks , a refreshingly comedic take on the Star Trek franchise that pays homage to its complicated history while cleverly poking fun at its most memorable chapters and characters. In season 1's eighth episode, "Veritas", Ensign Rutherford's cybernetic implant is in need of an update. To complete the process, the device occasionally has to shut down and reboot, causing Rutherford to suddenly collapse and wake up hours later. Consequently, he crashes on a barren planet and finds himself surrounded by the Gorn, who starts biting into him. It is a double crash because he has also interrupted a wedding celebration.

Design and Characteristics

The Gorn in the original series are a bipedal and large reptilian alien species. They are capable of space travel and seem to have their own civilization. They also appear to be an apprehensive species, as even later in the timeline of Star Trek, it is unclear if they ever joined Starfleet.

The Gorn on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds are similar to the variant of the species introduced in the Kelvin timeline set Star Trek video game between the 2009 Star Trek film and 2013's Star Trek Into Darkness . They are smaller, quadrupedal aliens that have a lot in common with the Xenomorphs from the Alien film franchise , including the practice of laying parasitic eggs inside a host that burst out of the victim's chest. They also no longer seem to have the sparkly eyes shown on TOS . Season 2 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds later found an explanation for this change in size. The smaller ones are the baby versions of the species, and audiences got to see Spock and Nurse Chapel fight a proper size Gorn which matched the size of the one Captain Kirk fought.

The Gorn have evolved and acquired the ability to evade Starfleet and other electromagnetic medical sensors, possibly indicating why the species has gone so long in the franchise without being seen. They grow quickly and will not hesitate to eliminate each other in order to establish dominance and strength. Strange New World also establishes that the Gorn are susceptible to the cold. It has done more to explain the Gorn than any other piece of Star Trek media since the creature first appeared, and hopefully, additional seasons will explore its culture and variants. The season 2 finale clearly hints that Trekkies will be seeing more of the Gorn as recurring villains in season 3.

Star Trek's Latest Season-Long Arc Breaks A Big Tradition

Has Trek’s biggest experiment reinvented itself?

Should a Star Trek TV series be comprised of stand-alone episodes, or, should the whole thing be a huge serialized story arc? While The Original Series pioneered the classic planet-of-the-week storyline in the '60s, the '90s and early aughts saw both Deep Space Nine and Enterprise play with season-long arcs that predated prestige TV as we know it. Ever since Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds debuted in 2020 and 2022, respectively, the Trek franchise has split the difference. Some shows still have a lot of serialization — Picard and Discovery for example — while LDS and SNW stick close-ish to self-contained episodes.

But what if you could have both? In Season 4 of Star Trek: Lower Decks , that’s exactly what’s happening; big stakes serialization combined with isolated episodes. Inverse caught up with Lower Decks supervising director Barry Kelly, and co-producer Brad Winters to get the inside scoop on how this season of LDS breaks with tradition, while also keeping things hilariously familiar. Spoilers ahead for Lower Decks Season 4, Episodes 1 and 2.

“So this is the first time I think we're really doing a serial,” Barry Kelly tells Inverse . Kelly has been a supervising director on Lower Decks since the beginning and describes his role as “literally checking in on all departments ... to get a bird's eye view of the episodes.” But, he notes that because Lower Decks introduces a new season-long mystery — something the comedy series hasn’t done quite like this before — that required even more rigor than usual.

“We really try to homage TNG in being more episodic,” Kelly explains. “Meaning, that the through-line of our episodes is really just the characters’ progression and development. But yeah, this time there’s a new mystery through-line, and we’re getting to see two things happening in each episode. There’s this new overhanging threat. This ship showed up and destroyed a Klingon ship. Who is this? It’s not Starfleet. It’s some weird organic-shaped pearl-looking ship and we don’t what that is, or what alien made that.”

Don’t get too cozy with these Klingons.

In the final moments of the debut episode of Season 4, “Twovix,” we see what Kelly is referencing, an unknown alien ship obliterates the same Klingon Bird-of-Prey first glimpsed in the Season 2 episode “Wej Duj.” This continues to expand the theme of the show, in which, Kelly says, “We’re getting to explore lower decks vignettes on multiple ships.” In “Wej Duj,” the show gave us a glimpse of the junior officers of both a Klingon ship and a Vulcan ship, a storyline which resulted in the USS Cerritos getting their newest crewmember, fan favorite “rogue” Vulcan T’lyn.

But, Kelly suggests that fans may not want to get too attached to the lower deckers on other ships we see this season. “You'll quickly learn, after the first episode, maybe after the second, you’ll be like, uh-oh, our new victims.” In the second episode, “I Have No Bones and I Must Flee,” we see a cold open on a Romulan ship, in which the Romlan lower deckers squabble over who is better at backstabbing who. But, quickly, Kelly’s warning is proven correct: This Romulan ship isn’t long for this world either.

That episode’s title is also a roundabout Easter egg from the famous Harlan Ellison SF short story, “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.” Because, even though there’s a season-long arc, the name of the game in Lower Decks Season 4 is still hilarious Easter eggs. In “Twovix,” at one point, Boimler yells out, “It’s all the deep cuts from VOY !” By now, three years since its debut in 2020, this is the kind of thing fans have learned to love from Lower Decks — romps that often reference existing Star Trek episodes (or other sci-fi), which often verge on deep cuts so obscure, that even just making the reference itself is funny. In “Twovix,” the entire episode tackles one of the internet’s favorite episodes to debate about, the infamous Star Trek: Voyager [VOY] episode ‘Tuvix.” Without fully spoiling the episode, it’s safe to say that at least some fans will have even more to debate about than ever before.

But, with an episode like “Twovix” — which is utterly stacked with Easter eggs and deep cuts — Kelly points out it's a careful process: “As far as Easter eggs go, there'll be stuff they read in the script that's like, we're in a sci-fi room, it's a museum. There's bones and there's a giant or a giant skeleton, and Spock Two from The Animated Series ,” Kelly explains. In the Voyager episode, for instance, we have the nano-virus, all that stuff, the lizard salamanders, the holograms, all that stuff was written in the script. But for something like the movie episode, “Crisis Point 2: Paradoxus,” at the last minute we added this Easter egg of actual live-action overlay of the computer they’re looking at in The Wrath of Khan .”

The people making Lower Decks are working hard to make these Easter eggs for you.

With all the gags and Easter eggs references to the entire canon of Trek, does Lower Decks ever worry about messing up the canon of the other shows? Short answer: Nope. As Lower Decks co-producer Brad Winters tells Inverse: “All the shows are talking. We don't want to do the same stuff thematically, but we don't have to worry about continuity because we’re very separate in the timeline. Discovery is after us. Picard is after us . Strange New Worlds is soooo in front of us.”

And yet, considering SNW just had an epic crossover with Lower Decks , does that mean clues to the mysterious enemy in LDS Season 4 could have been teased in another show? Again, Winters and Kelly stress that despite going big with serialization, Lower Decks is still its own thing. As Winters puts it succinctly: “We would never do the Gorn. ”

Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4 is streaming its first two episodes on Paramount+. New episodes drop every Thursday.

This article was originally published on Sep. 7, 2023

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Star trek shows kirk's biggest flaw (by celebrating his most famous victory).

Star Trek: Lower Decks recreates a key moment from Captain Kirk's iconic Gorn battle, but the reference also highlights his greatest flaw.

Star Trek: Lower Decks points out Captain James T. Kirk's biggest leadership flaw in typically comedic fashion, revisiting one of his greatest victories from  Star Trek: The Original Series . The 1960s adventures of Starfleet's USS Enterprise aren't short on classic sci-fi material, but season 1's "Arena" is undoubtedly one of the crew's most famous outings - especially for William Shatner's Captain Kirk . Following a dispute outside of Federation space, Kirk is forced into trial-by-combat versus the captain of a rival ship. Upon the increasingly-familiar surrounds of Vasquez Rocks, Kirk is pitted against the Gorn - a reptilian warrior far stronger than any mere human. Using his wits and ingenuity, Kirk fashions a makeshift cannon to win the day.

Thriving as it does upon lovingly mocking  Star Trek tropes,  Star Trek: Lower Decks recreates Kirk's iconic Gorn victory... with a twist. After the Cerritos' landing party is captured by greedy Ferengi poachers, Brad Boimler and Sam Rutherford must free their crewmates and defeat the criminals, despite having no weapons and being vastly outnumbered. Aping Kirk's Gorn cannon, the pair rustle up a device suspiciously similar in design and appearance, successfully ending the Ferengi standoff. Despite  looking like Kirk's cannon, however, Boimler and Rutherford's version projects a visual presentation detailing the cost/benefit analysis of the Ferengi poaching operation , convincing the villains to stop doing bad stuff because they'll make more money going straight.

Related:  Star Trek Jokes About Gene Roddenberry's Impossible TNG Rule

Star Trek: Lower Decks ' Kirk-esque projector cannon is a neat subversion of expectations. The audience expects Boimler and Rutherford to emerge all guns blazing, but it's their brains (not their skin, Sam) that ends up saving the day. Indeed, the overall message of  Star Trek: Lower Decks season 2's "Mugato, Gumato" episode is how brawn and violence isn't always necessary to escape a tight spot. The pair spend damn near a whole 20 minutes feeling inadequate compared to their more heroic colleagues - the likes of Mariner and Shaxs - but prove themselves worthy with a devastating, unstoppable, explosive... economics report. And alongside the cannon gag, their tactics tacitly point out the legendary James T. Kirk's greatest flaw .

Shatner's Kirk has a reputation for drop-kicking first and asking questions later, punching or phaser-ing his way out of a situations whenever the opportunity arises. His penchant for violence becomes even more obvious when comparing the original  Star Trek captain to Picard, or Sisko, or Janeway, or Saru, or Archer, or Freeman, or Pike... In "Mugato, Gumato," Mariner is the "Kirk," but her rugged approach fails to get the job done. Boimler and Rutherford's more cerebral strategy is how everyone ultimately gets out of trouble. The story acts as a critique toward the James T. Kirk School of Diplomacy, and turning the Shat-Cannon into a fountain of knowledge only underlines the point  Star Trek: Lower Decks is making.

One could certainly argue that Captain Kirk's gung-ho reputation isn't  entirely deserved. Sure, 1960s TV preferred straightforward action over the more dramatic conflicts that became commonplace from  Star Trek: The Next Generation  onward, but Kirk was often more thoughtful than he's given credit for. Even in "Arena," the Enterprise captain makes efforts to communicate with the Gorn before beating it into vegetable-colored alien pulp. Perhaps  Star Trek: Lower Decks ' fact-cannon isn't so much a sleight on Kirk himself, but a demonstration of how much the franchise has changed since those humble beginnings. A conflict that would've inevitably ended in a grueling battle back in the day can now be resolved through the power of math, compromise, and a sideways glance toward James T. Kirk's  Star Trek history .

More:  Star Trek Brings Back An Obscure Version of Spock

The One Star Trek Plotline Lower Decks Will Never Do

There was a brief moment, only just a few years ago, when it seemed that there were six "Star Trek" shows running simultaneously. CBS All Access, later Paramount+, debuted with "Star Trek: Discovery" in 2017, and padded out their Trek schedule shortly thereafter with "Short Treks," a monthly series clearly made to keep Trekkies hooked on subscriptions. Then, in 2020, both "Star Trek: Picard," and "Star Trek: Lower Decks" debuted. In 2021, the Nickelodeon series "Star Trek: Prodigy" started up, and in 2022, we got "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds." Every one of these shows was, for a moment, active. 

Recent months have, however, seen a contraction of that initial glut. "Short Treks" is an every-once-in-a-while thing rather than a regular series, "Picard" came to an end, and both "Discovery" and "Prodigy" will end after their next seasons. And then there were two. 

With all those shows running simultaneously, though, the various showrunners likely had to coordinate very carefully as to not step on each other's toes. It would have been good manners to ensure no one was repeating stories, changing fundamental premises, or killing off characters. It helped that the shows all took place in separate time frames, all but assuring the characters couldn't easily interact. "Strange New Worlds" takes place before the original "Star Trek," while "Lower Decks" and "Prodigy" take place after the events of "Voyager." "Picard" takes place another 20 years beyond that, and "Discovery" swept forward to the following millennium. Let's not step on each other's toes. 

In a recent interview with  Inverse,  "Lower Decks" supervising director Barry Kelly talked about that aspect of showrunning, and thanks to what's happening currently on "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds," he will never touch the Gorn. 

The Gorn have played a large part in "Strange New Worlds," serving as the series' most revisited villains . The Gorn have attacked the U.S.S. Enterprise from space, have implanted eggs inside the abdomens of certain members of the Enterprise crew, and, in the finale of the show's second season, are poised to destroy a human colony and eat its inhabitants. Characters talk about the Gorn in hushed tones, terrified of the threat they pose. In order to stay in line with dialogue from the original "Star Trek" series, few people in Starfleet have actually seen a Gorn up close. 

After the original series episode "Arena, which aired in 1967, the Gorn became an official part of Trek canon. Likely because of the Gorn mask worn by the on-screen actors and stuntmen, however, Trek has been reluctant to bring them back too often; the Gorn wouldn't reappear until "Star Trek: Enterprise" in the early 2000s. "Lower Decks" might easily have had an all-Gorn episode, and there could easily be passing references to the Gorn ("Lower Decks" is lousy with deep-cut Trek references), but Kelly didn't dare steal any of "Strange New Worlds'" thunder. 

In brief, he merely said, "We would never do the Gorn." 

This is, one might imagine, a promise made after the first season episode "Veritas," wherein Ensign Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) recalled, via his cranial implant, that he once stumbled into a Gorn wedding. Upset at the interruption, the Gorn all leap out of their seats and savage Rutherford. Luckily, he seems to have escaped with his life intact. Beyond that, a passing line of dialogue, or a background detail, it seems that the Gorn will not return. Kelly is politely leaving Gorn stories to the "Strange New Worlds" writers. 

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• Gorn on the Road! - Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 2 Episode 5

Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 2 Episode 5 Quotes

Melvis: I should disintegrate you for stranding me on Ceti Alpha IV which, I'll have you know, is much worse than Ceti Alpha V! Mariner: I don't strand people! Boimler: She stranded me on Rubicon III. Mariner: You stranded yourself. Boimler: Pfft. What about on Axelus? Mariner: Ok, yeah, I stranded you there. Permalink: Ok, yeah, I stranded you there. Added: September 01, 2021

Boimler: Woah. I've never been on a station this old. It's like a whole city. Mariner: Yeah, it's great, but it kind of smells like pee sometimes. Permalink: Yeah, it's great, but it kind of smells like pee sometimes. Added: September 01, 2021

Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 2 Episode 5 Photos

9/9/21 Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 2 Episode 5 An Embarrassment of Dooplers

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'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds': Who Are the Gorn?

Who are the mystery aliens pursuing the Enterprise?

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds recently released its fourth episode, "Memento Mori," and with it, used its prequel status to return to an iconic piece of Star Trek lore dating back to 1967. This episode doesn't shy away from saying the infamous species' name, either. However, revisiting the Gorn isn't all that surprising, considering Lt. La'an Noonien-Singh ( Christina Chong ) revealed the heartbreaking backstory that found her a victim of the ruthless species, even if that wasn't quite the lore the audience was expecting based on the character's name. But fifty-five years is a long time, so if you don't remember everything about the antagonistic species, nobody would blame you. So, who are the Gorn?

The Gorn are an intelligent, bipedal, and reptilian species that are incredibly hostile and unfortunately warp-capable with technology on par with The Federation's. Thanks to Lower Decks , the assumption can be made that they have at least two genders and that marriage is a part of their reptilian culture. The species are very durable, strong, and have incredible stamina, however, this also makes them slower and less agile creatures. While the eye appearance of the reptiles' eyes varied among the species, they had razor-sharp teeth, holes on the side of their heads for ears, and claws on their hands and feet. The Gorn are carnivores.

RELATED: How ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Perfectly Balances Classic and New Trek

Until Strange New Worlds , it was assumed that the first contact with the Gorn was with Captain James T. Kirk ( William Shatner ), but we now know of at least two previous interactions. The first occurred in the 2200s when the reptilians captured a human colony ship and transferred the entire complement to a facility where they were used as live food or breeding sacks. According to the Gorn's culture, the last surviving person is jettisoned into space aboard a life raft, allowing for Lt. Noonien-Singh's survival and rescue by Una Chin-Riley ( Rebecca Romijn ). Later, the Gorn attempt to lure The USS Enterprise under Captain Christopher Pike ( Anson Mount ) into a trap, but thanks to the previous experience of Lt. Noonien-Singh, the Enterprise is able to evade capture, destroy one of the ships, and escape.

The Federation made contact with the species when they attack a colony/outpost on Cestus III, a system in what the Gorn considered their territory, in Star Trek: The Original Series episode, "Arena." When USS Enterprise pursues a Gorn vessel, another alien, a Metron, transports both Kirk and the Gorn Captain to a deserted planet where the iconic fight scene takes place. Kirk eventually wins, but instead spares the Gorn. The Metron is surprised but impressed, deciding to spare The Enterprise while still sending them thousands of light-years away from that sector of space.

A Gorn was next seen on The Animated Series episode, "The Time Trap." He was seen on a ruling council of a pocket reality, implying that some of the species became separated from the whole. It's important to note that generally The Animated Series isn't included in the recognized Star Trek canon. The Gorn are also in several Lower Decks episodes. In addition to the huge marriage revelation, the series also gives fans an amazing tidbit of information: A Gorn resides on Starbase 25 and is a chef at 'Mr. Krada Leg'.

Finally, a Gorn named Slar is also used in Enterprise 's "In A Mirror Darkly, Part 2" to help contextualize the mirror universe and show how brutal and violent the alternate reality is. Slar is a slavemaster for the Tholian Assembly, leading a salvage mission of the USS Defiant (NCC-1764), a ship from the prime universe, stuck in the mirroring one. When Terrans also board the ship, Slar attempts to keep control of the ship but is killed by Captain Jonathan Archer ( Scott Bakula ) in the process. Star Trek: Discovery also shows that because of the size and might of the species, it isn't unusual for members of The Terran Empire to take their skeletal remains as trophies, as seen on Georgiou's ( Michelle Yeoh ) ISS Shenzou.

The Gorn may not have a history as complex as the Andorians or Bajorans, but the Gorn rightfully earned their place in Trek lore even just by being the first thing that comes to many people's minds when mentioning Star Trek or Captain Kirk. The inclusion of this species in La'an's backstory gives the opportunity to flesh out this species even more in Strange New Worlds , potentially providing more context for the goofy fight that aired over 5 decades ago.

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Star Trek: Lower Decks Episode 8 Easter Eggs & References

A courtroom drama in Lower Decks reveals classic Easter eggs from the classic Trek films, deep cuts about random TNG villains, a beloved DISCO voice, and at least one alien who is definitely not from Star Trek.

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This Star Trek: Lower Decks article contains spoilers.

If anyone was on the fence as to whether or not the Lower Deckers in Star Trek: Lower Decks were also giant in-universe Star Trek fans, the latest episode, “Veritas,” will reveal the truth. Mariner, Rutherford, Tendi and Boimler know their Trek history better than most real life Trekkies. And to prove it, this episode has more Easter eggs and deep-cuts than (mabye) all the other episodes combined. From discussions about the hair styles of obsecure TNG characters, to some very big homages to a big seen in Star Trek VI , this episode packed in the references, and then decided to throw in a Gorn wedding.

Here are all of the Easter eggs and references we caught in Star Trek: Lower Decks , Episode 8, “Veritas.”

Klingon trial from The Undiscovered Country

Later in the episode, Rutherford describes the setting for the episode as “Alien trial 101.” He’s not wrong. From the elevating platform to the tall alcoves full of shouting aliens, everything about this setting — including the banging of the creepy gavel — is meant to remind us of Kirk and McCoy’s trial on the Klingon Homeworld in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country . Granted, the gavel in The Undiscovered Country was not shaped like a skull, but the guy who banged it in that movie was wearing a metal claw.

The voice of Klarr

Kurtwood Smith plays the alien Klarr in this episode. Smith is famous to RoboCop fans as being the bad guy in RoboCop and famous to Star Trek fans as the guy who played the President of the United Federation of Planets in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country . As the President, Kurtwood Smith is the guy who said Kirk and McCoy had to stand trial for the murder of Chancellor Gorkon.

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Roga Danar versus Khan

Mariner and Boimler’s debate about “biggest badasses” is hilarious because everyone has heard of Khan, and only hardcore TNG fanatics have heard of Roga Danar. For most people, Roga Danar (played by Jeff McCarthy) is as Mariner says, “some dude nobody has heard of.” He appeared in the TNG Season 3 episode “The Hunted,” and briefly, did “outsmart” Picard, just as Boimler says.

Mariner’s defense of Khan echoes what Trekkies generally think; that he’s the best Trek villain ever, though obviously, nobody would pit Khan against Roga Danar! Mariner describes Khan as a “genetically engineered supervillain. Dude was a space seed!” Naturally, “Space Seed” is the TOS episode in which Khan first appears. Tendi’s reference to Khan’s “thick, thick chest’ is likely an allusion to the urban myth that Ricardo Montalbán wore a prosthetic chest while filming The Wrath of Khan . However, many sources (including director Nicholas Meyer) have repeatedly said that the “thick, thick chest” was all 100 percent Ricardo Montalbán.

Living on Earth

Mariner is super concerned about getting kicked off the ship and being forced to live on Earth “Where there’s nothing to do but drink wine and hang out at vintners and soul food restaurants.” This is a reference to both Captain Picard and Captain Sisko. In 2380, however, Jean-Luc Picard has not returned to his family’s vineyard full-time, The “soul food” references Sisko’s Creole Kitchen, a restaurant run Ben Sisko’s family and specifically operated by Ben’s father, Joseph Sisko. The restaurant first appeared in the DS9 episodes “Homefront” and “Paradise Lost.” 

Picard’s family wine vineyard, made famous in “All Good Things…” and the series Star Trek: Picard , first appeared in the TNG episode “Family.” 

Bug Captain Is Kenneth Mitchell

Star Trek: Discovery actor Kenneth Mitchell — who played the Klingons Kol, Kol’sha, and Tenavik — plays the voice of the insect-like Captain Seartave. In this same episode, Mitchell also plays a Federation guard and a Romulan guard. 

Send them a message

When Captain Freeman tells Mariner to “send them a message” to the alien ship, Mariner fires the phasers right away. This could reference The Wrath of Khan when Khan says “explain it to them,” which means, he wants his lackeys to fire a photon torpedo. 

“Denobulan flesh-eating bacteria”

Jax mentions a “Denobulan flesh-eating bacteria,” which references the Denobulans, a race of friendly aliens made famous by the prequel series Enterprise , specifically Dr. Phlox. Interestingly, Phlox did have a bunch of unorthodox treatments on the NX-01 Enterprise , which might have included weird fleshing-eating stuff.

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Vulcan nerve pinch

Rutherford points out he doesn’t know how to do the Vulcan nerve pinch but managed to do it anyway. Non-Vulcans have done the Vulcan nerve pinch on several occasions. Picard did it in the TNG episode “Starship Mine,” Data did it “Unification,” and Michael Burnham did it in “The Vulcan Hello.” Most hilariously, McCoy tried to do a Vulcan nerve pinch in The Search For Spock , while Spock’s Katra (soul) was in his body.

Vulcan shuttle

During their covert mission to the planet Vulcan (presumably) Jax, Rutherford and Philips are flying a classic Vulcan shuttle. This is the same design of shuttle Spock took to hook-up with the Enterprise in Star Trek: The Motion Picture .

Famous starships in the museum

The museum where Jax, Rutherford, and Philips steal a Romulan Bird-of-Prey is packed with a ton of famous Star Trek ships, including:

• A Jem’Hadar fighter ( Deep Space Nine )
• A Ferengi shuttle ( TNG and DS9 )
• A D-7 or K’Tinga class Klingon Battlecruiser ( TMP, TOS, TNG, DS9 , and, technically, Discovery )
• Several Federation shuttlecraft (Mostly TNG era)
• A classic TOS shuttlecraft
• The Vulcan landing ship from First Contact.
• A Tholian ship (“The Tholian Web,” “In a Mirror, Darkly.”)
• And…something that looks like the Monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey .

Romulan Bird of Prey

The ship that is stolen, and later used by Ransom and Tendi, is a classic TOS -era Romulan Bird-of-Prey. Prior to this episode of Lower Decks this style of Romulan ship has only been seen in canon three other times: In the TOS episodes “Balance of Terror” and “The Enterprise Incident,” and in the Picard episode “Absolute Candor.” That said, the Bird-of-Prey in “The Enterprise Incident” was digitally inserted into the remastered “Enterprise Incident” in 2008. So, really, this ship has only appeared in canon in 1968, 2008, and twice in 2020.

Federation Guard

Also voiced by Kenneth Mitchell, the Federation Guard has security armor and a helmet reminiscent of the kinds of outfits security guards wore in The Motion Picture , The Search For Spock , and The Undiscovered Country .

Jax tells Rutherford to “to a fan dance,” to distract the guard. This references Uhura doing a dance with feathery fans on Nimbus III in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier . In that case, the fan dance only got Kirk and Spock some horses. 

Does Philips know the TNG crew?

The chief engineer of the Cerritos , Billups, makes two references to TNG episodes when he’s running out of oxygen. He says “Mark Twain’s got a gun!” and “Tasha No! The garbage bag’s behind you!” The Twain thing references Mark Twain pulling a gun on the TNG crew in “Time’s Arrow.” And the Tasha comment seems to reference “Skin of Evil,” when a creature who you could call a “garbage bag” did kill Tasha Yar.

Gorn Wedding

Does the Gorn wedding count as an Easter egg? Considering we’ve never seen this many Gorn (Gorns?) in one place, ever, this feels like yes, this counts as an Easter egg. Also, if the shuttle crashlanded during a Gorn wedding, does that mean they crashlanded on Cestus III, a planet the Gorn took over in the TOS episode “Arena?”

Romulan Bridge interior 

Everything about the interior of the Romulan ship matches a TNG -era Romulan ship, which seems to reference, mostly, the TNG episode “Face of the Enemy,” in which Troi is kidnapped by Romulan agents, but also, made to work for them.

Covert Ops Starfleet Outfits (Again!)

This marks the second Lower Decks episode in a row that references the all-black bodystocking outfits from the TNG episode “Chain of Command.” And because Ransom wore one in “Much Ado About Boimler,” this is the second episode in a row that he’s been on an undercover mission.

“You know who I hate, Remans”

The Romulan guards are talking about how they hate “Remans” and that Remans are “the worst.” The Remans are an alien species who live in the same planetary system as the Romulans on the planet Remus. We never met the Remans until the 2002 film Star Trek: Nemesis . Although he was human, the Picard clone named Shinzon (Tom Hardy) considered himself a Reman. The events of Nemesis and the attempt for the Remans to take over the Romulan Empire happened just one year prior to Lower Decks , in the year 2379.

“Like whenever Q shows up”

John de Lancie voices “Q” in a flashback where he forces the crew of the Cerritos to play some kind of absurd chess game with playing cards and a soccer ball. Q is dressed in his judge’s robes from the TNG episodes “Encounter at Farpoint” and “All Good Things…” In the context of “Encounter at Farpoint,” this outfit is actually taken from Earth’s future history; at some point in the 21st century, several draconian courtrooms existed on Earth, in which the rulings were neither fair nor just. Q says “Do you think humanity is really worth saving?” which was basically his whole beef in “Encounter at Farpoint,” when he calls humanity “a savage, child race.” The ridiculous board game, in which the crew is turned into chess pieces could reference the DS9 episode “Move Along Home,” in which the crew has to act out certain moves that are reminiscent of a board game.

Salt Vampires… are… alive!

When Mariner tells Ransom that his date is a “salt vampire” the says that “salt vampires died out more than a century ago.” This references the very first aired TOS episode “The Man Trap,” which takes place in 2266, more than a century before Lower Decks . This is the second time the M-113 “Salt Vampire” creature has been referenced on Lower Decks , but the first time we’ve actually seen it in the flesh — sucker hands and all.

Dr. T’Ana has a “Remember Me” moment

When Dr. T’Ana says that nobody on the ship remembers her, this could reference the TNG episode “Remember Me,” in which Dr. Crusher enters a small bubble parallel universe in which people she knows, start to vanish from existence. 

Boimler’s speech about what Starfleet officers “don’t know”

To prove that Starfleet officers are good people, but sometimes totally ignorant of what is going on in the galaxy, Boimlter rattles off several examples of Starfleet officers not knowing something that was utterly nuts. 

• “Did Picard know about the Borg?” References the TNG episode “Q, Who?” in which Q forces the Enterprise to encounter the Borg. Picard may not have known about the Borg in 2365, but there’s some debate that some people in the Federation did. Seven of Nine’s parents knew about the Borg in the 2350s.
• Did Kirk now about that giant Spock on Phylos? This references an episode of The Animated Series called “The Infinite Vulcan.” The “giant Spock” was a huge Spock clone named “Spock 2.”
• Did Dr. Crusher know about that ghost in the lantern from the Scottish planet that she hooked up with that one time? This is from the TNG episode “Sub Rosa,” and yeah, Dr. Crusher hooked up with a ghost that lived in a lantern.
• “Drumhead!” Boimler’s mic-drop moment is the word “drumhead,” which references Picard giving a speech that ends a witch-hunt trial in the TNG episode “The Drumhead.” The “drumhead” itself, refers to the head of a drum that would be up-ended on a battlefield to serve as an ad hoc judge’s bench.

Q references Trelane!

When Q appears at the end of the episode, he says “I challenge you to a duel” to the Lower Deckers. This references the character of Trelane from the TOS episode “The Squire of Gothos.” Trelane was a being with powers that were basically exactly like Q, and later Trek novels like Q-Squared , made it clear that Trelane was a member of the Q-Continuum who had been cast aside. When Gene Roddenberry first created the character of Q, TNG writers were worried he’d be too similar to Trelane and fans wouldn’t accept it. These days, naturally Q, is much more famous that Trelane. And yes, Trelane did challenge Kirk to a duel in “The Squire of Gothos,” and Kirk accepted.

Q speaks French, talks about Picard

When Mariner says : “Get out of here Q! We’re not doing any of your Q bullshit” he says “S’il vous plaît Mariner!” This implies he knows Mariner pretty well, which is hilarious, but she tells him she’s not French and he should go bother Picard. Q says, “Picard is no fun!He’s always quoting Shakespeare, he’s always making wine.” Picard quoted Shakespeare to Q, specifcally Hamlet in the TNG episode “Hide and Q.” Mentioning that Picard is making wine at this point in time is interesting. We know that by 2385, Picard will leave Starfleet and go live on his vineyard in France. But, in 2380, Picard is still in Starfleet. Is he making wine on the Enterprise ?

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Western Animation / Star Trek: Lower Decks

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" First Contact is a delicate , high-stakes operation of diplomacy. One must be ready for anything when humanity is interacting with an alien race for the first time... But we don't, do that. Our specialty is Second Contact. Still pretty important. We get all the paperwork signed, make sure we're spelling the name of the planet right, get to know all the good places to eat..." — Ensign Brad Boimler , Episode 1x01: "Second Contact"

Star Trek: Lower Decks is an American animated Work Com aimed for adults, and set in the Star Trek universe. Created for Paramount+ by Mike McMahan ( Rick and Morty , Solar Opposites ), it is the first animated series created for CBS All Access, and the first animated Star Trek series since Star Trek: The Animated Series . note  Although there are two episodes of Star Trek: Short Treks that were also animated.

The series follows the exploits of the support crew serving on the U.S.S. Cerritos , one of Starfleet's least important ships, in the year 2380. This sets it between Star Trek: Nemesis (2379) and the prologue of Star Trek (2387), a period of relative peace for the Federation between the end of the Dominion War and the collapse of the Romulan Star Empire .

A group of four ensigns have been assigned to the Cerritos . Each of them is following a different career path and is a Bunny-Ears Lawyer at best. They are unappreciated by the senior staff and are the lowest-ranking members of the ship's crew, but they still manage to accomplish great things due to their friendship.

• Beckett Mariner ( Tawny Newsome ): A rules-breaking rebel with a poor opinion of Starfleet, and the daughter of the ship's captain and a Starfleet Admiral . Brilliant, but Lazy , she is a grizzled veteran of Starfleet and can handle almost anything, but is highly impulsive and has no desire to advance, having apparently been demoted from a higher rank multiple times.
• Brad Boimler ( Jack Quaid ): A nerdy and rules-abiding Ensign who has served on the Cerritos for a year, but has only visited five planets in his life as of the first episode (including Earth and Vulcan). He dreams of becoming a captain and has encyclopedic knowledge of the galaxy, but lacks any actual field experience.
• D'Vana Tendi ( Noël Wells ): A Green-Skinned Space Babe of the Orion species, she is a Plucky Girl nerd who is studying to be a doctor. She is extremely pleased to be working on the Cerritos and is thrilled at the prospect of adventure, but is somewhat oblivious to how dangerous serving in Starfleet can be .
• Sam Rutherford ( Eugene Cordero ): A human who was fitted with a Vulcan brain implant that gives him special abilities while also interfering with his emotions. He's a Grease Monkey who's passionate about engineering, and is every bit as excited to be working on a starship as Tendi.

The name of the show and general premise is inspired by popular Star Trek: The Next Generation episode " Lower Decks ," of which multiple references have been made in the show itself.

The show debuted on August 6, 2020 initially as a feature for CBS All Access before migrating to Paramount+ . International distribution has been handled by varying local networks and other services like Amazon Prime. The second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds featured a Crossover with Jack Quaid and Tawny Newsome portraying their characters in live action via a Time Travel mishap.

IDW Publishing started a Star Trek Lower Decks comic book series written by Ryan North and illustrated by Chris Fenoglio in September, 2022.

General trope examples:

• Continuity Nod
• Deconstructed Trope
• Deconstruction
• Mythology Gag

Why is he troping? What does he know?!:

• 2D Visuals, 3D Effects : The characters and most of the settings are 2D, but the space battles tend to be CGI.
• Accidental Misnaming : Throughout the first season, Boimler's superior officers consistently misremember his name, culminating in Riker calling him "Boomler" in the season finale, even as he's offering him a promotion and transfer to the Titan . As part of his Character Development , this is completely dropped in the second season.
• We have Ensign D'Vana Tendi voiced by Noël Wells, another instance where she voiced a green-skinned alien . note  Although unlike Lord Dominator, the character she voices here is heroic
• This isn't Dawnn Lewis's first role as a black woman in command .
• Lieutenant O'Connor, who ascended to a higher plane of existence , broke through the veil and saw the true nature of reality , is voiced by Haley Joel Osment .
• The rude, one-eyed Drookmani leader in "Terminal Provocations" is voiced by J.G. Hertzler, A.K.A. General Martok in DS9 .
• Of course, Samanthan (சாமந்தன்) is a traditional Tamil boy's name meaning leader, so Rutherford's a Bob not an Aerith.
• Affectionate Parody : This is a show that is best appreciated by Trekkies as a number of references, mythology gags , and Easter Eggs can only be appreciated by a super fan of every series. It also suggests how miserable and dangerous being a Red Shirt on a Starfleet vessel might be, and pokes holes at many of the flaws of Starfleet.
• In season 1, Rutherford creates Badgey, a Clippy -style helper avatar who, par for the course, develops homicidal daddy issues against his creator and tries to murder him and Tendi on the holodeck. In the season finale, he indirectly causes Shax's death, although he does sort of help blow up the Pakled ship .
• Season 2's “Where Pleasant Fountains Lie” has Boimler escorting a malevolent supercomputer named Agimus back to Starfleet custody. It enslaved an entire civilization and constantly tries to trick Boimler into plugging it into a comms network. Turns out Starfleet has an entire facility devoted to storing evil AIs .
• In a Call-Back to TNG , “No Small Parts” has an exocomp note  basically a sentient flying swiss army knife named Peanut Hamper join the Cerritos crew. She's friendly enough but when push comes to shove she chooses to beam herself into space rather than undertake a dangerous mission to save the ship. After drifting in space for months, she eventually lands on a planet of owl people where she almost gets them all killed arranging a dangerous scavenger attack to make herself look heroic so Starfleet will take her back. Subverted as she's mainly just a narcissist who only joined Starfleet to piss off her dad, rather than doing all this for typical berserk AI reasons.
• In season 3 Admiral Buenamigo unveils new Texas class fully-automated starships. But since he based their AI on the same code Rutherford used to create Badgey, the ships eventually go rogue and kill him, causing severe damage to Douglas Station, the Cerritos and the U.S.S. Van Citter before they're destroyed.
• Alien Arts Are Appreciated : Both Mariner and Tendi are apparently fans of "Klingon Acid Punk" music.
• Based on a holodeck simulation of the Adashake Center, the Orion sky is green.
• The sky is yellow and the clouds are beige on the Galardonian homeworld.
• Gelrak V has a green sky with green clouds.
• While the U.S.S. Cerritos is a Cool Starship , she does have her malfunctions. The opening credits show the ship being prone to complete power loss, and in the series premiere, red alert somehow deactivates a certain emergency hatch .
• The shuttle Sequoia , which is a constant presence in the ensigns' repair bay, is a subversion . Despite its battered and patchy appearance, the one time it is needed for an emergency, it does the job quite well. Doesn't mean there aren't still things wrong with it, but it's clearly spaceworthy.
• The shuttle sent by Starbase 80 is a dingy brown and really doesn't look like it should have managed to fly to the Cerritos , much less back, in keeping with Starbase 80 being a hellhole.
• Allohistorical Allusion : Mariner cries, "It's the 80s dude! We don't have psychiatric problems!" when ordered to attend therapy; a reference not only to the 2380s, when the show is set, but also to the 1980s, when mental health wasn't considered nearly the issue it is today, and many thought a starship with a counselor onboard was uninspiring.
• Blue: Andorians, Benzites, Bolians, Taxors.
• Green: Orions, Gelrakians.
• Grey: Drookmani.
• Purple: Galardonians, the inhabitants of Mixtus III, the Dooplers, and a member of an unnamed purple species that also works on the Cerritos .
• Red: At least one of the two residents of Mixtus II has red skin.
• Ransom gets much more detailed animation when he rips off his shirt for the gladiator fight in "Temporal Edict".
• The Cerritos model has been refined and tweaked for season 2, justified in-universe as the result of a refit/repair after being attacked.
• There are two instances of this for Badgey, when he gets closeups, in "A few Badgey's more".
• Amusing Injuries : Gory injuries are almost always Played for Laughs , poking fun at the franchise's depiction of "dermal regenerators" and other futuristic medical devices—often made of some handheld prop with a lightbulb in it. Lower Decks takes it to before-unseen extremes by waving a light even over messy compound fractures for an instant fix, characters being careless about inflicting such injuries due to the ease of healing, and nonchalant conversations continuing while someone has a spear in their shoulder. (There are exceptions, however, such as Freeman's injuries in the first season finale.)
• Anachronism Stew : A flashback in "Cupid's Errant Arrow" shows Mariner had been in Starfleet as far back as 2369, but she and her fellow shipmates were in uniforms that wouldn't be in use until 2373. Alternately, they were discussing news from 2369 in 2373 as if it were current. Either way, the situation is odd, although we later see those uniforms are still in use on certain ships such as the Titan .
• Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age : Although a spacefaring civilization, the Gelrakians haven't developed any Ray Guns and still rely on crystal spears when attacking enemies. Crystal battle blades and crystal-embedded clubs are traditional for a Trial by Combat . Although the last may be because their leaders think that they're cool, and their starships are equipped with phasers (although possibly not photon torpedoes, since they're not crystal-based).
• Arch-Enemy : The Gelrakians (a crystal-worshipping society) consider the inhabitants of Mavok Prime (a wood-worshipping society) to be their sworn enemies.
• Art Evolution : The Cel Shading CGI for the Cerritos has evolved since the early episodes. It appears that the Cerritos model was revamped if not replaced entirely, with slight changes to the proportions and adjustments to the lighting scheme, notably giving the name and registry number its own spotlight in season two.
• Art Shift : Being the second Star Trek animated series after Star Trek: The Animated Series , whenever actual images are shown related to the Kirk era it is shown in the Filmation art style rather than the show.
• Back from the Dead : Parodied and discussed - Shaxs comes back from the dead in one episode, and nobody discusses it. In particular, Boimler and Mariner point out that this happens to bridge crew all the time.
• Bait-and-Switch : A commonly used trope on the series. A typical sitcom trope would be set up, like the fear of the boss yelling at an underling's request to transfer, only for it to be immediately subverted by him saying he's super happy for the underling and generally being supportive.
• Bloodier and Gorier : While the series is trying to imitate Star Trek: The Next Generation 's style, it is not afraid to have blood spray about, while the older series tended to be mostly bloodless. (Usually in the cause of Amusing Injuries , but sometimes—as in the first season finale—the sight of blood is treated gravely.)
• Boring, but Practical : Second Contact may not be as glamorous as First Contact , but it's where the important bureaucratic work gets done.
• Mariner is an Action Girl who's incredibly knowledgeable about the galaxy, but also relentlessly insubordinate as well as prone to acting before thinking.
• Boimler is a stickler for the rules and full of technical knowledge, but a Lovable Coward who has little practical experience.
• Tendi is a Plucky Girl and The Heart of the team, but overly eager to please as well as easily impressed.
• Rutherford is a Cyborg with incredible engineering skill, but horrible at making command decisions as well as interpersonal reactions.
• The computer-worshipping planet of Beta III is revisited almost a century after Starfleet's first visit in the TOS episode "The Return of the Archons".
• An exocomp becomes a new ensign, after having been declared a sentient species sometime after the events of the TNG episode, "The Quality of Life".
• The Pakleds are back, a species only seen once during TNG note  they also made quick appearances in DS9 as crowd filler, and in the Klingon CD-ROM game, though that was a holodeck simulation , and one of the most ridiculed, only now they appear to have upgraded to a major threat.
• Riker comes in to save the Cerritos in the U.S.S. Titan , the same ship he was given command of at the end of Star Trek: Nemesis.
• The second season reintroduces the Tamarians, a race first appearing in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Darmok", in the form of Shaxs's replacement, Kayshon. Thankfully, he knows Federation Standard for the most part, only lapsing into metaphors when he can't remember the right word (or when he's flirting).
• Also in the second season, Boimler gets a transporter duplicate after an interference field combined with a second transporter beam materializes one on the ship, and another stuck on the planet. The same thing happened to Riker, as we learn in " Second Chances ".
• The episode "Mugato Gumato" reintroduces Mugatos; gorilla-like creatures last seen in the TOS episode, "A Private Little War".
• The cosmic koala mentioned in " Moist Vessel " gets brought up again after Boimler 's near death experience in " First First Contact ". Tendi, who was present for both comments, is distinctly weirded out by it.
• The Season 4 trailer features Mariner mentioning that " Pike thing [they're] not supposed to talk about."
• Mr. Broker (from the episode "The Inner Fight") resembles Balok's puppet in TOS: "The Corbomite Maneuver", though he is not a puppet himself, bringing to mind the expanded universe explanation that Balok species is called the Linnik, and the puppet's species is the Dassik as seen in the expanded verse novel The Face of the Unknown.
• The Sphinx Workpod makes its official appearance here, having only been seen in Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual and meant to show up in the TNG pilot, but was too expensive.
• Captain's Log : As is tradition. Used infrequently during season 1, when Freeman was a remote, detached, vaguely antagonistic figure; from season 2 onward, consistent with her depiction as more approachable and relatable, she delivers a log entry in most episodes.
• Cat Folk : T'Ana is a Caitian, a humanoid feline species first seen in The Animated Series . The ship's crew also includes at least one Kzinti, a different humanoid feline species featured in TAS and also mentioned in Star Trek: Picard .
• Character Exaggeration : Any live-action Trek character who makes a cameo plays an appropriately cartoonish version of themselves. Q's games to try humanity are even more convoluted and annoying, Riker is an incredibly Large Ham who makes constant jazz references, and Tom Paris' reaction to Boimler's temporarily Kazon-like hair is to tackle him immediately. This extends to species as well. The Vulcans are even more stoic and orthodox and the Pakleds are even more stupid.
• Early episodes had a much more hostile relationship between the Lower Deckers and the Senior Staff, with the Senior Staff coming off as unfeeling, arrogant jerkasses only looking out for themselves. Come season 2, the depiction of the Senior Staff softened and the relationships between the two groups improved. The Senior Staff kept their quirks, but they were shown to be more competent and well intentioned, with several of them serving as mentors to the main characters. Come season 4, the hostility between the ranks is all but forgotten, with the two groups getting along well and helping each other to improve, perhaps as a deliberate attempt to work on their flaws after a disastrous visit from a journalist that nearly got the entire Cali -class decommissioned .
• The early relationship between Mariner and Boimler was a strong-minded, domineering woman next to a meek, ineffectual man. After a few episodes it evolved to where Mariner still had a lot more field experience but Boimler thrived under pressure and in workaholic conditions. The show also became a bit more ensemble-based with them, Tendi and Rutherford forming a close-knit group rather than just Mariner and Boimler plus their friends. Boimler was also the designated Ascended Fanboy with extensive knowledge of Starfleet history, while that became a trait of near everyone.
• The Coconut Effect : Lower Decks continues the Star Trek tradition of forgetting that Starfleet has enlisted personnel, or "crewmen", who serve under the officers. In this case, Acceptable Breaks from Reality are involved, because it would undercut the premise of the show to have the New Meat ensigns giving orders to non-coms.
• Continuity Cavalcade : Every episode is packed with both Continuity Nods and Mythology Gags , using both Rapid-Fire Comedy in referencing deeper lore along with background Easter Eggs filling the screen at times.
• Continuity Nod : It gained enough entries for its own page after just two episodes.
• Continuity Porn : The series has a huge amount of it with virtually every frame filled with Easter Eggs , references, and homages.
• Continuity Snarl : Slight one. Mariner's flashback to Deep Space 9 shows her and her friends wearing Star Trek: First Contact -era uniforms, yet they are discussing the events of " Descent ", which occurred during TNG 's sixth season, before those uniforms were introduced.
• Although she is decidedly one of Starfleet's less glamorous vessels, the U.S.S. Cerritos , the setting of the series, qualifies. Ensign Tendi, in particular, squees as soon as she comes aboard.
• The U.S.S. Vancouver is the starship equivalent of Always Someone Better to the Cerritos ; the Lower Deckers are positively gushing over its awesomeness during their visit.
• The U.S.S. Titan is a Beam Spamming Lightning Bruiser of a starship that gets introduced with a Big Entrance Gunship Rescue and a Theme Music Power-Up .
• Cosmic Entity : Assuming that Lieutenant O'Connor's interpretation of the visions he experienced during his ascension is correct, then the universe is balanced on the back of a giant, smiling koala. Called back as a gag in the Season 2 finale, as Boimler mentions seeing a giant koala during an offscreen near-death experience after almost drowning as the result of his spacewalk suit sprung a leak in Cetacean Ops . The koala even appears in the intro card for season 3, visible for a few moments as a part of the nebula in the background.
• In "Second Contact", many people are covered in Bad Black Barf from the zombies, while Boimler gets covered in milkable Giant Spider spit. Gunge B turns out to be the cure to Gunge A.
• In "Envoys", Boimler, Mariner, and their shuttle quickly get soaked in Mariner's ramen broth and Klingon bloodwine.
• In "Moist Vessel", Mariner gets a face full of lubricant when the turbolift ascends with her on top of it.
• In "Cupid's Errant Arrow", Boimler spills beer all over Brinson after he trips on Jet's foot.
• In "Terminal Provocations", Mariner bumps into T'Ana in the mess hall, which causes the latter to face plant into a plate of nachos; the Caitian complains that it's extremely difficult to remove cheese from fur in the sonic shower.
• In "The Spy Humongous", Boimler covers himself in gunge as part of a Cooldown Hug for Tendi, who had transformed into a giant scorpion monster .
• The holodeck recreation of the Adashake Center on Orion depicts a beautiful Shining City with elegant architecture, and its residents are dressed in toga-like clothing.
• The Gelrakians don't wear togas, but there are crystals everywhere on their planet and in their culture, plus their technology is crystal-based.
• Cunning People Play Poker : One season one episodes show the commanding crew of the U.S.S. Cerritos playing poker much like their Enterprise counterparts. Noticeably, however, each player opted to fold each hand, showing an averseness to risk taking.
• Dark Is Not Evil : The Edosian medical expert on the Osler wears dark clothes and is on a dark ship and has a nasty attitude, but in the end he's trying to help the various mutated and anomalous Starfleet officers. He does admit he should consider brightening things up, and his bedside manner is terrible.
• Deconstruction : The series takes a look at how horrifying and traumatizing some of the events that happen in a typical weekly Star Trek show would be, by presenting them from the perspective of your typical low-level grunt or Red Shirt . This includes opening a story with a Zombie Apocalypse on the U.S.S. Cerritos. Played with as, with the exception of Boimler, the protagonists are entirely unfazed by this.
• Deconstructor Fleet : A great deal of the show's humor would not make sense to you if you were not an enormous fan of the franchise with knowledge of every single series. Jokes are made at the expense of TOS , TNG , DS9 , and VOY . Many of these require knowledge of specific episodes' plots and the holes thereof.
• It should also be noted that a lot of the jokes in the series make fun of the plotlines that are typical for the series. For example, Boimler goes into a lengthy speech about how he's going to die if he leaves Starfleet (see Mythology Gag ) or how Mariner deals with an Energy Being that attempts to take over the ship.
• And yet while elements of the Trek 'Verse are deconstructed, the show pulls a Decon-Recon Switch of sorts by revealing the reasons why Starfleet does what it does and how they keep it all working. That there are logical reasons for "buffer time", or that Starfleet has a contingency plan to treat the unfortunate Red Shirts who survive the occasional transporter accident or alien infection.
• At the beginning of the second season Boimler is on the Titan serving under Captain Riker and he ends up having a meltdown because he was engaged in one dramatic battle after another where they are dealing with a dark, ongoing seasonal threat . Other crew members mention that the Enterprise-D must have been so boring because it dealt with space phenomenon and they would have concerts. Boimler eventually snaps saying he preferred exploration and intellectual pursuits over facing death every day, and Riker himself says he loved going to the concerts "on the D" .
• Decon-Recon Switch : While the series spends a decent amount of time showing how horrible a lot of the stuff that goes on in most Trek shows would actually be, it also shows a great love and affection for the franchise as a whole. It also shows that working in Starfleet, while dangerous, can also be a fun adventure if experienced with the right people. Above all things, the point is made that exploration requires further engagement with the societies they discover and humanitarian efforts to leave them in better condition than before they showed up.
• Denser and Wackier : By virtue of being a comedy, Lower Decks is far more zany and silly than any past Trek series.
• Double Meaning : The title of the show refers to the four main characters sure, but also to the Cerritos (and the rest of the Cali -class ships). Relegated to Second Contact and other boring duties, they are the "Lower Decks" of Starfleet as a whole. As the show continues, this alternate meaning begins to eclipse the original, particularly as the Ensigns cultivate relationships with the senior staff and are ultimately promoted out of the (literal) lower decks .
• The season 1 finale, "No Small Parts". The beginning of the episode has Dayton, a quirky captain that we've seen before, fussing over her new ship, and sixty seconds later it has been blown into shreds by a Pakled ambush. The Cerritos warps right into the debris field, finds no survivors, and the captain barely averts the same fate while being severely injured. In order to save the ship, Security Officer Shaxs sacrifices himself and Rutherford loses his memories of the whole season . While there is still plenty of humor, it is an episode that is just as high-stakes and dramatic as any other Star Trek season finale.
• Ditto with the season 2 finale, "First First Contact". In order to save the Archimedes and the planet Lapeeria, the Cerritos crew have to dismantle the ship's outer hull and fly through a deadly Asteroid Thicket unpowered and unprotected. Boimler nearly drowns in the process of removing a defective panel that would've gotten them all killed, Rutherford uncovers a memory that implies his implant wasn't voluntary, and Mariner and her mother finally reconcile their strained relationship amidst all the chaos. And that's not even mentioning the Sudden Downer Ending ...
• And season 3's "The Stars at Night" starts with the Starfleet Admiralty threatening to decommission the entire California class , and only escalates from there. Admiral Buenamigo is revealed as an Insane Admiral who masterminded Rutherford's memory loss and used his AI code to create the Texas class, and engineered the Breen attack on the Cerritos to make his pet project look good. When Freeman finds out, he sics the Aledo on her. Problem is, the AI is a precursor to what Rutherford used to create Badgey , so the ship goes rogue and kills him, awakens two of its sister ships and they start destroying a massive starbase. It takes some quick thinking by the Cerritos crew and Beckett pulling a Big Damn Heroes with all the other Cali ships to save the day, and even though their class is saved from the scrap heap a lot of the starbase personnel are presumably dead . Phew!
• Mike McMahan withheld the titles and story summaries of season 4's last two episodes until each was released, cluing viewers in that something serious happens in the 9th episode. And then that episode, "The Inner Fight", ended with a To Be Continued card, meaning it and "Old Friends, New Planets" are a two-part finale . As such, while both episodes have the show's trademark humor, the drama bomb starts an episode early: In "The Inner Fight", Freeman, attempting to distract Mariner with a ridiculously safe mission due to her increasingly reckless behavior, unknowingly sends her to the planet where the command crews of the stolen ships are being dumped by the mystery ship's pilot. Mariner, Boimler, Tendi, and T'Lyn are attacked and end up stranded on the planet, where Mariner ends up in a fight to the death with Ma'ah that's only disrupted by Hostile Weather . While sheltering in a cave with Ma'ah, Mariner ends up admitting the root cause of her Military Maverick behavior: PTSD stemming from Sito Jaxa's death and the Dominion War. After Ma'ah helps her come to terms with her trauma, she rallies the stranded crews together, only to be abducted by and come face-to-face with the mastermind: Nick Locarno . The B-plot is mostly comedic, but is caught in the Drama Bomb because it involves Captain Freeman searching for Locarno to take him into protective custody. The episode ends with Locarno greeting Mariner and saying they'll cause trouble together... In "Old Friends, New Planets", Captain Freeman defies orders not to rescue Mariner upon seeing her denounce Locarno on a live subspace broadcast. With the system Mariner is trapped in protected by a "Trynar shield", Tendi approaches her sister D'Erika for a large enough ship to breach it and ends up having to offer to return to Orion in exchange for the ship. As this is happening, Mariner is being chased by Locarno's "Nova Fleet" and trying to reach a lifeless planet to detonate a Genesis Device Locarno was using as a deterrent, but is forced into an ion storm and ends up setting the device off there before being rescued during a confrontation with Locarno, leading to Locarno getting himself killed in a Genesis Wave when he refuses rescue. Mariner arrives on the Cerritos and apologizes for her recent behavior, but then has to say goodbye to Tendi soon after due to the deal with D'Erika .
• Buffer time margaritas, baby! Downplayed in that it's probably non-intoxicating sythehol since they got them from the replicator, though it wouldn't be out of character for Mariner to replicate actual alcohol for a single drink.
• In "Cupid's Errant Arrow", Boimler orders a beer in an attempt to impress Brinson, despite still being on duty.
• Driving Question : In season 4, who is behind the mystery ship and its ongoing attacks? Answer: Nick Locarno.
• Beckett's Establishing Character Moment in "Second Contact" has her drunkedly severely injure Boimler. While irresponsible, Mariner's rule breaking is otherwise shown to never imperil her crew mates and that she cares deeply about them. Relatedly, her interactions with Boimler became less about her messing with him and more of a Cowboy Cop vs By-the-Book Cop dynamic.
• Boimler's favorite part of the ship is the warp engine, this is more a trait of Rutherford and Boimler is instead more interested in sucking up to the command officers.
• Rutherford and Ensign Barnes ignore the Zombie Apocalypse on the ship in "Second Contact" when later episodes show he always takes threats seriously (and frequently panics over them).
• Rutherford's implant glitches were originally blamed on it being Vulcan in origin, but after the first episode, this does not really apply (and later episodes eventually show us there's much more to the implant glitches than even Rutherford knew).
• The senior staff of the Cerritos tends to be dismissive or even cruel to the Lower Deckers at times. For instance, in "Second Contact", Captain Freeman credits Dr. T'Ana for discovering the way to cure the zombie-like state that the crew's in, ignoring how Boimler and Mariner were the ones who found it.
• T'Ana acted more human than feline.
• Shaxs was much more of a Sociopathic Soldier in the first season, before becoming more of a Shell-Shocked Veteran (though no less badass) from the second onward. Apparently, coming Back from the Dead really did a number on him.
• The first season had a bit of Ship Teasing between Mariner and Ransom, albeit of the belligerent variety. From season 2 onward, he's more of a Mentor in Sour Armor toward her, with the romantic tension abandoned.
• Characterisation aside, early in the first season it seemed like all of Starfleet used Cerritos-style uniforms, Admirals showed up wearing a variant as did a Parliment class ship's crew and some embassy staff. The TNG-movie black and grey style was first seen in flashback as well. Eventually it was established the style was for the Cerritos class and other ships and starbases used the Black and grey uniforms.
• The first season leaned on what a horror working in Starfleet must be, with danger and horrible situations around every turn. Come season 2, the series started leaning more on the fun aspects of life in Starfleet, with the Lower Deckers serving as audience surrogates and expressing their joy for the various aspects of the Star Trek mythos.
• Entendre Failure : In the Season 3 opener, we see Boimler working at a vineyard, one where the grapes are turned into raisins. He is constantly hit on by gorgeous women who use double entendres to flirt with him or try to bang him. However, Boimler acts oblivious to all this, interpreting the entendres as literal, and is actually rather annoyed that the girls keep bothering him with seemingly minor things.
• Episode Title Card : Like TNG , Lower Decks features episode names, and even uses the exact same font from that series.
• Also deconstructed: Freeman, Shaxs, and T'Ana treat the zombie apocalypse as a joke, while Ransom, who was a zombie at the time, is clearly having a breakdown at the thought that he ate human flesh.
• Similarly deconstructed in "I, Excretus," where Shaxs cracks a joke about Boimler's (simulated) assimilation by the Borg and everyone else laughs while Boimler wistfully muses: "They took away everything I was!"
• Everyone Is Bi : Sexuality seems pretty fluid on the Cerritos . Ensign Mariner is openly pansexual ("bad boys, bad girls, bad gender-nonbinary babes..."), and many of the Mauve Shirts are Ambiguously Bi to some degree.
• Every Scar Has a Story : As Mariner recovers in sickbay in "Temporal Edict", Doctor T'Ana clears her to return to duty, but offers to repair the scars on Mariner's body. Mariner refuses the cosmetic procedure, stating "No way. These are my trophies."
• Evil Is Cool : In universe, Mariner's holodeck program has her and her friends playing murderous villains, and Dr. T'Ana's sexual fantasy turns out to be robbing a bank, massacring the police responders, and forcing the customers and staff to watch her having sex.
• Exhausted Eye Bags : Everyone aboard the Cerritos gets these in "Temporal Edict", including the senior staff when they have to correct the mistakes made by the harried crew. The only person who doesn't is Boimler because his workaholic, rules-following nature allows him to excel in an environment with tight deadline pressure.

• Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong : The Anabaj procreate by injecting their eggs into another person's throat.
• Famed In-Story : By the 3rd season, the Cerritos and its' crew has become legendary amongst the California class ships, with even the Lower Deckers themselves being regarded as heroes to be looked up to.
• There's a bit more Lampshade Hanging on this being an element of the Trek Verse . Mariner has a much more cosmopolitan view of the galaxy due to being raised on starships, while Boimler has only been to five planets total (counting Earth and Vulcan) and only knows species from books. As such, he often makes numerous mistakes in interacting with aliens that Mariner avoids. This is shown most prominently in "Envoys" when Boimler assumes that a Ferengi is leading them into a trap and is a greedy monster just because he's Ferengi. It's actually a set-up by Mariner to boost his confidence. Subverted in "Terminal Provocations" when Fletcher calls Doctor T'Ana "just a cat in a coat", to which Mariner agrees.
• After the Dominion War, there is lingering resentment towards the Cardassians because no one in the Federation wants to go near the Cardassian homeworld, which is why the peace negotiations have been moved to Vulcan. Admiral : Nobody wants to go to Cardassia Prime. The Cardassians are creeping everyone out.
• In "Crisis Point", Tendi is upset because of the stereotypes associated with Orions, who often happen to be pirates and are famous for their seductive "slave girls", etc.. Though her protest does border on a Suspiciously Specific Denial . Tendi : And for your information, many Orions haven't been pirates for over five years!
• Explicitly averted. The U.S.S. Cerritos and her crew are among those charged with carrying out "second contact," the follow-up work with a species and their homeworld after it has been discovered and contact has been made by one of Starfleet's premier front-line exploratory ships.
• In the season 2 finale, Captain Freeman gets to make first contact (her first time doing so) with the Lapeerians, filling for Captain Gomez who was recovering from the day's ordeal in sickbay. It goes very well .
• Fauxshadowing : In Season 3, multiple characters express concern that Brad's decision to become "Bold Boimler" is going to get him killed. So far, the Ensign's new-found confidence has served him rather well, with the worst consequence being his death... In a Klingon-themed tabletop role-playing game.
• Boimler and Mariner serve as direct representatives of this, with them having polar opposite personalities.
• Delta Shift is considered this to the protagonists, who are Beta Shift.
• In "Terminal Provocations", the character of Fletcher is introduced as the worst elements of both Boimler and Mariner combined. Despite his affable demeanor, he's a Dirty Coward who always claims that it's Never My Fault , and he doesn't care about any rules while relying on his friends to bail him out. Mariner says that she's different because she would never endanger a fellow crewmate with her rule-breaking (well, except Boimler). Fletcher gets fired from Starfleet .
• In Season Four, each of the non-Starfleet ships - Klingon, Romulan, Ferengi, Orion, even Bynar - that are attacked by the mystery ship get introduced via Lower Deck crews openly talking about plotting against their respective captains for control of their own ships. While it's expected of Klingons - whose warrior code encourages Klingon Promotion - and Romulans - established as Properly Paranoid schemers - there's a noticeable thread that gets revealed as a plot by the season's Big Bad Nick Locarno.
• Mariner: Choleric. Mariner is hot-headed, aggressive, and impulsive. She exhibits Blood Knight characteristics which are tempered by her rebellious nature. Mariner also shows leadership expertise when on away missions and, despite her laziness, is excellent at taking charge when the situation requires it.
• Boimler: Melancholic. Boimler is introverted, moody, and rigid. His away missions often end with him becoming overly self-critical and he falls into depressive moods often. He is deeply insecure, but his perfectionist qualities and devotion to the Cerritos give him some strengths.
• Tendi: Sanguine. Tendi is outgoing, sociable, and optimistic. She's easily the friendliest of the four ensigns and beats Rutherford to this position by being more outgoing and extroverted. Sanguine personality traits are also associated with youth, and Tendi is the rookie on the ship.
• Rutherford: Phlegmatic. Rutherford is calm, stable, and patient. The simple satisfaction that he takes from his job in engineering is all that Rutherford needs to be happy. These traits ended up crashing his date with Barnes, who was annoyed by him being more interested in running a diagnostic than in having sex during a ship-wide crisis.
• Resting in one of the USS Cerritos 's repair bays is Sequoia , a shuttlecraft built by the main four out of salvaged parts, with Class 6 nacelles mated to a 6A body, dinged panels with mismatched colors, and markings drawn on by hand. Although it hasn't been put into regular service because it's more of a passion project than anything else, Shaxs and Rutherford are forced to use it when the Cerritos is attacked by one of the Pakled warships and a boarding party prevents them from getting to the normal shuttlecraft to board and disable the Pakled ship .
• In " No Small Parts ": The Pakleds' new war spaceships are made from parts of other ships. They even show that they can use grappling hooks to attach pieces of wreckage from other ships like the Solvang to their hulls to upgrade and repair on the fly.
• Fun with Acronyms : Ransom refers to Kirk's era as TOS, which he says stands for "Those Old Scientists"
• Geodesic Cast : The four main characters are vaguely mirrored by the four primary bridge officers, and other similar cliques exist on the ship as well, like the Redshirts.
• Genre Shift : This is the first Star Trek series that is primarily a comedy, and only the second series to be animated.
• Girl on Girl Is Hot : When she comes upon a room full of nude crew during a "Naked Time" holographic training simulation, Mariner is very interested in the two female crew members making out directly in front of her. It helped that one of them was a hologram of Jennifer, who later becomes Mariner's "hot Andorian girlfriend."
• Glitch Episode : A running gag for Rutherford and his cyborg implant in the first season. In " Star Trek: Lower Decks S1E08 "Veritas" ", he has to update his implant with Romulan flight manuals. During the multiple updates, he passes out and wakes up after his implant has taken over— Hilarity Ensues as he tries to figure out what the hell it did .
• Played with as the series progresses, as Tendi has to cope with her legacy as a respected "Mistress of the Winter Constellations" and visits her homeworld where all the other Orion women live up to this trope.
• Groin Attack : In "Strange Energies" a series of these is how Mariner eventually defeats Ransom after he's given god-like powers by the titular strange energies.
• Season 2: The Pakleds, previously a largely comical villain from TNG, return and are a persistent thorn in the side of Starfleet, including the Cerritos .
• Season 3: The development of the Texas -class automated starships, headed by Admiral Les Buenamigo, an old friend of Captain Freeman.
• Season 4: An unknown alien vessel is attacking random vessels belonging to the major galactic powers except the Federation, somehow disabling their systems before obliterating their ships — or rather, as it turns out towards the end of the season, faking obliterating the ships to cover hijacking them.
• I Just Want to Be Special : In "Moist Vessel", Lieutenant O'Connor confesses to Ensign Tendi that he was merely pretending to want to ascend so that people would notice him more, and he hoped that this would boost his Starfleet career. O'Connor : Well, since we're gonna die here, I'll just tell you I was never going to ascend. I was faking. Tendi : What, why? O'Connor : It's hard to stand out in Starfleet. This gave me an edge. It was my thing. I was the ascension guy.
• Ink-Suit Actor : Every voice actor in the opening credits could plausibly play their characters in live-action. The creators of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds took advantage of this with a Crossover episode in which Tawny Newsome's Mariner and Jack Quaid's Boimler jump not only into the past, but into live-action portrayal. The resemblances are not perfect — Mariner's hairstyle had to be revised, for instance — but the complaints about the episode did not center around physical quirks. Overuse of gimmicks aside, there is no reason the same could not be done with the remaining characters.
• This was lampshaded earlier in "Cupid's Errant Arrow" when Ron Docent claimed to know an admiral who was a psycho.
• Averted however by Mariner's father, Admiral Alonzo Freeman, who is a Reasonable Authority Figure through and through.
• In Space, Everyone Can See Your Face : Notable in that, because the show is animated, spacesuit-wearing characters could just be drawn with visible faces beneath mostly transparent visors, but instead the artists depict internal lights illuminating the faces to maintain consistency with the visual style of the live action shows and films.
• Instantly Proven Wrong : In the Season 2 premier after Ransom is hit by the titular strange energies and starts to float, Mariner correctly identifies that he's become endowed with god-like abilities. T'Ana reprimands her and says that she has to run more test before that can be confirmed. Cue Ransom instantly healing himself from the damage of the energy blast (including his uniform), gaining telepathy, Glowing Eyes of Doom , and shooting energy beams all in the span of about 30 seconds. The rest of the episode is him just getting more powerful from there.
• Improbably Predictable : When Boimler returns to the Cerritos after being transporter cloned, Tendi ends up having to pay up to Rutherford for guessing that would be the reason Boimler would end up getting transferred back. When asked how he guessed, Rutherford replies that "it seemed like a Boimler thing to do."
• The Internet Is for Porn : One of Ensign Mariner's favorite holodeck programs is an all-nude Olympic training facility. Later, Ransom mentions that he had her cleaning the biofilters out of the holodecks, which apparently amounted to removing the various "bodily fluids" that the users have left behind. Ransom: I've got her cleaning [bleep] out of the holodeck's [bleep] filter! Freeman: Ugh, people really use it for that? Ransom: Oh yeah, it's mostly for that.
• Dr. T'Ana (Caitian) and Shaxs (Bajoran) repeatedly express an interest in each other, and T'Ana even asks Mariner if she could get Captain Freeman to sign off on them entering a relationship. Following his Unexplained Recovery in season 2, they become an Official Couple .
• Tendi, like most Orion women seen thus far, seems to have a thing for humans, hooking up (briefly) with O'Connor and carrying an obvious torch for Rutherford.
• Near the end of the Season 2 finale, Mariner asks out Jennifer — an Andorian that she previously disliked — after the latter saves her life .
• Kids Prefer Boxes : In "We'll Always Have Tom Paris," Dr. T'Ana sends Tendi to get a family heirloom. In transit, the heirloom gets wrecked, but T'Ana doesn't care, she only wanted the large wooden box it came in .
• That the ships can regularly get into horrifying disasters like a Zombie Apocalypse , and this is considered to be a normal part of the ship's duties.
• That the holodeck will most definitely be used by someone (or probably most someone's) for porn note  Although The Orville and DS9 have already covered this subject .
• Mariner basically spells out in "Temporal Edict" that the story is a parody of a Kirk-centric TOS episode. Mariner : Huh, circled by spears. This is a classic. What am I, Kirk? Is this the 2260s? Alright.
• The head Gelrakian breaks down all the usual tropes associated with fighting a giant alien in an arena.
• Ransom calls the Kirk-era the "Tee Oh Ess" period, standing for Those Old Scientists .
• Last-Name Basis : Apparently this has come back into vogue in the 2380s, as characters almost never refer to each other by first name, not even close friends.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler : It's quite hard for anyone who looks into the show before watching it to avoid finding out that Riker, Troi, and the Titan show up at the end of Season 1.
• Legendary in the Sequel : Played for laughs. In the far, far future of the Federation, Miles O'Brien is considered the greatest hero in Starfleet history note  O'Brien was indeed a great engineer and a war hero to boot, but he was also kind of DS9 's Butt-Monkey , to the point where the writers set aside one episode a season where they made O'Brien's life a living hell. Then again, his ability to survive everything that the galaxy threw at him would lead others to admire his resilience .
• Mariner has apparently been promoted a number of times and has served on five starships. She always self-sabotages so that she can be busted back to ensign and thus avoid any responsibilities ( or, as it turns out, having to send people to their deaths because the Dominion War surrounded her with death before she could fully recover from a friend being killed in action ).
• Boimler is an eager young ensign with aspirations of making it to captain. His efforts to fast-track himself are frequently thwarted by Mariner. Until he accepts a promotion to the Titan under the command of Captain Will Riker at the end of season 1. Although this ends up being reversed at the start of season 2.
• Freeman plays the trope the straightest, as the Cerritos is seen as a pretty low-grade command that involves often unglamorous missions. Captains of cooler starships often make cracks at her.
• Likewise, Ransom's career appears to have stagnated at First Officer of the Cerritos . Starfleet does not show any intentions of promoting him to Captain, as showcased in the season 2 finale where it’s stated that if Freeman were to be reassigned, a different captain would take her place.
• According to Admiral Buenemigo's Motive Rant , this is one of the main factors why so many Starfleet admirals like him go crazy ; at that rank, the only career choices you get are a Soul-Crushing Desk Job or doing risky, unethical black ops projects and Jumping Off the Slippery Slope . Not that it justifies sending one of his friends into a Breen ambush, nearly causing the Cerritos to be lost with all hands, on purpose , but it's a really toxic work environment.
• Finally, triumphantly averted at the beginning of season 4, when all four main characters are (permanently) promoted to Lieutenant, Junior Grade. Ironically, given that season 4 is set in 2381 and season 1 is set in 2380, this means that they spent only a couple of years (or less) at Ensign, which is an entirely reasonable interval in any real-world military. note  Both Mariner and Boimler had been promoted (and then demoted) during that interval, Boimler having spent only one year busted back down to Ensign before being restored to his previous rank. Rutherford had been up for promotion on multiple previous occasions before he finally accepted; as the series opens with Tendi being assigned to the Cerritos fresh out of the academy, she also only had to wait for one year. This is lampshaded in "Caves", where the Delta Shift ensigns point out that Beta Shift having frequent interactions with the senior staff means they were much likelier to get noticed — and promoted — sooner.
• Lizard Folk : The Anabaj are humanoid aliens with a long forked tongue, a frilled-neck like a chlamydosaurus, and their ability to climb up vertical surfaces is lizard-like.
• Loads and Loads of Races : Since an animated series doesn't have the same limitations as a live-action series (which traditionally relied heavily on Rubber-Forehead Aliens ), the Cerritos is a true Federation melting pot, featuring nearly every Federation race, and a few non-Federation ones. If they aren't on the ship, odds are they're on one of the stations or planets they visit.
• The California -class ships appear to be all named after lesser-known California cities ( Cerritos , Merced , Rubidoux , Alhambra , and Solvang ) as a reflection of the strictly second-fiddle missions they specialize in. The San Clemente , mentioned in "Crisis Point" but revealed to not be a real ship, also fits the pattern. The mentioned but unseen Sacramento is named after the capital of California which breaks the pattern but is also considered a prestigious posting by Boimler.
• The shuttlecrafts on the Cerritos ( Joshua Tree , Death Valley , Redwood , Kings Canyon , and Yosemite ) are all named after national parks in California.
• The U.S.S. Vancouver 's shuttlecraft are all named after neighborhoods in Vancouver, BC ( Marpole , Fairview and Kitsilano ).
• The Texas-class automated ships are all named after cities in Texas such as Aledo, Dallas, and Corpus Cristi
• Mildly Military : Even more so than what is typical in the Trek Verse . The Lower Deckers are a goofy offbeat bunch with more than their fair share of orders-defying antics. Surprisingly averted with Mariner, though, as her shenanigans have apparently gotten to the point that she is about to be cashiered and her own mother is actively seeking a reason to kick her off the ship. Although the fact she's in her own mother's chain of command is its own Artistic License – Military . By the third season the show openly acknowledges some of the military-lite features of Starfleet, but also makes it clear Mariner is on her last options if she wants to continue, forcing her to shape up or get kicked out.
• Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot : Rutherford's creation of Badgey → his uncovering of repressed memories and his original personality → he was involved in the secret creation of Admiral Buenamigo's long-planned Texas-class ships, and directly leads to the destruction of said ships and Buenamigo's Karmic Death .
• Mistaken for Toilet : A Pakled spy accidentally ejects himself from the Cerritos and claims that he mistook the airlock for a toilet. The other characters think that he couldn't have been that stupid, even given Pakleds' generally low intelligence, and that he must have been attempting espionage or sabotage. A Brick Joke ending then reveals that he did, in fact, defecate in the airlock.
• Modesty Towel : There's a recurring extra who walks through the communal bunks wearing nothing but a (very short) towel, showing how there's very little privacy to be had. Mariner at one point complains that he could at least replicate himself a bigger towel. Tendi also wears a (larger) one when talking to Boimler at one point. Privacy is not commonplace in the lower decks.
• More Hero than Thou : Mariner and Ransom get into a scuffle over who should go up against the Gelrakian champion to save their crewmates, much to the bafflement of the Gelrakian leader who keeps reminding them that they're arguing over a fight to the death . It ends when Ransom stabs Mariner in the foot.
• Mundane Utility : The Cerritos crew use phasers as all-purpose cleaning and removal tools.
• Mythology Gag : Has its own page.
• National Weapon : The chief weapon of the Gelrakians is a crystal spear.
• Never Trust a Trailer : In the trailer for season 4, scenes featuring the main characters after they are promoted to Lieutenant, Junior Grade are edited to remove the hollow pips from their collars and make them appear to still be Ensigns .
• Non-Standard Character Design : As a reference to the last animated entry in the franchise , TOS -era characters are depicted as they appeared (or would've appeared) in Star Trek: The Animated Series — meaning they're relatively realistic-looking, as opposed to the Rick and Morty -esque style used for everyone else in the show.
• No OSHA Compliance : Safety standards on the Cerritos can be... lax. In the first episode, an emergency hatch somehow locks down during a red alert, which is the opposite of what it should do. There's an access panel in the Cetacean Ops tank that can't be operated by flippers, requiring a risky dive if it ever needs to be opened. On one occasion, Mariner does repairs on a turbolift without taking it offline, and then Shaxs brushes away the "Do Not Enter" sign she put up to keep anyone from using it while she's in the shaft. Then there's the fact that in the event of a power outage the ship computer considers diverting power from the holodeck safety protocols a higher priority than the holodeck itself.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain : The villains of the Season 1 Finale? Pakleds . In the original episode they were introduced back in TNG, they were seen as slow, easily gullible, and only were as strong as whatever tech they managed to steal. But here? They've stolen tech and weapons from several warp-capable species and were able to connect them all together to make ships that can easily severely damage, slice apart and even outright destroy Federation ships. Not only that, but these batch of Pakleds are much more confident and aggressive, even fully willing to beam onto the Cerritos and fight in hand-to-hand combat. Subverted when it's revealed that they were being used by a rogue Klingon as part of a Proxy War . Once their puppet-master is out of the picture, they blew up their own planet and were never heard from again.
• Oddball in the Series : This is the only Star Trek series which is predominantly comedic and its main protagonists are Starfleet ensigns who aren't senior officers.
• Oh, Crap! : In "Small Parts", when Boimler accidentally reveals Mariner's and the Captain's secret relationship to the entire crew of the Cerritos . Captain Freeman becomes enraged and beams Boimler and Mariner directly to the bridge, while Boimler is in the middle of making mocking kissing noises. As soon as he sees Captain Freeman's face he freaks out.
• Season 1: The USS Titan .
• Season 2: The USS Cerritos , from the perspective of the ship they are rescuing, the Archimedes .
• Season 3: The other 30 California -class starships. Boimler lists every last one of them by name .
• Season 4: The Cerritos again, this time towing an Orion battleship they intend to use as a makeshift mass driver to penetrate a shield barrier to rescue Mariner.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten : In "Veritas", we learn that Dr. Crusher's romance with a Scottish candle ghost is common knowledge among Starfleet. One has to wonder who leaked that to the public.
• Only a Flesh Wound : In the Season 4 trailer Tendi and Mariner go to an Orion Bad Guy Bar only for Mariner to get a throwing knife to the chest and fall behind the counter while Tendi panics, Mariner gets up and explains that that's just part of the ambiance before pulling the knife out and depositing it in a jar with multiple other bloody throwing knives.
• Outhumbling Each Other : A variation occurs in " Hear All, Trust Nothing ." Kira and Shaxs served in the Bajoran resistance together, and apparently saved each others' lives multiple times. They basically end up in a fight with each one claiming the other person saved their life more times than the reverse.
• People Zoo : In the episode " I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee ", the Cerritos gets called to retrieve two humans who have been put on display in a menagerie. The away team gets attacked by an adorable yet deadly creature called the Moopsy which has escaped its cage. It turns out the humans realized how profitable the menagerie was and released the Moopsy on purpose in an attempt to kill the owner and take control.
• The Peter Principle : Mariner ends up an inversion to this trope. She has deliberately kept herself as an ensign through refusing promotions, getting demoted and transferring ships on a constant basis because she has an attitude towards stuffy leadership ignoring the smaller problems and seeking to solve it herself. She has Academy classmates who are captains now. This is shown to be its own problem as someone with zero interest in promotion is fostering an anti-authority sentiment that has left her more interested in being defiant than actually supporting the work, and over time even her closest friends can only be bullied into compliance for so long. The third season makes it clear that Mariner has to shape up and show some initiative if she wants to continue in Starfleet. The fourth season reveals Mariner's issues stem from a fear of The Chains of Commanding . She's dealing with her friend Ensign Sito Jax death from TNG's "Lower Decks" and shortly after the pointless deaths in the Dominion War, and wishes to never be in charge of lives like that . The subsequent events of that season gives her a frame of reference to her bad behavior, and is more open to promotions and leadership positions.
• Pet the Dog : Mariner sets up a situation to help Boimler recover his confidence after his horrible day in "Envoys", even letting him get away with mocking her in front of the rest of the crew later. In "Cupid's Errant Arrow", she goes to extreme lengths to protect him from a girlfriend she's convinced is a secret alien and/or robotic menace.
• Pig Man : The Galardonians are humanoid porcine aliens.
• Place Worse Than Death : Starbase 80 is considered such a terrible place that the mere mention of it is akin to an insult, and Mariner would rather do a job she despises than risk a transfer there. Ransom refers to it as a "hellhole" and would never willingly condemn anyone to it, though he does use the threat to motivate Mariner.
• The Gelrakians base their entire social structure around crystals. Their planet is so rich in this substance that giant crystalline deposits dot the whole landscape, their symbol of peace is the honor crystal, the people wear crystal jewelry, their weapons are made out of crystal, their space ships feature enormous crystals that jut out from the top and the bottom, and a humongous adjudication geode is used as a method of execution. The Gelrakian boarding party covers the Cerritos in "crystal graffiti", and a few invaders demand crystals when attempting to break down the doors to the bridge.
• The inhabitants of Mavok Prime are described as a wood-worshiping civilization. Their fertility totem is a piece of wood.
• Discussed in "Crisis Point", where Mariner tries to put all sorts of Orion stereotypes on Tendi. She gets called out for the stereotypes, even if most members of the race are exactly as she depicted. Tendi also says in later episodes that Orion stereotypes are a problem for her career advancement and it was hard for her to even get into the Academy.
• Plug 'n' Play Technology : The Pakleds manage to cobble together some truly fearsome warships using tech from much more powerful races including Klingons, Romulans and even Borg .
• Pointy Ears : Besides the expected Vulcans and Romulans, the inhabitants of Mixtus II and III also have pointy ears.
• Predator Pastiche : K'Ranch (and Kromsapiods in general) are this Played for Laughs , with the intense drive to hunt, glowing green blood, an impressive arsenal of high-tech weapons yet apparent lack of waterproofing for their tech. However, they venerate life, practice catch-and-release, and their trophy from a worthy prey isn't the prey's skull, but a selfie.
• Proud Hunter Race : Kromsapiods are a species of hulking sapient predators with a deep-seated urge to hunt that becomes deeply frustrating if left unaddressed for too long. However, they also respect life above all else, and as such use ritualized, non-lethal "catch and release" hunts to sate their instincts by pursuing willing sapient prey, subduing it non-lethally (although they have no particular qualms about causing reversible injury, which in the 24th Century can be quite a lot), and taking a few pictures to commemorate the occasions before releasing it. The hunt's setup is an involved affair where the prey is given an hour's head start while the Kromsapiod undergoes a ritual, paints their face, and inhales vapor from special candles.
• Purple Is the New Black : Outer space has a purplish hue when seen from the Cerritos windows (such as the ship's lounge or crew quarters).
• Red Oni, Blue Oni : Mariner and Boimler. Mariner is street-smart and has a ton of experience, but arrogant, hotheaded, and cynical about the divide between Starfleet's ideals and its bureaucracy. Boimler is a stickler for the rules, but inexperienced and prone to panicking in unfamiliar situations, and much more willing to blindly trust in his superiors' judgment no matter what. As the series goes on, the benefits and flaws of their attitudes are examined.
• In "Strange Energies", the alliance between Freeman and Mariner is unceremoniously abandoned after they both decide it doesn't suit them. However the two characters get along much better in the second season than they did in the first.
• In "Kayshon, His Eyes Open", after a transporter malfunction, Boimler is reassigned back to the Cerritos so that he and his transporter duplicate aren't serving aboard the same ship and he is demoted back to Ensign. However his brief time on the Titan matured him enough to make him a much more competent officer when he returns, which the other characters notice.
• In "We'll Always Have Tom Paris", Shaxs is mysteriously Back from the Dead for reasons unexplained, in a parody of the many uses of Death Is Cheap throughout franchise history .
• Retraux : The opening credits are a parody of the classic "look at our starship" style of the first four series (even using the TNG font) rather than the more symbolic imagery of Discovery and Picard .
• Tendi is Orion and has green skin , but is otherwise identical in appearance to the human characters.
• Rutherford technically isn't even an alien, but a cyborg, with his cybernetic enhancements resembling the appliances worn by Borg characters.
• Shaxs is Bajoran, with the tell-tale ridges on the bridge of his nose being his only alien feature.
• The series takes common Trek tropes and exaggerates them immensely for a good time. It's unlikely that any of the characters could get away with being the way they are in a live-action Trek show—and the characters from old shows who get appearances are exaggerated themselves so they fit in with the cartoon absurdity. (Notably, the Pakleds are depicted here in the exact same way as they were during their one episode on TNG , but this time they don't stick out at all.)
• The reason that curse words on this show are bleeped out when the other new Trek shows don't is because it's funnier.
• Sapient Cetaceans : Cetacean Ops has at least two beluga whale crew who work in navigation, and we see them for the first time in the Season 2 finale.
• Scotty Time : Referenced in-show as "buffer time", used by most of the crew to extend out deadlines so there's no rush and get multiple tasks done at the same time. It's then Deconstructed when Captain Freeman finds out and — thinking her crew is being lazy and hurting her reputation — issues new orders that all tasks be done on-time and as quickly as possible. The Cerritos immediately falls into chaos because the crew becomes overworked and get overwhelmed when emergencies pop up that cannot be handled with a large task backlog. There's also the fact that the people setting the schedules clearly had no idea how long they'd take in the first place since they were always fooled. The ship even gets raided by lower-tech aliens wielding crystal spears because of it. By the episode's end, Freeman resumes letting "buffer time" happen. That said, there are times where "Buffer Time" is clearly being abused, as characters are shown playing full rounds of (bootleg Ferengi) Klingon Dungeons and Dragons during it.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here : In the title sequence, the Cerritos apparently stumbles into a battle between the Romulans and the Borg. Once it is targeted by Borg phaser fire, it immediately retreats.
• Seen It All : Because ships like the Enterprise encounter a lot of the weirder stuff first and relay it back to Starfleet, things that were strange and exotic now have established protocols on how to deal with it .
• Self-Deprecation : Lower Decks gleefully and lovingly pokes fun at the franchise's own inherent goofiness. Such as taking pot-shots at the presence of children aboard the ship in The Next Generation when Rutherford manages to get every child aboard the Cerritos sucked into space during a training simulation... which shouldn't even be possible .
• Serial Escalation : Done with the opening credits. In the first season, there's a scene where Romulans are battling a group of Borg Cubes, and the Cerritos is driven off when one of the Cubes fires upon them. Season 2 throws in the Pakleds opportunistically attacking the Romulans, and season 3 goes a step further by adding a Crystalline Entity that one-shots a Cube. Season 4 throws in a Breen ship chasing a Bird-Of-Prey and the Whale Probe hanging out nearby.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend : Mariner and Boimler frequently have to deny they are a couple because they hang out almost exclusively together all the time, Mariner in particular seems awfully clingy to him. This is one example that doesn't actually have romantic subtext to it, they are more Vitriolic Best Friends that is mistaken for Belligerent Sexual Tension .
• Boimler/Mariner has a lot of She Is Not My Girlfriend moments and are a lot closer than just two similarly ranked members of a crew should be.
• Rutherford/Tendi has Tendi constantly getting jealous if anyone else shows Rutherford any attention, and later Rutherford goes through a memory wipe and ends up with the goal of ensuring he never again forgets Tendi.
• Mariner gets some Belligerent Sexual Tension with Ensign Sh'reyan that seems to be reciprocated toward the end of Season 2.
• Ship Sinking : A few episodes implied a pairing between Shaxs and T'Ana, which the latter referenced in the season finale that the former died in . In season 2 this is subverted when Shaxs comes Back from the Dead (apparently via Things Man Was Not Meant to Know ) and T'Ana reaffirms her interest, which he reciprocates .
• Badgey from "Terminal Provocations" is a parody of Clippy, the notoriously loathed "virtual assistant" from the 1997-2003 versions of Microsoft Office.
• The character of Saul Rubichek is likely a reference to Saul Rubinek , who played Kivas Fajo in the TNG episode, "The Most Toys".
• In the first episode, when asked what sand is, Boimler explains that it "gets everywhere" .
• Boimler is from Modesto, California likely as a nod to the hometown of the creator of Trek's historic competing franchise .
• Peanut Hamper rolling through space recalls Wheatley at the end of Portal 2 .
• God-Ransom appearing as a disembodied head and hands resembles Andross from Star Fox .
• Rutherford's sudden liking for pears is probably a reference to a Running Gag from Doctor Who where The Doctor hates pears, but often winds up eating them when he loses his memory and can't remember his dislike of them. Similarly, one of Rutherford’s tools first seen in the fifth episode either has the same sound effect as, or just straight up is , the sonic screwdriver. An additional reference in the episode where this happens was Ransom, having gained godlike powers and an ego to match , deciding to turn all the inhabitants of a planet into copies of himself .
• Some of the items in the collector's ship include a roomba, a painting by Piet Mondrian, and the Curiosity Mars rover.
• The station security officers in "An Embarrassment of Dooplers" bear a strong resemblance to Judge Dredd .
• When Rutherford tries to get re-assigned to Security, Shaxs starts a simulation where a group of Borg drones is attacking Rutherford. Since he's completely clueless about hand-to-hand combat, Rutherford allows his cybernetic implant to fully take over. The resulting fight is straight out of Upgrade , including a few moves being directly copied.
• The in-universe holomovie Crisis Point: The Rise of Vindicta is chock-full of various nods toward Star Trek movies under J. J. Abrams and especially their aesthetics , mocking them relentlessly .
• Rutherford is assigned a role of " Bionic 5 ".
• Shempo , who is there to replace Boimler and drawn in a way to resemble Shemp, rather than Boimler.
• One of the Corazonian painters seen when the clouds start falling in In the Cradle of vexilon looks like Bob Ross.
• The Orion drinking game from "Something Borrowed, Something Green" seems to be based on the Wood Beast scene from Flash Gordon (1980) .
• Shown Their Work : While most of Star Trek lore might still be technobabble , the show makes a point of referencing all the different aspects introduced over the years, from famous faces like Sulu and Troi, to lesser known facts like the Cetacean Ops and Gary Mitchell .
• Sickly Green Glow : In the main titles, there's a Space Battle between a dozen Romulan warbirds and six Borg Cubes; the lights of their vessels and their disruptor/phaser fire glow green.
• Silver Spoon Troublemaker : Ensign Beckett Mariner is the rebellious daughter of the U.S.S. Cerritos 's captain, Carol Freeman. Mariner is very capable of rising in rank but she frequently sabotages herself through skirting Starfleet protocol in order to stay an ensign. Throughout the first season of the series, Freeman looks for any excuse to have Mariner removed from duty, but never follows through, however they do come to an understanding in the season finale.
• Beta Shift and Delta Shift do not like each other, but it's not explained what they've done to piss each other off.
• Mariner can't stand Jen, for some reason that's never explained. This ends in the Season 2 finale, where Jennifer saves Mariner's life—and the latter asks out Jen following the event.
• Mariner also does not take to Jet when he's transferred to their shift as a replacement for Boimler, and they're rapidly trying to out-compete each other.
• Small Reference Pools : Downplayed: Ensign Boimler is described as being born in Modesto, California, a town some actual native Californians haven't heard of — although fans of American Graffiti , whose director George Lucas also hails from the city, may have.
• Subverted in season 4. In the first episode of the season, Boimler, Tendi, T'Lyn and Mariner are all promoted to Lieutenant Jr. Grade, with Rutherford getting a promotion to the same rank the next episode. In addition, all of the main characters move out of the bunks they slept in during the first three seasons, with Boimler and Rutherford becoming roommates.
• Stealth Sequel : Season 4 reveals Mariner's character arc to be this to " The First Duty ", revealing her reasonings for resistance to promotion were rooted in the fallout of the aforementioned episode, with her friend Sito's later death on a spying mission and the Dominion War serving as a Trauma Conga Line that caused her to lose confidence in the Federation's ability to uphold its idealistic mission in a 24th century that repeatedly demanded more moral greys and sacrifices from Starfleet's officers to maintain the peace. Fittingly, Nicholas Locarno emerges as the Big Bad of the season, forcing Mariner to deal with her issues in the open after four seasons of keeping them buried.
• Suicidal Pacifism : Strangely zigzagged - the command crew seem oddly reluctant to open fire with the Cerritos ’s ship borne weaponry, even in situations where it would be completely justified, to the point where the Cerritos doesn’t fire its weapons even once during the first season. On the other hand, on a personal level, the entire cast and crew seem to have zero issues engaging in multiple intense unarmed, melee and phaser fights with hostile forces and characters.
• Take That! : Much of "Kayshon, His Eyes Open" is written as an open critique of how much of Star Trek in recent years has become focused on action and epic serialized story arcs, to the point of having lost the love for science and exploration that had originally been the heart of the franchise, going so far as to have Riker himself stating that he preferred the Enterprise -D with its concerts to the wild action adventure that is his current life aboard the Titan .
• Telepathy : The Anabaj can read other people's thoughts.
• Tertiary Sexual Characteristics : The female characters (except for T'Ana ) are drawn with eyelashes and lips, whereas the male characters (except for some aliens like the Galardonians and the Taxors, whose lips are visible) lack these features.
• Theme Music Power-Up : While Cerritos is being basically drawn and quartered, the Titan rides to the rescue, under the command of one Will Riker with the TNG theme in full effect.
• All California-Class starships are named after California cities, especially lesser-known ones. The shuttlecraft on the Cerritos are named after state parks.
• Pakleds name everything after their species name usually following the pattern of "Pakled Blank.” Their homeworld is a good example as it’s just called Pakled Planet. This also includes their ships with at least one of them just called Pakled .
• Thin-Line Animation : Showrunner Mike McMahan is also a producer on Rick and Morty , so it's no surprise that Lower Decks shares a similar animation style.
• Through the Eyes of Madness : The crossover episode with Star Trek: Strange New Worlds established that this series is what the Star Trek universe looks like after drinking Orion Hurricanes.
• Title Drop : "Lower decks" is said on two occasions in the series premiere. The first time, it was a derogatory address of Ensign Tendi, dismissing her as beneath the Lieutenant's notice. The second time was Mariner chanting it in the bar with a sense of pride. The phrase continues to crop up throughout the series as an identifier of the lower-ranked members of the ship.
• The villains for the first season finale are none other than the Pakleds , who have spent the last few decades stealing whatever starship tech they can from powerful races they encountered, including the Borg . They wipe out at least one Federation starship that we see (the Solvang ) before they encounter the Cerritos .
• Boimler, following his time on the Titan , becomes far more willing to stand up for himself than in Season 1, and (somewhat) less of a Butt-Monkey to boot.
• The senior staff of the Cerritos in general. In the first season, they were relegated to scout work and largely seen as an unimportant joke. But by the third season, the ship had become legendary in the California class series thanks to their exploits. In the finale, the Cerritos managed to take down two rogue Texas class ships on its own, with the rest of the California class coming to their aid to take down the last ship. By the 4th season, the Cerritos is running important missions for Starfleet, showing just how far the little ship has come.
• Took a Level in Kindness : The Senior Staff were initially presented as a group of arrogant, self centered jerks- likely to emphasize the underdog nature of the main characters and the horrific working conditions in Starfleet. After the first season, the senior staff became more likeable and friendly towards the main cast, with many serving as mentors to the Lower Deckers, to the point where the dismissive, condescending attitude displayed in the first episode would be seen as wildly out of character in the 4th season.
• The Unfavorite : California -class ships and their crew are treated like this. Despite being relatively new to the fleet, the ships are portrayed as being held together with duct tape and a prayer. The crews are considered throwaway to the point where if a captain were to be promoted to a more prestigious ship, leaving their crew or even their senior staff is considered standard . Despite this, just because they aren't the most prestigious or the most structurally sound, they're still Starfleet . When Captain Freeman is accused of destroying Pakled Planet, Starfleet Intelligence smell a rat and convince Freeman to go with the trial while they get evidence of her innocence, much to Mariner's shock.
• In season 1, generally Mariner would get the A-plot, with or without Boimler; if Boimler wasn't part of the A-plot he would get the B-plot; and Rutherford and Tendi would either share the B-plot, be divvied between the A-plot and the B-plot, or get a flimsy C-plot which is so slight it's basically a Running Gag .
• Starting in season 2, Mariner is relegated to the B-plot more often, with Boimler either carrying the A-plot by himself or sharing it with other characters; the senior staff also begins to carry their own plotlines, with Freeman, Ransom, Shaxs, and even Billups being given their own stories.
• In season 3, Freeman is allowed to carry multiple A-plots by herself, sometimes relegating the Lower Deckers to the B-plot or even minor roles in their own series.
• The Galardonians have tube-like ears.
• A few Gelrakians have very long earlobes.
• Unusual Euphemism : After Mariner applies a series of Groin Attacks to de-godify Ransom . Ransom : What was I doing? Mariner : You tried to eat the ship, sir, and I applied concentrated force to your neutral zone.
• Unusual Eyebrows : The Corazonians parody the live-action series' habit of creating "aliens" by applying one weird facial trait, in this case, eyebrows that extend several centimeters beyond the skull.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight : Combined with a hefty dose of Seen It All in I, Excretus when Captain Freeman orders the crew to fly into increasingly dangerous situations to scare the scheming inspector into giving them the passing grade they deserve. The inspector is understandably freaking out, while the rest of the crew calmly continues to do their jobs. When she finally caves and Rutherford rights the ship, a shot of the mess hall shows the rest of the crew staring at the blackhole they were almost sucked into with casual boredom for a second before returning to whatever they were doing.
• Unwinnable Training Simulation : Lieutenant Shaxs' standard starting simulation for new recruits is hand-to-hand combat with a dozen Borg drones, which he specifically designed so that he can assess how they handle defeat.
• Vitriolic Best Friends : Mariner and Boimler have a certain "domineering girl and passive guy" dynamic, and because Mariner seems awfully attached to Boimler they have to fend off beliefs they are a couple .
• Voluntary Shapeshifting : The Vendorians can change their form at will.
• Walking Shirtless Scene : One of the lower decks staff has only ever been seen wearing a towel wrapped around his waist in the hallway bunks.
• While You Were in Diapers : In "I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee," a Romulan Commander tells a subordinate who he suspects of plotting against him that, "I've been stabbing commanders in the back since before your mother killed her first traitor."
• World of Weirdness : A lot of the show's humor comes from the fact that the Star Trek universe is an absolutely bizarre place to live, and that Starfleet crews take this mostly in stride .

Video Example(s):

Orion drinking game.

Tendi plays a drinking game with the bar owner; it has the added risk of an angry bug that tries to bite whoever is doing the drinking unless they can raise a forcefield over their hand. Tendi ends up winning when the owner chokes, nearly getting bitten before Tendi slams a mug over the bug.

Example of: Drinking Contest

He's Like a Pet

Goodbye, Tendi

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Trynar Shield

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Level 7 Ion Storm

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D'Erika's Deal

Unpredictable S...

Nick Locarno

Barter By Combat

It's Twaining Time

Previously on L...

Starfleet Bias

Tremble Lizards

Mariner Stops t...

The Mysterious ...

Ma'ah Helps Mar...

Retaking the Bi...

Right About the...

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Carnivorous Cav...

Stuck in a Turb...

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Blue Light AGIMUS

Badgey Achieves...

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Peanut Hamper &...

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We Have No Natu...

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Star Trek: Lower Decks

The support crew serving on one of Starfleet's least important ships, the U.S.S. Cerritos, have to keep up with their duties, often while the ship is being rocked by a multitude of sci-fi an... Read all The support crew serving on one of Starfleet's least important ships, the U.S.S. Cerritos, have to keep up with their duties, often while the ship is being rocked by a multitude of sci-fi anomalies. The support crew serving on one of Starfleet's least important ships, the U.S.S. Cerritos, have to keep up with their duties, often while the ship is being rocked by a multitude of sci-fi anomalies.

• Mike McMahan
• Tawny Newsome
• 648 User reviews
• 47 Critic reviews
• 2 wins & 26 nominations total

Episodes 50

• Ensign Beckett Mariner …

• Ensign Brad Boimler …

• Ensign D'Vana Tendi …

• Ensign Samanthan Rutherford …

• Captain Carol Freeman …

• Commander Jack Ransom …

• Lieutenant Shaxs …

• Dr. T'Ana …

• Lieutenant Commander Andy Billups …

• Ensign Barnes …

• Command Ensign with Accelerated Growth and Reverse Aging …

• Admiral Freeman …

• Lieutenant Kayshon …

• Key'lor …

• Dr. Migleemo …

• T'Lyn …

• Ensign Jennifer Sh'reyan …

• Lieutenant Commander Stevens …
• All cast & crew
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• Trivia Tawny Newsome said in an interview with Wil Wheaton that one of the few things her parents had in common was Star Trek and because of her childhood experiences with the series, there was no other franchise she'd rather be a part of. She was also influenced by the positive portrayal of the black father and son on screen in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993) .
• Connections Featured in AniMat's Crazy Cartoon Cast: Crazy Comic Con Coverages (2022)

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• Runtime 25 minutes
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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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After several days of subjecting the vial found in “Mirrors” to every scientific test imaginable, the Discovery crew is no closer to figuring out what it could possibly indicate; all tests show that it contains nothing but pure, distilled water. Just when they’ve exhausted all options, Captain Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) gets a “call” from Kovich (David Cronenberg), who’s able to provide her with a bit more information: the names and planets of origin of all five of the clue-giving scientists.

(She finds one of his infinity room keys in her pocket; I guess he just beams those onto people?)

Adding to the pile of eccentricity and mystery, Kovich gives this information to Burnham handwritten, on a yellow legal pad. Genuine, of course; none of this replicated nonsense. Why? Because he loves the feel of paper. I like that Kovich is a mystery — and I don’t think I want to know so much about him that he ceases to be one — but I do hope we get a little something more before the series is up. Without that, as time goes on I’m afraid he’ll be reduced to “That time David Cronenberg was on Star Trek for some reason” instead of remembered as a full character.

With Kovich’s intel, Burnham and the team are able to pinpoint planet Halem’no as the location of the next clue. It’s an arid, storm-tossed place where, 800 years ago, the Denobulan scientist on Kovich’s list surreptitiously built five huge rain generators. Disguised as naturally occurring towering rock formations, only one of them remains in operation, and the planet’s entire population lives in its vicinity.

Before Burnham and Tilly (Mary Wiseman) beam down to find the clue, Burnham spends some time listening in on the Halem’nites. They have a typical phonetic language used for everyday communication, but they also have something called whistlespeak — which sounds much more like multi-tonal birdsong than human whistling — and is used for communication across great distances.

Burnham gets very excited about this, not just from a linguistic and anthropological perspective, but also from a metaphorical one; the idea of people coming together from across the vastness of space or across cultural divides is understandably thrilling to her.

Unfortunately, beyond Burnham and Tilly hearing a bit of it once they beam down to the surface, no one actually uses whistlespeak to communicate in the episode! Even when the emotional power of song becomes integral to the episode’s climax, the tune is merely hummed. Communicating across distances — whether across interpersonal divides, divides of time and space, or across the cypher of clue and solution — has been a primary theme of this season of Discovery . I don’t know that I see how the introduction of the linguistic phenomenon of whistlespeak really helps that though, given that it goes virtually unused and, other than Burnham’s explanation of it to Tilly, unmentioned.

Burnham and Tilly join up with a band of pilgrims known as ‘compeers’ — an ancient word meaning ‘companions’ —  who are on their way to the rain generator, known to them as the High Summit… and the home of a temple to their gods. One of the pilgrims is sick from dust inhalation, and is cured by the local leader, Ohvahz (Alfredo Narciso), through some sort of sonic healing ritual using musical bowls.

Talk about a missed opportunity for some of that whistlespeak, right?

Burnham learns afterwards that access to the temple inside the tower is restricted to those people who have completed the Journey of the Mother Compeer, a ritual that proves worthiness to the gods and entices them to bring rain. Burnham asks to perform this ritual, and the next morning she, Tilly, and a host of other pilgrims including Ohvahz’s child Ravah (June Laporte) are lined up and ready to prove themselves.

Multiple people, including the dust-sick woman, urge Burnham to reconsider her enthusiasm for running the Journey and entering the temple. Ohvahz also tries to convince Ravah not to run, but they insist, seeing it as an opportunity to prove themselves. It’s a little ominous, but Burnham’s got to get that clue so, off she goes.

Maybe I’ve just seen Altered States too many times but when I saw that running the Journey started by ingesting a tab of mystery substance I thought the trip was going to turn out to be a psychedelic one. I’m a little disappointed to have to report that nope, it’s just a footrace. More of a leisurely jog really, but one that’s done while very, very thirsty.

Participants drop out along the route, tempted by the bowls of water placed here and there, and Burnham eventually drops out too — deliberately, tempted by something else. Noticing that some moss in a particular area is yellow instead of green, she surmises that the color change is being caused by hypothetical radiation leakage from a hypothetical broken console.

As far as hunches go it’s paper thin, but it does turn out to be correct.

While Tilly continues to run the race to access the tower the traditional way, Burnham contacts Discovery to get a walk-through on how to repair the console. Adira (Blu del Barrio) stumbles their way through for a while before telling Rayner (Callum Keith Rennie) that they think someone else ought to take over. “Yes,” I said to myself while watching, “Good thinking Adira, you’re right, they probably should get an expert on 800-year-old Denobulan technology.”

But actually the problem is just that Adira is feeling too flustered and awkward to want to continue, so Rayner declines their request. And why is Adira feeling flustered and awkward? Because Tilly isn’t the awkward one anymore, and Discovery apparently requires that one of them always be fumbling and bumbling their way through a mission at any given time.

Adira and Burnham are successful, and rewiring just that one console is all it takes to repair the rain generator. Tilly, for her part, has made it almost to the finish line alongside Ravah. They’ve each been given a bowl of water to carry across the line as one last temptation, but also one last challenge… as it’s kind of hard to run and not spill water. Ravah trips, their water spilling, and they’re out.

Instead of finishing the race on her own, Tilly returns to Ravah and pours some of her water into Ravah’s bowl. They cross together in a moment that surely was not intended to invoke the ending of perennial elementary school reading list title and book-that-traumatized-me-in-front-of-my-entire-4 th -grade-class Stone Fox , but did.

It’s a nice moment seeing them persevere together (and one with fewer sudden dog deaths than Stone Fox , so I appreciate that), but one’s that’s immediately tempered by the fact that their reward for winning is ritual sacrifice. Oops.

Burnham can’t beam into the “temple”, Tilly and Ravah can’t beam out (or leave any other way), and the rain generator is well on its way to causing the “sacrifice” conditions — which turns out to be a vacuum forming inside the chamber where Tilly and Ravah are trapped during rain generation.

Prime Directive be damned, Burnham beams into the nearby chamber where Ohvahz remains, not wanting his child to die alone. He is understandably freaked when she materializes beside him, and it takes a while to convince him that she’s real and that her explanation, which sounds like something straight out of Ancient Aliens on The History Channel, is legitimate.

Even with that done, there’s still the issue of Ohvahz’s fervent belief that the gods and the very rain itself require the sacrifice. Burnham finally gets through to him by humming a tune she hears Ravah humming to Tilly over an open comm line, and he opens the chamber. Everyone is saved and it rains, hooray.

Star Trek does love its “ritual sacrifices that power ancient machinery” storylines, and over the decades they’ve changed just how “set straight” the alien of the week is in the end, but I’m not sure they’ve ever had one that’s quite as gentle  as this one. Burnham explains the rain generators and their origin to Ohvahz, which leads to him asking some understandable questions about the nature and reality of his gods, which Burnham deftly deflects.

He then — and this is where my bewilderment sets in — casually and almost sadly wonders aloud if they really have to stop the sacrifices, because doing so would be a lot of work. I understand Ohvahz’s concern about the social upheaval of this change (not to mention that they never really needed to have happened in the first place, can you imagine when that gets out?) — but yes, guy, you definitely have to stop sacrificing people.

Oh, and this whole time? The next clue was actually in one of the other rain generators. Welp!

OBSERVATION LOUNGE

• Saru (Doug Jones) is once again absent from this week’s episode — and will be out of sight for at least two more weeks (we’ve seen up through episode 508). On social media this week, Doug Jones shared that his temporary exit from the season was a result of his commitments to the Disney sequel Hocus Pocus 2 .
• The clue registered a lifesign in “Mirrors” despite being nothing but inert water, artificially generated by one of the planet’s rain generators. Pretty lucky that Zora (Annabelle Wallis) knew about this charity project, huh?
• Tricorder contact lenses? One please!

• he console Burnham repairs is only the second instance of Denobulan computer interfaces seen in the franchise; the circle-based interface is in line with the control room of the Denobulan ship seen in “Cold Station 12.”
• Burnham showing Ohvahz his planet from orbit after breaking the Prime Directive and being mistaken for a god is reminiscent of a very similar moment between Picard and Nuria in The Next Generation ’s “Who Watches the Watchers”.
• The five scientists who worked to hide the Progenitor technology are Dr. Vellek of Romulas, Jinaal Bix (a Trill), Carmen Cho (a Terran), Marina Derex from Betazed, and Hitoroshi Kreel (this week’s charitable Denobulan).

While Burnham and Tilly are down on the surface, Culber (Wilson Cruz) has been continuing to interrogate his new feelings and experiences. We see him consulting his abuela — or at least an experimental holographic AI of her created from his brain waves, as a “grief alleviation therapeutic” — seeking advice on her spirituality in life… and also a recipe.

She declines to give him spiritual advice, suggesting that he’s jumped the gun a little by not ruling out physical causes for his symptoms, and also the recipe because it turns out she wasn’t actually that great a cook and was secretly replicating his favorite meal behind his back.

(How a program made from Culber’s own memories could know a secret she’d kept from him, I don’t know. Either AI in the 32 nd century is psychic or it still has the pesky 21 st century habit of making up whatever it thinks will satisfy a prompt, accurate or not.)

Also, come on now — I thought Star Trek had already clearly stated its position on how creepy and invasive holographic representations of real people are almost certain to be. Just this morning I saw an ad for an AI that claims to let you speak with exes or deceased loved ones, accompanied by the comment “Absolutely the fuck not.” I do not disagree, and neither, I suspect, does Leah Brahms. Or Kira Nerys, or Deanna Troi, or Chakotay, or…

Reluctant for the help — but also energized by the possibility that this might all just be physiological — Culber opens up to Stamets (Anthony Rapp) and asks for his help and support with a full neurological workup. When no anomalies are found, Culber seems almost disappointed, which Stamets picks up on. Even though it’s a small scene, this moment with Stamets is the one thing in the episode’s exploration of religion and spirituality that I connected with and really appreciated.

Stamets is not a religious or spiritual person, something that Culber is concerned will color his reaction to Culber’s “awakening.” But instead, he’s fine with it, even if he’s not invested on a personal level. His is a “You’re healthy and you’re happy, so I’m happy” philosophy, which seems to me to be the most respectful possible way to approach this type of issue, one that allows both parties to hold and live by their own respective beliefs.

It’s interesting, then, that Culber closes the episode quietly disappointed with this. And Book (David Ajala), who’s had a hard time keeping his own perspective this season, is right on when he gently calls Culber out: “It’s an odd quirk, really, this human tendency to consider something less meaningful if it’s just for yourself.” Stamets doesn’t need to share in this with Culber, he just needs to be there for him, and he is.

Next week: the Breen are back!

Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 continues on Paramount+ May 9 with “Erigah,” followed the next day on SkyShowtime in other regions.

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Descripción de TREKKIES 86. Star Trek Lower Decks 🖖 4x09 - 10 �‪�‬ El Aftershow

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La serie con más referencias de todo el universo Star Trek ha vuelto en algunos países y por ello vuelve el programa de análisis de El Aftershow. En un formato más ligero, sin resúmenes por escenas, pero con tantas referencias como siempre y con las mismas ganas que en cualquier otra edición, Opako y XeviPanda se reúnen otra vez para tomar los mandos de la nave y analizar el final de temporada. Edición: Sergio Valencia Música: Star Trek y Tears for Fears Escucha el episodio completo en la app de iVoox, o descubre todo el catálogo de iVoox Originals

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Published May 1, 2024

WARP FIVE: Eve Harlow and Elias Toufexis on Star Trek’s Unrelenting Star-Crossed Lovers

The Star Trek: Discovery actors give us more insight to their approach towards Moll and L'ak.

SPOILER WARNING: This article contains story details and plot points for the fifth season of Star Trek: Discovery.

Getty Images / StarTrek.com

Welcome to Warp Five, StarTrek.com's five question post-mortem with your favorite featured talent from the latest Star Trek episodes.

The fifth and final season of Star Trek: Discovery has Captain Burnham and the crew of U.S.S. Discovery chasing a Red Directive mystery that has them on an epic adventure across the galaxy. At the end of the chase is a tool of immense ancient power that’s been deliberately hidden for decades.

However, the Federation isn't the only ones on the hunt; the main antagonists this season are a mysterious pair of ex-couriers who are desperate for prize themselves, unrepentant of who they harm along the way.

"Elias [Toufexis] and Eve [Harlow] play L'ak and Moll who are our two new bad guys this season," executive producer and co-showrunner Michelle Paradise previously told StarTrek.com . "We talked about them as kind of a Bonnie and Clyde unit. We hadn't had a couple before as our antagonist. In turn, they're obviously formidable foes for our heroes. But we also really wanted to make sure that they felt well-rounded, and that they weren't just one note, bad guys. We understood the why of what they were doing the depth of their love for one another. People will be surprised that they may start rooting for these bad guys, actually. But they'll never want them to win more than our heroes, of course."

Ahead of the release of " Mirrors ,” a turning point episode that unmasks the real driving force behind Moll and L'ak's actions, StarTrek.com had the opportunity to sit down with Eve Harlow and Elias Toufexis about portraying this season's big bads.

Star Trek's Bonnie and Clyde

"Red Directive"

StarTrek.com

Moll and L'ak are a formidable and impressive pair as they continue to outmaneuver and outwit Michael Burnham and the Discovery crew. The two are fiercely protective of one another, and "Mirrors" showed us how their unlikely pairing came to be, given the Breen Imperium 's stance on "lesser beings."

"Moll and L'ak are an inter-species couple, and it's kind of breaking all of the rules," summarizes Eve Harlow. "It’s why they're on the run. Whether you want to think of it like Romeo and Juliet or Bonnie and Clyde because they are like star-crossed lovers."

"When we are first presented with them, you think of them as villains," continues Harlow. "But as the season progresses, you get to learn their story, you begin to empathize more with their trials and tribulations, and it just explains their actions."

"My favorite thing was their relationship and their love," offers Elias Toufexis. "How it literally defines them and informs every decision they make, is their love. That was my favorite thing to play because I play a lot of bad guys on television and, for the most part, they're not really given a background. I have to make up a background or a reason why I'm doing this."

"This was all given to me, and we got to play it," Toufexis adds. "The idea of, as cliché as it sounds, doing something for love, but it was written with so many layers, and Eve is so great at playing these things, and it's easy for me to play off of her. This is the reason I'm doing this. She is the reason I'm doing this. That was my favorite part. My take on it is their love and how it informs what they do is my favorite thing about that."

Echoing Michelle Paradise's earlier sentiment above, Harlow states, "The reason why [everyone is rooting for them] is because everybody understands that kind of pain. Of wanting to fight for something that you love. When this love for a person is there, everything else goes out the window, and what is normal, what is acceptable, all of a sudden is topsy-turvy, it doesn't matter. It's like, 'I will do whatever for this to survive, for this to succeed.' When people see that, it's relatable. We've all done crazy things for love, not killing people, hopefully, love. Abide by the rules, you guys. [Harlow laughs] That is not the message. In this world, that's how far they go."

Referring to the Progenitor 's tech the duo is chasing, Toufexis exclaims, "The tech means freedom. The tech just means freedom to them. It doesn't mean power, it just means freedom."

"It’s not about power, it's not about wealth," Harlow continues. "It's not about any of those things. Ultimately, everybody just wants to be safe and happy and loved, and that is what we want as well."

The Ghost of Cleveland Booker

"Mirrors"

[ RELATED : WARP FIVE: David Ajala on Embracing Second Chances and the Heavy Burden of Legacy ]

For Moll, every day has been a fight to survive since she was 14. Her father Cleveland Booker IV sold her mother and her on a dream — a safe haven in the Gamma Quadrant — but he disappeared one day and left them alone to fend for themselves. And then she lost her mother.

Confronted by Cleveland "Book" Booker, a man who was so touched by his relationship with her father that he took on his name, Moll's resentment and pain bubbles up to the surface.

"People contain multitudes," reflects Harlow on this raw side of her character Moll. "Moll only saw her father as a traitor, and then she meets Book. Initially, she is very dismissive of his version of her father."

In "Mirrors," Moll is intrigued by Book's determination to help her and L'ak, even going as far as giving her his phaser. On Moll's wonder, Harlow explains, "She gets to know Book and sees how he is as a person, like, oh man, my dad helped him become that. Maybe there was something good to him."

However, it doesn’t change her past and the atrocities and anger she endured. Harlow hopes Discovery isn’t the last we'll see of her character and allowing her to work through those complicated feelings, stating, "If we saw more of Moll in the future, I think she would be a little bit more open to seeing her dad as maybe having failed her in one way, but that doesn't define his entire life in person."

But for now, with Book on their tail along with the Federation and Breen Imperium, Harlow shares, "They're on this one mission this entire time. On the surface, it's like, 'No. Fuck this guy, I don't care.' Subconsciously, of course, it impacts her because she doesn't have family and all of a sudden this person comes along that knew my dad. I think as much as we try to cut our family bonds and stuff, there's something there, even if she won't full-on admit it."

On Holding their Own Against the Federation

"Face the Strange"

As we traverse through the galaxy, one thing’s for certain. With their determination and resources, Moll and L'ak have managed to stay one step ahead of Michael Burnham and the Discovery crew.

"Screw the Federation," Toufexis proclaims. "That's another great thing about them. Again, it just comes back to these are layered people, layered characters. They're smart. One of my favorite things that we're not in, but when they're talking about us, is when Book says, 'They're in love. They're having fun.' They are. There are big stakes, high stakes for them, but that's why they're doing these flips. They're so smart, and they're so ahead of the game. Man, that's one of the best things about them, their love, their smarts, their wits, their passion. That's why it's one of my favorite characters I've ever played."

"I felt badass," Harlow adds. "I put on those boots, and I stomped around like I fucking owned the place. It was really fun, especially because we are winning. We are ahead, and it feels cool." 

Pulling the Mask Off the Breen Imperium

Despite being a major player in the Alpha Quadrant, not much is known about the Breen until "Mirrors."

Moll isn't the only one with complicated familial relationships. L'ak, a member of the Breen royal family, steps away from the Breen Imperium and his uncle, the Breen Primarch, acquiring an Erigah — a blood bounty — following his betrayal. He saves Moll and runs away with her, but unfortunately, they’re constantly looking over their shoulder because you can’t escape a Breen Erigah .

"For me, the family thing, it's more than just family for him," Toufexis reveals. "It's not really even family. He doesn't want to be there. He's there because he's forced to be. Moll, at first, for him, is [a way out]. It's a couple of things; he wanted to leave anyway and now he's in love. So it's like, 'Let me get the hell out of here and she's my way out of here.' But he's not using her, if you follow what I'm saying. He is in love with her. That gives him maybe the impetus to finally escape. That's why he does what he does. But his family is a burden him. It’s very different from Moll and Book."

Being Part of a Star Trek Production

"Mirrors

Strong pillars of a Star Trek production include rich landscapes, alien species, and well-choreographed stunts. And both Harlow and Toufexis reveled in what Star Trek: Discovery offered them.

“I've loved a lot of sets that I've been on, but I think I've just never been on sets like Star Trek because it's just visually beautiful," remarks Harlow. "And I've said this before, that you read something on a piece of paper, like script, and you're like, 'oh, this is cool.' And then you come to set, and you have these incredibly talented people who've built what was on the paper, and they've not just built it, but they made it even better than what you could have possibly imagined. You come to set, and you never know what you're going to get."

Switching gears to the action sequences she participated in this season, Harlow explains a yet to be aired choreographed number, "I've never done as much action and fight sequences as I did on Star Trek . And even Sonequa [Martin-Green] said that the fight that she and I have, it's the longest fight that she's had on the five seasons of Discovery . And I am not an athletic person, so it was funny. I got the first script, and in the first script, there's this fight. And I was like, 'Oh, I need to get the stunt coordinator's email because I need to tell him that I have not done anything like this before.'"

"His name's Chris [McGuire], he responded right away. We met up, and he's like, 'Look, you're doing yourself a disservice. You got this.' And they were so supportive and so helpful, but I will say it was like we're learning a fight sequence or whatever, it takes me an hour to learn it. Sonequa comes, learns it in 15 minutes. I saw some of the finished product, and I was like, 'Man, we look so badass. It looks so cool.' Again, Chris and his team, they're amazing, and they really held my hand through the entire process. Our stunt doubles were amazing. Everybody was so supportive. And coming to these sets that are gorgeous, I think it's the combination of all these people being really great at their jobs, and then you get the final thing, which I think is amazing."

"And it turned out so great," Toufexis adds in. "Eve was so worried about it, and it turned out so great. You kick ass. The whole season, you kick ass. It was great."

"I'm a little bit of a perfectionist, so I'm like, 'I want to be as good as these stunt people,' and it's like it's impossible," Harlow proclaims. "These people have been doing this for 20 years. I cannot in the span of a week gain the knowledge that they've had of 20, 30, 40 years of experience. But, when I saw the result, I was like, 'I look so cool. Wow, this actually worked. Amazing.' Honestly, I'm lucky because I didn't have that much. I honestly feel like a lot of it fell onto Elias. I'm like, I didn't have the prosthetics, I didn't have the tech talk. Yes. I just got to run around fighting people."

What was it like for Toufexis to tackle the stunts while donning all his prosthetics and Breen gear?

"More than anything, it was the heat," states Toufexis. "The head piece was very heavy, but I don't think it affected my stunt stuff that much. But the heat of it, after a day of doing that stunt stuff…."

"Here's a funny thing, the stunt stuff, there were parts of me that would come off or the glue would melt or would be less adhesive because I'm sweating," shares Toufexis while laughing. "But you know what was the most difficult thing? It was kissing because every time we would kiss, my lips would start ripping off. The one big scene in Episode 4 there, how many times did we have to pause and just let him fix my face? It was very hot."

"Please, I'm glued to the lips," jokes Harlow.

"Compared to the previous episodes, the stunts in "Mirrors" challenged Toufexis as the bulk of the episode had him in his Breen Imperium uniform. "There was a different wardrobe in 505," states Toufexis. "It was a lot heavier, and that was tough because I could barely swing. Unlike Eve, I'm like, 'I want to do everything.' Well, Eve wanted to do everything, too, to be fair. But I'm definitely a stunt guy at heart, so I always wanted to do everything, and it was very difficult in that costume."

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Christine Dinh (she/her) is the managing editor for StarTrek.com. She’s traded the Multiverse for helming this Federation Starship.

Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-4 are streaming exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S., the UK, Canada, Switzerland, South Korea, Latin America, Germany, France, Italy, Australia and Austria. Seasons 2 and 3 also are available on the Pluto TV “Star Trek” channel in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. The series streams on Super Drama in Japan, TVNZ in New Zealand, and SkyShowtime in Spain, Portugal, Poland, The Nordics, The Netherlands, and Central and Eastern Europe and also airs on Cosmote TV in Greece. The series is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

• Behind The Scenes