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Matt and Sean talk about befriending a Gorn, in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’, “Terrarium”.
Matt and Sean talk about befriending a Gorn, in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’, “Terrarium”.
- (00:00) - Intro
- (05:58) - Viewer feedback
- (09:15) - Today's episode
- (13:06) - This time in history
- (17:00) - Episode discussion
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Creators and Guests
What is Trek In Time?
Join Sean and Matt as they rewatch all of Star Trek in order and in historical context.
Sean Ferrell: Today on Trek in Time, we're talking about zombies. Welcome, everybody, to Trek in Time. This is, of course, the podcast that takes a look at all of Star Trek in chronological stardate order. We've worked our way through Enterprise, some of Discovery, what has been made for Strange New Worlds up to date, including today and most of the Original Series. But we took a pause on the original series to loop back to season three of Strange New Worlds. Which brings us to today, season three, episode nine, Terrarium. This is the episode that dropped just recently on September 4, 2025. And of course, here on Trek In Time, we not only take a look at the episodes in chronological Stardate order, we also take a look at the world at the time of original broadcast. So normally we've been talking about the past. That's right. We talked about the 2000s. We talked about the 1960s. And today. We're talking about today. Matt, I don't like today as much as I do the other dates.
Matt Ferrell: Okay.
Sean Ferrell: The era we're living through. But anyway, yes, I agree. With me, as always, is my brother Matt. He is that Matt behind Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives. And that was him lurking in the background just now. Matt, how are you today?
Matt Ferrell: Doing great. And Sean, I love your deep cut Enemy Mine reference to open the show.
Sean Ferrell: Yes, yes, Enemy Mine, which Matt and I have a soft spot for. Oh, yeah, it is one of those sci fi movies from the 80s that you either the people who don't know about it, really don't know about it. It's just like the. The what and the who, like they don't have a clue. And the people who do know it really know it. There's. There's no in between on that movie. So for our viewers and listeners, I encourage you if you. I'll say this right off the top, if you enjoyed this episode, I think you would really enjoy Enemy Mine.
Matt Ferrell: You'd love Enemy Mine.
Sean Ferrell: I'll just throw that out there. And before we get into the conversation, we've had a couple of weeks now where we've been talking about other things. We've pulled in a couple of quick, brief comments. I just wanted to share with everybody. I recently watched the new War of the Worlds that was just released. I watched it because I enjoy the podcast how did this Get Made? Which takes a look at weird movies and asks the question, like, how did this end up here? So I watched it for that reason. I watch a lot of bad movies for that podcast and there's a bar of, like, some of them, you're like, this is objectively not well made, but it is a passion project or an artistic. Artistic endeavor that shines through. And you're like, it's a great bad movie. That kind of thing, where you're just like, oh, this is. This is laughably bad. Yeah. Like, you can watch it, enjoy it. Yeah, you can watch it and enjoy it in its own. It for. Its. For what it is. And then there are those movies that are just, okay, what were they thinking when they said, yep, it's ready to go? That movie, the 2025 War of the Worlds, is that it is very obviously people in 2020 who were losing their minds because of the pandemic, terrified of what was happening. And it reads like a project where it wasn't so much. Well, I need to keep working because I need the money. It was. I need to keep working because if I don't, I'm going to be sitting at home and I'm going to be panicking about the state of the world. And it's fine that they made. Really is. It's fine that they made it. But here's the thing. It would have been a better movie if what they released was just the rough footage that was made, as opposed to adding the CGI effects to it and releasing the CGI effects, because the movie is clearly shot by all these individuals on their own laptops and cell phones.
And then CGI has been added in on top of these things, and it is a wild ride. I cannot, in good faith, I cannot recommend watching it for fun.
Matt Ferrell: Let me just read the text that you sent me. One sentence. It felt like being assaulted by stupid. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man.
Sean Ferrell: Rough, rough watch. Anyway, just wanted to throw that out there in case anybody else has seen that movie. Jump into the comments, let me know. Do you agree with me? Were you like, this was rough? Anyway, we're here to talk about Terrarium. This is, of course, the 29th overall episode of Strange New Worlds, the ninth of the third season, the penultimate episode. Next week will be the final episode of the third season. So looking forward to that. Not because I'm looking forward to the season being over. Not at all. Am just looking forward to seeing how they end this season. I'm. I'm hoping for a good jumping off point into future storytelling. This episode dropped on September 4, 2025. Before we get into our conversation about this episode, we always like to dip into the mailbag and see what you've shared with us about our previous episodes. So what Matt, have you found for us this week?
Matt Ferrell: A lot of really good comments this week Sean from Four and a Half Vulcans. Doug, Doug, Doug came up a lot in the comments. And you had asked at the end of the episode what people think about Doug. Which of the plot lines do they think was the best that worked the best? And I'm just putting a whole bunch of comments on screen if you're watching on YouTube. There was an overwhelming amount of love for Doug.
Sean Ferrell: Everybody loved Doug.
Matt Ferrell: Everybody thought the end credit scene was just like a chef's kiss. Hysterical. Fantastic. Patton Oswald is a national treasure, as Dan Sims called him. I agree, he is a national treasure. So yeah, people really enjoyed it. Some people commented that Spock's plotline was best. Some people talked about La'an's being the most interesting, but generally this episode seems to be really well liked. But then we have a comment from J.C. Egbert who wrote “Predicting a future spinoff, Romulans are actually a result of interbreeding between Vulcans and Augments, and they travel back in time or across the multiverse to have the safety to start their own empire. Also explains why they keep manipulating time in Kurtzman's Trek. 2009, Picard, Strange New Worlds Season 2, Episode 3.” I thought that's kind of fun.
Sean Ferrell: Wild. Yeah, wild. Jumping off point for that's. I mean it wouldn't be the first time that they've used the Augments in that way. They actually planted the idea that Augments in some way had something to do with the Klingon Empire in they did that in Enterprise. So it's like they've toyed around with that idea before. But yeah, interesting concept.
Matt Ferrell: We also had several wrong answers, only I'm only going to read one. But they were all good. Paleghost69 wrote Terrarium, on a first contact mission, the away team is captured by the locals and are shrunk down to be locked in a terrarium until the day of their trial. The away team must compete with the inhabitants of the terrarium for survival, which are massive compared to their shrunken forms. Though diplomacy and a gift of Pelia's 300 year old sealed terrarium, the away team is returned to the Enterprise. The episode ends with Pike making a log that ends with honey, I shrunk the crew. Yes, and I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna read it. It's on screen again. If you're on YouTube, you can see it. Mark Loveless, as usual, put in a great one and he put in a callback. Sean, to Still to be Determined, our other podcast where we talked about a coastal fouling tattoo on your back.
Sean Ferrell: Okay, there we go.
Matt Ferrell: It's very funny. So I highly recommend people go and check out the YouTube comments because it's in there. It's fantastic.
Sean Ferrell: Thank you everybody for your comments. I do have to say, *PaleGhost69, your suggested plotline. I think that would have made a great episode for the Animated Series. I mean, that really like the idea of them getting stuck in a terrarium and having to survive against some flora and fauna in a terrarium is right up there with some of the animated episodes. And in fact, I believe there is an animated episode where they are shrunk down and go inside a computer. But I can't remember the name of that episode. Anyway, on now to yes, the flashing lights. The klaxon. What does that mean? Does it mean it's time to scramble and go to the escape pods? No, it's the read alert. It's time for Matt to tackle the AI generated description. And Matt, this one, for some reason the AI juices were flowing and it was like, oh, I'm going to make a long one. Okay.
Matt Ferrell: Oh, you're not kidding. Okay. In the Terrarium episode of Star Trek, Strange New World, Lieutenant Erica Ortegas is stranded on a toxic moon after her shuttle, the Archimedes, is pulled through a wormhole during a solo mission to investigate gravimetric anomalies in uncharted space. With her shuttle damage and supplies destroyed, Ortegas must survive on the barren moon, which orbits a gas giant and is periodically engulfed in toxic atmospheric storms. Her survival becomes intertwined with that of a female Gorn pilot who is also stranded on the moon. Initially wary, Ortegas forms a bond with the Gorn after it saves her from a deadly native creature and shares its shelter. They work together to survive, using Ortegas tricorder to create a rudimentary communication system, and eventually devising a plan to ignite flammable gases in the atmosphere to signal the Enterprise. Their friendship is tragically cut short when a rescue team beams down and Lieutenant La'an Noonien-Singh fatally shoots the Gorn upon seeing it, unaware of the bond that they had formed. The episode concludes with a revelation that the Metrons, a powerful alien species, orchestrated the encounter as an experiment to test the nature of conflict and cooperation between the Gorn and humans.
Sean Ferrell: This episode, episode nine of the third season, directed by Andrew Coutts and written by Alan B. McElroy. Originally released on September 4, 2025. It stars the usual cast of characters. Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, Jess Bush, Christina Chong, Celia Rose Gooding, Melissa Navia. We don't see. We get some Rebecca Romijn, but we don't see many of the other regular or guest stars that we've seen. We don't get any Scotty. We don't get any of Pelia. We do see Warren Scherer as the Gorn. And you may not have recognized Warren Scherer. In fact, I don't know that I would recognize Warren Scherer if you walked right up to me. He has played in this series three different Gorn. So he's the man in the suit. Little side note, I ended up stumbling upon an interview with Melissa Navia after watching this episode and in which she talked about how difficult it is for Warren Scherer to play Gorn. Because I think this is interesting. They do a mixture of practical and CGI effects. They do some CGI on top of practical. So that is a guy in a suit, and it is apparently extremely heavy, very hot. And given rules regarding safety for actors in those environments, they could only shoot for a certain number of hours before he would have to basically disembowel the Gorn costume, removing himself from it so that he could breathe and get his body temperature back down to normal. So Melissa did a lot of acting in this one to either an empty suit or an assistant director just off camera as her emoting partner. So not only would this be a difficult piece of acting when you had a acting partner opposite you, but when you're just acting across from a vacant latex suit, it's got to be even more challenging. And of course, as always, we're taking a look at the time of. At the look at the world at the time of original broadcast. This being September 4th, 2025.
Yes, Matt, once again, you get to sing along to the number one streaming song on Spotify. At the time of recording, it is and was Tears by Sabrina Carpenter. Take it away, Matt. Beautiful as always. Thank you for that. I can't thank you enough for that. And in the movies. A couple of familiar faces from last week. We still have Thursday Murder Club and Caught Stealing, but a new entry. It's not doing so well with the critics, according to the Rotten Tomatoes website, but it's doing okay with audiences. It's the final conjuring movie. Conjuring the Last Rites. This is a movie series that I feel like if you've seen one of them, you've seen all of them.
Matt Ferrell: All of them.
Sean Ferrell: But they're all, like, finely crafted. Does that make any sense? A little bit. Like you go into a furniture showroom and you're just like, well, it's not the most ornate piece of furniture I've ever seen, but it is a well built piece of furniture and it will do the job. And this being spooky season, I mean, it's a little early to call it spooky season. It's still, I mean, we just had the beginning of the month, but this household enjoys spooky season. We're into Halloween, we're into the horror. And so my fiance and I decided, let's watch all of these, because we haven't seen all of them. And we're watching them in the same order that we're doing this podcast. We're watching them in canon order as opposed to production order. So we just watched the first of the story, which is the Nun. And yeah, it's not inventing anything. It's just doing everything it's trying to do very well. And we finished it. We were like, that was a movie. So thumbs up to the Conjuring universe. And in TV streaming, we try to compare apples to apples. So when we talk about the original series, we're talking about broadcast television. When we're talking about these newer shows that are on Paramount, we're talking about other streaming shows. And amongst the top shows this week, streaming the new program, the Paper, which is on Peacock. This is the not spinoff, but it is in the same universe as the Office. So it is made by the people who made the Office and is very much in the Office style. I have not seen it, but it appears to be getting positive response. Also, the second season of Wednesday is doing very well. And the return of Peacemaker, which is of course the only property that began in the Zack Snyder controlled DC universe and then, well, it is a James Gunn show. So yes, surprise, surprise, when James Gunn took over. Peacemaker has been kept in that universe.
In fact, Peacemaker in the form of John Cena did appear in the Superman movie, so. And finally in the news, we see this headline as the top story. Many cities say yes to Federal Police help but no to occupation. This is an article examining the responses amongst cities across the country to the idea of the federal government sending in National Guard troops to save the city from crime. All right, on now to our discussion about this episode, Terrarium. Matt, I don't recall which of us kicked it off last week. Was it you?
Matt Ferrell: I think it was me.
Sean Ferrell: It was you. So let me kick off this one. I feel like right off the bat, this episode did a lot of very quick hand wavy. Why is everything that's going to happen happening? Which is classic Star Trek style, like why are they on a shuttle flying into the middle of this very dangerous looking thing? Well, because of science reasons. That's the only explanation we get. Because they want to get to the action of the story. They want to get the people in the circumstances that will drive the plot. They don't want to worry about setup because they don't have 90 minutes, they've got 50. And when you get that kind of episode, you kind of, kind of read that handwriting on the wall. At least I do. I sit there, I'm just like, oh, they're trying to get to something. And very often when I see that, I actually take that as a good sign. I'm like, oh, if they're doing this much, like, don't worry about the details about why the main pilot of this ship is in this shuttlecraft by herself and it's been stripped of all that. Like, okay, they're trying to get to something. And I have to say, once they got there and I realized, oh, there's going to be an enemy mind story. It's going to be a survival story. I thought at first, oh, it's going to be like Tom Hanks alone on the island by himself, trying to figure out how to survive and something's going to happen where it's going to be. She's going to experience a long form survival story. And then it turned into enemy mine. And either one of those stories for this episode would have worked for me. So what I got felt like I was good with it. This felt to me like a. It had a couple of things that I feel like maybe they were a little too cute. And they've done it a couple of times this season in particular, a little too cute with tying it into the original series. A little too heavy.
Matt Ferrell: Metrons.
Sean Ferrell: The Metron showing up at the end I thought was like, okay, that's not really a necessary thing. It might have been enough, I feel like, for her to say, who are you? I know you're watching. What do you want? Why did you do this? I actually felt like it might have been more compelling to have that be the end of the experience and leave the question mark hanging for the audience was this, in fact the Metrons. They could have made a reference to identifying the sector of space where they were so that hardcore fans could like connect the dots. And it could have been the kind of thing that people online would have been saying, like, oh, they named the sector of space. It's the same place they went in the episode where they chased the Gorn and Kirk and the Gorn face off on the planet. They could have done something like that. That to me would have been a little bit more of a polished edge. But I do understand they want to kind of not just be cute with older audiences, but they want to have the brand new audience that doesn't know any of that history, get a sense of, like, what actually happened here. So I saw that moment. I was just like, oh, for me, maybe that's a little too cute, but for another audience member, it's probably fine. It's probably going to give them the explanation they wanted out of that moment. And I found myself landing in a place of this all worked for. For me, I found it very compelling. There was an issue with exactly how much time is passing, which it felt like it was trying to be a story that was. They are spending days there, but it's supposed to be hours, I believe. So it's this kind of they're teaching each other games of chess and whatever that other game that Gorn is playing, they're hunting, they're eating, they're sleeping, like, and is this a day? Is this an hour, Is this longer? It's. It felt very uneven in that way.
I would have appreciated a little bit more of a sense of the scope of time. It could have been either in the form of people on the Enterprise explicitly saying, we have 12 hours to do this, or we have three days to do this after. If the doctor had shown up, or they had said, the doctor just said that after three days, there's no way she could be alive. You know, something like that. To give us a sense of how long this effort is going to take would have been helpful. The other way that they could have gone, I think that would have been also helpful is to say, oh, we've gotten some sensor readings through the wormhole. We're not able to read anything. But we do know that there's some sort of time dilation taking place. So it's possible that time is moving on the other side of the wormhole at a different rate than we are here. And they could have set up the idea that she's literally there for weeks. And I think that could have been really, really compelling. That could have been really fascinating of them, like getting hints of messaging and Uhura having to say, like, there's something with this signal coming through where it feels like I'm getting far less than is actually being broadcast, because what I'm picking up is taking me far longer to receive. But when I put it all together, it's actually just a blip of information. So maybe they're taking weeks of, you know, Ortegas time to just get moments of the Enterprise, time that could have been interesting, but to get to the story that they wanted to tell. I feel like the two things that I just laid out would have been nice for me, but they weren't critical for this. So I kept going back to am I engaged? Am I having fun with this episode? Am I enjoying it? And there were moments where I realized I was literally sitting on the edge of my seat.
I was sitting forward watching this and feeling like I was watching it in two ways at the same time. One was I was completely immersed in the story and found it really compelling. And in another, I was very impressed with Melissa Navia's performance in a one woman show. For most of it, when you know that she's acting to a rubber suit that at some points didn't have anybody in it. And she's able to bring this arc, which is very. It's concisely done because it's one episode, but she starts in a place where it is the scramble for survival, talking to herself, knowing that she has to keep herself calm, coming across somebody that she immediately recognizes as an enemy, and then pulling herself forward through that into developing a friendship. I particularly found the game playing scene lovely. I was very touched by the fact that they played chess and the Gorn one, and then they play this other game which she wins and has to eat the piece. I thought how clever. Like I was. Just like all of this was, I thought, very sweetly done. And as fast forward as it felt at times, I built a little, little translator that only translates positive and negative. So you get the yes, no moments, you get the Gorn needing the pep talk to want to survive. You get the Gorn expressing Gorn ideology around death is better because if you're broken, you're not useful. And that's a bit of Gorn ideology and philosophy that is up to this point, we haven't seen that. And I found that compelling. And the tragedy of the end, while maybe a little too pat and not necessarily what I wanted for the episode, I understood why they landed on that and what they got out of it, because they get the tragedy of the loss, but not the complication of now they have a Gorn who might not want to live. That could have been a whole other episode on its own. So that's a lot of talking from me at this point.
So I found myself in a place where I landed in a good spot with this episode, and I enjoyed it. And I thought this was the episode that I was afraid that we wouldn't yet. Because the previous episodes that have dealt with her ptsd, it felt poorly handled. And I found myself thinking, like, was there a point where this episode was supposed to take place earlier in the season and did it get moved here? Because it was a strong performance and they maybe felt like, oh, this is a good penultimate episode, because this answers questions that I think were raised by bad moments earlier in other episodes where it just seems like she kind of, like, shrugged off the ptsd. And I'm like, oh, if this experience had taken place two or three episodes earlier, it would actually explain those moments. So I don't know if there's, like, some shifting of episode order in play or not, but I found this one very, very satisfying. I hope you enjoyed it as well.
Matt Ferrell: I was going to say, it sounds like you think this is the conjuring of this season. Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: Well made. Working, like, well executed. Did what it wanted to do, and it left me feeling satisfied.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah. Yeah. In a nutshell, I agree with a lot of what you said. My feelings on Ortegas are mixed historically because I've always felt like they've never really known what to do with her. Yeah. And when they use her, she's there for their sarcastic quips. And I've never gotten a sense if she's a good actress or not because she's never given any kind of real depth or purpose. And this is the first time I've seen her with purpose. And when I was watching this one. Sean, I think I may have liked this episode more than you because it's not the strongest of the season, but I thought it was. It reminded me so much of, like, the Geordi La Forge episode where he gets stranded on the planet with Romulan. Yeah. Enemy Mine. Of course, within the first five minutes of the episode, I turned to my wife and went, this is Enemy Mine. And I was, like, really excited. So it's like, I'm a sucker for this kind of storytelling. It felt, even though there was lots of special effects, it still felt like a ship in a bottle because it was spending more time with one plot line. And I really appreciate the episodes that do that, especially on the Next Generation. There's a bunch of episodes with Picard. One of my favorites of all time is the Inner Light episode where he lived an entire lifetime at the end of that lifetime. That's why he has the flute from that episode for the rest of Next Generation. Picard, he has that stupid little flute, and it's because it's a reminder that he lived his entire life. And you brought something up around the timey wimey ness of this episode. And this was my nitpick on it too, because it was unclear and it felt to me like days were passing on the planet, but it felt like hours on the ship and it was never clear which one was which. And I think the time dilation would have just cleanly explained that.
And I would have loved it if they had done that, because you could have had a Picard like episode. She's been there for months. What if she was there for three months? Yeah, and they get her back. So it wasn't that she became friendly with this Gorn. It was like her soulmate. Like, she becomes like enemy mind. She becomes super bonded to this Gorn, which would make the ending even more tragic. And. And then her little flute, her little game piece at the end of the episode that she puts on the shelf, it's like, ugh. It's got that nice Picard flute moment. For me, it was like, I'm a sucker for this kind of storytelling. I like this episode a lot. I think the time dilation would have explained a lot. And as far as Ortegas, one of the things I really appreciated is she's this sarcastic, quippy character, and it made sense why she'd be talking to herself nonstop on the planet. It never felt like if you took another character, like, if you put Spock on the surface and had him doing this and he was talking that much, he'd be like, that's weird. Spock probably wouldn't say a single word on the planet. It probably would be a, like, no dialogue at all.
Just Spock for 40 minutes doing stuff.
Sean Ferrell: Right.
Matt Ferrell: So it's like, with her just constantly talking her through it, it's like it felt very natural to the character and it really accentuated the storytelling they had to do here because it had to be. Everything had to be externalized by her. And so I, I like the fact that they leaned into her quippiness as a character to do that. And just for me, the, the Gorn. The other aspect is the Gorn have been very one dimensional and they've done like little things here and there where that you get a sense of who they are and like, oh, here's how they. Here's how they've. Why they're doing what they're doing, why they're, like, going across the galaxy and, like, use these supernova things to transport all over the galaxy, all that kind of stuff. It's interesting what we're learning, but we're still not understanding them as a species, like, what makes them tick. The only way to do that, to create a moment where we can have some empathy with the Gorn and we can learn about them. Like how we learned about the Klingons through Worf in Next Generation. And the Klingons became an incredibly deep, interesting species because of Next Generation. Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: As we know from our experience of the original series, Klingons showed up and they were basically just like shoe polish and strange, like Fu Manchu mustaches. There wasn't a lot there. They held on as the fan favorite villain. But it wasn't until, as you said, Next Gen that you suddenly said, oh, there's a culture. And where in this.
Matt Ferrell: It's the same thing. It's like the Gorn are the alien of the Star Trek universe. Boogie, boogie, Going to get you scary. Looks like the alien creature. And that's good enough for a start. But then giving them a little more depth of understanding. The way they replicate is by planting their eggs inside of people. It's like, that's awful. But you can kind of empathize with. They're not doing this because they're evil. They're doing this because this is how they reproduce. And now we understand a little bit of the culture of. They play games. They have games. It's like, that's freaking awesome. Like, the whole game scene, I was just like, hell, yes. I love the fact it wasn't just chess. It was this other game that it taught her. Just like Chef's Kiss. Oh, Such a simple way. And the whole thing about the. I'm broken. Yeah. Was kind of like. I'm not gonna say it made me choke up, but it was kind of like a very. Kind of like, ugh. God. Yeah. It's like they're like Klingons on the next level. It's just like. It's like an ant colony. Right. It's like you're completely replaceable by anybody that's around you. If you're broken, you're out, and we'll just put somebody else in because it's just for the greater good of the species or whatever it is. So it was interesting that we got those insights into the Gorn on this episode. So I was worried we were not going to get a nice denouement on the Gorn storyline this season. I thought they were just going to leave it hanging, and they didn't. This episode gave us a lot to learn about the Gorn, and I'm hoping this finale may bring something back even more with the Gorn storyline.
Sean Ferrell: I wonder if, like, I actually think that there's a possibility that the final episode doesn't do that, but leaves something hanging for next season. Because I have a feeling that they are teasing out this conflict with the Gorn as a long term thing and will and will resolve the larger scale battle operations at some point in the future. Because they had the episode where they manipulated the energy fields to basically sort.
Matt Ferrell: Of put them to sleep.
Sean Ferrell: Put them to sleep the way the Borg were in Next Generation. So it's this like, oh, they. They stimulated the resting cycle. And is that just like the pause button that we then don't get the Gorn back until next year? Because I just feel like one episode is not going to be enough to do what I think that they're trying to do. But I completely agree with everything you said about, like, getting into their culture, getting it, like, in. And it's really remarkable how little it takes to feel like you're getting that. Show them playing a game that does that. There was one back and forth which opened up so many doors in my head where it was. She's building the translator and realizes that the Gorn understands her.
Matt Ferrell: Yep.
Sean Ferrell: And says, oh, you do that so that you, like, can better understand your prey. And the response is no. Like, oh, you do that to better understand your enemy. Yes. Like, okay, they don't see us as prey. They still lay their eggs in us. But it is not, we are hunters and feeding upon you. It is something more akin to a cultural or societal imperative as opposed to instinct. These are not simply instinctive creatures. They are a society that operates along a very different measurement of what is morally acceptable than the Federation. But it's not instinct. These are not lizards that built spaceships. This is a culture that is going out into the stars and doing something that everybody else is like, hold on, that's monstrous. But from their perspective, no, this is what we choose to do. So it is that chasm of common ground that is now been highlighted in this episode in a very different way because all the previous ones have been. It's a story of alien survival. And I mean alien in the Ridley Scott film sense. It is the, oh, these things are going to come and plant eggs in you and then they pop out of you and they eat you and they eat everything around them. And they grow and they do it again. And that is a well rendered, monstrous storyline. And I enjoy those episodes of this series when they've had those. I thought it was a really terrific reuse of the Gorn. And this is now a reuse of that reuse. It is a additional layer that turns them into more like the predator species as opposed to just straight up the alien species.
Matt Ferrell: You can have a little more empathy with them now because we're starting to learn a little bit more about them, which is what I think is important and needed, especially for a long term storyline. So whether they wrap it up or do something in the finale or next season doesn't really matter too much to me. I just want them to keep going down this path because it's new, it's interesting, it's not rehashing Metrons, it's not rehashing all that stuff. It's doing something new. And that's one of the things I like about it. It's still playing within the same sandbox, the original series, but we've never seen this before. Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: And let's talk briefly about the conclusion of the episode. Were you conflicted, as I was, about whether or not the killing of the Gorn was the best end for this, or did you think like, okay, that makes sense. I understand it.
Matt Ferrell: Literally 30 seconds before the Gorn got killed, like they're setting the atmosphere on fire. My wife turns to me and says that Gorn's not going to make to the end of the episode. I was like, no, no, they'll keep the Gorn. They'll keep. Three seconds later, 30 seconds later, it was just, just bang, bang, bang, bang. And I was like, no, come on. They could have kept it alive.
Sean Ferrell: But did your wife just do this? She just like.
Matt Ferrell: But, but, but the thing is, I, I think killing it was the right choice. And the way they killed it makes sense that it's La’an. Her instinct would be kill it. Like, because she has such a sordid history with it. So it's like, I get it, but I feel like it would have been probably better if. What if the Gorn. And when the flames are going off, what if the GORN had done something where it sacrificed itself to protect Ortegas? Right, so it still dies, but it did something to protect her. That gives the Gorn even more depth of like, what the hell?
Sean Ferrell: Like, yeah, I feel like there was a. Yeah, I think there was a lot of probably mathematic calculations going on in the writer's room around how to end this episode and what to do with it. One of the permutations is, of course, I like. I really like the idea of what if the Gorn had been. What if the shield was falling away in a way that was going to endanger them both and the Gorn stepped outside to then take the thing and put it in place and hold it there so that the shield will keep her alive and then she. And then the Gorn had died. I think I really like your suggestion there. I wonder if part of the mathematics of this, though, was them saying, oh, we now have a tension point between La'an and Ortegas for a future episode.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: Where Ortegas and La'an have to overcome Ortegas's unprocessed anger toward La'an for shooting first and La'an having to process her side of it. Because you can come up with, I can come up with a compelling story, which is effectively La'an having to argue with Ortegas, regardless of whether or not I have a personal history with the Gorn. In that moment, you were seemingly fleeing from a enemy, and my job was not to stop and figure out what was going on, but to kill that enemy. And like, having that be for La'an's perspective, I have a feeling I wouldn't be surprised at all if we do get an episode where La'an is processing. Did I shoot first because I hate Gorn, or did I shoot first to protect my friend and having to come to terms with that? And if they do do that episode, please, Paramount, if you're listening, don't make it black or white. Let it be a muddy gray area. Let it be a muddy gray. Let La'an end the episode not certain whether she shot first because she knew it was an enemy or not. Let it end with, I don't know why I pulled the trigger, but I know I did. Like, that's a good story. So I can't help but wonder if somebody was just like, oh, if she's actually killed, then we get another great La'an moment in the future. So if there is going to be that coming out of this, I'm hopeful for that because I do agree in that episode, the moment of self sacrifice, if the episode was going to be left completely freestanding, the self sacrifice by the Gorn would have been a better ending. As far as the Metrons of it all, you've already hinted at this where you're just like, okay, it's like, do we really need that? And I basically said the same thing. Let's play devil's advocate against ourselves right now. And let's say, yeah, the Metron moment needed to be there. Do you think it did something.
I think it actually did do something for the Metrons that was missing from the original series episode with Kirk. Do you feel like it did something of value for the episode in that way? Playing a devil's advocate? Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: Yes. I think it added to the storyline of the Metrons, like with the Kirk and the Gorn, that stuff. It did something more to it because the conversation why they were doing this stuff, oh, more experimentation is needed. Like it did build on was just. It still felt unnecessary. Like, you remove it from the episode, it doesn't change the quality of the episode. It doesn't. It's not something you'd miss. So it's like, in that regard, if something is unnecessary like that, it should have been cut. But it was only there as fan service. That's the only reason it was there.
Sean Ferrell: There is a element to it that I did appreciate it from a writing perspective. And this is something I feel like the Strange New Worlds overall series has been trying to do, which is, to a certain degree, lower the unknowable godlike being hood of such a large group of aliens from the original series. There were so many episodes of the original series where it was just like, these beings are unknowable because they no longer need corporeal bodies and they can do anything they want. And it's so often the case that the original series just like, oh, here's this thing. We don't know what it is, but it can do anything. And it's like a God. And this episode, I thought did a. They all. They, they. I think that they were trying to do that with the episode where it was like the Trelane Q wedding episode. I think they were trying to do that too with like, okay, how do we play with both Trelane as a child and the Q as a species and tie this thread together so that it removes Q from what Next Generation even presented it as and turns it into more of a continuity. And this episode, I feel like, takes the Metrons, who, in the episode with Kirk and the Gorn, come across as having the moral, snobbish high ground. You species are weak and pitiful in the way that you fight against each other. We're going to teach you about the consequences of your actions, and then we'll dismiss the loser per the winner's wish. And oh, good, you children have matured enough to recognize that war is not useful. This takes them down a notch by making them overly analytical and talking about experimentation. I liked. I actually liked that in this, instead of it showing up and being like, well, maybe you humans and Gorns can learn to live together the way you're supposed to and turning it into. We're kind of just like throwing pieces together and seeing what happens.
Which then mirrored smartly, the game playing between the Gorn and the human. So you have the Gorn and the human learning that they can learn from each other by playing games together. And then you have the Metron showing up saying, yeah, we've been playing a game with you.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: And I thought that that was a nice. Kind of like knocking one of the moral high pegs out from underneath the Metrons and making them a little more approachable as a species in the universe of Star Trek. As far as, like, yeah, they're not all Q’s. They're not all running around being Q. Like, when it's, oh, we've moved past needing bodies and we've turned into these godlike creatures, it's like, this is a species that maybe is saying, like, oh, let's see what happens when we take this species and the species and put them together and they don't like each other.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: And it's like, I. I actually liked that aspect of it. There was one final thing I wanted to bring up. There is, as Matt and I have just talked about, analyzed, complained a little bit about. Yeah, don't be overly cute with referencing the original series, but there is a thing in this episode that I think is the perfect use of elements from the original series to present something in what is effectively a prequel that informs a later episode in a really neat way. Matt, do you want to take a guess as to what I'm referring to?
Matt Ferrell: No. What is it?
Sean Ferrell: They set the atmosphere of the planet on fire. And who detects the explosion?
Matt Ferrell: You mean on the ship? Who detected it?
Sean Ferrell: Yes.
Matt Ferrell: Who did detect it? Was it Spock?
Sean Ferrell: Spock, yeah. And who ejects the last of the fuel from the Galileo 7?
Matt Ferrell: Oh, my God, yes.
Sean Ferrell: To signal to the Enterprise where they are.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah, there you go. Okay.
Sean Ferrell: I was, like, watching this, and they're like, oh, my God, we can use this. You've got this rocket. And it will ignite the atmosphere. But then we're gonna have to protect ourselves because it's going to be a giant fireball, but it should be a signal that the Enterprise will see. And I was like, and Spock is going to detect it. And Spock is going to put that into his memory. And then when he's on the Galileo 7. He's just like, well, I know this works, so, yeah, maybe they'll see it. I'm like, the loving reference like that. And I have to believe that it was intentional, deliberate. I have to believe it's deliberate. I do not think that they did that without recognizing this is something Spock did. So that is, for me, the perfect cherry on top of an episode like this. I understand the direct to the audience references to the original series and other series beyond it. I get why they do that. But for me, this kind of reference is the best, where you're sitting there and just being like, ah, I see what you did there. I now see why Spock decides logically, it was time to panic.
Like, he would have known when Ortegas got back and he said, that was clever of you to set the atmosphere on fire. And she's like, yeah, we nearly burned ourselves alive. And he would log that away as, like, I guess the flare was logically the right thing to do in that situation. Future Spock is like, all right, here we go. Loved it. I love that. So, viewers, listeners, what did you think about this episode? Do you land in similar terrain as Matt and I, where you find yourself suddenly saying workman, like, yes. Enjoyable. Yes. A good penultimate episode? I have to say yes. Let us know. Jump in the comments. And don't forget. Wrong answers only. We are, of course, suddenly finding ourselves hurtling toward the final episode of season three. It is new life and new civilizations. They love to quote from the opening preamble, don't they? New life and new civilizations. What's that episode about? Wrong answers only in the comments, please. And as always, your comments, liking subscribing, sharing with your friends. Those are all very easy ways for you to support this podcast. But if you want to support us more directly, and I mean, come on, why wouldn't you? Have you seen us go to trekintime.show? You can click a button there that allows you to throw some coins at our heads. We appreciate the welts. And then we get down to the heavy, heavy business of talking about, how do you play that Gorn game? I give it about three weeks before somebody goes on Reddit and says, I created rules to play that game. Here's how you do it. I bet somebody's already done it, and I will start. Suggest this, Matt. If we see each other at the holidays, I suggest we play.
Matt Ferrell: So, yes. Yes. All right.
Sean Ferrell: Thank you, everybody, for taking the time to watch or listen, and we'll talk to you next time.