Your opinion on SNWs Gorn

[HotRod]

What does SNW's use of the Gorn really serve for SNW, anyway?

They get to expand on a race that fans of the franchise know about, but only appeared twice in live action. They've got just enough wiggle room that with some creative thinking, they can give us something interesting with the Gorn while still maintaining the connection with TOS. So why not use the Gorn?

 

[fireproof78]

They get to expand on a race that fans of the franchise know about, but only appeared twice in live action. They've got just enough wiggle room that with some creative thinking, they can give us something interesting with the Gorn while still maintaining the connection with TOS. So why not use the Gorn?

Indeed. We simply don't know hardly anything about the Gorn from one episode.

 

[Daedalus]

I was actually going to post this in the thread regarding controversial opinions, but I feel it relates to the Gorn in some ways.

Are we really supposed to believe that nobody knew what a Romulan looked like before Balance of Terror? Like, for real?

There must've been thousands of dead Romulans floating around in space, or on starfleet outposts and somehow nobody saw one? No teams tasked to obtain Romulan corpses for study? Its bonkers.

The only thing I can think of is that those who did see a Romulan were sworn to secrecy to preserve the relationship with the Vulcans, or something like that. People can get funny if you look like the people you're fighting. That aside, it's just weird.

So yeah, have a war with the Gorn and it's suddenly not so ridiculous to think Kirk never knew what "a creature called a Gorn" was.

 

[Dukhat]

Actually, we know a lot about the Gorn, but just from being told about them in past Trek shows like DS9. None of them implied that the Gorn were these bloodthirsty ravenous xenomorph creatures that were attacking Federation ships and outposts in order to harvest people as incubators for their young, or that the Federation had any kind of major war with them.

(Yes, I am a SNW-Gorn-depiction-detractor. I don't really mind whatever revisionist-history SNW wants to do with the Gorn; I'm just annoyed that they clearly made them into Alien xenomorph ripoffs rather than something a little more original.)

So yeah, have a war with the Gorn and it's suddenly not so ridiculous to think Kirk never knew what "a creature called a Gorn" was.

That's because in "Arena" it was never established that the Federation even knew who the Gorn were, much less being involved in a war with them only a few years before the episode. That's not the same thing as your Balance of Terror example.

 

[Daedalus]

That's because in "Arena" it was never established that the Federation even knew who the Gorn were, much less being involved in a war with them only a few years before the episode. That's not the same thing as your Balance of Terror example.

Not identical situations, no. But for Kirk to not know what one is, doesn't it still apply? He wouldn't be able to describe either a Romulan or Gorn one until he saw one, despite earlier contact by other people.

 

[Dukhat]

Not identical situations, no. But for Kirk to not know what one is, doesn't it still apply? He wouldn't be able to describe either a Romulan or Gorn one until he saw one, despite earlier contact by other people.

From what I understand, the Romulans had been isolationists for 100 years before BoT, so it would make sense for Kirk and crew not to know what they looked like. But according to SNW, the Federation had plenty of contact with the Gorn and knew what they looked like only a few years before Arena. So, you're correct, it's not identical situations at all.

 

[Ssosmcin]

Are we really supposed to believe that nobody knew what a Romulan looked like before Balance of Terror? Like, for real?

Yep.

Because it was explicitly stated in the dialog. There was no wiggle room.

There must've been thousands of dead Romulans floating around in space, or on starfleet outposts and somehow nobody saw one? No teams tasked to obtain Romulan corpses for study? Its bonkers.

Long before the Star Trek franchise made space wars crowded and close contact battles, "Balance of Terror" showed us that you didn't need to be up close. Your weapons had to to be able to lock on and hit the other target. That's it.

You're assuming there were surface confrontations to leave Romulan corpses behind. I never got that impression. We saw one single Bird of Prey destroy an outpost from orbit. That tells us that there was no need to drop a landing party. They weren't trying to occupy, they were out to obliterate.

As for corpses in space....after a war - which is always a costly affair - I don't think the priority is to send a team out to the furthest reaches to try to find random bodies in endless space. A ship blows up a long distance away, you're done. Space is really, really big.

Thing is, the episode tells us that "neither humans, Romulans or allies had ever seen the other" before that encounter. So, yeah, that's the way it happened.

The only thing I can think of is that those who did see a Romulan were sworn to secrecy to preserve the relationship with the Vulcans, or something like that. People can get funny if you look like the people you're fighting. That aside, it's just weird.

Why come up with a convoluted explanation when Paul Schneider and the original series writing staff already made it clear?

So yeah, have a war with the Gorn and it's suddenly not so ridiculous to think Kirk never knew what "a creature called a Gorn" was.

Except his dialog makes it clear that the name "Gorn" was new to him.

KIRK [OC]: Weaponless, I face the creature the Metrons called a Gorn. Large, reptilian. Like most humans, I seem to have an instinctive revulsion to reptiles. I must fight to remember that this is an intelligent, highly advanced individual, the Captain of a starship, like myself, undoubtedly a dangerously clever opponent.

KIRK: I'm engaged in personal combat with a creature apparently called a Gorn.
He's immensely strong. Already he has withstood attacks from me that would have killed a human being. Fortunately, though strong, he is not agile. The agility and, I hope, the cleverness, is mine.

Pretty obvious Gene Coon meant this to be the first encounter with a Gorn as well as the first time even hearing of one because Kirk has no familiarity with the species in the slightest. Compare it to "Errand of Mercy" which makes it obvious that they have had history with Klingons, even though it's the first time we heard of them.

TOS made clear what they intended, SWN is doing it's own take.

 

[Ithekro]

If the Gorn have multiple subspecies, perhaps the Gorn Kirk encounters wasn't one of the types seen before using an unfamiliar starship design to cover up the raid. Perhaps in relation to whatever is the result of the interactions while Pike was captain of the Enterprise.

 

[Dukhat]

If the Gorn have multiple subspecies, perhaps the Gorn Kirk encounters wasn't one of the types seen before using an unfamiliar starship design to cover up the raid. Perhaps in relation to whatever is the result of the interactions while Pike was captain of the Enterprise.

But he should at least have heard the term "Gorn" before. So his dialogue should have been:

Weaponless, I face the creature the Metrons called a Gorn. Large, reptilian. It looks nothing like the Gorn the Federation encountered only a few years ago, which was why I don't understand why the Metrons called it a Gorn.

But it wasn't, and we all know why it wasn't.

 

[fireproof78]

Imagine an alien race had their only encounter be Shaquille O'Neill and then meets someone like Ray Park. There might be some confusion as to what is a human.

 

[Rahul]

Are we really supposed to believe that nobody knew what a Romulan looked like before Balance of Terror? Like, for real?

There must've been thousands of dead Romulans floating around in space, or on starfleet outposts and somehow nobody saw one? No teams tasked to obtain Romulan corpses for study? Its bonkers.

The only thing I can think of is that those who did see a Romulan were sworn to secrecy to preserve the relationship with the Vulcans, or something like that. People can get funny if you look like the people you're fighting. That aside, it's just weird.

So yeah, have a war with the Gorn and it's suddenly not so ridiculous to think Kirk never knew what "a creature called a Gorn" was.

Actually, yes, since it was so clearly stated in the episode.
IMO that's one of the reasons why the Romulan War is still so interesting to fans compared to other, not shown ones (e.g. the first Cardassian war, or Tzenketi(sp?)).

There's actually a number of plausible explanations:

1) TOS implied it was less starships pummeling each other (that really only became the norm with DS9), and more like advanced civilisations hurling nuclear rockets from a far distance towards each other

2) ENT gave the perfect explanation: Romulans used primarily drones. Nothing says the war was fought on equal footing (ships vs ships). Could have been "manned ships vs drone swarm" battles, with the few command ships going auto-destruct when defeated

3) NEM introduced the Remans. Totally possible the Romulans sent a bunch of warriors from subjugated races to the front. When humans checked the bodies on the battlefields, they might have found a large variety of dead aliens and assumed some of them to be Vulcans.


Totally off-topic by the way
I just love to speculate about this specific part of Trek lore, because it's so unique

 

[Alexspaceman]

I didn't care for them at first. Now I'm a bit more open to it. I've been watching TOS and I still enjoy it in a way that I won't ever enjoy new stuff. But SNW is a fun show.

 

[Dukhat]

Imagine an alien race had their only encounter be Shaquille O'Neill and then meets someone like Ray Park. There might be some confusion as to what is a human.

Except Shaquille O’Neill and Ray Park are real people. Star Trek is fake and written and produced by people who take the approach that if you’ve seen one alien, you’ve seen them all.

 

[Enterprise1701]

Are we really supposed to believe that nobody knew what a Romulan looked like before Balance of Terror? Like, for real?

There must've been thousands of dead Romulans floating around in space, or on starfleet outposts and somehow nobody saw one? No teams tasked to obtain Romulan corpses for study? Its bonkers.

That is what TOS meant before technology advanced, but ENT writers couldn't handle it quite right. (I still remain annoyed that ENT and DIS writers alike can't come up with anything better than cloaking device as a plot device. Boo.)

As Rahul points out, drone ships and slave soldiers are a workable explanation, but unfortunately, ENT was canceled before that could be properly fleshed out, leaving us with an ENT season 4 which did not deploy any Reman ground troops, and only showed one telepresence system reliant upon a single Aenar hostage.

 

[Daedalus]

Actually, yes, since it was so clearly stated in the episode.
IMO that's one of the reasons why the Romulan War is still so interesting to fans compared to other, not shown ones (e.g. the first Cardassian war, or Tzenketi(sp?)).

There's actually a number of plausible explanations:

1) TOS implied it was less starships pummeling each other (that really only became the norm with DS9), and more like advanced civilisations hurling nuclear rockets from a far distance towards each other

2) ENT gave the perfect explanation: Romulans used primarily drones. Nothing says the war was fought on equal footing (ships vs ships). Could have been "manned ships vs drone swarm" battles, with the few command ships going auto-destruct when defeated

3) NEM introduced the Remans. Totally possible the Romulans sent a bunch of warriors from subjugated races to the front. When humans checked the bodies on the battlefields, they might have found a large variety of dead aliens and assumed some of them to be Vulcans.


Totally off-topic by the way
I just love to speculate about this specific part of Trek lore, because it's so unique

That's one thing that slipped in during my mental wrestling match, and one reason why a Romulan War movie might not seem so late in the game, seeing as we're living in this crazy era of modern warfare.

Like others have said, it's stated on screen so it's just how it is. It does stretch credibility a tiny bit, but what doesn't in Star Trek?

 

[BillJ]

It just didn't sit well with me. Not so much because of them being reimagined, but because they feel like a lazy rip of Xenomorphs from the Alien franchise. At least that is how they appear, as far as I got into the show (watched season one).

 

[Rahul]

That's one thing that slipped in during my mental wrestling match, and one reason why a Romulan War movie might not seem so late in the game, seeing as we're living in this crazy era of modern warfare.

Like others have said, it's stated on screen so it's just how it is. It does stretch credibility a tiny bit, but what doesn't in Star Trek?

I think it's also testament to how much Star Trek has evolved:
As of now, it has a Lord-of-Rings-like lore with clearly defined races. This is akin to a Dwarf never having seen an Elf, it just doesn't vibe very well with how everything is presented now (hell, ST09 basically completely ignored the Romulan "mystery" in it's timeline).

The original Star Trek was much more living from the Sci-fi tropes & ideas of it's time - and having a war with an alien species that we never even saw or talked to is kind of a standard staple of traditional sci-fi.

---------

To bring this somewhat back to the threads topic:
Because the Romulans became so iconic and recurring, and the rest of Star Trek (specifically prequels like ENT & now SNW) always took so much effort to respect that original story, retconning it now would feel like a slap in the face.

The Gorn however, have been WAY drastically ret-conned in SNW, the current Gorn are basically incompatible with both the TOS Gorn as well as the whole story of "Arena". But since the Gorn have never played another big role in Trek, and are basically only meme-fied in that ridiculous slow-fu fight with Shatner, the retcon feels not so big. It contradicts only one story in TOS. Not what feels a big part of the lore.

So even though it's a much more drastic retcon, it's somehow less consequential. I think that's the big reason the fans aren't running amok against this reimagination.

 

[fireproof78]

Seeing only one Gorn really doesn't create lore.

 

[Dukhat]

The ‘lore’ is that Kirk fought an alien creature he had never seen before and knew nothing about, a slow lumbering humanoid lizard man with muscles and compound eyes, who felt that humans had invaded their territory. It turned out that this was a misunderstanding and that apparently amends were made, because by a century later humans were living on the planet the Gorn once believed belonged to them. The implication was that the Gorn were in fact a civilized race and not just misunderstood bloodthirsty killers who happened to possess enough advanced technology for space travel and thought they were being threatened.

That lore was basically ignored in SNW, or at best could be termed ‘revisionist history.’ In SNW, the Gorn are these xenomorphs who kidnap people to use as incubators for their young, who then die once the young are born. The young are just as fast and ruthless killing machines as the adults. Everyone seems to know who they are, especially those who have survived capture and lived to describe the breeding planets. The Gorn don’t seem to be particularly territorial, and if Cestus III happened to be one of their breeding planets (which did not seem to be the case), then bombing it from orbit would seem counterintuitive. So far they don’t seem to possess any outward intelligence other than the aforementioned space travel technology.

 

[fireproof78]

The implication was that the Gorn were in fact a civilized race and not just misunderstood bloodthirsty killers who happened to possess enough advanced technology for space travel and thought they were being threatened.

Except, the Metrons note Kirk would not have received mercy from the Gorn captain, so this is assumption.

From the episode we get a lot of assumptions about without a lot of facts. McCoy assumes the Federation is in the wrong, while the Gorn laid a trap to draw in the Enterprise and attack. An attack that would lead the quadrant being exposed, per Spock's dialog.

So, I don't think the Gorn were as civilized as later assumed around the episode.

Thus far the lore strikes me as very thin and based on fan assumption and memories to what the episode actually says.