Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 3x09 - "Terrarium"

[bookworm8571]

This was a very good episode, but I cannot give it a perfect score. Not because of the Metron appearance – I was okay with that – but Ortegas’s flare plan. How did she know the Enterprise would see it if she’s on the other side of the wormhole? Literally makes zero sense.

I’ll give this episode a 9.

I don’t understand where the sympathy for La'an come from (and I like La'an). La’an should be pulled from the duty roster and go through retraining, like Ortegas was at the end of “Shuttle to Kenfori”.

That Gorn could have become an ambassador for the Federation, if she was given a chance to talk to Starfleet. It does not matter that the show has to set up “Arena”. The Watsonian view suggests La’an made a terrible mistake.

Anyone saying Uhura would be booted out of 24th century Starfleet for fudging data should also realize that La’an too would be booted from 24th century Starfleet for having an itchy trigger finger.

Why? La’an a space cop. That’s what she does. The real problem is that she should know better, regardless of her past history with the Gorn. Certainly, she should have the training to discern between a threat and someone not in the position to be one.

Considering the real world parallels with police brutality and the methods for greater accountability to address it, it just makes La’an and Starfleet look worse. Even when considering that 23rd century Starfleet is quicker to pull out their phaser in this era, and La’an both visited and is familiar with 2020s Earth. Were the away team even wearing body cameras?

Based on all of her past experiences and knowledge of the Gorn, the only thing to do with a Gorn is shoot to kill. La’an had a fraction of a second to respond when she saw the Gorn, which could have been life or death for Ortegas. And, for all we know, the stun setting doesn’t work on Gorns.

 

[HotRod]

I just rewatched it, and my feelings are still pretty mixed. What continues to infuriate me, though, is the death of the Gorn at the hands of La'an and the landing party. I expected she would die, but the way it happened was maddening. And honestly, I think that’s intentional.

We're ’re meant to be angry about it.

Conflict between characters is always compelling, but I really hope we see some lasting repercussions from this. It would be incredibly disappointing if her death ended up being meaningless. I want to believe this moment will have consequences and not just be swept under the rug.

 

[The Wormhole]

I do hope she carries some resentment for what happened to the Gorn. That was her friend and she was brutally murdered by Starfleet, based solely on their pre-existing prejudice.

The matter might be rather complex for Ortegas. Yes, the Gorn was her friend killed for no other reason than because she was considered "the enemy," but on the other hand, La'an reacted the way she did to the Gorn because of her own personal history with the species, which Ortegas knows about and given her own experiences in the Klingon War and that she was unable to be friendly with Dak'Ral, I think Ortegas can understand La'an's reaction. This even gets touched upon during the conversation Ortegas has with Uhura at the end where Ortegas notes La'an is also her friend which makes her feelings on the matter confusing at the moment.

At the very least, this could become a source of drama between Ortegas and La'an in future episodes, and for that reason, I agree that I hope it gets revisited at some point.

Tony Gilroy brazenly killed one at Andor and got away with it.

If you're referring to Cinta, the only reason she was killed off was because Varada Sethu had to leave for her Doctor's Appointment.

 

[Noname Given]

They basically only erased her memory of Them.

What? I didn't see any giant radioactive ants on that Asteroid...

 

[JoseNoodles]

10/10! Great episode done in the spirit of TNG's Darmok and ENT's Dawn!

 

[gweeps]

What does that mean? More of the handheld type?

Yup.

 

[gweeps]

They are actual phasers. What makes you think they're not?

I meant the handheld ones.

 

[DaveyNY]

What? I didn't see any giant radioactive ants on that Asteroid...

It was radioactive millipedes this time.

 

[PatB1974]

This episode disappointed me again. It seemed like a bad remake of TNG's the Enemy, which was a remake of "Enemy Mine" And that ending, I mean how disappointing was that? Really La'an?? I love Ortegas, and liked seeing her get an episode but she deserved a better one.

 

[Warp Core Breach]

This script was sooooo easy to fix if the writers would just exercise a little imagination.

The rendezvous with Constellation is the reason Enterprise has to delay the search for Ortegas, giving her some time on the asteroid where she really needs to worry about survival. Two different times in military survival training I went a week without eating- it would have taken me waaaaaay longer than a day to be hungry enough to scarf some raw alien giant centipede hurled to me by a Gorn.

Then, due to being in a different part of the universe and so close to that humongous gas giant, gravity alters time a bit, so it's more like six weeks or months for Ortegas before Enterprise returns to mount a rescue. Now she has to eat those nasty bugs, and has time to teach the Gorn chess, and learn the Gorn game.

Did not like the Castaway easter egg. "I have made water!" CRINGE.

Did not like the Metrons showing up- that just about ruined the entire ep, right there. Just utter shitty writing and MORE TOS small-universe syndrome.

Did not like Ortegas's constant flip commentary. She was in a dead serious situation, which should have been coupled with a little awe over what had happened to her, etc, but all we get is continuous Ortegas-brand snark and jokes.

And why would any starfleet shuttle not launch with some emergency rations, water, hand phasers, and so on? My corporate jet has more survival gear than her starfleet shuttle!

Given the circumstance we did get, Pike was criminally slow on the uptake when it came to search and rescue measures. And I guess Uhura was channeling her inner Hemmer here as others have point out.

Just bad, lazy, unimaginative, unoriginal writing. Any living TOS writers should be getting royalties, because they [Shat]keep....getting....ripped off....over....and OVER![/Shat].

The good: it tried to be a real episode of Star Trek where something happened, someone actually got off the ship, and Pike got to be in the captain's chair!

I'm glad you're not a show writer.

 

[DaveyNY]

This episode disappointed me again. It seemed like a bad remake of TNG's the Enemy, which was a remake of "Enemy Mine" And that ending, I mean how disappointing was that? Really La'an?? I love Ortegas, and liked seeing her get an episode but she deserved a better one.

You must really be disappointed in a lot of the Trek episodes then, because very few of them are actually original ideas that haven't' been done before somewhere else.

 

[Mudd]

Of course La'An immediately shot the Gorn standing over her friend. What else would she do?

 

[DaveyNY]

I'm glad you're not a show writer.

I believe that some folks are missing the fact that the whole episode points to the fact that the Metrons were the ones that set up everything from the get go.
It was Their space-bound laboratory, to study other species interactions.

Spock indicates at the beginning that the gravimetric disturbances are impossible to calculate and that shouldn't be the case because there's nothing obvious controlling them.
When the wormhole suddenly appears out of nowhere, he and Uhura both wonder why it didn't show up from the start on the sensors.

 

[Firebird]

I just rewatched it, and my feelings are still pretty mixed. What continues to infuriate me, though, is the death of the Gorn at the hands of La'an and the landing party. I expected she would die, but the way it happened was maddening. And honestly, I think that’s intentional.

We're ’re meant to be angry about it.

Conflict between characters is always compelling, but I really hope we see some lasting repercussions from this. It would be incredibly disappointing if her death ended up being meaningless. I want to believe this moment will have consequences and not just be swept under the rug.

I do feel like the episode needed a beat between Erica and La'an after getting back aboard. Maybe if they hadn't wasted time on the Metron stuff, they could've used it to better set up a slam-dunk dynamic of friction between them for future episodes.

 

[Artoo Atari]

I thought this was a great episode. Then the Metron showed up.

Would have gotten a 9 from me, but it gets a 7 now.

This.

Solid episode, then fumbled at the 1-yard line. On re-watch, when La'an says "energize," skip to Ortegas in her quarters and pretend that the shining light was... I dunno... Enterprise's signal reflection or something. Much better episode.

 

[voyager1]

This episode was good. I scored it an 8. It worked for me. The critters living in the ground reminded me of that Stargate SGU episode though.

This was a solid Star Trek story that every series does some form of. The Metron thing, I am not sure if it adds or subtracts. I had a feeling something would be watching and it would be something from the trek lore.

 

[cooleddie74]

Captain Decker.



NICE.

 

[fireproof78]

I'm glad you're not a show writer.

But how else will we know if it's a real Star Trek episode or not?

 

[DaveyNY]

But how else will we know if it's a real Star Trek episode or not?

Perhaps in the same way some folks can determine who the True Trek Fans are?

Personally, I'm very glad I don't have that apparent innate ability..., even after almost 60 years of watching all the Trek shows.

 

[TheUsualSuspect]

Just finished watching this one, and I've got very mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, this feels very like a good episode of TOS made in the 2020s rather than the 1960s, which is exactly what I want most from SNW. On the other hand, it is largely derivative of TOS episodes, especially "The Galileo Seven," "Obsession," and

Spoiler

of course, "Arena" itself.

Overall, I really enjoyed the episode - the plot was compelling, the characters all seemed in character, and the pacing was (mostly) excellent. The one exception to that was the "game montage" around the middle of the episode. It didn't seem to match up with the "ticking clock" element of the Enterprise's search. Perhaps I missed something about the time needed to prepare the Enterprise to stand up to the wormhole.

Spoiler: Episode ending and plot elements

I was caught a little bit by surprise by the ending. I had been rolling with the derivative plot elements up until then, but the ending makes this episode basically a remake of "Arena." If they needed to tell another story about the Gorn (They didn't, IMO), why make it a remake of "Arena" right down to the resolution? For a moment I thought the Metron was going to erase not just Erica's memory of that moment, but EVERYBODY'S memory of all of the encounters with the Gorn from last season and earlier this season. I'm glad they did NOT do that! (I have managed to accept that I must view the original "Arena" now as a distorted account of those events, since I can't imagine any way that Spock and Kirk would not recall their prior encounters with the Gorn.
I also really wonder why they chose to use the Gorn at all. Why not simply create some other race to tell these stories about? It's not like Star Trek isn't full of races that we see only once or a handful of times. Why use an existing race, but then contradict much of the little that we already know about it?

In the end, despite its derivativeness, I do like this episode quite a bit overall. I'll be rewatching it in a few days when my wife returns from a work trip, so I'll be interested to see how it stands up to a second viewing.