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

[JonnyQuest037]

I was gonna give it a 9 for some of the things you list...but then a Metron appears. Is this bad writing or an attempt to repair TOS continuity? I haven't decided yet.

It's not TOS continuity that needed repairing. It's SNW that's failed to jibe with a single standalone episode from 1967. There was no continuity snarl until SNW decided to take the Gorn in a different direction.

Like Dr Who?

No, even Doctor Who hasn't been running continuously since it premiered. It originally ran from 1963–1989, and then was revived in 2005. So it was off the air for 16 years of its existence, outside of one TV movie in the 1990s.

 

[TRON JA307020]

People aren't questioning that she fired, but rather why the writers chose to have the entire security team's phasers set to kill. Obviously La'an panic-firing wouldn't have mattered if the phasers were on stun, as is often shown to be standard procedure (and this mission is a textbook example of why).

The answer is that the writers really wanted the Gorn to die by La'an's hand because a) it's a dramatic ending and b) so the Metron could sneer at humans for being violent and thus get the "we hope somebody passes our test in the future, wink wink" reference to Arena in there.

Quite right Starflight. They wanted that moment that goes to the arena in the future. They want to say they did it first and the arena is a follow up. Tired of them trampling on tos and trying to outdo the tos original stuff. Its not working. I would watch The Squire of Gothos and The Arena any day over the ones SNW produced.

 

[Trekker4747]

Based on the information she had at the time, what she did was not a mistake. Unfortunate result, sure, but she had a split second to make a decision. It’s also what happens a lot of the time in police shootings.

And we question those and get upset when courts cast them aside.

A few years ago some cops responded to a call about a kid with a gun in a park and the cops literally just pulled up to the kid a shot him, gun was a water pistol.

You can make all of the arguments in the world the cops had "reason to fire" because they saw a gun and couldn't take the time to see it was a toy without risking their lives. We still question this incident because it appears they didn't try anything else.

Now, maybe the show will focus on this in a future episode (I kinda doubt it) if it does and La'An admits her mistake, fine. Right now we question it because anytime someone kills someone we should.

 

[Starflight]

Based on the information she had at the time, what she did was not a mistake. Unfortunate result, sure, but she had a split second to make a decision. It’s also what happens a lot of the time in police shootings.

Again though, the rifle has a stun setting. La'an having the trigger discipline of a disgraced modern-day SWAT officer wouldn't matter if the weapon was set to stun, so the question is why the team's rifles were set to kill. It's not like stun is some weird esoteric bit of hidden lore, it's a core component of the franchise and indicated in some episodes to be standard procedure, so it's natural people would wonder why it's absent without explanation here, and why the security team appear to be doing the opposite of what Starfleet landing parties are typically depicted as doing.

And the problem, for some viewers at least, is that that question has no in-universe answer. Rather than feeling like an organic end to the story, it instead feels like an unfitting convolution created by the writers because they really wanted to get the Metron scene in, and also felt they had to put the toys back in the box to allow the events of Arena to occur.

It's absolutely possible to write a script in which La'an kills the Gorn (either through anger or perceived necessity) that doesn't raise these issues. All the story really needed was some reason as to why the security team would have their weapons set to kill before beaming down (even an incredibly lazy one like "oh, there's some weird probably-actually-Metrons radiation here that's jamming our stun setting, we'll have to set to kill and check our fire" would have gone some way to mitigating it).

 

[Mudd]

Based on the information she had at the time, what she did was not a mistake. Unfortunate result, sure, but she had a split second to make a decision. It’s also what happens a lot of the time in police shootings.

True. I'd call it an error in judgment, though.

 

[Mudd]

It's not TOS continuity that needed repairing.

It does now. And it would require changing about, oh, one line of dialogue in "Arena."

But that would be a bad idea. Better to just shrug it off.

 

[Mudd]

La'An does have Gorn trauma. I don't see why that should count as a reason to shrug the situation away.

If a cop had race-based trauma and they killed an innocent stranger because of it we wouldn't just say "I get it."

In no way equivalent situations.

Humans have never encountered a Gorn who wasn't inhumanly and lethally vicious, or hesitant to destroy without provocation.

And, BTW, neither did James Kirk. The Metrons spared Kirk because of what he did, not because the Gorn rose above their nature at any point.

By sparing your helpless enemy--
who surely would have destroyed you--
you demonstrated the advanced trait of mercy,

 

[bookworm8571]

And we question those and get upset when courts cast them aside.

A few years ago some cops responded to a call about a kid with a gun in a park and the cops literally just pulled up to the kid a shot him, gun was a water pistol.

You can make all of the arguments in the world the cops had "reason to fire" because they saw a gun and couldn't take the time to see it was a toy without risking their lives. We still question this incident because it appears they didn't try anything else.

Now, maybe the show will focus on this in a future episode (I kinda doubt it) if it does and La'An admits her mistake, fine. Right now we question it because anytime someone kills someone we should.

The legal standard is whether the shooter feared for his life. It’s why there is almost never a conviction in police shooting cases. The suspect was either waving something around or posed a threat of some kind. In this case, La’an saw a Gorn looming over her friend, knew from prior experience that the Gorn kill and eat people, and shot to kill. Whether she shifted the phaser setting or had it already set to kill, the shooting would likely be cleared and ruled justifiable by a review board. I’m sure she will have a second or third thought after she learns the circumstances, but would still do the same thing again in the same set of circumstances.

 

[bookworm8571]

The legal standard is whether the shooter feared for his life. It’s why there is almost never a conviction in police shooting cases. The suspect was either waving something around or posed a threat of some kind. In this case, La’an saw a Gorn looming over her friend, knew from prior experience that the Gorn kill and eat people, and shot to kill. Whether she shifted the phaser setting or had it already set to kill, the shooting would likely be cleared and ruled justifiable by a review board. I’m sure she will have a second or third thought after she learns the circumstances, but would still do the same thing again in the same set of circumstances.

This is dialogue from Hegemony.
La'An: I'd like them dead as much, if not more, than the rest of you. But that's not enough. We don't know what we're walking into down there. Phasers might not be enough.
Pike: I have something that might help. Pike to transporter, Chief Jay, is in-ship transport still functional?
Jay ( over comm ): Yes, Captain.
Pike: Could you transport crate 32 directly to ready room, please? Authorization Pike epsilon C-6.
Jay (over comm): Acknowledged, Captain. Transporting.
Pike: Ever since the Gorn started massing on the edge of Federation space, Starfleet's been working on weapons to counter them. Now all our ships carry these, in case.
La’An: "Gorn Protocols. To be distributed upon an encounter with the hostile species."
Ortegas: "Break in case of Gorn"?
Spock: "Phaser harmonics adjustments. To better counter their defenses. Scanner re-calibrations."
Sam: Last time, our tricorders couldn't detect Gorn at all.
Pike:Now they do.

They aren’t lobbing nitrogen hand grenades at Ortegas’s friend, but they can detect Gorn, they have re-calibrated phasers for Gorn, and there is a protocol in place that addresses what to do in any encounter with this “hostile species.” At a guess, that protocol is shoot to kill. Ortegas knew as much too.

 

[Tosk]

but they can detect Gorn

Which I doubt they did this time. They had zero reason to think one would be involved. And they seem caught completely off guard by the Gorn being there. La'An doesn't even raise her rifle when the Gorn first exits the shelter.

 

[cooleddie74]

Technically, Scotty rigged a special sensor box that could detect Gorn. Had the Enterprise detected the Gorn then why were La'an and her security team surprised to see her? Seems that Starfleet only selectively detects the presence of Gorn with sensors. The special environment on the surface may have prevented such a scan. They only knew Erica was down there.

 

[Mudd]

Maybe they scanned the Gorn and that's why they beamed down locked and loaded.

 

[Trekker4747]

Maybe they scanned the Gorn and that's why they blamed down locked and loaded.

You don't strike me as this kind of "maybe" guy.

 

[bookworm8571]

Which I doubt they did this time. They had zero reason to think one would be involved. And they seem caught completely off guard by the Gorn being there. La'An doesn't even raise her rifle when the Gorn first exits the shelter.

When she recognized the Gorn, it would have been shoot to kill time. That’s the Starfleet protocol. It’s what she ordered in Hegemony: “Phasers to kill.” It’s also why no one, including Ortegas, will be court martialing or disciplining La’An over this or questioning her reasonable decision. She might have some personal regret over it, but maybe not.

 

[Mudd]

You don't strike me as this kind of "maybe" guy.

Pay more attention, then.

Or don't.

 

[cooleddie74]

Remember, the hapless Starfleet security guard in "Friday's Child(TOS)" pulled his phaser the very moment Kras the Klingon stepped out from behind the Capellan. It's standard Starfleet policy.

 

[Quantum21]

I accidentally voted a 6 for this one, I'd give it closer to an 8.

While the tropes are familiar, this episode is a strong prequel to TOS's Arena. There's no doubt that every similar beat was intended, and it even invoked Galileo 7 in igniting something as a signal. It still works though because not only does the damn thing look great but we like the characters and some of us have been waiting for the Gorn to be anything but monsters for 3 seasons now.

The main trope was of course the idea of two enemies working together. This can be traced back to a WWII film called Hell in the Pacific, that Barry Longyear probably inadvertently used as the basis for the Enemy Mine novella story. Since then Trek has used that story in almost every single series, but I think the overall ratio is pretty low. Other sci-fi series have used it too, it'll never go away.

I think there's some merit to the idea that this is the same planet from Arena, and that the Metrons (a fantastic reuse of this old Gene Coon creation) are simply doing a set of experiments because as with Q, humanity caught their attention. You may want to get away now Metrons...

So will this somehow lead to the different Gorn perception we see in TOS? Well, the season 3 finale might have something to say about it too, but this suggests not only will humans have to forget about the current experiment, but that there will be some careful massaging of human memory by the time we get to TOS. A fairly major occurrence and makes the Metrons far more integral to their relationship than we ever realized.

I'm all for deepening these old God stories from TOS.

 

[Nerys Myk]

]*PICARD S3 has entered the Chat*[

Which makes me thankful Matalas has nothing to do with SNW.

 

[Jedi Marso]

Would solve a lot of issues if they did.

That would make the Metrons as powerful as Q or even moreso. They would have to wipe who knows how many memories on dozens of planets and starbases, erase and/or alter countless computer records, and somehow fill in the blanks to make the ledgers of memory and expended resources balance out. You'd have that TNG episode 'Conundrum' on an interstellar scale afterwards as people with unreconcilable holes in their memories or perceptions tried to fill in the blanks. Actually, a plot line like that could make for an interesting season-wide arc of a show like Trek.

 

[TRON JA307020]

Which makes me thankful Matalas has nothing to do with SNW.

If he did do SNW would not have disrespected TOS. He would waste time on 3 comedies a season or a puppet episode. He would have made the show actually look closer to period before TOS. Shows like Alien Earth got the look of the original alien world down correctly. Same with star wars. These guys want to erase everything roddenberry did to put their own stamp on star trek.