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Lorca has a GORN Skeleton in his mancave!

McCoy had a skull on a shelf in his office during TOS.

From a former Enterprise crewmember perhaps? McCoy did occasionally lose patients.
 
I'm not sure the mere existence of species we've seen before counts as small universe, and I'm normally the first to moan about it. If it had been the actual Gorn from Cestus IIIs mother, that's small universe.

*sighs* it is, isn't it?

I just think it feels small, because you can go anywhere in the universe, and yet you end up at Janus VI, the Gorn homeworld, the Paradise Syndrome planet... and so on.
 
I just think it feels small, because you can go anywhere in the universe, and yet you end up at Janus VI, the Gorn homeworld, the Paradise Syndrome planet... and so on.
I disagree. As you said it's a wink to the fans. That's a different thing than being "small universe syndrome". Sarek and Mudd appearing and being integral to the plots is small universe. Set decoration that is never referred by name and is jut there for the fans isn't. Something to notice a say oh yeah I know what that is. No different than Enterprise mentioning Deneva or name dropping Chapel in STID.
 
What would make the universe really small is taking the heroes for their word when they say they encounter things for the first time. I mean, perhaps they do, but it makes no sense for them to be the "real" first when millions of others have been milling around in space before them already.

What possible reason could there be for Kirk being the first human to meet the Gorn? The lizardoids are next-door neighbors. They aren't exactly secretive in their introductory episode, either.

Heck, we could argue whether Kirk even thinks he's meeting the Gorn for the first time. Prior to the Metrons mentioning the name, Kirk has had no opportunity to look at his opponents, and couldn't tell they're Gorn even if he played racquetball with one on Fridays. And what the Metrons give is a name, which Kirk does indicate is alien to him - but the physical appearance of the alien isn't established as being all-new to Kirk.

Timo Saloniemi
 
What would make the universe really small is taking the heroes for their word when they say they encounter things for the first time. I mean, perhaps they do, but it makes no sense for them to be the "real" first when millions of others have been milling around in space before them already.

What possible reason could there be for Kirk being the first human to meet the Gorn? The lizardoids are next-door neighbors. They aren't exactly secretive in their introductory episode, either.

Heck, we could argue whether Kirk even thinks he's meeting the Gorn for the first time. Prior to the Metrons mentioning the name, Kirk has had no opportunity to look at his opponents, and couldn't tell they're Gorn even if he played racquetball with one on Fridays. And what the Metrons give is a name, which Kirk does indicate is alien to him - but the physical appearance of the alien isn't established as being all-new to Kirk.

Timo Saloniemi
Well, there is also the fact that the Gorn were either studying (or intercepting and UNDERSTANDING) the communications to/from the outpost because remember:

All that stuff in the episode preamble where they were talking about beaming down to meet the Commodore and McCoy even asking why said Commodore was so insistent they bring their tactical officers along <--- Was all faked/transmitted by the Gorn to bring the 1701 there and guage the Federation's technology and combat tactics.

As the survivor said: "They hit us two days before you got here. No messages came from us."

And if the Gorn already knew as much as they did to be able to lure the 1701 there, it's possible Starfleet may have had some info on a sentient race in that area of space, that hadn't been fully deceminated yet.
 
And if the Gorn already knew as much as they did to be able to lure the 1701 there, it's possible Starfleet may have had some info on a sentient race in that area of space, that hadn't been fully deceminated yet.
It's established in-episode that the outpost on Cestus III had made contact with at least some of the other aliens in that sector.

"Scanners reported a ship approaching. We get them now and then. They're all welcome to use our facilities. You know that."

http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/19.htm

That provides all the means we need to consider it plausible that the Gorn could have sent in spies, established listening devices, etc. Nothing in "Arena" demands or requires additional elaboration to tell its story; "Arena" itself is entirely self-contained.

One of the common traits of fan films is that they revisit the greatest hits of the original that they are emulating. This is no different, in that respect.
 
More fundamentally, individual members of a species (or, say, a shipful) ought to get around, quite possibly centuries before actual first contact is made. After all, that's what our heroes themselves are doing!

Sometimes the heroes turn an encounter into a true first contact where the existence of humankind is revealed to the society in question. Often enough, they don't; even killing all the witnesses is not atypical of them, if said witnesses are black-hatted enough.

Timo Saloniemi
 
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