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

[cooleddie74]

Best Gorn episode of any Trek since TOS.

 

[cooleddie74]

Best episode of Season 3. Next week's season finale is going to have to lift some decent heft to top this week.

 

[nightwind1]

View attachment 48519

I always wanted a spinoff starring the Paternoster Gang.

 

[gweeps]

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.

Has La'an ever tried to help Ortegas heal from her Gorn-related trauma?

The more the show progresses the less I like La'an. She's too self-centred. And the whole Spock romance stuff doesn't gel. Though I guess we get to see them dance...

And why have La'an related to Khan again? Oh yeah, almost everything has to be a foil for the TOS characters.

 

[cooleddie74]

This is a 9.5.

Solid 9.5.

 

[26138]

Remember that episode of Space, Above and Beyond where Hawkes was running around the Chig planet on his own, trying to survive and seeing visions of Vansen as an angel of death? Hardly a word spoken that episode, and it was damn near epic. A silent Erica working to survive in silence would have been far more impactful than constant chatter. The occasional computer voice or just seeing what she was doing would have filled in the blanks- the viewers are capable of connecting the dots.

[sarcasm] But then how would people messing around on their phones the whole time they're 'watching' the episode know what's going on? We can't have that [/sarcasm]

 

[Yistaan]

I thought they were going to have a little more fun with the wormhole and say she was stuck in the Delta Quadrant in Borg space. Have the Discoprise detect a massive ship approaching them before they escaped. The viewer then sees it as a Borg Cube.

Assimilated Gorn would open up the whole question of why the Borg don't adapt the Gorn's toxic venom spray to implant Borg nanoprobes instead of Gorn eggs.

 

[nightwind1]

Umm Canon has already been steamrolled so it would have been fine.

Uh, nope.

 

[JohnCrichton1999]

I agree. I think they shouldn't have had her lose her rations so immediately. The fact she was wandering around a completely barren rock looking for food felt a bit silly. I think it might have been better if she had a steadily dwindling amount of food, some occasional encounters with the Gorn, then eventually she loses the shuttle and meets up with him. As it stands, she was only trapped on the planet for a few days at most.

I was seriously baffled why rations were in some location where not only it seems inconvenient, but also next to some conduit that is flammable and the ration packages themselves didn't have any adequate protection, they were literally just placed right next to the dangerous power source. I'm sorry, who designed that shuttlecraft storage? Because the simple fact that the rations weren't stored in a higher compartment in a sealed package or container that is fireproof was such a huge design flaw.

 

[Warp Core Breach]

Canon. It still ain't a religious scripture. It's a TV show. Several of them, really.

 

[Lucky]

I'll give it a 10. I understand this Enemy Mine approach has been done in Star Trek before, but I found this episode extremely moving. Erica Ortegas cemented herself as one of my Star Trek favorite this episode, the sublot of watching Uhura bend the rules and wrestle with the consequences really got to me. I never thought I'd be mourning a Gorn this much.

 

[cooleddie74]

I like "Dawn(ENT)," but damn, this blows that out of both the water and the solar system.

 

[PatB1974]

I thought they were going to have a little more fun with the wormhole and say she was stuck in the Delta Quadrant in Borg space. Have the Discoprise detect a massive ship approaching them before they escaped. The viewer then sees it as a Borg Cube.

I briefly thought so too! The wormhole effect gave off DS9 vibes.

 

[Ssosmcin]

Well, I guess Ortegas is fine with her hand injury because of the M'Benga finger fix. Fine, it's been so long anyways, it doesn't even matter. At least she got to address her Gorn fear.

Star Trek: Enemy Mine (or "The Return of Starbuck"). Got it. Well, to be fair "Arena" itself was a ripoff that Gene Coon had to immediately scramble to Frederic Brown for permission to use before airing, so all's fair I guess. The Gorn have been mired in unoriginality since 1966. At least they made this one less bitey.

Sigh, the Metrons. The same Metrons who will check on humans several thousand after Cestus III to see if we made progress will again test us like 3-5 years after this. I kinda felt like they'd be in no hurry to diddle with humans again. Eh, I'm sure some fans were bouncing in their seats going "OMG Metrons!!!"

Yeah "handwaving excuse" ahoy. I'm already numbed to it, don't even bother. I still liked this episode. Why?

Because it was a legitimately compelling story with a great performance by Melissa Navia who finally has something important to do. Celia Gooding was also fantastic and I was even misty eyed in the end when the Gorn died and Uhura and Ortegas were reunited. The emotional stakes weren't diffused by Carol F'n Kane. Nobody danced. Ethan Peck moved his face a bit more than usual. And yeah, they mentioned The Constellation and Decker, so that will always put me in a good mood since "The Doomsday Machine" is my favorite Star Trek story franchise wide. This one worked for me.

Could have done without the Metrons, but this was a solid 7/10.

Unlike the rest of ya, I don't give 6's to episodes I don't like. A 7 is really good by my ranking.

One more to go. If the season finale is at least as good as this, I'll come back next season.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I think we have to question whether the female Gorn was even real. There were quite a few indications that she might not have been real, at least in the events that we witnessed.

 

[Paul755]

Yeah, the involvement of the Metrons is the only real negative for me. Including them was just unnecessary.

Otherwise I thought it was fantastic. It’s a shame they waited until the tail end of S3 to give us a proper Ortegas episode but at least they delivered a good one.

8/10

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

La'An firing on the Gorn with a weapon on kill seems extreme... Can we say her phaser was set to stun but the Gorn was so injured stun was enough to kill her?

Even on stun or medium settings; with enough hits, especially to a weakened person, could kill them.

Even a species as tough as the Gorn w/o armor can't take that many hits.

Remember, the Gorn Pilot had a long term infection in the leg on top of that & was eating whatever bugs she could killl.

There's no way she could be that healthy or anywhere near 100%.

So 3 Stun Shots that burn big holes into her body would be enough to kill her.

 

[thribs]

Imagine if the TNG episode “The Enemy” ended like this; with Worf shooting the Romulan.
There should be serious consequences for La’an for this. That isn’t acceptable behaviour.

 

[cooleddie74]

Yeah, the involvement of the Metrons is the only real negative for me. Including them was just unnecessary.

Otherwise I thought it was fantastic. It’s a shame they waited until the tail end of S3 to give us a proper Ortegas episode but at least they delivered a good one.

8/10

The Metron was the reason I didn't give this a 10.

 

[DaveyNY]

Yeah, the involvement of the Metrons is the only real negative for me. Including them was just unnecessary.

Except, the Metron are the whole setup right from the get go.

It was their gravimetric disturbance area/wormhole that the Enterprise was sent to investigate.

We realize it at the end, but the Enterprise crew never finds out, due to the erasure of Ortega's knowledge of that.

There are hints that something or someone else was involved throughout the episode.