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

[DaveyNY]

That's been a part of UFO lore for decades now. Star Trek is Johnny Come Lately on this idea.

Oh really???

MARCH 29th, 1968

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[fireproof78]

Oh really???

MARCH 29th, 1968

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Ok...only 5 years late.

 

[TRON JA307020]

And even if it had been - so what? The two visiting Organians did the same thing to Archer's crew in "Observer Effect(ENT)" and half of Trekdom didn't have a meltdown over it.

In

And even if it had been - so what? The two visiting Organians did the same thing to Archer's crew in "Observer Effect(ENT)" and half of Trekdom didn't have a meltdown over it.

Actually I was upset. It made kirks encounter with the organians seem much less cool. Unfortunately SNW has done it with two powerful aliens now. Trelane and the Metrons all in one season. I fully expect they'll keep mining TOS. 10 episodes without tos aliens seems to be a lot for this writing team to handle. God forbid they ever had to write 26 episodes on their own. Lol

 

[Starflight]

I read them as a military organization that just finished one war and is on the verge of another. La’an is mounting a rescue operation in unseen, hostile territory with dangerous wildlife. She likely ordered them to set phasers to kill.

This is the exact reason you'd set it to stun though, surely. It's dark, they have low visibility and no knowledge of what's on the planet other than that Ortegas is somewhere down there.

If you set phasers to stun, you can fire on sight - you'll disable any hostile lifeforms just as reliably as the kill setting would and, if you accidentally hit Ortegas (or a non-hostile lifeform, like, say, this Gorn), you can retrieve them and beam them back to the Enterprise. There is literally no reason I can think of to have the phasers set to kill. It doesn't allow them to deal with threats any more efficiently than stun does, and just introduces the risk of either killing Ortegas or making the exact cock-up La'an makes here.

 

[fireproof78]

Stun is woefully underused in Trek.

 

[Tuskin38]

and thus what appears to be a Gorn could be literally any reptilian species

Not really, she looked like a Gorn straight up. There's no mistaking her.

 

[Starflight]

All I can really do is re-add the context you cut out:

It's also insane to lethally shoot something that she vaguely thinks might be a Gorn when she has no idea where in space she is or what's going on on the planet, and thus what appears to be a Gorn could be literally any reptilian species (in the same way that Betazoids, Bajorans, Ilyrians, and Humans all look virtually identical, especially at a distance in low lighting and wearing face-obscuring clothing, as the Gorn was).

And even if the script does intend her to fatally shoot it because she IDs it as a Gorn, the portrayal on-screen just makes it appear that she had her phaser set to kill by default (on a rescue mission in the dark!) and fired instantly at a vague cloaked figure.

And reiterate that it's largely beside the point, as stun is obviously the best option even if we are to accept that she IDs it as a Gorn.

 

[Farscape One]

I'm glad we FINALLY get a heavy Ortegas episode. This has been long overdue.

There are clear parallels to multiple episodes of the franchise... "The Enemy", "Darmok", and "DAWN" were clearly where the main story got its inspiration from. Other parallels were more subtle: "THE GALILEO SEVEN" (lightened shuttle load, flare as a distress signal, ticking clock with the medicine delivery) and "GRAVITY". (That episode is the only way I can reconcile Ortegas teaching the Gorn chess and her learning the Gorn game... that time on the other side of that wormhole was faster than outside, which is what Tuvok, Tom, and The Doctor went through in "GRAVITY", only for a much greater length of time. Yes, gravity was greater on that moon and her perception of time would definitely be longer, but considering the Enterprise seemed to only be there for about 2 or 3 days, it's not enough time for all the events we see happen on that moon.) Having parallels to that extent is not necessarily a bad thing, but it CAN seem like it's going overboard with the franchise self-referencing.

Ortegas: I actually liked that she was talking to herself throughout the episode. There are two ways you can really go about a survival mode episode like this (at least, when she is by herself). You can do what we see here or go the almost entirely silent route, like in "WHO MONITORS THE BIRDS?" from SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND. (By the way, I highly recommend that episode if you are able to find it... very well done. I also can't recommend that series highly enough.) In the case of "WHO MONITORS THE BIRDS?", Hawkes was on an actual mission, so being silent would very much be a requirement for him. In "Terrarium", Ortegas was not on an assassination mission... she crash landed on that moon. While I can see the need to maintain silence in an unknown environment, considering her known character traits, her talking to herself throughout makes a lot of sense. Particularly in the beginning, when she realizes she was bleeding from her head, she likely figured it was a good idea to stay awake for as long as possible in case there was a deeper head injury. (And honestly, I can see the utility of talking out loud to yourself while figuring things out. I have done the same thing many times, so I get it.) A lot of the rest of the time, she was talking either with the Gorn or around her, and sometimes people can pick up other languages simply by more exposure to words and talking. I do, however, think some of the things said here could just have been her reacting to something rather than talking about it. This is a visual medium, after all... you can show the audience stuff and they will understand. (Having said that, I do like how resourceful Ortegas is... this is a side we haven't really seen of her. I like that.) Thinking about it more... it was overdone a bit.

Speaking of the Gorn being able to understand Ortegas, this helps prove, once again, that the Gorn ARE an intelligent species. Either this Gorn knew of english beforehand or she was able to pick up from Ortegas talking very quickly. Also, it's entirely possible that the Gorn simply are incapable of speaking in the same way other humanoids do. They can understand other languages but are not able to speak them, maybe simply due to their biology.

I like how the Gorn was the first one to extend the olive branch... when she picked up Ortegas, it certainly seemed like an attack. Until that creature came out and it seems the Gorn saved her life. And again when she threw some of the creature to her as a food offering. This differentiates the episode from "The Enemy" and "DAWN"... in those cases, it was always the Starfleet officer making the first friendly overture.

I liked their bonding a lot, and that just made the Gorn's death more tragic. (Though I saw her death coming as soon as she appeared.) However, I can't completely fault La'an. Even on a stun setting, if another person is injured, that can be fatal. The Gorn was already injured badly. Considering La'an saw a Gorn heading directly over to Ortegas, she reacted exactly as she should have done based on what she saw and all the information available to her at that time.

Uhura: I have to say, she seemed much more whiny than she ever has been. (Granted, she's still a fairly recently full commissioned ensign, but it just felt out of place for her.) I also don't like her manually falsifying data to make a decision work in her favor. (If it's so easy to change the data in real time like this, how can anything seen be fully trusted?) I do like that Pike knew about it when Uhura was ready to tell him what she did. This episode did not do her any favors, however. But at least it does highlight one of Uhura's established character traits from TOS, the movies, and SNW... her loyalty to her friends. (However, I do have to question Pike's command thinking here, considering he is risking the entire ship on false data. It's one thing to make a decision based on false data without knowing it from the start, but quite another when you are gambling your crew's lives on false data knowingly. This does not make Pike look like a good captain here.)

The medicine delivery ticking clock came out of nowhere. If it was mentioned at the beginning of the episode, it would not have stuck out like a sore thumb here. But saying it long after Erica crashed was adding a clock for no reason except it's a tv show. It felt artifical. (Though nice shout out to Captain Decker... just please SNW producers, for the love of the prophets, DO NOT do anything more than that regarding "THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE".)

By the way, a question: why did it take them TWO DAYS before they decided to send in a probe to check for Erica? Seriously, that sould have been one of the first things done if sensor contact and communications were lost.

While I had some problems with the episode, I thought it was very well done because this kind of story with Ortegas and the Gorn is very much one of the core philosophies of the franchise: understanding and working with others who are enemies. While this certainly isn't as well executed as "Darmok", which captures the message possibly better than ANY episode in the franchise, it definitely presents the message well. Which is why I would have rated this episode fairly highly...

Until the Metron appeared. That damned Metron. That was absolutely, totally, and completely unnecessary. In fact, it brings down the episode quite a bit. There are people who would say that the current era adds in the 'fanwank' way too much, and when you have instances like this, it's difficult to argue against that perception. The episode was already borrowing VERY heavily off others, it certainly didn't need to add in "ARENA" with the Metrons. There's being self-referential, and then there's 'fanwank'. This was absolutely the latter.

Despite some of my issues, I would have rated this an 8.0. But the Metron drops this to a 6.5. (So for here, it rounds up to a 7.)

 

[Mudd]

This is the exact reason you'd set it to stun though, surely.

Set what to stun? A goddamn heavy rifle?

 

[Donald G]

Question: Does a phaser set on stun even work on Gorns?
Some life forms can shrug off phaser stun, and others have needed multiple shots to render them unconscious.

 

[Mudd]

Pike issued them special Gorn-hunting rifles with "adjusted harmonics" in "Hegemony." The scaly bastards are tough to kill.

 

[Starflight]

Set what to stun? A goddamn heavy rifle?

It's a phaser rifle. You know, from Star Trek.

 

[Trekker4747]

Set what to stun?

The fictional weapon that can do whatever they want it to do being used by the organization focused on peace and exploration.

 

[Donald G]

Question Two: Does a 23rd century phaser rifle even have a stun setting?

Remember, Kirk was angry when Spock had a phaser rifle beamed down to him on Delta Vega to deal with Mitchell, because Spock thought that the hand phases the party beamed down with were insufficient.

 

[Detached Nacelle]

Memory alpha would have you believe all phaser rifles are the same just updated designs so by their logic it would have 16 beam settings just like it does in the 24th

 

[Trekker4747]

So, other than physical size and maybe the energy capacity what's the difference between a hand phaser, a phaser rifle and even those tiny finger phasers? I would think all have the same range between stun, kill and vaporize?

 

[Starflight]

Question Two: Does a 23rd century phaser rifle even have a stun setting.

I think Discovery established that they do (mostly so they could have the drama of having someone order that it be set to kill), but don't quote me on that.

So, other than physical size and maybe the energy capacity what's the difference between a hand phaser, a phaser rifle and even those tiny finger phasers? I would think all have the same range between stun, kill and vaporize?

I've wondered this for years! Especially since Riker has that line in "Frame of Mind" about how a hand phaser could blow up a whole building, and the "phaser on overload" fiasco from "Conscience of the King", both of which suggest a hand phaser alone could wipe out a whole army.

FWIW in the videogame Elite Force, the Type-3 rifle has a special sight you can aim down which gives you thermal vision or something, which might be the main benefit.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

"You won't remember me, and perhaps someday we may need to reset your perception of the Gorn as well." Potentially confusing pronoun usage, but the Metron does several times use "you" to refer to "all of humanity/Gornity" and not just specifically Ortegas and Gornette.

To me, that also sounded like setup for later erasing all of humanity's memories of the Gorn, to make all the continuity track perfectly.

Reminds me of right at the start of Disco when they kept saying "don't worry, we have a brilliant plan to make this all work with canon!"

I joked "what, are they going to order everyone not to talk about it, like that Simpsons episode?", which was the most comically stupid idea I could think of, and then two seasons later that was exactly it!

Exactly. The Metron was talking about erasing memories. Whether the "you" in that sentence referred to just Ortegas or all of humanity is up for debate, I suppose. I don't know if this is the writers being intentionally oblique or if it was just sloppy writing. (Considering how underwhelming this season has been, I suspect the latter.)

There are TWO planets where significant action occurs in " Arena": Cestus III, where a Federation outpost was annihilated by the Gorn, and the unnamed planet where Kirk fought the Gorn as part of the Metron's test.

Yup. Easy to misremember because Sisko says in "Trials and Tribble-ations" that Kirk fought the Gorn on Cestus III, and I'm guessing lots of fans have rewatched that DS9 episode more recently than "Arena."

Apparently there are a lot of sneaky aliens having quiet, un-named and memory erasing contacts with humans prior to previous "first" contacts.

Which is exactly why SNW shouldn't be doing stories like this. We've had loads of "previously unknown / secret first contact" stories on Trek, and all the novelty is gone.

Did you miss the part where her emergency rations were damaged?

The episode was so dimly lit, it's no wonder if they did. You couldn't see what was happening half the time.

I think it’s arguable in TOS that the Vulcans weren’t founding members and actually first encountered in the last fifty years of so. In the 70s fandom started leaning that way and then the following productions officially adopted the idea.

What’s also sort of funny is the idea of the founding members comes entirely from the aliens with speaking roles in “Journey to Babel”

Vague memory: There was some Trek writer or someone on staff at ENT who got a call from Brannon Braga or Rick Berman asking who the founding members of the Federation were. Mike Okuda? Doug Drexler? Someone like that, I think.

This person knew that nothing had been officially established on the question of which races founded the UFP, but longtime fanon had said it was Earth, Vulcan, the Andorians, the Tellarites, and the Alpha Centaurians. (I think this came from Franz Joseph.) The ENT knew it might be a fandom shitstorm if they did something different from that. so they just told B&B to use Earth, Vulcan, Andoria, and Tellar as the four founders. (I think Alpha Centauri had already been established as a human colony by this point.)

Actually I was upset. It made kirks encounter with the organians seem much less cool. Unfortunately SNW has done it with two powerful aliens now. Trelane and the Metrons all in one season. I fully expect they'll keep mining TOS. 10 episodes without tos aliens seems to be a lot for this writing team to handle.

Yeah. I'm personally beyond sick of Kirk's thunder being stolen by prequel shows, like Archer being sent to Rura Penthe 100 year before STVI.

 

[Donald G]

Memory alpha would have you believe all phaser rifles are the same just updated designs so by their logic it would have 16 beam settings just like it does in the 24th

Thanks.
So, it's basically three and a half decade old fanon based on very informed behind-the-scenes worldbuilding for TNG by Sternbach and Okuda for the Writer's Technical Manual and expanded for the professionally published version, but never actually established onscreen, so free to be fudged or finessed by future productions, for good or ill.

 

[Detached Nacelle]

Thanks.
So, it's basically three and a half decade old fanon based on very informed behind-the-scenes worldbuilding for TNG by Sternbach and Okuda for the Writer's Technical Manual and expanded for the professionally published version, but never actually established onscreen, so free to be fudged or finessed by future productions, for good or ill.