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

[Aragorn]

With the last two episodes, La'an is being set up to become the final season villain.

 

[Detached Nacelle]

Since when does SNW care about canon?

Since 5/5/22

 

[Rahul]

I liked this episode a lot!

• I also thought the Metron at the end was unnecessary. It makes canon & "Arena" even more messy. However I don't hate it either, I'm okay with it
• The ending with La'an shooting the Gorn was weirdly dark, no typical StarTrek happy understanding ending. But also not unrealistic, so again, not hating it
• The planet, the creatures, the Gorn - that was one of the best looking Star Trek episodes, ever
• This episode is basically a remake of TNG's "The enemy". Even the planet looks similar
• I like how here they're basically friendly right from the start - no reason to be antagonistic in this situation at all. Also differentiates this episode a bit
• I love how this season's theme is basically "monsters". I'm a fan of monsters. And especially space monsters
• Finally an Ortegas-episode! And both the character, the actress & the episode delivered.

 

[FederationHistorian]

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.

It’s too bad the Gorn died, though it’s hard to blame La’an given all her past experiences. She thought she was rescuing Ortegas from her captor.

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.

La'An firing on the Gorn with a weapon on kill seems extreme...

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?

 

[thribs]

Her firing on the Gorn was fine but why was it set to kill? Why did they even have rifles in the first place? It was a rescue operation

 

[Trekker4747]

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.

As a space cop in the 23rd century serving on an organization focused on science and exploration she should know better and her weapons have a stun setting.

 

[Quinton]

You know, it’s funny. Unlike many, I wasn’t particularly wild about getting an Ortegas episode. Nothing against it, but Ortegas just hasn’t been a standout character for me. With the streaming era’s dreadfully slim episode counts, I wasn’t in any rush to get this.

Yet… what do you know. I rewatched “Terrarium” after work, and yep, sure enough, I think I’ve finally seen the light. Ortegas is cool.

 

[Trekker4747]

You know, it’s funny. Unlike many, I wasn’t particularly wild about getting an Ortegas episode. Nothing against it, but Ortegas just hasn’t been a standout character for me. With the streaming era’s dreadfully slim episode counts, I wasn’t in any rush to get this.

Yet… what do you know. I rewatched “Terrarium” after work, and yep, sure enough, I think I’ve finally seen the light. Ortegas is cool.

She flies the ship.

 

[Michael]

It’s so interesting how this show can go from whatever the hell that was last week — one of the most baffling hours of Trek — to something as competently made as this. This is now my favorite episode of this season; and surely one of the best of the show. Which is not to say that it was perfect.

Pretty early on I guessed that the lights Ortegas was seeing would turn out to be the Metrons, but I kept pushing it away in my mind thinking that surely — surely! — they wouldn’t be doing something as uninspired as this. While it didn’t ruin the episode for me, I thought it was super unnecessary, and reading through the comments here and elsewhere it seems like that feeling is nearly universal among viewers. You gotta wonder just who this was included for, as neither the people who care about canon and continuity nor the ones who just watch the show as its own thing seem to appreciate it. (That said, I thought the Metron looked awesome and the actor performing them was perfect.)

Watching this I thought to myself that it was almost like a retelling of “Arena” for a modern audience. And I gotta say, as much as I love the original iconic episode, I liked this much more. Production design and the score were top-notch and basically feature film quality; I’ll really need this one as a soundtrack release. The AR wall was put to perfect use in creating the moon’s eerily surreal atmosphere, and the animatronics on the Gorn were some of the best I ever saw on the small screen. Melissa Navia fired on all cylinders and delivered her best performance on the show so far. Celia Rose Gooding and Anson Mount also stood out to me. Especially the former continues to be one of the best cast performers on the show.

The end was heart-breaking and there was a big part of me hoping they would find a way to rescue the Gorn to the ship instead of the more telegraphed way they ended the character. The one thing the episode is missing is one more scene with La’an and Erica. Wouldn’t need to be much; just something that displays some uneasiness between them. I’m sure there’s a part of La’an that feels terrible about what happened.

How did she know the Enterprise would see it if she’s on the other side of the wormhole? Literally makes zero sense.

How do you mean, “how did she know”? She did not know; it was a hunch. She said a couple of times that surely her friends were looking for her. Should she not have even tried, missing possibly the only chance she could have been saved, just because she didn’t know?

 

[Noname Given]

Surely that's why the phasers have a stun setting! Even moreso because it's a rescue mission and they knew they were approaching Ortegas' position; setting them to kill opened up the risk of fatally hitting her in the crossfire (especially as all three officers fired at once).

I could maybe buy it a little bit easier if they'd scanned the area before going down and there was a line that gave La'an the foreknowledge that a Gorn was on the planet - I'd still be wondering why she didn't use stun, but at least it wouldn't be a case of her going to a completely unknown planet in a totally mysterious part of space and fatally shooting the first non-human thing she sees, firing a volley of lethal shots over her friend's head in the process.

I actually don't have an issue the La'an's actions as it definitely fits the character. She may have had it set to stun, but IMMEDIATELY switched it to 'Kill' and fired once she saw a Gorn. She will always see any Gorn as an immediate and deadly threat to be dispatched with prejudice.

 

[thribs]

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.

 

[fireproof78]

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.

Was there reason to go in set to kill?

By and large, Starfleet weapon policy should be stun unless indicated otherwise.

I get the drama of the moment in Star Trek but stun as a setting is a nice feature that doesn't get used often enough. Wide angle stun and boarding parties and hostiles are dropped.

 

[Noname Given]

I liked this episode a lot!

• I also thought the Metron at the end was unnecessary. It makes canon & "Arena" even more messy. However I don't hate it either, I'm okay with it

I disagree as it actually fixes some issues in the episode including the big one of:

How could the Gorn so expertly fake a live radio conversation between the (deceased two days earlier) Commadore Travers and Captain Kirk?

and

If the Gorn did have all this in depth knowledge of Starfleet and The Federation, why would the Gorn captain immediately assume they were invaders?

Answer? The Gorn didn't fake that conversation; the Metrons did as part of setting the entire confrontation up.

Who knows what info they fed the Gorn Captain to make him want to obliterate a Federation Civilian Research colony?

 

[Trekker4747]

How do you mean, “how did she know”? She did not know; it was a hunch. She said a couple of times that surely her friends were looking for her. Should she not have even tried, missing possibly the only chance she could have been saved, just because she didn’t know?

Spock did the same thing.

 

[NCC-73515]

Is it me or did the Metrons sound like the Goa’uld?

Ah, that's what it reminded me of...

There's also Nagilum. I want to see "him" again.

...and that!

It's weird, Lower Decks basically fleshed out the Pakleds and I'm not bothered by it. Technically SNW is doing the same with the Gorn, but somehow trying to shoehorn it into TOS just makes it really bad for some reason.

Because LDS is a sequel and SNW is a prequel

 

[Pauln6]

It was a very derivative plot, a homage/rehash of the movie Enemy Mine, but Melissa Navia does great when she's given something to work with. I felt that revealing the Metrons was largely unnecessary, or at least the exposition was. I think a silent cameo, where everyone is frozen and the alien just walks around, looking them all over would have been enough.

Overall, very mid table for the season.

 

[FreezeC77]

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.

"Hey, I'm on a barren rock that somehow has a breathable atmosphere... Oh look it gets so close to the gas giant that the gasses actually blanket the entire moon... but hey, I'm sure there's food here somewhere."

 

[Nerys Myk]

I’ll say this much: the costume and animatronic work in this episode was astounding. They really brought the Gorn to life. She felt like a real character brought to life.

The Gorn costume is pretty cool.

I wanna see some actual phasers in SNW. Can't remember if we have or not.

What does that mean? More of the handheld type?

 

[Nerys Myk]

TNG did the same thing IIRC. I don't recall if it was a vaccine, but there was a medical emergency with a time limit.

Doesn't Galileo Seven use that trope?

 

[DaveyNY]

haven't seen anyone mention yet that the Metrons saved Ortega's and the Gorn's life during the explosion. The heat shield wasn't enough, but a blue glow suddenly appears to protect them.

At first I thought it was the Enterprise beaming them up, but then when the Metron appeared I realized what it was.