In the Fan Art forum I’m presently working on a design for the Gorn ship referenced in “Arena” as part of my Unseen TOS project. I’m exploring what Matt Jefferies or Wah Chang could have designed and had constructed with the resources at hand and strictly from the perspective of what influences, both real world and fictional, they could be aware of back when the show was being produced.
Was that not the same basic approach that led to the design of the Gorn ship in TOS-R: "Arena"?
The first we learn of the Gorn, and apparently the first The Federation learns of them, is when they irradicate the Cestus 3 outpost without warning. Their justification was they saw the outpost as an intrusion into their space. But no mention of the Gorn warning Federation ships not to trespass into their territory or no prior warnings to vacate the planet first. Just sudden attack and destruction.
Why no prior warnings? Or how did the Gorn not even notice anyone intruding into their space until the outpost was already established?
From the Federation’s viewpoint no one seemed to be around to object to them establishing an outpost in that system. No wonder Kirk initially sees it as an unprovoked attack. If the Gorn are so territorial then why no advance warning the Federation they were intruding into Gorn space?
One of the most interesting things about "Arena" is the degree to which it--unintentionally--provides an early example of an alternative view of the Federation as a colonialist and imperialist power. It is written, of course, by citizens of such a power, people who were steeped in a certain historical tradition. The most englightened version of the conventional historical narrative--at least back in the 1960s--about territorial disputes like the one depicted in "Arena" held that, as you (and Kirk) say, the expanding/colonizing power only "accidentally" stumbled upon someone else's territory, that they couldn't possibly have known what they were doing. (Obviously there were much more bellicose interpretations involving manifest destiny, etc.)
But that's not really possible, is it? As you say, it seems pretty unlikely that one could construct a colony in someone else's sovereign territory without each side noticing the other. Borderline impossible, in fact. It seems much more likely that warnings
were, in fact, both given and received, but were also ignored by the colonizer. There could be a variety of reasons for this, and we would need to see them actually shown or discussed onscreen to be able to speak more specifically to them.
This is a potentially interesting (and almost certainly inadvertent) side effect of what SNW is doing with the Gorn. One could very easily interpret the Gorn's actions in that show as being a form of warning to stay away--"the frontier pushing back," as Krall said in
Star Trek Beyond. A nation which respected the boundaries of other sovereign powers and which did not wish to be a colonialist/imperialist power would recognize that the frontier had pushed back, and accept that it could not boldly go wherever it wanted without consequence. The Federation did not. While we of course cannot condone the Gorn's actions, we can hardly credit the Federation's insistence that the attack couldn't have been predicted.
