I like that they did this.
For better or worse, one of the most memorable moments from Star Trek: The Original Series is when William Shatner’s James T. Kirk got into an awkwardly choreographed fight with a Gorn. Back then, this lizard-like alien was brought to life merely by putting an actor in a rubber suit. Decades later, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds used modern visual effects to make these creatures look much more frightening, almost like the Xenomorphs from Alien. With just a few weeks to go until Strange New Worlds Season 3 premieres on the 2025 TV schedule, showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alsono Myers gave an interested explanation for why they retconned the Gorn’s appearance.
The Season 2 finale “Hegemony” ended with Captain Christopher Pike and the USS Enterprise crew locked in combat with the Gorn, so it was only fitting that Goldsman and Myers addressed these reptilian menaces at the Q&A for the world premiere of Season 3’s debut episode, titled “Hegemony, Part II,” at the Tribeca Festival (via StarTrek.com). Goldsman shared with the crows that his and Myers’ “fascination” with the Gorn began in childhood, then explained:
What I loved about the Gorn was that it was an opportunity to retcon something into a real monster. What we do in Star Trek and, you'll see, we only do it with the Gorn, is that we start by seeing the other. And often, we end by engaging our empathy and understanding common ground. That's great, and it doesn't mean that there isn't real evil in the world. And so, what we wanted to do with the Gorn is give you a monster that at least at first seemed irredeemable.Although a Gorn from the Mirror Universe was briefly seen in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode “In a Mirror, Darkly Part II,” Strange New Worlds is the first time this alien species have been explored in a significant way on a live-action show since the TOS days. While I’m sure some Star Trek fans will debate whether the Gorn are pure evil or not, I do like what Akiva Goldsman said about bringing these aliens as close to such a classification as possible. We may understand what drives the Gorn, but from my point of view, there’s nothing that indicates they’re redeemable.
With that recontextualization of the Gorn came the overhauled physical design, and while that may certain rub certain Star Trek purists the wrong way, I’m glad Strange New Worlds took this approach. That’s not to say I think the show would have just put a guy in a rubber suit again if they’d decided to stick with something closer to what was shown on The Original Series, but I like that this series opted to turn them into something more animalistic. It made their grand return in the Season 1 episodes “Memento Mori” and “All Those Who Wander” all the more frightening.
We’ll see how Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ wraps up this arc with the Gorn when “Hegemony, Part II” premieres Thursday, July 17. It was also announced last month that in addition to the already-confirmed Season 4, Strange New Worlds will end with a shortened fifth season in the coming years.
