For higher or worse, one of the vital memorable moments from Star Trek: The Authentic Collection is when William Shatner’s James T. Kirk bought into an awkwardly choreographed struggle with a Gorn. Again then, this lizard-like alien was delivered to life merely by placing an actor in a rubber go well with. Many years later, Star Trek: Unusual New Worlds used fashionable visible results to make these creatures look far more horrifying, nearly just like the Xenomorphs from Alien. With just some weeks to go till Unusual New Worlds Season 3 premieres on the 2025 TV schedule, showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alsono Myers gave an clarification for why they retconned the Gorn’s look.
The Season 2 finale “Hegemony” ended with Captain Christopher Pike and the USS Enterprise crew locked in fight with the Gorn, so it was solely becoming that Goldsman and Myers addressed these reptilian menaces on the Q&A for the world premiere of Season 3’s debut episode, titled “Hegemony, Half II,” on the Tribeca Competition (by way of StarTrek.com). Goldsman shared with the crows that his and Myers’ “fascination” with the Gorn started in childhood, then defined:
What I cherished concerning the Gorn was that it was a possibility to retcon one thing into an actual monster. What we do in Star Trek and, you may see, we solely do it with the Gorn, is that we begin by seeing the opposite. And infrequently, we finish by participating our empathy and understanding frequent floor. That is nice, and it doesn’t suggest that there is not actual evil on this planet. And so, what we wished to do with the Gorn is offer you a monster that at the least at first appeared irredeemable.
Though a Gorn from the Mirror Universe was briefly seen within the Star Trek: Enterprise episode “In a Mirror, Darkly Half II,” Unusual New Worlds is the primary time this alien species have been explored in a major manner on a live-action present because the TOS days. Whereas I’m positive some Star Trek followers will debate whether or not the Gorn are pure evil or not, I do like what Akiva Goldsman mentioned about bringing these aliens as near such a classification as attainable. We might perceive what drives the Gorn, however from my perspective, there’s nothing that signifies they’re redeemable.
With that recontextualization of the Gorn got here the overhauled bodily design, and whereas that will sure rub sure Star Trek purists the fallacious manner, I’m glad Unusual New Worlds took this method. That’s to not say I believe the present would have simply put a man in a rubber go well with once more in the event that they’d determined to stay with one thing nearer to what was proven on The Authentic Collection, however I like that this collection opted to show them into one thing extra animalistic. It made their grand return within the Season 1 episodes “Memento Mori” and “All These Who Wander” all of the extra horrifying.
We’ll see how Star Trek: Unusual New Worlds’ wraps up this arc with the Gorn when “Hegemony, Half II” premieres Thursday, July 17. It was additionally introduced final month that along with the already-confirmed Season 4, Unusual New Worlds will finish with a shortened fifth season within the coming years.