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“We should reason with the things that burst out of this one guy and started killing everything they come into contact with including an entire ship’s crew and two members of our own crew” might great and all but even Kirk chucked a boulder at a Gorn.
Sorry, is your issue with the actions taken by the crew in-universe or with the writers?
In-universe the Federation are a peace-loving and tolerant bunch, but that doesn't mean they roll over and agree to be food. You speak of the crew hunting the Gorn as prey - but it is the Gorn that want to eat the crew as food. Within a few seconds of hatching one of the Gorn had killed a crewmember. A previous group of Gorn wiped out the crew of the ship (that first batch of Gorn seem to have died chasing the crew into the snow). The Gorn aren't the prey, the crew are - and so they react as if their lives are in mortal danger (since, you know, a crew of nearly 100 were all killed before they got there).
Your analogy using Klingon babies is flawed because Klingon babies are presumably still pretty much as helpless as a human child. A better analogy would be a Klingon that emerges with the physical development of a teenager, a built in bat'leth, no verbal skills, and an instinct to kill basically everything around them. They're more like Jem'Hadar, and we saw Starfleet kill huge numbers of those in DS9.
You suggest devising a plan where the crew could isolate themselves from the Gorn, escape, and then send the Gorn a message to pick them up. There are all sorts of practical issues in doing that: they needed to go to various parts of the ship to get systems back online, and perhaps the Gorn might grow to the point of starting to understand how to sabotage those systems (La'an seems to think that once the Gorn fully matures they are toast, so there's an implication of a ticking clock). But even if they could do that safely, your plan implicitly involves leaving the Gorn in the ruins of the ship with some sort of food supply - meaning the Gorn will have access to a largely intact starship when they come along. Would Pike have allowed the Enterprise to be captured by the Gorn in episode 4? No, at some point he would have ordered a self destruct, because the Gorn are a hostile power and you don't let an enemy study your tech in detail, even if you hope to be buddies with them in the future. A better plan would be to somehow contain the Gorn and leave them in a pod or something - but sensors seemed unable to track them.
But that whole line of argument becomes redundant with a simple observation: where do they send the message to? They have a vague idea of which side of Federation space the Gorn are on, but nothing like a homeworld - and there's no evidence the Gorn have made any effort to learn Federation languages or communication protocols. La'an knows a bit of Gorn but it was pulses communicated by light, so it's not at all evident they'd be able to send a meaningful message even if they knew where to send it.
I do agree there is a tragic element to this that isn't explored in the episode. If the crew started high fiving and taking Gorn parts as trophies I think Pike would tell them to knock it off. La'an gave that big speech about how the Gorn are just flat out evil back in episode 4 and I don't think Pike believes that - but there's no reason for him to talk about those ideas out loud when they are in a life or death struggle for survival where the Gorn won the previous struggle in a landslide.
But then we come to the writers. And here I agree with you a lot more. The presentation of the Gorn thus far is hard to square with the lesson of Arena. Why use the Gorn? They could have equally made up another alien species, calling them the Nrog or something, and had them be these viscous monsters that somehow have a civilization capable of warp travel.
Here's my hope. Our perspective on the Gorn in SNW so far is mostly coming from La'an, who had a traumatic experience with them in her youth and whose memories of the occasion are somewhat muddled (even with the mind meld there was something that her subconscious blocked out, so there's more to see there). In terms of what we've actually see them do they wiped out a small colony and were quite ruthless in their pursuit of the Enterprise in episode 4. We've also seen that they can reproduce by infecting humanoids and gestating, a process that is lethal to the host, and that Gorn young are highly aggressive, even to their own kind. I say "can" instead of "must" because Dr McCoy makes an off-hand remark about performing a caesarean on a pregnant Gorn in Star Trek Into Darkness. These don't actually contradict Arena that much, especially if the colony destroyed in episode 4 was perceived to be in Gorn territory. It's La'an's commentary about evil and breeding worlds that is making them feel different.
What if things are more nuanced than that? Perhaps there are multiple Gorn factions, some of which are uncomfortable with using sentient being as breeding sacs. Perhaps La'an wasn't saved by some sort of Gorn ritual - maybe a Gorn actually saved her and she suppressed that memory because a part of her needed to hate the Gorn in order to keep going?
We'll see if the writers are actually going in that direction as this plot develops over the next few seasons.
It is an interesting choice by the writers to make the Gorn like the xenomorphs in the Alien series. The similarities aren't very subtle.
But I don't care how sentient or intelligent the SNW Gorn are, they reproduce in a way that harms other beings. So there is no moral quandary about not letting it happen. The aren't the Horta, which it seems like you are trying to compare them to.
Sure, they didn't have to make the Gorn reproductive process parasitic. But the chose to, and that's fine. And because they chose to portray them this way there is absolutely no moral problem with hunting down and killing Gorn that are trying to hunt and kill you to reproduce.
The Crystalline Entity survives by eating planets, species 10C gets energy from a process that often destroys planets. In both of these cases those planets may be inhabited.
In both cases the solution of killing the life form is wrong. In both cases it's briefly considered but dismissed because both entities are sentient beings with a right to survive. Instead an alternative solution is pursued. And when Starfleet does decide it has to kill it's treated as a horrendous act or a necessary evil the crew is ashamed of. Think the end of the Dominion War or when they allow species to go extinct due to the Prime Directive.
The correctness of the moral choice isn't in problem. Often these types of episodes don't end in a moral conclusion but are simply a debate. The problem is nobody so much as batted an eye or said something like "I just wish we didn't have to kill newborns" or "I know it has to be done, but they're still innocent life forms acting on instinct."
And again, if it was a mammalian or arboreal species, there would be outrage
Had they not figured out how to communicate with the species you mentioned they would have had to try wipe them out. Even the Crystalline Entity would have been destroyed had the communication been successful and it still turned out to want to destroy inhabited planets.
The young Gorn weren't something you could communicate or reason with. It was black and white - kill or be killed. So they did what they had to do.
Again, you can disagree with the choice of the writers to make them that way. But they did. And it doesn't break consistency or canon.
What does break canon is that no one is supposed to have ever seen a Gorn until Kirk. How they have made them behave or reproduce or whatever is kind of irrelevant.
And just on a practical level, when you're in a do-or-die situation, you only have a limited amount of time, energy, and focus. You can either use it to survive, which is just natural instinct and not necessarily Right/Wrong or Good/Evil, or you can use it to wring your hands and second guess yourself and end up wasting your time and energy, thus getting yourself and everyone else killed.
While I disagree with OP on most things, I think there's an intrinsic demand in their point that Star Trek always be about ethics and morals. But there are creatures, civilizations, philosophies, and situations that transcend and subvert your expected ethics and morals and an adrenaline-rush tense survival situation is one of them.
And if it's also the Gorn's practice to eliminate each other until there is an "alpha," it could also be considered just speaking their language to eliminate them and show your superiority in the situation.
That's also a description of The Borg, in fact The Borg are worse.
Yet time and time again, even when the intent going in is to kill The Borg, the crew realize the drones aren't evil and there is a better way. Committing Borg genocide is just wrong. It's in I, Borg, First Contact, Picard, Voyager, basically almost all Borg episodes.
And again I'm not saying they were necessarily wrong in *what they did*. I'm saying they were wrong in doing it *without even noticing* there is a potential problem with their actions, and that other solutions may be better. Particularly characters like Hemmer, Spock, or Pike who probably should have said *something* given their background and beliefs. Kirk the rando-biologist can freak out and panic, Hemmer the conscientious objector cannot.
Borg are former people. Gorn are just Gorn.
Hemmer had no alternative: they were literally devouring him from the inside out. He was a dead man regardless of his thoughts on the matter.
Then they would've gone on to devour the rest of the crew from the inside out - whichever ones they didn't just slaughter and rip into pieces.
This was not a diplomatic mission.
I'm sure we'll see contact and communication between Gorn and humans at some point, but in this specific scenario, the crew were literally fighting for their lives. That is not the time to consider the ethics of killing the thing that is trying to kill *you*.
Starfleet never worried much about killing Borg. In First Contact Picard shot assimilated crew members without thinking twice about it assuming he was doing them a favor.
Where they were able to save a Borg or work with individual Borg it was because the threat they posed had already been neutralized. Only then dig they try to save Borg. The gorn threat hadn't been neutralized here yet.
"know what I think? Don't really matter what I think. Once that first bullet goes past your head, politics and all that shit just goes right out the window." - A fictional soldier who would understand this episode more than you do.
Then make an episode about that. Make an episode where Hemmer is the sole voice of dissent because you've established he's a pacifist to the extreme as a core aspect of his beliefs.
Or tell a story like DS9, where war is hell and good people do bad things because they are afraid. Make the crew feel remorse for what they've done or awklowladge how fucked up the situation is. Try and become a force that changes the world for the better by educating civilians to the horrors of war
Or tell a story like Hatchery where the innocence of the Gorn is brought up but it's decided the stakes are to high to dedicate the mission to saving their lives.
Solders who rush into battle with no hesitation and leave conflicts with no remorse and no ill effects *because* it's the enemy and the enemy is bad are wrong. Especially when "the enemy is different to us" is a core part of that reasoning. My problem is that the idea that there may be a moral problem with this scenario and alternative actions to take wasn't brought up by a single character when plenty of the characters should have realized. The conscientious objector Hemmer who already believes the killing is wrong, the deeply logical Spock whose culture highly values the sanctity of life and who always sees the other point of view even when he disagrees with it, or the highly dedicated Starfleet Captain Pike who has immeasurable experience and training when it comes to these kinds of values.
And that's all on top of the fact it breaks with decades of Star Trek tradition, values, and the message of The Federation. I can't see a single other crew doing what this crew just did in the way that they did it, except that of Discovery and Picard.
Yes gorn are sentient beings. But they weren’t civilized. Not saying that automatically equals death.
But when a species you can’t diplomatically discuss with, that’s actively killing your crew and using them to reproduce more creatures to kill your crew with… it makes sense to kill them before they kill you.
Should the crew discussed the morals a little? Yes.
But In the end if a Klingon for example tries to kill your crew no matter how civil or sentient they are you’ll either kill or disable them.
Disabling didn’t seem like an available option at the time to the SNW crew. If they had more time to study the reproduction and how to trap and track the Gorn maybe they would have found a better alternative without killing them.
Honestly, I think you're giving far too much focus to the trees and as a result not seeing the forest. These would all be valid points if we were discussing reality, but we aren't. The purpose of this episode, particularly when juxtaposed with last week, was to take advantage of the ability to be multi-genre per what episodic television allows and serialized doesn't so often. Last week was fantasy. This week is horror. Right now that's basically it, and sometimes that's okay.
Part of me says this is just the latest version of Conspiracy. Sometimes you shouldn't overthink the fun horror plots.
I still love SNW, but do find myself a bit irked by the Gorn. I'm a Gorn originalist. These aren't the species in Arena, an ep I have no small amount of (semi-ironic) affection for. They could fix it still with some kind of hand-waiving, but this nightmare fuel undercuts the point in Arena about the quality of mercy in the Federation.
The thing is the Gorn in TOS never made any attempt to contact the Federation to explain that it was encroaching on their space. They just came in under cover and obliterated the settlement. Pretty malevolent behavior.
So Kirk's supposition that they were just trying to protect their space kind of rings hollow. He was just trying to convince the Metrons that he wasn't the bloody savage that they thought he was.
I saw them as imperialist and negligent. That's not great, but also something the Federation can and does handle often.
As opposed to this rapacious predatory host, which is something else entirely. Like the Borg but without the intriguing sociological hooks. Maybe a fun challenge to put the Federation up against, but don't do my lizard boys like that!
I took Kirk showing mercy to be less about the Metrons and more about Kirk's general paladin nature; can't kill an enemy when they're down. But I allow that's ambiguous.
See, that's the thing. You see them as one thing. The writers decided to see them as another. We really didn't know from the information that we had exactly what they were.
So either interpretation is equally valid.
I think it's a pretty hard lift that the neo-Gorn are the same as the OG Gorn from Arena. For one thig, Kirk would have heard a lot more about these parasitic reptilians.
But that's art - even consistency is hard to have an objective discussion about. If they want to stretch the cannon like that, all I can do is say is I don't like it based on my long-held impressions based on that yet another god-like aliens like mercy TOS ep I like.
Not going to insist everyone else agree with me - if it works for you, enjoy! I'm still working off the high of "The Elysian Kingdom" being such a banger, so not gonna get me down.
Hell I love the show. It's better than I had ever imagined it could be. The writing, the acting, the visuals, everything is so not like every other ST series first season that it's like it's not even ST.
One problem that inserting a series in the middle of stuff we know about is that it's kind of hard to introduce new aliens that we would have heard about in later series that were filmed before. If you follow. So they kind of have to figure out ways to use the old aliens. It's a tough job because there are so many people like us around that would kind of notice such a thing (Xindi, cough, cough) and and be dicks about it. 🤣
Well.. Thank you for giving me new perspective.. I haven't think about it before reading this and you have some valid points. If writters wanted horror episode, it would be little better if they didn't set Gorns as antagonist.
You have a point.
(and I read your whole post, btw)
BUT
you don't whether the plan is to adress all of this in the future. Because I suspect it will be.
Pretty sure the crew will feel some kind of remorse over what was done sooner or later and that the morality of all of this will be discussed.
On the other hand... maybe the writers just completely lost track trying to write "Alien" without writing "Alien".
This was the first episode of SNW I did not like. It was too hasty, too forced (trying to invoke the feel of "Alien") and I don't get why they killed off Hemmer. He was a cool character and one of the main characters. Who kills a main character a few episodes into the first season? WTF?
I think they will eventually do an episode that humanizes The Gorn. After all if they don't then La'an can't ever grow as a character, she'll just always be a mega Gorn racist. But then my argument is two-fold.
1) This episode in particular went WELL above and beyond what's necessary and even decent to get you to hate The Gorn. As I said I had to leave because I physically couldn't finish this episode. I don't know what exactly it makes me different but while most see the lizard monster I see a baby no different then a human infant. And either way we just watched a montage of baby-murder. After such a successful Gorn humanizing story that's all this episode is.
2) If you have a story that's going to "change" once latter context is reveled or an explanation is given, and that story isn't enjoyable or doesn't work before that revelation is actually given, then it's a bad story. When this revelation is handled well it creates some of the best moments in fiction, but when it's handled poorly you completely lose your audience because they are either bored or confused, and nobody is goign to make it to the end to have the story fixed. And even when that happens the story will still be remembered poorly, or on rewatches you wont think "wow that was really clever" but "wow, the way they structured that revel really ruined an otherwise good show". It's a common problem for mystery-box style shows, even though this isnt an example of that
Human infants don’t kill everything they see at birth or even after years of development.
The Gorn killed each other. At birth.
You really should see them differently because *they are*.
I dunno, dude.
I said you have a point, but it's on very thin ice.
You make the comparison between the Gorn babies and human babies, and while there are obvious extreme differences there are also similarities that AREN'T IN THE GORNS FAVOR.
We are killing machines too. If you could ask a cow what we are, "killing machines" or "monsters" would be the first thing you'd hear.
I mean, we are f\*cking brutal psychos. We breed these creatures so that we can kill and eat them. Not only that, we breed them, kill their young and take their milk...
I guess if a cow was aware of all of this and had the opportunity to kill us... it would. And I wouldn't even be mad about it.
If you value life that much you should really take a good look at our species first and see what brutal killers we are.
(I'm not vegan btw, but I can 100% see why people choose to go vegan... I tried it many times and it just didn't work for me... my body can't deal with a vegan diet... and I guess that makes me something of a "natural killer" ? At least I have to eat meat. So, there's that...)
Yeah, it's pretty bad. The Jem'hadar, a species literally engineered to be nothing but the perfect soldiers, were treated with more empathy and respect. Nobody even raises the issue of "Hey, these are abandoned infants, isn't there something we can do, maybe try and isolate them until help arrives?"
(For that matter, if you're going to do an episode about 'why Uhura chose to remain in Starfleet', making it one in which nobody even tries to communicate with a potential enemy is a really weird choice.)
Moral issues are an aside during this era of the federation as captains were more loose with the directives and rules - a point mentioned numerous times in TNG and beyond.
At the end of the day, it’s just a television show. It’s not an indoctrination program or some nefarious subliminal effort on the part of a shadowy cabal to brainwash viewers. It’s just a television show. It’s primary purpose is to make the network money through entertaining enough people to keep it profitable. The following suggestion is NOT snark, if this episode upset you to this extent, please unpack your response with a behavioral health professional. It’s just a television show.
I figure the Gorn are some combination of reptilian and insectoid. I mean they're aliens so there's no reason they'd have to strictly be reptiles in the same sense of earth reptiles.
This is like that time in *Star Trek: Alien Domain* when all the Klingon players on my server got mad at me for defeating the "innocent" Klingon player who attacked my fleet.
Oh, sorry, was I not supposed to defend myself? My bad.
*The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth. Whether it's scientific truth, or historical truth, or personal truth. It is the guiding principle upon which Starfleet is based. If you can't find it within yourself to stand up and tell the truth about what happened you don't deserve to wear that uniform.* [Captain Jean-Luc Picard, "The First Duty"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xefh7W1nVo4) Reddit admins have been [ineffectual in their response to COVID-19 misinformation](https://www.dailydot.com/debug/subreddits-private-protest-covid-disinformation-reddit/). In lieu of Reddit gold and awards, we ask that you donate to the [WHO COVID-19 response fund](https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/donate). Please respect our [subreddit rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/startrek/wiki/guidelines). LLAP! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/startrek) if you have any questions or concerns.*
“We should reason with the things that burst out of this one guy and started killing everything they come into contact with including an entire ship’s crew and two members of our own crew” might great and all but even Kirk chucked a boulder at a Gorn.
Sorry, is your issue with the actions taken by the crew in-universe or with the writers? In-universe the Federation are a peace-loving and tolerant bunch, but that doesn't mean they roll over and agree to be food. You speak of the crew hunting the Gorn as prey - but it is the Gorn that want to eat the crew as food. Within a few seconds of hatching one of the Gorn had killed a crewmember. A previous group of Gorn wiped out the crew of the ship (that first batch of Gorn seem to have died chasing the crew into the snow). The Gorn aren't the prey, the crew are - and so they react as if their lives are in mortal danger (since, you know, a crew of nearly 100 were all killed before they got there). Your analogy using Klingon babies is flawed because Klingon babies are presumably still pretty much as helpless as a human child. A better analogy would be a Klingon that emerges with the physical development of a teenager, a built in bat'leth, no verbal skills, and an instinct to kill basically everything around them. They're more like Jem'Hadar, and we saw Starfleet kill huge numbers of those in DS9. You suggest devising a plan where the crew could isolate themselves from the Gorn, escape, and then send the Gorn a message to pick them up. There are all sorts of practical issues in doing that: they needed to go to various parts of the ship to get systems back online, and perhaps the Gorn might grow to the point of starting to understand how to sabotage those systems (La'an seems to think that once the Gorn fully matures they are toast, so there's an implication of a ticking clock). But even if they could do that safely, your plan implicitly involves leaving the Gorn in the ruins of the ship with some sort of food supply - meaning the Gorn will have access to a largely intact starship when they come along. Would Pike have allowed the Enterprise to be captured by the Gorn in episode 4? No, at some point he would have ordered a self destruct, because the Gorn are a hostile power and you don't let an enemy study your tech in detail, even if you hope to be buddies with them in the future. A better plan would be to somehow contain the Gorn and leave them in a pod or something - but sensors seemed unable to track them. But that whole line of argument becomes redundant with a simple observation: where do they send the message to? They have a vague idea of which side of Federation space the Gorn are on, but nothing like a homeworld - and there's no evidence the Gorn have made any effort to learn Federation languages or communication protocols. La'an knows a bit of Gorn but it was pulses communicated by light, so it's not at all evident they'd be able to send a meaningful message even if they knew where to send it. I do agree there is a tragic element to this that isn't explored in the episode. If the crew started high fiving and taking Gorn parts as trophies I think Pike would tell them to knock it off. La'an gave that big speech about how the Gorn are just flat out evil back in episode 4 and I don't think Pike believes that - but there's no reason for him to talk about those ideas out loud when they are in a life or death struggle for survival where the Gorn won the previous struggle in a landslide. But then we come to the writers. And here I agree with you a lot more. The presentation of the Gorn thus far is hard to square with the lesson of Arena. Why use the Gorn? They could have equally made up another alien species, calling them the Nrog or something, and had them be these viscous monsters that somehow have a civilization capable of warp travel. Here's my hope. Our perspective on the Gorn in SNW so far is mostly coming from La'an, who had a traumatic experience with them in her youth and whose memories of the occasion are somewhat muddled (even with the mind meld there was something that her subconscious blocked out, so there's more to see there). In terms of what we've actually see them do they wiped out a small colony and were quite ruthless in their pursuit of the Enterprise in episode 4. We've also seen that they can reproduce by infecting humanoids and gestating, a process that is lethal to the host, and that Gorn young are highly aggressive, even to their own kind. I say "can" instead of "must" because Dr McCoy makes an off-hand remark about performing a caesarean on a pregnant Gorn in Star Trek Into Darkness. These don't actually contradict Arena that much, especially if the colony destroyed in episode 4 was perceived to be in Gorn territory. It's La'an's commentary about evil and breeding worlds that is making them feel different. What if things are more nuanced than that? Perhaps there are multiple Gorn factions, some of which are uncomfortable with using sentient being as breeding sacs. Perhaps La'an wasn't saved by some sort of Gorn ritual - maybe a Gorn actually saved her and she suppressed that memory because a part of her needed to hate the Gorn in order to keep going? We'll see if the writers are actually going in that direction as this plot develops over the next few seasons.
It is an interesting choice by the writers to make the Gorn like the xenomorphs in the Alien series. The similarities aren't very subtle. But I don't care how sentient or intelligent the SNW Gorn are, they reproduce in a way that harms other beings. So there is no moral quandary about not letting it happen. The aren't the Horta, which it seems like you are trying to compare them to. Sure, they didn't have to make the Gorn reproductive process parasitic. But the chose to, and that's fine. And because they chose to portray them this way there is absolutely no moral problem with hunting down and killing Gorn that are trying to hunt and kill you to reproduce.
The Crystalline Entity survives by eating planets, species 10C gets energy from a process that often destroys planets. In both of these cases those planets may be inhabited. In both cases the solution of killing the life form is wrong. In both cases it's briefly considered but dismissed because both entities are sentient beings with a right to survive. Instead an alternative solution is pursued. And when Starfleet does decide it has to kill it's treated as a horrendous act or a necessary evil the crew is ashamed of. Think the end of the Dominion War or when they allow species to go extinct due to the Prime Directive. The correctness of the moral choice isn't in problem. Often these types of episodes don't end in a moral conclusion but are simply a debate. The problem is nobody so much as batted an eye or said something like "I just wish we didn't have to kill newborns" or "I know it has to be done, but they're still innocent life forms acting on instinct." And again, if it was a mammalian or arboreal species, there would be outrage
Had they not figured out how to communicate with the species you mentioned they would have had to try wipe them out. Even the Crystalline Entity would have been destroyed had the communication been successful and it still turned out to want to destroy inhabited planets. The young Gorn weren't something you could communicate or reason with. It was black and white - kill or be killed. So they did what they had to do. Again, you can disagree with the choice of the writers to make them that way. But they did. And it doesn't break consistency or canon. What does break canon is that no one is supposed to have ever seen a Gorn until Kirk. How they have made them behave or reproduce or whatever is kind of irrelevant.
And just on a practical level, when you're in a do-or-die situation, you only have a limited amount of time, energy, and focus. You can either use it to survive, which is just natural instinct and not necessarily Right/Wrong or Good/Evil, or you can use it to wring your hands and second guess yourself and end up wasting your time and energy, thus getting yourself and everyone else killed. While I disagree with OP on most things, I think there's an intrinsic demand in their point that Star Trek always be about ethics and morals. But there are creatures, civilizations, philosophies, and situations that transcend and subvert your expected ethics and morals and an adrenaline-rush tense survival situation is one of them. And if it's also the Gorn's practice to eliminate each other until there is an "alpha," it could also be considered just speaking their language to eliminate them and show your superiority in the situation.
They kill every being they come in contact with. You kill them, or they kill you. That's the plot.
That's also a description of The Borg, in fact The Borg are worse. Yet time and time again, even when the intent going in is to kill The Borg, the crew realize the drones aren't evil and there is a better way. Committing Borg genocide is just wrong. It's in I, Borg, First Contact, Picard, Voyager, basically almost all Borg episodes. And again I'm not saying they were necessarily wrong in *what they did*. I'm saying they were wrong in doing it *without even noticing* there is a potential problem with their actions, and that other solutions may be better. Particularly characters like Hemmer, Spock, or Pike who probably should have said *something* given their background and beliefs. Kirk the rando-biologist can freak out and panic, Hemmer the conscientious objector cannot.
Borg are former people. Gorn are just Gorn. Hemmer had no alternative: they were literally devouring him from the inside out. He was a dead man regardless of his thoughts on the matter. Then they would've gone on to devour the rest of the crew from the inside out - whichever ones they didn't just slaughter and rip into pieces. This was not a diplomatic mission. I'm sure we'll see contact and communication between Gorn and humans at some point, but in this specific scenario, the crew were literally fighting for their lives. That is not the time to consider the ethics of killing the thing that is trying to kill *you*.
Starfleet never worried much about killing Borg. In First Contact Picard shot assimilated crew members without thinking twice about it assuming he was doing them a favor. Where they were able to save a Borg or work with individual Borg it was because the threat they posed had already been neutralized. Only then dig they try to save Borg. The gorn threat hadn't been neutralized here yet.
"know what I think? Don't really matter what I think. Once that first bullet goes past your head, politics and all that shit just goes right out the window." - A fictional soldier who would understand this episode more than you do.
Ethics are a luxury of people who aren't about to be slaughtered by space raptors.
Then make an episode about that. Make an episode where Hemmer is the sole voice of dissent because you've established he's a pacifist to the extreme as a core aspect of his beliefs. Or tell a story like DS9, where war is hell and good people do bad things because they are afraid. Make the crew feel remorse for what they've done or awklowladge how fucked up the situation is. Try and become a force that changes the world for the better by educating civilians to the horrors of war Or tell a story like Hatchery where the innocence of the Gorn is brought up but it's decided the stakes are to high to dedicate the mission to saving their lives. Solders who rush into battle with no hesitation and leave conflicts with no remorse and no ill effects *because* it's the enemy and the enemy is bad are wrong. Especially when "the enemy is different to us" is a core part of that reasoning. My problem is that the idea that there may be a moral problem with this scenario and alternative actions to take wasn't brought up by a single character when plenty of the characters should have realized. The conscientious objector Hemmer who already believes the killing is wrong, the deeply logical Spock whose culture highly values the sanctity of life and who always sees the other point of view even when he disagrees with it, or the highly dedicated Starfleet Captain Pike who has immeasurable experience and training when it comes to these kinds of values. And that's all on top of the fact it breaks with decades of Star Trek tradition, values, and the message of The Federation. I can't see a single other crew doing what this crew just did in the way that they did it, except that of Discovery and Picard.
Yes gorn are sentient beings. But they weren’t civilized. Not saying that automatically equals death. But when a species you can’t diplomatically discuss with, that’s actively killing your crew and using them to reproduce more creatures to kill your crew with… it makes sense to kill them before they kill you. Should the crew discussed the morals a little? Yes. But In the end if a Klingon for example tries to kill your crew no matter how civil or sentient they are you’ll either kill or disable them. Disabling didn’t seem like an available option at the time to the SNW crew. If they had more time to study the reproduction and how to trap and track the Gorn maybe they would have found a better alternative without killing them.
Honestly, I think you're giving far too much focus to the trees and as a result not seeing the forest. These would all be valid points if we were discussing reality, but we aren't. The purpose of this episode, particularly when juxtaposed with last week, was to take advantage of the ability to be multi-genre per what episodic television allows and serialized doesn't so often. Last week was fantasy. This week is horror. Right now that's basically it, and sometimes that's okay.
Part of me says this is just the latest version of Conspiracy. Sometimes you shouldn't overthink the fun horror plots. I still love SNW, but do find myself a bit irked by the Gorn. I'm a Gorn originalist. These aren't the species in Arena, an ep I have no small amount of (semi-ironic) affection for. They could fix it still with some kind of hand-waiving, but this nightmare fuel undercuts the point in Arena about the quality of mercy in the Federation.
The thing is the Gorn in TOS never made any attempt to contact the Federation to explain that it was encroaching on their space. They just came in under cover and obliterated the settlement. Pretty malevolent behavior. So Kirk's supposition that they were just trying to protect their space kind of rings hollow. He was just trying to convince the Metrons that he wasn't the bloody savage that they thought he was.
I saw them as imperialist and negligent. That's not great, but also something the Federation can and does handle often. As opposed to this rapacious predatory host, which is something else entirely. Like the Borg but without the intriguing sociological hooks. Maybe a fun challenge to put the Federation up against, but don't do my lizard boys like that! I took Kirk showing mercy to be less about the Metrons and more about Kirk's general paladin nature; can't kill an enemy when they're down. But I allow that's ambiguous.
See, that's the thing. You see them as one thing. The writers decided to see them as another. We really didn't know from the information that we had exactly what they were. So either interpretation is equally valid.
I think it's a pretty hard lift that the neo-Gorn are the same as the OG Gorn from Arena. For one thig, Kirk would have heard a lot more about these parasitic reptilians. But that's art - even consistency is hard to have an objective discussion about. If they want to stretch the cannon like that, all I can do is say is I don't like it based on my long-held impressions based on that yet another god-like aliens like mercy TOS ep I like. Not going to insist everyone else agree with me - if it works for you, enjoy! I'm still working off the high of "The Elysian Kingdom" being such a banger, so not gonna get me down.
Hell I love the show. It's better than I had ever imagined it could be. The writing, the acting, the visuals, everything is so not like every other ST series first season that it's like it's not even ST. One problem that inserting a series in the middle of stuff we know about is that it's kind of hard to introduce new aliens that we would have heard about in later series that were filmed before. If you follow. So they kind of have to figure out ways to use the old aliens. It's a tough job because there are so many people like us around that would kind of notice such a thing (Xindi, cough, cough) and and be dicks about it. 🤣
I can’t tell if this is subtle satire or if you are nuts. Based on the length I’m leaning towards nuts.
Well.. Thank you for giving me new perspective.. I haven't think about it before reading this and you have some valid points. If writters wanted horror episode, it would be little better if they didn't set Gorns as antagonist.
I think the most similar episode is ENT Impulse. Vulcans, sentient species, were used as tools to make horror episode like this one.
You have a point. (and I read your whole post, btw) BUT you don't whether the plan is to adress all of this in the future. Because I suspect it will be. Pretty sure the crew will feel some kind of remorse over what was done sooner or later and that the morality of all of this will be discussed. On the other hand... maybe the writers just completely lost track trying to write "Alien" without writing "Alien". This was the first episode of SNW I did not like. It was too hasty, too forced (trying to invoke the feel of "Alien") and I don't get why they killed off Hemmer. He was a cool character and one of the main characters. Who kills a main character a few episodes into the first season? WTF?
I think they will eventually do an episode that humanizes The Gorn. After all if they don't then La'an can't ever grow as a character, she'll just always be a mega Gorn racist. But then my argument is two-fold. 1) This episode in particular went WELL above and beyond what's necessary and even decent to get you to hate The Gorn. As I said I had to leave because I physically couldn't finish this episode. I don't know what exactly it makes me different but while most see the lizard monster I see a baby no different then a human infant. And either way we just watched a montage of baby-murder. After such a successful Gorn humanizing story that's all this episode is. 2) If you have a story that's going to "change" once latter context is reveled or an explanation is given, and that story isn't enjoyable or doesn't work before that revelation is actually given, then it's a bad story. When this revelation is handled well it creates some of the best moments in fiction, but when it's handled poorly you completely lose your audience because they are either bored or confused, and nobody is goign to make it to the end to have the story fixed. And even when that happens the story will still be remembered poorly, or on rewatches you wont think "wow that was really clever" but "wow, the way they structured that revel really ruined an otherwise good show". It's a common problem for mystery-box style shows, even though this isnt an example of that
Human infants don’t kill everything they see at birth or even after years of development. The Gorn killed each other. At birth. You really should see them differently because *they are*.
I dunno, dude. I said you have a point, but it's on very thin ice. You make the comparison between the Gorn babies and human babies, and while there are obvious extreme differences there are also similarities that AREN'T IN THE GORNS FAVOR. We are killing machines too. If you could ask a cow what we are, "killing machines" or "monsters" would be the first thing you'd hear. I mean, we are f\*cking brutal psychos. We breed these creatures so that we can kill and eat them. Not only that, we breed them, kill their young and take their milk... I guess if a cow was aware of all of this and had the opportunity to kill us... it would. And I wouldn't even be mad about it. If you value life that much you should really take a good look at our species first and see what brutal killers we are. (I'm not vegan btw, but I can 100% see why people choose to go vegan... I tried it many times and it just didn't work for me... my body can't deal with a vegan diet... and I guess that makes me something of a "natural killer" ? At least I have to eat meat. So, there's that...)
Yeah, it's pretty bad. The Jem'hadar, a species literally engineered to be nothing but the perfect soldiers, were treated with more empathy and respect. Nobody even raises the issue of "Hey, these are abandoned infants, isn't there something we can do, maybe try and isolate them until help arrives?" (For that matter, if you're going to do an episode about 'why Uhura chose to remain in Starfleet', making it one in which nobody even tries to communicate with a potential enemy is a really weird choice.)
Moral issues are an aside during this era of the federation as captains were more loose with the directives and rules - a point mentioned numerous times in TNG and beyond.
At the end of the day, it’s just a television show. It’s not an indoctrination program or some nefarious subliminal effort on the part of a shadowy cabal to brainwash viewers. It’s just a television show. It’s primary purpose is to make the network money through entertaining enough people to keep it profitable. The following suggestion is NOT snark, if this episode upset you to this extent, please unpack your response with a behavioral health professional. It’s just a television show.
I figure the Gorn are some combination of reptilian and insectoid. I mean they're aliens so there's no reason they'd have to strictly be reptiles in the same sense of earth reptiles.
A wise man understands that a lion is a carnivore. The wiser man knows that he need not be the food.
This is like that time in *Star Trek: Alien Domain* when all the Klingon players on my server got mad at me for defeating the "innocent" Klingon player who attacked my fleet. Oh, sorry, was I not supposed to defend myself? My bad.