Strange New Worlds Has Established The Gorn As The Next Great Star Trek Villain
Set phasers to spoilers: This article discusses events from the season 2 finale of "Strange New Worlds."
If it seems like every generation of "Star Trek" must always contend with their own unique existential threat, that's because they do. For James T. Kirk in "The Original Series," real-world Cold War anxieties manifested themselves through the fearsome Klingon Empire and their numerous skirmishes with Starfleet as the two galactic powers constantly stood on the brink of all-out war. For Jean-Luc Picard in "The Next Generation," the horrifying Borg Collective instantly became the franchise's most iconic villain — not only as a physical threat, but one that channeled technological fears of the 21st Century by stripping away our very identities through their assimilation tactics. And for Benjamin Sisko in "Deep Space Nine," no greater threat than the Dominion would eventually land on Federation borders, bringing a darker and more paranoia-driven flavor to "Trek" that allowed for some of the most complex and nuanced storytelling the franchise has ever seen.
Despite two excellent seasons under its belt, "Strange New Worlds" is probably still a few years away from being spoken of in the same breath as these other shows ... but as of the season 2 finale, titled "Hegemony," Anson Mount's Captain Pike has come face-to-fangs with the most unexpected nemesis of them all: the lizard-like Gorn. They've been carefully threaded throughout the series as a steadily building threat and come loaded with intensely personal connections to much of the crew, from Christina Chong's Gorn attack survivor La'an Noonien Singh to Celia Rose Gooding's Uhura, still mourning the death of her mentor Hemmer (Bruce Horak) upon being infected by Gorn eggs back in season 1.
Now, they've stepped up as a series-defining big bad — and there's more to them than meets the eye.
Here today, Gorn tomorrow
At this point, Trekkies need no reminder of how the Gorn were first introduced to "Trek" — as a man in a woefully unconvincing rubber suit beating up William Shatner's Kirk at the famous Vasquez rocks in southern California in the Original Series episode "Arena." (For more casual fans, we've got the history of the Gorn covered right here!) To say that any future installment of the franchise would have its work cut out for it in trying to reshape our conception of this particularly barbaric alien species is putting it mildly, but "Strange New Worlds" managed to crack the code — and, against all odds, make them feel genuinely scary.
The season 1 episode "All Those Who Wander" finally brought the Gorn back into the spotlight after only teasing them through La'an's traumatic backstory in previous episodes, reconfiguring them into a Xenomorph-like threat that was far deadlier than we'd ever seen before. But even as Trekkies wrapped their minds around this downright horrific take on the classic creatures, we weren't fully prepared for just how much "Strange New Worlds" would be playing the long game. The Gorn, as it turns out, would inevitably come back to threaten the entire Federation as we know it.
In the season 2 finale, the episode begins with extremely high stakes when the Cayuga, the Starfleet vessel crewed by Pike's lover Captain Marie Batel (Melanie Scrofano) and Spock's love interest Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush), comes under attack by the Gorn outside of Federation space. But the scope of the conflict remains fairly limited to our immediate supporting characters ... in the early going, at least. The fraught political climate between the Federation and the Gorn soon comes into play when the latter enact a blockade of sorts, leading to the threat of all-out war.
The next great Trek villain
In the span of one hair-raisingly tense hour, "Strange New Worlds" positions the Gorn as the next major threat to Starfleet overall. After our heroes slip behind enemy lines to rescue their trapped comrades planet-side, disobeying Federation orders to maintain their side of the demarcation line and avoid the outbreak of war at all costs, their actions in surreptitiously destroying a communications jammer set up by the Gorn leads to the aliens kidnapping many of the remaining survivors (including multiple crewmembers of the Enterprise) and launching an attack on Pike's starship as the captain faces the most difficult scenario of his Starfleet career.
As with many of the greatest villains in past "Star Trek" history, the Gorn simply have to offer something we've never experienced before. Luckily, the season 2 finale includes several hints that the Gorn are much more complicated than Starfleet ever realized. On different occasions, Pike confronts evidence that the Gorn aren't quite the instinctive, low-IQ animals they had always assumed. Nurse Chapel directly observes one individual struggling to access core ship systems, while Pike and Batel can only watch in shock when a young Gorn decides not to attack — a result of perceiving the Gorn eggs already incubating inside her. Still, their tactical methods on the ground suggest a more evolved and intelligent species that is more than capable of destroying our heroes one by one while dismantling Starfleet on a galactic scale.
The Klingons represent a relentlessly brute force. The Borg symbolized advanced technology far beyond Starfleet's own. The Dominion could attack either through strength of arms or by hiding in plain sight. Now the Gorn embody all of these qualities and more. Going into season 3, it's clear the Gorn have everything they need to become the next great "Trek" villain.