Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' Gorn Were Designed To Leave One Key Question Unanswered
Did you know that the Gorn have lips?
Evidence presented in the 1967 "Star Trek" episode "Arena" might stand counter to that assertion, as the mask worn by (alternately) Bobby Clark, Gary Combs, and Bill Blackburn didn't have an articulated jaw or mouth. Indeed, the Gorn mask has been widely giggled at by Trekkies and non-Trekkies alike. The fight between the Gorn captain and Captain Kirk (William Shatner) is usually considered broadly campy, what with its stiffness and slowness.
But the Gorn — an aggressive reptilian species — actually do speak their own language. In "Arena," the Gorn captain (voiced by Ted Cassidy) spoke to Captain Kirk using a miniature, hand-held translation device. He explained that the Federation had set up a colony on Cestus III, which was unknowingly a Gorn world. The Gorn, rather than negotiate or file a complaint, merely laid waste to the colony and killed everyone living there. The Gorn wouldn't be seen again until an episode of "Star Trek: Enterprise," wherein they were visualized with some pretty terrible CGI.
The Gorn have also served as a recurring villain on "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds," and the makers of that show have been incredibly ginger about how much they wanted to reveal. In "Arena," the Gorn were presented as having never really been seen before. "Strange New Worlds" is set a few years before "Star Trek," so the series has to maintain an element of mystery. In a recent interview with ScreenRant, the co-founder of Legacy Effects, J. Alan Scott, talked about visualizing the Gorn in a modern milieu, and just how much he and his fellow technicians were permitted to show the mysterious monsters.
Children of the Gorn
In the first Gorn episode, "Memento Mori" (May 26, 2022), the U.S.S. Enterprise was besieged by a Gorn starship and had to defend themselves in spatial combat. The Gorn's faces were never shown, nor were their voices heard. All the information about the Gorn was given by Lieutenant Noonian-Singh (Christina Chong) who had encountered their viciousness in the past.
Several weeks later, in the episode "All Those Who Wander," audiences got their first gander at a Gorn baby. It seems that the Gorn reproduces similarly to the creatures in Ridley Scott's 1979 film "Alien." Namely, they lay their eggs gestate inside a human host. The children of the Gorn are, however, born feral. They skitter around on all fours, roar, and behave like hungry monsters. They are not the upright, bipedal Gorn seen in "Arena."
The Gorn returned in "Hegemony," the finale of the second season. In that episode, we saw more Gorn babies, as well as our first Gorn adult, its face was semi-hidden behind a space suit mask. Importantly, the Gorn also communicated only by text, so their voices or language were not heard.
Scott noted that the slow meting out of information regarding the Gorn's language was deliberate. To quote:
"We've discussed that and we're ready to do either, but as far as I know, that decision hasn't been made yet. But that's part of it. As we design the creature, you ask those questions right away. Is this going to be subtitles? Is this gonna be a language they don't understand? Is it going to be guttural clicks? Or do we have to form words when it comes to the design? I actually don't have that answer yet. We haven't had to do it yet."
The Gorn language
In terms of continuity — a vital thing for Trekkies — it should be important that diplomacy, open relations, or even a warlike relationship not be established with the Gorn just yet. They should remain distant, strange, and threatening. It will be Kirk's job to finally speak to a Gorn for the first time in about seven or eight more years. Even with the silly 1967 Gorn mask to deal with, Scott felt that the aliens have a more interesting society and biology than that. He felt that the Gorn do indeed have lips, allowing them to speak a language similar to ours. Scott said:
"The Gorn reveals have been slow and incremental and exciting in that way. So, it's capable [of speaking]. It's got lips. We made sure that it wasn't just a T-Rex or a raptor; that's the lips couldn't close. But we don't know yet if it's going to be speaking English, or if there's going to be a translator. I love that because if it's that alien, why would you already understand it no matter what your technology? And figuring out the structure of language, at a certain point was like, you don't know its intent or what it's saying. And I think that adds to the mystery and the scariness of it."
Scott also noted how refreshing it was that the "Strange New Worlds" characters don't have the context of the events of "Arena," making the Gorn that much more threatening.
If the Gorn do speak their own vocalized language, Trekkies can rest assured that a linguist would be hired to build out an entire conlang, very much the same way Marc Okrand did for the Klingon language back in the late 1970s.