Star Trek: Tricky Business – this Gorn problem had to be solved!

• The Gorn are well-known “Star Trek” scoundrels. In “Strange New Worlds” they have now been brought back.
• In “Starship Enterprise”, set 7 years after SNW, Kirk explains that no one has ever seen the Gorn before.
• Screenwriter Davy Perez now talks about the challenge of bringing back the Gorn without breaking canon.

In Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the Gorn have returned. In two episodes, the reptilian aliens were the antagonists of Captain Christopher Pike’s (Anson Mount) crew. In doing so, the series creators had to overcome some tricky problems, the first of which: How do you redesign an iconic design?

The Gorn from “Starship Enterprise” are iconic. Unfortunately not only in a positive sense. The immobile rubber mask, as well as the full suit worn by a stuntman, is now deeply entrenched in pop culture. The Gorn were funny, goofy, and yet fans took the villains in the official Star Trek canon very seriously.

In the subsequent series, almost nobody dared to bring back the iconic villains, since they didn’t seem to know how to change the costume without also being too silly. Only in “Star Trek: Enterprise” were the Gorn brought back and animated on the computer. The result was almost worse than the original design.

So in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, a way had to be found to design the Gorn in a way that was creepy and lived up to their reputation, but also honored the original design. The decision to only show the Gorn as juveniles made the task easier.

Most importantly, the rejuvenation of the Gorn eased another tricky problem. Captain Kirk (William Shatner) mentions in “Starship Enterprise” that no human has ever seen a Gorn before. Kirk’s story takes place in the Star Trek chronology in the year 2266, Pike’s adventure seven years earlier in the year 2259.

So how do you show the Gorn when no one has seen them? One shows the youthful Gorn as well as the children. Because it is still clear: Nobody saw an adult Gorn until Kirk’s encounter.

We’ve discussed this quite a bit as we cherish the idea that people have either never seen the Gorn or even believe they don’t exist. There’s still so much we don’t know about the Gorn.

Screenwriter Davy Perez

Of course, the series creators have twisted the facts a bit to honor Kirk’s testimony, but fans are excited to finally learn more about these iconic villains. It’s also nice to know that the series creators put a lot of thought into honoring the official canon.

Screenwriters often ignore existing stories in order to give their own story more weight. Fans are correspondingly upset about such cases.

We’re listing all of the upcoming Star Trek releases streaming this year on Paramount+!