The ultimate “We don’t need an origin for that” moment would be if something in the next ep is done to explain why we don’t see Scotty in ‘Arena.’
By the way…i feel your weapons officer also being your helmsman is bad enough but he’s pulling triple duty in Arena. Can you imagine a guy at the wheel of a battleship also being responsible for fire control?
I was thinking that most of the TOS cast has been portrayed in younger form in this show, except, I think, for Chekhov. I believe the producers of the reboot movies said that any future movies would not have him in it, out of respect for Anton Yelchin, but are these producers also doing the same thing?
No Sulu yet.
Also, I think Chekov would be a kid at this point, not even a cadet yet.
Chekov was born in 2245, and this season of SNW takes place in '59. He’s 14 right now, yeah. Probably not even in the Academy yet.
I’m just disappointed the same actor isn’t playing Sam Kirk and James Kirk. And also it breaks my head canon about Jim being a self-made orphan who was never close to his half-brother.
But Star Trek 2009 broke that by having our Spock mention a father we’d never heard of in the 45 years earlier.
Wait, what? Sam was in an episode of TOS.
Wait, what? When?
They made a real attempt at creating an ALIEN race, not just humans with funny foreheads - as has so often been the case over the years. It makes sense that a slow-ish, but strong and tough race of bipedal beings could evolve into a technological, spacefaring race. I still don’t understand how SNW “Gorn” did so, with their weird life-cycle and their treatment of their young. They run around killing and eating each other on a breeding planet until eventually the survivors are picked up, and at THAT point, they’re taught speech and civilized?
To me at least, the SNW Gorn make more sense as a Aliens-type xenomorph infestation, with a crude cunning and intellect.
Sam Kirk appears in Operation Annihilate as you probably know. Shatner plays both roles.
In my head canon, Jim Kirk is an orphan. Sam is his half brother and the two were never close. I get this from the fact that Jim doesn’t seem particularly broken up over Sam’s death. But maybe they had a falling out which would explain Kirk’s stoicness as more regret then “we were never close”
Also, in ST V…Kirk says “I had a brother once. (The audience thinks he’s referring to Sam)…I thought I lost him once but he came back to me” Turns out he’s talking about Spock. Damn Jim.
I also always saw Jim as an orphan because his parents were never mentioned and he was on that Kodos planet and still no relatives of Jim are mentioned being there. He’s also a ‘walking stack of books’ at the Academy. Sounds like someone over-compensating.
Finally in the Chris Pine Trek movie…old Spock tells Pine Kirk that in Spocks universe, Jim Kirks father lived long enough to see Kirk graduate from the academy.
Not everyone has to have a tragic backstory.
I’m not yet liking the new Gorn, but this episode was a bit better than the last season one in which Hemmer died. I like that we saw an adult in a spacesuit, and there were hints that there are more to them than just eating and killing. I suspect young Gorn are not sentient, and their parents don’t treat them as such, rather more like livestock.
It would be a nice twist if that was only a “teenage” gorn and full adults were more like the gorn of TOS. (Sort of a Pak Protector thing.)
Honestly, it is a little tiresome that every species is shown to be humanoid, even ones like the shapeshifters that don’t need to be. (I get that this makes it easy to put makeup and prosthetics on actors to portray them but really, some or most are going to look very different.)
So I appreciate making the Gorn look really different, even if they seem modeled on the lifeform from the Alien movie.
And their culture/life cycle is more distinctly alien, not just variants of human societies with particular characteristics caricatured. Old Gorn were really just strong insular xenophobic humans that moved slowly.
We, like the Federation, are just ignorant of what that new Gorn culture/life cycle is. It is clearly alien to us.
Yes could be that the young are not socialized, trained, and educated until they reach a level of maturity with a process in place that only the most fit reach a point in which that effort is invested. Then they cooperate and have a developing culture. Or something even more alien.
The new to be observed cooperation between young Gorn in response to some specific solar flare activity may be a hint. Maybe it is locust like and cooperation occurs at specific cycles?
Something actually very different than human like cultural evolution.
I think of what they do with the young as evocative of Spartan culture. In Sparta you’d expose an infant to the elements and if it lived, it was worth raising. If it died then it wouldn’t have had a chance in life anyway, or at least would have been a liability to the community.
The Gorn let their young eat each other until only a few strong ones are left. Similar concept. It’s brutal but not without precedent or even some logic, as horrible as it might seem.
I could see a culture proud that every single individual has gone through so much just to reach adulthood. They’d likely look with contempt on other species that coddle their young. It’s no wonder that they are often shown allying with Klingons, as they have a somewhat similar viewpoint.
R-selection alien species aren’t especially rare in science fiction. Ones that immediately come to mind are the Martians in Stranger in a Strange Land, the Prador in Neal Asher’s Commonwealth universe, and Harry’s species in Resident Alien.
Long clip from season three of SNW here:
ETA Another site with the clip in the proper aspect ratio:
I’m gonna be that kind of Star Trek fan and say the Vulcan clip they posted was kind of dumb because there is nothing in Vulcan’s DNA that makes them logical. They have very powerful emotions and keep them in check with culture and discipline.
I recently rewatched DS9 and it makes this modern era live action Trek look so bad in comparison (and I actually like SNW).
Yes, it makes no sense at all, they are just doing it for the funny. Like poor Spock’s reaction when Pike says “4 and 1/2 Vulcans to beam down”. SNW is getting a lot of its humor styling from Lower Decks.
Well, there is clearly an in-show reason for them doing it - and yeah, its definitely being played up for laughs - and I’m good with it.
Pike’s Vulcanized hair!
(since when are hairstyles genetic?)
Indeed. They even did a crossover episode with Lower Decks which was a lot of fun although a little far on the improbable scale (along with the singing episode…also great but also so much of a reach it seems there is no reality to their reality…whatever the writers want).