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Complete history of the gorn in star trek.

The Gorn have become one of the Federation's most formidable foes in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Here's everything we know about them.

• The Gorn Hegemony is a powerful and mysterious governing body of cold-blooded reptilians with advanced technology and superior physical capabilities. They communicate through light and are difficult to track.
• In Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, tensions between the Federation and the Gorn escalate when the Gorn attack a Federation colony. Captain Pike and his crew face off against Gorn forces, leaving them at a disadvantage.
• While the Gorn were initially portrayed as aggressive and territorial in their first appearance in Star Trek: TOS, later appearances and Strange New Worlds indicate the possibility for peace between the Federation and the Gorn, suggesting a potential shift in their behavior.

The Gorn made their first appearance in the iconic Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Arena," but Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has introduced a whole new version of the vicious reptilians. After Starfleet learns of the existence of the Gorn in Strange New Worlds , they begin developing weapons and technology to defend against them. As the tensions between the Federation and the Gorn increase, Starfleet begins to fear that war looms on the horizon. The Gorn have proven to be a formidable opponent for the Federation, but not much is known about their lifestyle and culture.

The Strange New Worlds season 2 finale, "Hegemony," adds fuel to the fire when the Gorn attack a Federation colony on the planet Parnassus Beta. The Gorn claim that Parnassus Beta is in their territory, and they send Starfleet a communication establishing a demarcation line. Despite Starfleet's orders to remain on their side of the line, Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) and a landing party slip past the Gorn to rescue the survivors trapped on the planet. "Hegemony" ends with the USS Enterprise facing off against a Gorn destroyer and three Gorn hunters, leaving Captain Pike outgunned and unsure about his next moves.

Everything Known About The Gorn Hegemony's History In Star Trek

Not much is known about the Gorn, but their governing body is referred to as the Gorn Hegemony, which was known to the Orion Syndicate as early as 2154. The technology of the Gorn seems to be similar to that of Starfleet and the Gorn themselves are stronger, faster, and more resilient than humans. Neither Gorn eggs nor hatchlings appear on sensors, making them nearly impossible to track. While the Gorn's method of communication is not yet fully understood, they seem to communicate with one another using light. Because the Gorn rarely leave survivors, their earliest encounters with the Federation have gone largely unrecorded.

Related: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' Gorn Explained By Legacy Effects Co-Founder

The Gorn are cold-blooded lizard-like reptiles who originated in the Beta Quadrant. They reproduce by laying eggs within a humanoid host. To maintain a steady supply of hosts, the Gorn establish breeding planets where they deposit captured humanoids to hunt for sport and to be used as incubators. Even from a young age, Gorn can spray venom that infects a host with eggs. After a host becomes infected, Gorn hatchlings will soon burst from their body, killing them instantly. Vicious and territorial, Gorn hatchlings begin competing for dominance soon after they are born.

The Gorn's First Appearance In Star Trek: TOS

In the Prime timeline, the Federation does not officially encounter the Gorn until 2267 as depicted in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Arena." When Captain Kirk and his landing party arrive on the planet Cestus III, they discover that the Federation colony there has been completely destroyed and the Gorn lie in wait. As the Enterprise pursues the Gorn ship, they enter an uncharted area of space and encounter an advanced species called the Metrons. The Metrons deposit Captain Kirk and the Gorn Captain on a planet, saying that they will destroy the ship of whichever Captain loses the fight. Kirk eventually defeats the Gorn by creating gunpowder with materials found on the planet. Because Kirk stops short of killing the Gorn Captain, the Metrons return the Gorn to his ship and praise Kirk's mercy.

Interestingly, when Kirk confronts the Gorn Captain, the Gorn maintain that they only attacked Cestus III because it was in their territory. From the Gorn's perspective, it looked as though the Federation was invading. Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) both acknowledge that the Federation may have been the one in the wrong. Not only does this suggest these particular Gorn to be less vicious than the ones in Strange New Worlds , it also suggests that peace between the Federation and the Gorn may be possible.

The Gorn's Other Star Trek Appearances

After their first appearance in Star Trek: The Original Series , the Gorn show up on several different Star Trek series. A Gorn named Slar appears in one episode of Star Trek: Enterprise , "In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II," but this entire episode occurs within the Mirror Universe. Slar kills several members of the ISS Enterprise crew, before eventually being killed by the Mirror Universe version of Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula) . A Gorn skeleton appears in the menagerie of Captain Gabriel Lorca (Jason Isaacs) on Star Trek: Discovery, establishing, again, that some Starfleet officers knew of the Gorn before Captain Kirk's famous encounter.

The Gorn appear briefly in Star Trek: Lower Decks season 1, episode 8, when Ensign Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) inadvertently ends up on a desert planet in the middle of a Gorn wedding ceremony. This scene is shown in a flashback as Rutherford recounts a particular day's events, so it's unclear how much of it is accurate. A couple of different Gorn can be seen on a Starbase in the background of the Lower Decks episode "An Embarrassment Of Dooplers," suggesting that relations between the Gorn and the Federation will not always be hostile.

The Gorn's Retcons In Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Aside from a few brief appearances across other shows, the Gorn do not make a major return to the Star Trek franchise until Star Trek: Strange New Worlds . Strange New Worlds has given more information about the Gorn's history and biology than any other Star Trek show. Despite the fact that the official first contact with the Gorn did not occur until the events of TOS' "Arena," Strange New Worlds establishes that the Federation knew of the Gorn long before that.

In Strange New Worlds season 1, episode 4, "Memento Mori," Enterprise Security Chief La'an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong) reveals that she was the only survivor of a Gorn attack. When she was a child living on the colony ship the SS Puget Sound, Gorn invaded the ship, eventually killing everyone on board aside from La'an. After the Gorn had killed the other passengers, La'an was sent into space on a raft as part of a Gorn ritual. She was then rescued by the Federation starship USS Martin Luther King Jr.

In "Arena," it seemed as though none of the Enterprise crew members were familiar with the Gorn, but Spock (Ethan Peck) goes up against Gorn in both "All Those Who Wander" and "Hegemony." Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush) and Nyota Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) also aid in the fight against Gorn. "Hegemony" introduces the young Montgomery Scott (Martin Quinn), who not only builds a trap to catch Gorn, but also figures out how to sneak past their ships. All of these characters would be on the USS Enterprise in "Arena," but Star Trek: Strange New Worlds can still offer an explanation for this apparent canon discrepancy.

Gorn, Explained: A History of the Star Trek Aliens

The Gorn are one of the most famous aliens in Star Trek. Here is everything to know about the reptilian humanoid alien species.

Gene Roddenberry's space opera franchise Star Trek is filled with iconic aliens: Klingons, Andorians, Romulans, Betazoids, Orions, Changelings, Vulcans, and the Borg, to name a few. Many of them have been explored in great detail through various Star Trek series and films. Still, one particularly infamous and hostile species remains relatively unknown in live-action media: The Gorn . First introduced in Star Trek: The Original Series , these reptilian humanoid aliens are best remembered from the 1967 episode "The Arena." It is one of the most notable episodes in Star Trek history, mainly due to the slow and sluggish movement of the creatures' leader and its over-the-top combat with Captain Kirk, which rendered the scene unintentionally comedic.

Update August 13, 2023: This article has been updated by Mona Bassil with additional information following the season 2 finale of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and with information from the series Star Trek: Lower Decks.

This cemented the Gorn as one of the most memorable aliens in the Trek universe. Despite that, the franchise has typically avoided bringing them back. While it makes sense for prequel series not to include them, it is odd how later Star Trek shows, like The Next Generation , Deep Space Nine , Voyager , and Prodigy, never featured the Gorn. One of the more recent series, however, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds , which premiered on Paramount+ on May 5, 2022, has not only given an update on the Gorn but has also explored them in more detail and plans on making them an overarching threat for the series. Here is everything to know about the Gorn species.

Gorn History in the Star Trek Series

The Gorn are first introduced in Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Arena". They are still a mysterious species to the Federation, and Captain Kirk is forced to do battle with the Gorn leader in a fight to the death. Kirk believes the Gorn to be a violent and savage race that eradicated an entire Starfleet colony. While he has the chance to kill their captain, he spares him after he realizes that the previous attack on a Starfleet Outpost was simply an act of self-defense and that the Gorn and humans have more in common than they realize. This marks the official first encounter the United Federation of Planets has with this species.

Related: 23 Coolest Alien Characters in the Star Trek Franchise

The Gorn would later appear in an episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series , as well as on Star Trek: Enterprise , which marked the first time the creature was portrayed with GCI. In order not to mess with the continuity of the original series and the subsequent first contact with Kirk, the Gorn seen on the prequel show, Star Trek: Enterprise , is set in the Mirror Universe, an alternate universe in Star Trek where everyone is either evil or has an entirely different character.

How Strange New Worlds Redefines the Gorn

The Gorn were planned to appear in both Star Trek: Nemesis and 2009's Star Trek reboot but were scrapped for unknown reasons. In Star Trek Into Darkness , Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy makes reference to performing a C-section on a pregnant Gorn, indicating they may have encountered The Federation earlier on in this new timeline.

The next major appearance of the Gorn would be in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, where they are a recurring foe. Set ten years before the events of TOS , Strange New Worlds slightly retcons the original series. Here, the alien species are a large part of the backstory for La'an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong), who is the sole survivor of a Gorn attack when she was a child. This marks an unofficial first encounter with the species in the series.

The USS Enterprise , under the command of Captain Christopher Pike, first encounters a Gorn ship in the episode Memento Mori . The creatures are not seen, which seems to indicate that the aliens would be a recurring unseen foe throughout the series. But they reappear later in the season, in the episode "All Those Who Wander " , where various members of the Enterprise crew, including Spock, come face to face with the aliens. Unlike in the original series, these Gorn are depicted as smaller, more agile, and more animalistic. Henry Myers, the show's executive producer, told Variety , "I think audiences would have an instinctive organ transplant rejection to the classic version of the Gorn. Audiences now are sophisticated; they expect a certain level of effects work, of verisimilitude.” He was, of course, referring to the fact that the Gorn on TOS looked like giant lizards in fake rubber suits.

Related: Star Trek: How the 3 Animated Series Stack Against Each Other

The Season 2's action-packed finale, "Hegemony", it features the species decimating a human colony at the edge of Federation space, which they believe is part of their territory. They also plant a device that prevents any starship or shuttlecraft from beaming up trapped survivors, thus demonstrating superior dampening technology. While the episode begins with Captain Pike very clearly seeing the Gorn as monsters, the episode also looks to try to build the foundation for the Gorn being seen as a more advanced species in The Original Series.

Not only do the Gorn have their own fleet of ships, the young Gorn also appear not to be killing each other for dominance like it was believed they do, but instead working together. Pike comments on how there is more for them to learn about the Gorn. Audiences will likely learn more in season 3 as the finale of season 2 ended on a cliffhanger. Pike must decide between following Starfleet orders and retreating or going to save the rest of his crew who were beamed aboard the Gorn ship, including La'an Noonien-Singh.

The Gorn on Star Trek: Lower Decks

More recently, the species also appeared on the adult animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks , a refreshingly comedic take on the Star Trek franchise that pays homage to its complicated history while cleverly poking fun at its most memorable chapters and characters. In season 1's eighth episode, "Veritas", Ensign Rutherford's cybernetic implant is in need of an update. To complete the process, the device occasionally has to shut down and reboot, causing Rutherford to suddenly collapse and wake up hours later. Consequently, he crashes on a barren planet and finds himself surrounded by the Gorn, who starts biting into him. It is a double crash because he has also interrupted a wedding celebration.

Design and Characteristics

The Gorn in the original series are a bipedal and large reptilian alien species. They are capable of space travel and seem to have their own civilization. They also appear to be an apprehensive species, as even later in the timeline of Star Trek, it is unclear if they ever joined Starfleet.

The Gorn on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds are similar to the variant of the species introduced in the Kelvin timeline set Star Trek video game between the 2009 Star Trek film and 2013's Star Trek Into Darkness . They are smaller, quadrupedal aliens that have a lot in common with the Xenomorphs from the Alien film franchise , including the practice of laying parasitic eggs inside a host that burst out of the victim's chest. They also no longer seem to have the sparkly eyes shown on TOS . Season 2 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds later found an explanation for this change in size. The smaller ones are the baby versions of the species, and audiences got to see Spock and Nurse Chapel fight a proper size Gorn which matched the size of the one Captain Kirk fought.

The Gorn have evolved and acquired the ability to evade Starfleet and other electromagnetic medical sensors, possibly indicating why the species has gone so long in the franchise without being seen. They grow quickly and will not hesitate to eliminate each other in order to establish dominance and strength. Strange New World also establishes that the Gorn are susceptible to the cold. It has done more to explain the Gorn than any other piece of Star Trek media since the creature first appeared, and hopefully, additional seasons will explore its culture and variants. The season 2 finale clearly hints that Trekkies will be seeing more of the Gorn as recurring villains in season 3.

Gorn Hegemony

• View history
• 2.1 Background information
• 2.2 Apocrypha
• 2.3 External link

History [ ]

The Orion privateer Harrad-Sar had dealings with the Hegemony prior to 2154 , but declined to elaborate to the crew of Enterprise NX-01 , merely saying "The less said about them, the better." ( ENT : " Bound ")

Unconfirmed first contact report for the Gorn, found in the personnel file of La'an Noonien Singh

In the 2230s or 2240s , the Gorn attacked and captured the SS Puget Sound , a Federation colony ship , and deposited its crew and passengers on a Gorn breeding planet to be hunted for sport or eaten alive by their hatchlings . La'an Noonien-Singh was the sole survivor of the incident, and related the story to Starfleet ; this was the first documented encounter with the Gorn, although it was not considered an official first contact . ( SNW : " Strange New Worlds ")

In 2259 , the Gorn attacked and massacred the colony of Finibus III , and then attacked the USS Enterprise when it arrived in the system. During the subsequent battle, the Enterprise was badly damaged and lost seven crew members, but managed to destroy three Gorn hunters before evading a destroyer using the system's black hole as cover. With the Gorn confirmed to be raiding targets in Federation space, Captain Christopher Pike resolved to be more prepared for the next hostile encounter. ( SNW : " Memento Mori ")

In 2259 , Federation star charts were denoting the location of the Gorn Hegemony in the Beta Quadrant. The lettering and border outlines were colored a shade of green . ( SNW : " Subspace Rhapsody ")

A Gorn Captain , a member of the Gorn Hegemony

Official first contact finally took place eight years later, in 2267 . This encounter with the Hegemony was also hostile, as the Gorn were claiming Cestus III – a world which was then occupied by a Federation settlement – as their own. Despite this, the two powers had resolved the conflict over Cestus III by the 2370s , when a Human settlement thrived there. ( TOS : " Arena "; DS9 : " Family Business ")

The Zhat Vash , a Romulan cabal , was said to operate in the Gorn Hegemony as of 2399 . ( PIC : " Maps and Legends ")

Appendices [ ]

Background information [ ].

The name of this government was revealed in "Bound", although there was apparently no official UFP contact with the Gorn until Kirk's era. Federation-Gorn relations were described, in the Star Trek Encyclopedia , as "cordial" during the 2370s. The name "Gorn Hegemony" had been used in non- canon books and games for years before this episode was written, however.

The Gorn Hegemony symbol first appeared in canon in PRO : " Masquerade ", but originates in the 1997 Starfleet Academy video game.

Apocrypha [ ]

The Star Trek: Star Charts places Gorn Hegemony space in the Beta Quadrant , in the region of Gamma Orionis and the Delta Triangle . (page 64)

In the novel Articles of the Federation , one of the characters says that the crew of the USS Enterprise convinced the Gorn to join the Federation Alliance and fight against the Dominion in the war . This is from the graphic novel " The Gorn Crisis " by Kevin J. Anderson and illustrated by Igor Kordey . But in the game manual for Star Trek: Bridge Commander , it is stated that the Gorn sided with the Dominion . The Star Trek: Destiny novel Mere Mortals by David Mack establishes that the Gorn Hegemony had an embassy to the Federation located in Berlin and its head of government was the Gorn Imperator. In A Singular Destiny , the Gorn allied themselves with the Romulan Star Empire , the Tholians , and others antagonistic towards the Federation and Klingons.

In Star Trek Online , by the early 25th century , the Klingons had conquered the Hegemony after learning that their leaders had been replaced by Species 8472 infiltrators, and absorbed the Gorn into the Empire. The storyline of the game also states that a monarch, King Slathis, was the head of the government.

In the 2013 video game Star Trek , which is set in the alternate reality , the Gorn are given an origin story as an alien race originating from another galaxy and are portrayed as expansionists. One of the races subjugated to the Gorn are the Lymax ( β ).

The twenty-fourth issue of the Star Trek: Ongoing comic book series features a group of Gorn who had rebelled and settled on the planet Parthenon 559 wanting to live in peace. But because of the previous encounter as mentioned above, the Humans who came to mine the planet reacted with hostility. Kirk resolved everything and forced the Humans off of the planet after learning more about the Gorn in the process. The issue also potentially provides another origin story for the Gorn Hegemony.

External link [ ]

• Gorn Hegemony at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• 3 Star Trek: Discovery

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The Gorn are one of the most recognizable alien species in Star Trek . First appearing in The Original Series episode “ Arena ,” the Gorn have, so far, just over a dozen canon appearances throughout the franchise, but their impact in popular culture has been substantial, nonetheless.

A bipedal reptilian race, the Gorn have butted heads with the Federation on multiple occasions. But by the 24 th century, much like with the Klingons, relations with the Gorn seem to have cooled down. In the meantime, the Gorn have always represented a formidable opponent.

Despite their monstrous appearance and aggressive demeanour, they are cunning, intelligent, and technologically advanced. Today, I’d like to examine the biology, history, and culture of the Gorn, comparing them to our expectations about aliens in real life. I’d also like to explore how their relationship with the Federation has evolved over time. Let’s get started.

Origins and Early History

The Gorn’s interstellar government is called the Gorn Hegemony. Its domain includes a region of space called “the five systems,” referenced by Orion privateer Harrad-Sar in the Enterprise episode “Bound.”

However, Harrad-Sar says of the Gorn, “the less said about them, the better.” More information about the Gorn’s potential origins is revealed in the non-canon 2013 Star Trek video game, which is set in the alternate reality introduced in the 2009 movie. In this game, the Gorn are said to have originated from another galaxy which they have colonized under the banner of the Gorn Armada.

The Gorn reach the Milky Way via a wormhole and begin expanding into the Beta Quadrant, just outside the borders of both the Federation and Klingon Empire. Much like in other non-canon sources, this game and subsequent IDW companion comics emphasize that the Gorn are not one species, but rather, an alliance of genetically similar reptilian aliens.

One of these factions which have settled on the planet Parthenon 559 is depicted as rebelling against the Gorn Armada, suggesting Gorn are not of one mind when it comes to politics. Either way, the existence of these multiple species, which other sources additionally depict as strict castes, is used to explain the disparities between different canon depictions of the Gorn.

The videogame Starfleet Command explains that Gorn society is organized into a hereditary monarchy. Gorn mythology speaks of a Mistress of Fertility, S’Yahazah, who saved young Gorn eggs from being devoured by a figure called “The Great Father.” Clearly, this is a reference to the Greek goddess Rhea saving Zeus from being devoured by Cronus.

Star Trek Online expounds upon Gorn history by speculating they may share a common ancestor with the Saurian species, dating back about 15,000 years. This ancestor race may have inhabited planets in the Kassae system, some 40-60 light-years from Earth. Other sources cite Gorn space travel as far back as thousands or even millions of years ago, and between these various accounts, there’s no consensus as to whether the Gorn evolved on the same homeworld or separate homeworlds.

All of this also seems to contradict Gorn activities beyond the Milky Way Galaxy, but ultimately, there’s no telling where they first came from. They could have originated in the Milky Way or another galaxy first, travelling between the two via a mechanism like, say, the Mycelial Network. In any case, what’s clear is that they have achieved warp travel by the 22 nd century and developed a violent reputation among various other Beta Quadrant civilizations.

New Homeworld?

We’re never explicitly told what kind of star the “new” Gorn homeworld orbits, though in beta continuity, it’s the ninth planet in a triple star system consisting of three K-type orange stars.

While the habitable zone around a K-type star, a type of star usually cooler than the sun, is about 60% the size of Sol’s habitable zone, the triple nature of the star may mean the ninth planet is further out in a tightly packed system.

K-type stars’ habitable zones are also generally stable as they emit less light in the ultraviolet portion of the spectrum, which normally has severe effects on DNA molecules. It’s also worth noting that planets orbiting multiple stars in a “P-type” orbit are generally stable if they orbit at least 2-4 times the distance separating the stars themselves.

The name “Tau Lacertae” for the star system is thrown around by various non-canon sources, Lacerta being a real-world constellation whose name means “lizard” in Latin. GET IT??? And tau, of course, is the nineteenth letter of the Greek alphabet.

But there is no such star called “Tau Lacertae.” And there are no notable K-type triple systems in Lacerta. But we can gather that even if the Gorn didn’t originally evolve on Tau Lacertae IX, they no doubt selected it because of its environment. The planet, also called Gornar, has a surface gravity of 1.4g—implying it has a higher mass, radius, and possibly density compared to Earth—and is largely covered in tropical jungles and swampland. It has two Class D moons, which would have a major influence on the planet’s tides.

The Gorn homeworld’s average surface temperature is likely higher than Earth’s, which would create a suitable climate to support the biology of a cold-blooded reptilian species. And indeed, their cold-blooded nature isn’t their only connection to the Terran order of animals…

Biology Overview

Much like many Earth reptiles, particularly crocodiles, the Gorn possess scaly green skin, red blood, simple earholes with no external cartilage, and vicious claws. They also have mouths full of sharp teeth unsuitable for chewing—indeed, the teeth of reptiles are generally undifferentiated in size and shape compared to mammals, whose teeth are more specialized.

Gorn eyes are often depicted as silvery and faceted, much like the compound eyes of insects, suggesting a considerably different evolutionary path. Indeed, compound eyes have rather poor image resolution but possess a larger viewing angle and the ability to detect fast movement. Still, others have typical reptilian eyes with slit pupils, like the Tholian-employed slavemaster Slar in the Enterprise episode “In a Mirror, Darkly.” They have at least two genders, male and female.

Gorn has an average height of approximately two meters and tends to be many times stronger than most humanoids. Adult Gorn is slower and less agile than humans on average but possesses more durability and stamina. Unaided by the universal translator, their language sounds to most humanoids as a series of clicks and growls. And as far as their lifespan, one source indicates they can live for up to three hundred years. This brings me to the discussion of the Gorn’s life cycle…

In the Gorn’s earliest appearances, their growth and maturation cycle has never been explored deeply—or, actually, at all. Star Trek Into Darkness has an offhand line of dialogue indicating Gorn can become pregnant with live young, a phenomenon in nature known as viviparity.

This is not so unusual for a reptilian being, as some Earth snakes and lizards don’t lay eggs. Caesarean sections may be necessary to deliver Gorn children in such a way, with births of up to eight children at a time known to have occurred. The infants are apparently highly aggressive even when born in this manner. In season one of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds , however, we are treated to a much different, more thoroughly detailed explanation as to how the Gorn reproduce. And indeed, this is just one of a number of things about the Gorn that are a notable departure from previously established canon…or so it might seem at first.

In the fourth episode of Strange New Worlds , “Memento Mori,” the character La’an Noonien-Singh recounts how, as a child, she escaped from a Gorn breeding planet. On these planetary nurseries, Gorn deposit sentient beings for use as breeding sacs or to be hunted as food by Gorn hatchlings.

The adults will periodically return to these planets to harvest their young. As we see in the series’ ninth episode, “All Those Who Wander,” Gorn hatch from parasitic eggs that incubate inside humanoid hosts. This is in contrast to the previously mentioned viviparity—pointing towards different methods of reproduction and/or the existence of, once again, different species of Gorn.

Their maturation cycle depends on the species of the host, lasting months in some cases but days in others. When ready, hatchlings will rip their way violently from the host’s body in a clear homage to the xenomorphs from Alien .

Newly emerged Gorn are white in colour—they become green as they feed voraciously and grow rapidly in size, moulting their skin along the way. Both the eggs and hatchlings are biologically invisible to sensors—rather conveniently—and despite their bestial nature, hatchlings can prevent themselves from being sensed telepathically.

Gorn hatchlings are quadrupedal, and they are exceptionally fast and strong in clear contrast to their adult forms. Not only are they uncontrollably aggressive towards other life forms—they are also aggressive towards members of their own species. Competing for dominance, only the strongest and smartest survive. Juvenile Gorn develops ducts that enable them to spit venom, which can infect additional hosts with eggs. As some have speculated, many of these other advantageous traits could indeed be the result of genetic engineering.

So, how can this more fearsome depiction of the Gorn be reconciled with their other appearances throughout Star Trek ? Well, the most straightforward answer is that Gorn hatchlings are simply more rambunctious and appear to, well, mellow out as they mature. Of course, “mellow out” only in a comparative sense. Also, keep in mind that the “intelligence” of human babies is nothing remarkable, being on average slightly under that of an untrained domestic dog.

“Trained” dogs are ones that work for the police, the armed forces, on movie/TV sets, as guide dogs, shepherds etc. And feral dogs are, logically, somewhat more intelligent than most regular, coddled pet dogs, simply because they must be due to their unfortunate circumstances. As humans mature, of course, our IQ goes up as we train our minds by learning things and practising new skills.

Something that should be further emphasized as well is that many animals’ “final forms” are quite drastically different from their infant or even adolescent stages. I talk about one type of biological transformation, metamorphosis, in detail in my video about the Metroids from, well, Metroid …another species that Strange New Worlds ’ lil’ baby Gorn is reminiscent of. While we don’t exactly know how many times a Gorn moults its skin, this process is just one example of how the Gorn metamorphose during its life cycle.

And their assumption of an upright posture later in life is, once again, perfectly in line with the maturation of an intelligent lifeform. Besides humans, bipedal locomotion is common among birds, the descendants of avian dinosaurs—and as I also demonstrated in my video about the Chozo from “Metroid,” birds are some of the smartest nonhuman terrestrial animals, another indication that the evolution of a sapient reptilian species is more plausible than one might think.

Plus, if you’re looking for further evidence connecting the familiar Gorn with their quadrupedal counterparts, let’s not forget Lorca had a Gorn skeleton as part of his “menagerie” aboard the starship Discovery —a show that directly predates Strange New Worlds and which shares the show’s overall design language.

Federation-Gorn Relations

Regardless, in Strange New Worlds , Gorn is referred to on occasion as “monsters.” Humans are merely prey to them, La’an emphasizes, and she dismisses the idea that they can ever be reasoned with—some things in the universe, she says, are simply evil. Of course, this is through the lens of one character’s traumatic childhood experiences.

It should be noted that such a roughshod, antagonistic approach to dealing with an enemy is not entirely out of character for a Starfleet crew in the mid-23 rd century, and it’s up to the discretion of individual captains as to how to deal with such matters. Besides, we do ultimately see that, evidently, La’an isn’t correct that the Gorn can’t be reasoned with…more on that later.

In terms of the Federation’s other dealings with the Gorn, despite multiple unofficial contacts between the two powers by 2259, the Gorn have never been listed as “officially” encountered. This is primarily because the Gorn hardly leave survivors.

In accordance with ritual, when Gorn hunt captives for sport on their breeding worlds, one survivor is spared and placed in a life raft jettisoned into space. The survivor is not expected to live, though La’an obviously did.

The first “official” contact between the Federation and the Gorn does occur in 2267 when the Gorn attack a Federation colony on the planet Cestus III. The Gorn view their attack as a preemptive move since they regard Cestus as part of their own territory. The USS Enterprise pursues a Gorn starship into unexplored space, where both ships are immobilized by the super-advanced and mysterious Metrons, who pit Captain Kirk and the Gorn captain against each other, against their will, in a contest of strength and ingenuity to the death.

Kirk spares the brutish Gorn’s life after Kirk is victorious, and the calculating but high-principled Metrons send both captains back to their respective ships and transport the Enterprise light-years out of the area.

Given how intelligent the Gorn are, they are surely keenly aware of the Federation’s perception of them up to this point. So, it’s likely that this very encounter in “Arena” was an instrumental stepping stone in the thawing of Federation-Gorn relations as both cultures began to appreciate each other’s perspectives and moral systems more fully.

This is why, by the 24 th century, the Cestus conflict is more or less resolved…the Federation colony has been rebuilt, and Benjamin Sisko speaks of the Pike City Pioneers baseball team that hails from this planet’s capital. This doesn’t mean the Federation and the Gorn have to be best buds, but once again, like the Klingons, open hostilities have apparently been reduced to a minimum.

And even more has been done in recent Trek instalments to, in a word, further “humanize” the Gorn. In Lower Decks , we see a Gorn wedding reception, and a Gorn chef works at a restaurant on Federation Starbase 25.

A Gorn is even referenced as having attended William T. Riker’s bachelor party in an omitted line of dialogue from the first draft script of Star Trek: Nemesis . While admittedly a lot of work must be done, both in-universe and out-of-universe, to bridge this more peaceful depiction of the Gorn with their depiction as loose analogues to Alien ’s xenomorphs, the point is, the groundwork has already been laid for such a transition. So, no, Ms Noonien-Singh, the Gorn can be reasoned with. Much like has happened with the Romulans and multiple other antagonists in Star Trek , given enough time, an enemy really can become an ally—even a friend.

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Published Jan 19, 2020

The Gorn Identity

53 years of "Arena" in pictures.

StarTrek.com

The Gorn is 53 years old. Actually, he’s probably much older than that, but Star Trek fans first met the big, lumbering green guy in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode “Arena,” 53 years ago today.

The Gorn, in his birthday suit, on the set of “Arena.”

The Gorn costume was created by Wah Chang while actor, stuntman and Star Trek convention favorite Bobby Clark actually got into the character to play the Gorn. “[Director] Joseph Pevney hired me as a stunt actor,” Clark told StarTrek.com in a 2011 interview. “Now, for ‘Arena,’ I was hired as an actor who could do my own stunts. That’s how I’d say it. Regardless of what the critics say about the fight with Bill Shatner, I think the Gorn was pretty interesting. I was supposed to be cumbersome, I was supposed to be awkward and I was supposed to be slow. That was the reptilian nature of the Gorn. But, definitely, I was hired as an actor who had the capability to do the stunts.” Clark, for the record, went on to appear in three other TOS episodes: “The Apple,” “Mirror Mirror” and “The Return of the Archons.”

The Gorn return to action, albeit cartoon style, in “The Time Trap,” an episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series that aired in 1973.

The Gorn figured into a number of Star Trek books and video games, but didn’t return to live-action television until the Star Trek: Enterprise Mirror Universe episode, “In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II.” That was stunt coordinator Vince Deadrick, Jr. in the costume, with his performance enhanced by VFX.

Let’s not forget that there was a whole 96-page Wildstorm graphic novel devoted to the Gorn, The Gorn Crisis.

The Rura Penthe prison sequence in Star Trek (2009) also initially included a Gorn, but the creature hit the cutting room floor.

William Shatner and the Gorn reunited in 2013 for a very funny commercial touting NAMCO Bandai’s Star Trek: The Video Game .

And, of course, there are Gorn characters in Star Trek Online , where they are a playable race and belong to the Klingon Empire faction. The Phalanx Science Vessel, Draguas Support Vessel and Varanus Fleet Support Vessel are the only playable Gorn ships in-game, though there are Gorn-style C-Store costumes for the Vo'quv Carrier and Vor'cha Battle Cruiser.

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The history of ‘Star Trek’s’ Gorn, from styrofoam rocks to big green xenomorphs

Imagine 'Godzilla vs. Kong,' but they're both way shorter and Kong is a Canadian.

The Gorn. Since debuting in the 1967 Star Trek episode “The Arena,” they’ve been called a lot of things. “Weird.” “Iconic.” “Weirdly iconic.” Thanks to their striking combination of Ferrigno-green slabs of thigh beef and Spirit Halloween-level facial features, the Gorn have taken up a special place in the hearts of Trekkies, representing a threat whose level of seriousness lay somewhere between tribbles and that Riker clone who disguised himself by wearing fake sideburns.

Like Daleks, Cruella De Vil, or any fictional monster with the staying power to stick around for six decades, the Gorn have gone through a fair few reimaginings. Here’s a quick rundown of every take on the Trek villains.

Part One: The Gorn Identity

Star Trek had only been a thing for four months when the Gorn made their first appearance. Episode 19 of the original series aired in January of 1967, spinning a yarn about a Federation outpost on an exotic world getting pretty well smooshed.

The smooshers, who follow up their smooshing by luring Kirk and company into a smoosh trap, are an unknown alien species — cold-blooded reptilians, according to sensor readings, but difficult to get a bead on. After a quick exchange of explosives, the aggressors and the Starfleet personnel make their way back to their respective ships, and a high-warp chase ensues.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, the Enterprise and the alien ship wind up driving through sort of a galactic speed trap. They’re forcibly pulled over by powerful space narcs called Metrons, who don’t cotton to gunplay and irresponsible starship maneuvers in their neck of the woods. The Metrons’ dim view of violence leads them to decide that Kirk and the captain of the alien vessel should get transported to a quiet spot where they can kill each other with primitive weapons. It’s kind of like when you were a kid and you’d fight with your brother, so your parents would give you both all of the ingredients to make gunpowder and then watch you shoot each other with cannons. 

Materializing on the planet, Kirk and the audience get their first look at the Gorn. The tricorder readings from earlier got a few things right: The creature in front of Kirk is definitely reptilian. What they couldn’t have predicted, though, was just how much the alien captain would look like what would happen if Vince McMahon encouraged a Sleestak to start taking some injections to further his career.

The fight is one for the ages. The music is classic. The rocks are uncharacteristically bouncy. Kirk is faster than his sluggish opponent, but the Gorn captain is incredibly strong — not as strong as Khan from the second movie about Khan , but at least as strong as Khan from the first movie about Khan. On a related note, Star Trek is kind of a mess. That’ll be relevant in a minute.

When the Gorn captain finally communicates with Kirk, he’s high-octane arch. He offers to kill Kirk quickly if he stops moving around so much, then lets him know that the outpost he and his crew smooshed earlier was on a planet that the Gorn had called dibs on. This leads to Federation officers, perhaps for the first time, considering that maybe they can’t just park their stuff in people’s yards without asking. 

Kirk wins the fight, pulls a classic hero move, and announces that he won’t kill a helpless super-strong lizard man with a taste for annihilation. Everyone goes their separate ways. Spock and Uhura don’t mention anything about having hung out around Gorn before, inadvertently dropping nerds in the future into a never-ending echo chamber filled with continuity errors, but again, we’ll get to that in a minute.

Part Two: Here today, Gorn tomorrow

It’s uncharacteristic for a species with such an iconic debut to go missing for long stretches of time, but the Gorn didn’t show up again through the rest of the original series. Aside from a cameo in Star Trek: The Animated Series and a deleted scene from Nemesis, the species fully ducks out of the franchise for just shy of 40 years.

The next time we see the Gorn is a full four series later in a 2005 episode of Star Trek: Enterprise. “In a Mirror, Darkly, Pt II” introduces a fresh take on the Gorn — an ambitious new look, fueled by optimism and creativity and maybe a little bit too much faith in how far CGI could get you on a television budget the same year that Sharkboy and Lava Girl hit theaters.

This go-round, the evil counterpart to Captain Archer faces off against a Gorn in the Mirror Universe. This isn’t the sort of Gorn you remember. This guy is slinky and ceiling-crawly. The compound eyes of the creature seen in the original series are replaced by reptilian lizard peepers. This reimagining of the Gorn would look right at home in a video game cutscene made by a studio that’s been struggling for a while. Brought low by a targeted gravity beam, the defenseless lizardman gets a close look at how dark and gritty this timeline is when Archer pew-pews him full of special effects blasts. The only thing strong enough to kill CGI is CGI.

In point of fact, OG Gorn in their rubbery glory would only make one more appearance on screen, during an ad for 2013’s Star Trek: The Video Game. The commercial sees William Shatner and the Gorn he fought back in ‘67 arguing over their couch co-op sesh. 10 years later, it remains the only fondly remembered aspect of a game that made a whole generation ask, ”How big is anything supposed to be?”

Part Three: I Know Gorn When I See It

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is a peculiar thing. While it mostly veers toward humanistic optimism about bright-eyed, hard-working explorers, it can’t always escape the black hole of dourness left by its Discovery parentage.

(As a quick, related side note: Captain Lorca had what sure looked like a Gorn skeleton in his office on Discovery. The producers said it was a Gorn, then realized that the Federation hadn’t made contact with the Gorn by that point in history, then walked it back and claimed that it wasn’t a Gorn at all. Discovery was a real mixed bag.)

Case in point: The even newer, even darker, even CGI-ier Gorn, alluded to and kept just offscreen for most of the first season before making their wet first appearance in the episode “All Those Who Wander.” 

The new Gorn would have been unrecognizable to a Star Trek fan in the ‘60s, and suspiciously recognizable to anyone working on the movie Alien in the ‘70s. The days of lumbering were over. The bug eyes were kaput. Now, Gorn — albeit very young ones — looked like a cross between Gremlins and those guys from Dead Like Me that stuck people’s heads in revolving doors. Folks who’d encountered them were petrified of a second run-in, a detail that’s made up about a third of La’an’s dialogue throughout the series, and with good reason. The new Gorn had a habit of sneezing acidic propagation snot on their victims, impregnating their exposed skin with exploding sacks of smaller Gorn. Gorn gestation wound up being what took out fan-favorite Chief Engineer Hemmer, who sacrificed himself to stop the bloodthirsty buns in his oven from cooking. It was a tough pill to swallow, but it went down a little easier thanks to the fact that it gave Carol Kane’s Pelia a chance to join the crew.

The Gorn made one more appearance on SNW as the antagonists in the season two finale, “Hegemony.” Fully realized, fully terrifying, and for the first time since the series premiered, seemingly capable of escaping the trap of being to Strange New Worlds what the Ferengi were to the first year or two of Next Generation, the Gorn are finally primed to take their place as a Star Trek villain worth not laughing at hysterically. 

Oh, shoot, speaking of which.

Part Four: Never Gorn-a Give You Up

Star Trek: Lower Decks is silly. It’s some of the best Star Trek in recent memory for fans of the old days who don’t mind treating a show about spaceships less than reverently, but also just hyper goofy. It’s Rick & Morty if Rick & Morty had been licensed by Paramount and the Roddenberry estate. It’s what everyone expected The Orville to be, but funnier.

So it can be easy to forget that it’s also canon. More than a wacky side project for Trek nerds, it’s a series of stories that take place in the wider Star Trek universe, the same way-too-serious place where those guys from Picard treated Borg victims like they were in a Hostel sequel, and where that lady from TNG died from melting into the floor. All of those stories are just as valid to Trek continuity as the time when the crew of the USS Cerritos was hunted by an anthropomorphic Starfleet insignia named Badgey. Either it all counts, or none of it does.

And so, there’s one last detail about the Gorn that we can pull from Star Trek lore. According to the Lower Decks episode “Veritas,” the Gorn have extravagant weddings. The brides wear white dresses, and the guests sit in uncomfortable-looking folding chairs, and the whole thing is eerily similar to the ceremony for your partner’s hayseed cousin that you got stuck at last summer, only with a flaming mouth-shaped cave instead of a bespoke apple orchard as a backdrop.

This franchise really went off the rails.

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• Gorn Hegemony

Gorn history

• View history

This page details the history of the Gorn and the Gorn Hegemony .

• 1 Early history
• 2 22nd century
• 3 23rd century
• 4.1 Klingon-Gorn War
• 5 25th century

Early history [ ]

The species origins were traced to the planet Agornu where the Gorn were noted for being both a very old and a highly sophisticated civilization. Thousands of years ago , the first empires arose following the discovery of agriculture which eventually formed the first Gorn states. Over the next few centuries, the barbarism of Agornu was conquered by the Gorn people who absorbed such regions to form an empire. In the time that followed, the Gorn began colonizing nearby worlds which were later united into a single great empire after the invention of the warp drive . ( Last Unicorn RPG module : Star Trek: The Original Series Core Game Book )

The Gorn race was actually three species who were genetically identical and lived on three separate worlds. After they achieved space travel, the three Gorn races discovered one another and learnt of their similarity whereupon it was discovered, through fossil records, that none of their planets was their race's true homeworld. Seeing the similarity, the three races joined one another into a single political unit. ( TOS video game : Starfleet Command II )

The Gorn had achieved interstellar propulsion technology as far back as 500,000 BC when they established a cemetery world on the planet Cenotaph . They marked this world by placing numerous kilometer wide stone spheres in equatorial orbit which were engraved with a warning that anyone who trespassed would be committing a grave sacrilege. ( TOS comic : " Dying of the Light ")

Early in their history, the Gorn people encountered the Paravian species. The encounter led to hostilities between both races and eventually to the extermination of the Paravian people by the Gorn's hand. The next species they encountered was the Romulan Star Empire . Because the Romulans lived in a poor region of space, the Gorn Hegemony and the Romulan Star Empire battled in a war for resources over the few planets they managed to discover. The Gorn achieve several victories but each were costly and bloody. This resulted in a constant state of conflict between the two races. Both set of hostile encounters clouded the Gorn’s view on other races. ( TOS video game : Starfleet Command II )

22nd century [ ]

By 2154 the Gorn were known to at least one Orion , the trader Harrad-Sar who purchased Meridor from the Hegemony. ( ENT episode : " Bound ")

23rd century [ ]

In the 2230s or 40s , the Gorn made un-official first contact with humans and the United Federation of Planets when they attacked the SS Puget Sound . The gorn took the colonists as both food and to be used as breeding sacks. According to the only known survivor, La'an Noonien-Singh , the Gorn used her family and other colonists as sport for their hunts before they were fed to the gorns' infants. The gorn, in accordance to one of their rituals, sent Noonien-Singh in a life-raft believing she would eventually die. However, she was found by the USS Martin Luther King Jr. .( SNW episode : " Strange New Worlds ")

In 2259 , Noonien-Singh, now the USS Enterprise 's Security chief , discovered that the gorn had attacked Finibus III . The Enterprise then came under attack by three Gorn hunter warships and a destroyer . However, the gorn hunters were destoryed and the destroyer was fooled into believing that Enterprise had been destroyed by a black hole .( SNW episode : " Memento Mori ")

Later that year, the USS Peregrine under Captain Alice Gavin rescued three survivors from a gorn breeding planet. Unfortunately, Pasko had been infected with gorn eggs and attempted to kill himself with a plasma grenade. The Peregrine made an emergency landing on Valeo Beta V and the gorn hatched. Gavin and her crew were forced to deal with hatchlings for a week until they were forced to abandon the Peregrine . Gavin and 20 of her crew went outside knowing the the gorn could not survive in the cold. Unfortunately, she and her crew died of hypothermia . The Enterprise was sent to recover the Peregrine . Only a little girl, Oriana and her friend Buckley were found by Captain Pike and his landing party. However, Buckley had gorn eggs in himself and they hatched. The hatchlings killed cadet Chia and Lieutenant Duke . Lieutenant Hemmer was infected with eggs and chose to jump to his death out of the Peregrine 's cargo bay. Pike and his landing party were able to eliminate the hatchlings, recover the Peregrine , and returned to the Enterprise .( SNW episode : " All Those Who Wander ")

S'alath, at first contact with the Federation

The Gorn made official first contact with the Federation in 2267 when a Gorn vessel attacked a Human colony on Cestus III interpreting the colonization as in invasion into Gorn Space. The vessel was pursued by the USS Enterprise until the Metrons , a non-corporeal species, intervened and forced the commanders of both ships to battle to death for control of Cestus. Kirk of the Enterprise won, but refused to kill the Gorn commander. ( TOS episode : " Arena ")

A brief lull in Federation/Gorn rivalry in 2269 enabled Gorn cadet Telosirizharcrede of Cestus Eliar to enter Starfleet Academy . ( TOS - Fortunes of War novel : Dreadnought! )

The following year a Human archaeologist , Holm Baynan , traveled to the Gorn cemetery world Cenotaph to conduct research. Aware the Gorn would pursue him for pillaging their sacred world he issued a fake distress call to bring the Enterprise to the planet so that he could quickly have them take on the artifacts he discovered and make his escape. Unfortunately a trio of Gorn cruisers arrived before the Enterprise departed, demanding the ship surrender to take a quick death for their crimes. Fortunately for the Starfleet crew the lead Gorn vessel was commanded by S'alath , the same Gorn Kirk had battled before, the familiarity between the commanders, coupled with the token destruction of one of the Enterprise's shuttles by Kirk, allowed the situation to calm from conflict to a cultural exchange. ( TOS comic : " Dying of the Light ")

In 2282 , a Federation shuttlecraft crashed on a planetoid used by the Gorn to train young warriors. A Gorn rescue party was sent to aid the survivors, who mistook them for a war party and shot their physician, Thak . The Gorn, surprised and infuriated by the unprovoked attack, prepared to retaliate, but the Humans, having realized their mistake, treated Thak's wounds, enabling him to explain the situation to his people. ( TOS comic : " Alien Spotlight: The Gorn ")

In the 2280s , the Gorn Kingdom was ruled by a king who was old and lacked authority. Actual running of the government was left to the King's advisors and children. Though the government suffered political problems, it was still quite a powerful military force that was more then enough to challenge other governments near their territory. ( TOS video game : Klingon Academy )

The Romulans were noted in attempting to fracture the newly developed Gorn-Federation alliance , however, their attempts only served to further cement the two's relations which became based on mutual trust as well as respect. ( TOS video game : Starfleet Command II )

24th century [ ]

In 2370 , there was growing unrest within the Gorn empire with a more militant faction seeking to undermine the dominant government and declare war against the Federation. Peace talks were made through the efforts of Captain Jean-Luc Picard who attend the Gorn Summit that managed to avert the crisis. ( TNG novel : Requiem )

Several Gorn were visiting Quark's on Deep Space 9 in 2372 . Quark thought their speech sounded like air escaping the station . ( DS9 novel : The 34th Rule )

In 2374 , after decades of peaceful relations with the Federation, the Gorn government was toppled by a coup d'etat by the Black Crest faction, and a new offensive was launched against Cestus III. A halt to these hostilities was negotiated by the crew of the USS Enterprise -E , who also managed to persuade the Gorn to join the Federation Alliance in the war against the Dominion . ( TNG comic : " The Gorn Crisis ")

Thanks to their familiarity with the Gorn, the Enterprise crew were later able to convince the Gorn to join a task force to meet the 'Iconians' in the gateways crisis of 2376 . ( TNG novel : Doors Into Chaos )

By 2379 , the Gorn Hegemony had established normal diplomatic relations with the Federation, and even maintained a diplomatic mission on Earth . The Gorn Ambassador to the United Federation of Planets that year was Zogozin , whom Federation President Min Zife of Bolarus found very intimidating. ( TNG novel : A Time to Heal )

In 2381 , the Imperator of the Gorn Hegemony was called to a summit called by the Federation President in order to discuss the threat of a Borg invasion. ( ST - Destiny novel : Mere Mortals )

Klingon-Gorn War [ ]

On Stardate 61829.83 in 2384 a Gorn starship attacked the IKS Quv in international space. 207 Klingons were killed and King Xrathis refused to hand over the survivors. Chancellor Martok retaliated by expelling Gorn diplomats, and dispatched Klingon Defense Force vessels to their common border.

Xrathis died in 2386 and was succeeded by his son Crown Prince Slathis . He reinforced the Gorn side of the border, and several KDF-Gorn skirmishes followed. Full-scale war broke out on Stardate 63504.74 of that year when the Klingons attacked the Gorn colony at Gila IV , capturing it after a two-day battle. The Federation then intervened to mediate between the two powers, and negotiations dragged out for the next three years.

In 2389 the war resumed with the battle for the Gamma Orionis system. Slathis negotiated a deal with Nausicaan mercenaries, granting them rights to several asteroid belts and a substantial payment in exchange for joining the war on their side. Despite this, the Klingons held onto Gamma Orionis.

The Federation opened a second round of talks in 2390 , but the preliminary talks came to a halt when Martok demanded that Starfleet remove its ships from the Romulan -Klingon border.

Starfleet agreed to Martok's demand in 2391 and dispatched ships to battle the Nausicaans in exchange for Martok committing to peace talks. Representatives of the Klingons, Gorn, and Nausicaans met at Deep Space K-7 , but talks collapsed two days in when Gorn Ambassador Zogozin was injured by a bomb . Starfleet Security investigated and linked J'dah , a Klingon extremist, to the attack, but he was killed by an unknown attacker before he could be arrested.

The Klingons advanced into Gorn territory, and Slathis recalled forces from the outlying colonies to protect Gornar . He attempted to gain the assistance of Lethean mercenaries, but outside analysts doubted he had the resources to pay both them and the Nausicaans.

In 2392 another round of peace talks began on Cestus III , but the preliminary talks came to no conclusion. On Stardate 69259.56 a Gorn-Nausicaan fleet attacked the Klingon planet Ogat , but were repelled after a two-week battle.

Chancellor J'mpok , who had slain Martok in an honor duel in 2393 , reluctantly agreed to yet another round of talks in 2397 . On Stardate 75705.90 , the peace conference on Casperia Prime was bombed by a Klingon extremist group. The Federation tried to restart the talks but the Klingons and Gorn withdrew their delegations.

In 2399 Captain Ja'rod, son of Torg of the IKS Kang returned to Qo'noS with evidence that the Gorn had been heavily infiltrated by Species 8472 . The next day Chancellor J'mpok ordered a full-scale invasion of the Hegemony, and within weeks a Klingon- Orion fleet stormed the border. Gorn and Nausicaan ships fought bravely against the invaders through 2400 , earning the Klingons' respect with their ferocity. The Federation Council declared the war unlawful but was ignored.

In 2402 the Klingons reached Gornar and laid siege to the planet . The Gorn attempted to prevent an invasion by erecting a network of transporter scramblers and laying a minefield of cloaked self-replicating mines to prevent a shuttle landing. However, on Stardate 80344.81 ( 2403 ) the transporter scramblers failed and the Klingons made planetfall, heading straight for the capital city. Twenty-eight hours after the invasion began, KDF ground forces stormed the royal palace. King Slathis surrendered to General Klag, son of M'Raq , who agreed to lift martial law orders against the civilian population. The Klingon occupying force were noted for remarkable civility towards Gornar's civilians.

Chancellor J'mpok traveled to Gornar and together with Slathis made a public announcement of the severity of Species 8472's infiltration of the Hegemony, then proceeded to execute the infiltrators. Despite demands by hardliners on the Klingon High Council , J'mpok chose not to execute the Gorn royal family, instead offering them self-rule as a client state of the Empire. Slathis accepted and was given a non-voting seat on the Council. ( ST website  : The Path to 2409 )

25th century [ ]

In their capacity as a Klingon client state, Gorn naval forces attacked Sherman's Planet on Stardate 82626.64 in 2405 , at the start of the Third Federation-Klingon War . Starfleet repelled the attack. The same year, King Slathis negotiated a nonaggression pact between the Klingons and the Nausicaans he had formerly employed.

In 2408 Klingons and Gorn invaded Cestus III. Again, Starfleet retaliated. ( ST website  : The Path to 2409 )

By 2409 Gorn rebels opposed to Klingon domination began attacking Klingon starbases . ( ST video game : Star Trek Online )

• 1 The Chase
• 2 Preserver (race)
• 3 Ferengi Rules of Acquisition

Star Trek writer explains a big Gorn canon twist in Strange New Worlds

Your favorite lizard people are back. Or are they? SNW w riter Davy Perez explains all things Gorn.

The Gorn are back! In Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode 4, “Memento Mori,” Starfleet begins believing the myth of the Gorn is real, and the species of lizard aliens who fought Captain Kirk in The Original Series suddenly just got a lot more fleshed-out in Star Trek canon. Yet, Strange New Worlds also created several new mysteries and continuity twists about the Gorn.

Inverse caught up with Episode 4 co-writer Davy Perez to get all the scaly details about the Gorn and why he and (Episode 4’s other co-writer) Beau DeMayo made a very specific decision on whether to show the lizard aliens onscreen. Spoilers ahead.

The mystery of the Gorn

Captain Pike (Anson Mount) and Spock (Ethan Peck) try to outwit the Gorn spaceships.

Other than the famous appearance of a Gorn captain in The Original Series episode “Arena,” the only other times we see Gorns in Trek canon are in:

• The Animated Series episode “The Time Trap” (1973)
• Lower Decks episode “Veritas” (2020)
• Enterprise episode “In a Mirror, Darkly Part II” (2005)
• Discovery season 1 as a skeleton kept by Captain Lorca (2017)

Because the Enterprise Gorn is from the Mirror Universe , and the other non- TOS appearances are either animated or skeletal, actual flesh-and-blood Gorn sightings in the Prime Universe of Trek canon are extremely rare.

“We discussed this quite a bit, how to honor the idea that people either haven't seen [the Gorn] and in some cases might not even believe they exist,” writer Davy Perez tells Inverse. “ There is a lot we still don’t know about the Gorn. What was fun for me was using parts from ‘Arena’ we do know to inform some of their behavior.”

Perez points out that in “Arena,” Kirk is told by the Metrons that the creature he fights is a Gorn, which gave the writers “room to play” while making sure the moment for Kirk still made sense.

“Our goal is never to undo people’s experience with The Original Series, ” Perez explains. “But if we can manage it, perhaps to give us an interesting perspective to consider that lines up with the original stories.”

Why Strange New Worlds didn’t show the Gorn

La’an (Christina Chong) and Ortegas (Melissa Navia) in a tense moment on the bridge of the Enterprise .

Because Kirk had never seen a Gorn before “Arena,” some fans might be worried that Strange New Worlds flies very close to violating canon in “Memento Mori.” How can the Enterprise encounter the Gorn in roughly 2259 if Kirk doesn’t see the Gorn for the first time until 2267?

The answer is simple: At no point in this episode do we ever see a Gorn. And Perez reveals this decision was crucial.

“I think there were some early ideas floating around where we might have caught a glimpse of one,” Perez says. “But there was always the idea that we should hear about them and begin to dread the Gorn without ever actually seeing them. Once we decided not to see them at all, the episode sprang to life.”

Because “Memento Mori” doesn’t feature Pike wrestling with a guy in a lizard suit, it doesn’t reference “Arena” all that much. Instead, the structure of “Memento Mori” refers to a different Original Series episode, “Balance of Terror,” in which the Enterprise plays cat-and-mouse with a Romulan ship.

“It was 100 percent an inspiration,” Perez says. “I did a deep dive on submarine movies when I was researching this episode. I wanted to emulate that same feeling as ‘Balance of Terror.’ We put the focus on our crew working together and dealing with their respective problems all over the ship.”

Strange New Worlds ’ “Easter egg basket”

Although Pike, Spock, and most of Starfleet have never seen a Gorn, Lt. La’an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong) very much has. As revealed in this episode, La’an’s family was murdered by the Gorn when she was a small child on a Federation colony ship, the S.S. Puget Sound . As La’an says in the episode, “plenty of people have seen the Gorn,” they just don’t live to tell the tale.

In this way, La’an has hidden canon knowledge about the Gorn that even Spock and Kirk won’t have until after the events of “Arena” in The Original Series . Notably, this is also the second bit of classic Trek canon that La’an has access to because of her unique background. In “Ghosts of Illyria,” we learn she’s the descendent of the villainous Khan Noonien Singh from TOS and The Wrath of Khan . So, in the ‘60s show, the crew doesn’t know much about the Gorn and has spotty knowledge of Khan, but in Strange New Worlds , La’an has secret knowledge of both.

“I haven’t thought her that way, but I can see how she is sort of the ‘Easter Egg basket’ for our show,” Perez says with a laugh. “She’s an outsider and new character, and she also gets to be an audience surrogate. A lot of La’an’s back story is going to be new information to existing fans as well. That’s what is fun about playing in this era [of Star Trek canon]. There are a lot of stories and ideas that have been touched on in the past but still have lots of potential to explore.”

Captain Kirk (William Shatner) refuses to murder the Gorn Captain in “Arena.”

Perez also notes that La’an’s feelings about the Gorn are intended to reference Kirk’s actions in “Arena,” albeit in a roundabout way. In “Memento Mori,” La’an says, “The Federation teaches that if we can find a way to empathize with an enemy, they can one day become our friends. They’re wrong . Some things in this universe are just plain evil.”

And yet, in “Arena,” Kirk famously refuses to murder a Gorn, proving to the Metrons that human beings are capable of incredible empathy. It’s a classic Trek moment that gets an interesting twist in Strange New Worlds .

“It’s a nice bookend thematically with ‘Arena,’” Perez explains. “La’an says this because of her history with the Gorn. We’re a long way from that lesson right now.”

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds airs new episodes on Paramount+ on Thursdays.

Ryan Britt's new book on the history of Star Trek's biggest changes. From the '60s show to the movies to 'TNG,' to 'Discovery,' 'Picard,' Strange New Worlds,' and beyond!

This article was originally published on May 26, 2022

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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.

The Complete History of the Klingons in Star Trek's TNG Era

Quick links, the next generation introduced the klingon-federation alliance, deep space nine changed klingon and federation dynamics in an explosive way, the klingon and federation go to war against the dominion, the end of the 24th century brought a return to klingon and federation peace.

While Klingons are thought of as the biggest antagonists in the history of the Federation, the majority of Star Trek stories take place when they are at peace. The end of Star Trek: The Original Series era of films included the beginnings of an alliance initiated by Spock and Captain Kirk, though reluctantly. While peace was never easy or all that long-lasting, the Klingon Empire and Starfleet are just as often allies as enemies. Making peace with the Federation was always something controversial among the war-obsessed Klingons. Through multiple versions of treaties, alliances and agreements, some Klingon ship and its crew were always hassling some Starfleet or Federation target. However, the Romulan Star Empire's reemergence helped bring them closer together.

In 2344, a Klingon outpost on Narenda III was attacked by the Romulans. The USS Enterprise-C under Captain Rachel Garrett tried to help and was destroyed after a brief time-travel excursion changing Star Trek canon. This sacrifice led to very productive peace talks, which themselves came under attack by Romulans two years later. Ja'rod of House Duras betrayed the Klingons, but he blamed Mogh (Worf's father), whose son was sent away and was raised on Earth. Another prominent Klingon, Martok was given a field commission while fending off a Romulan attack. The most solid alliance between the Federation and Klingons came in 2349 when Riva (whose name came to mean "peacemaker") negotiated a lasting peace with Federation leaders, including Sarek, father of Spock.

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The treaty Riva negotiated led to a powerful political alliance between the Federation and the Klingons . The Empire was even described as being a tertiary part of the United Federation of Planets. However, errant Houses continued to attack Federation targets, and anti-alliance leaders like Korris emerged because they believed their leaders were traitors. Still, Starfleet and the Klingons participated in officer exchanges, and they even fought in some battles together, mostly against Romulans. Klingons assisted the USS Enterprise-D in trying to help Admiral Jarok defect, and provided a Bird of Prey for Picard and Data's covert mission to find Spock on Romulus.

Still, there were Klingons who chose the Romulans over the Federation. Ambassador Kell who worked with Sela (the daughter of an alternate timeline Tasha Yar ) to frame the Federation for the murder of a Klingon governor. While the peace with the Federation was maintained, it wasn't so for the Klingons themselves. A civil war broke out in the Empire deposing the longest ruler in Klingon history, K'mpec. Duras, son of Ja'rod, led a faction that wanted to break ties with the Federation and make the Klingons more warlike. He was killed by Worf in revenge for Mogh's death around 2367. After this, Worf's half-brother, Kurn, had to live in hiding as "Rodek"

Klingon women could not lead a house, so Duras's sisters Lursa and B'Etor put forth their half-brother Toral to stand against the more Federation-friendly successor to K'mpec, Gowron. However, the previous chancellor named Captain Picard as the "Arbiter of Succession," rejecting Toral's claim. The ensuing Civil War was fanned by Sela and her new Klingon Ally, General Movar. As the Enterprise and Starfleet tried to maintain a blockade of Romulan and Klingon space, quick-thinking by Data revealed the cloaked Romulan ships providing aid to House Duras. Gowron won the Chancellorship, and he was mostly friendly to the Federation .

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Under Gowron, the Klingons helped to engage the Borg, though it is unclear if they were aiding Starfleet or being attacked themselves. Also, in 2369 clerics at a monastery in Boreth cloned Kahless the Unforgettable , the legendary Klingon leader. This was to fulfill the prophecy that he would return from Klingon Heaven, Sto-va-kor. However, he became a "moral" leader while Gowron retained his position. When the wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant was discovered near Bajor and Deep Space 9, relations grew tense, especially once the Dominion became a threat.

Before the outbreak of open hostilities, the Changeling Founders replaced General Martok with an imposter, who forced Gowron to antagonize the Federation, even ending the alliance. At the same time, the Klingon Empire invaded the Cardassian Empire, which Starfleet and the Federation opposed. Captain Benjamin Sisko convinced Gowron to end his campaign, but the alliance was not restored. The phony Martok's influence created tension between Starfleet and the Klingons, but Gowron's desire to appear in complete control made them think he was the Changeling imposter.

Eventually, the Klingons declared war on the Federation over territory on the shared galactic border. The two forces battled for weeks until Starfleet revealed the Changeling infiltration and return the true Martok. At the same time, the Cardassian Empire joined the Dominion. These reinforcements almost decimated the Klingon Fleet. Gowron and the survivors travel to Deep Space 9, where he rejoins the Khitomer Accords and allies with Starfleet to fight the Dominion in 2373.

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The Federation and Klingon alliance was effectively based out of Deep Space 9, with Captain Sisko and General Martok leading the forces . Each had to answer to their respective superiors, but the two leaders formed a bond. A year later, the Romulan Empire joined the alliance , after Sisko aided the Cardassian spy and tailor Garak in framing the Dominion for the death of a Romulan ambassador. The three-way alliance turned the tide of the war and put the Dominion on the defensive.

Eventually, the Dominion recruited the elusive Breen species into their Empire, and with them a weapon that drained power from starships. The Klingon fleet was the first to adapt to this weapon. However, instead of helping their allies, General Martok led these forces on an ill-fated offensive against the Dominion. This was a ploy by Gowron to sully Martok's reputation, lest he become a political rival. If he won the war without the help of Starfleet or the Romulans, it was Gowron's plan. If he failed, then Martok took the blame and Gowron's position was safe. Martok didn't fail.

Gowron eventually took over the command of the Klingon forces at Deep Space 9, sidelining Martok. Worf, an adopted member of Martok's house and the first Klingon in Starfleet, challenged Gowron in a fight to the death for leadership of the Empire . Worf won the battle and named Martok as the Chancellor of the Klingon Empire. Under his leadership, the alliance defeated the Dominion in a decisive battle on Cardassia Prime.

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Since the end of the Dominion War, the Klingons have kept mostly to their own territory . Starfleet intelligence estimated the Klingons would take a decade or more to recover from their losses of people and material from the Dominion War. Worf took a leave of absence from Starfleet to work with Martok, though he did return for select missions on the USS Enterprise-E until it was destroyed. By the first years of the 25th Century, Worf was both a member in good standing of the Klingon Empire and working as an intelligence contractor for Starfleet.

In the late 24th Century, a group of Klingons was part of former Starfleet cadet Nick Locarno's plan to create his own fleet, complete with Genesis Device. Beckett Mariner and the crew of the USS Cerritos were able to stop him. Otherwise, the Klingons have kept mostly to themselves. If they are still traveling space and picking fights, but not with Starfleet. In the 32nd Century ( where the USS Discovery time-traveled to from 2258), the galaxy had been decimated by "The Burn." This cataclysm destroyed most of the dilithium in the galaxy, which powered warp drives for all species.

The crew essentially found a planet made of dilithium, and the space-faring civilizations of the Federation and its adjacent territories returned to normal. However, the USS Discovery has not encountered any Klingons in that time period. It's possible after the Burn, they resorted to war, both with other species and within the Empire, again decimating their population. If not, the Klingon Empire continues to keep to itself and stay out of galactic affairs .

The Star Trek universe encompasses multiple series, each offering a unique lens through which to experience the wonders and perils of space travel. Join Captain Kirk and his crew on the Original Series' voyages of discovery, encounter the utopian vision of the Federation in The Next Generation, or delve into the darker corners of galactic politics in Deep Space Nine. No matter your preference, there's a Star Trek adventure waiting to ignite your imagination.

Created by Gene Roddenberry

First Film Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Latest Film Star Trek: Nemesis

First TV Show Star Trek: The Original Series

Latest TV Show Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Cast Nichelle Nichols, Scott Bakula, Kate Mulgrew, Jonathan Frakes, Patrick Stewart, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Avery Brooks, Deforest Kelley, James Doohan

TV Show(s) Star Trek: Animated, Star trek, Star Trek Voyager, Star Trek: Enterprise, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek Lower Decks, Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Prodigy, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Star Trek: Lower Decks