Erica Ortegas finally does something other than fly the ship this week in an episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds that tests her survival skills on an inhospitable planet with the help of an unlikely ally.
”Terrarium” takes us to a strange new world but ultimately leaves us with an unfortunate case of déjà vu. For much of its runtime this story was working for me even after the Gorn showed up and I was reminded of installments from The Next Generation such as “The Enemy” — where Geordi La Forge and a Romulan must work together to survive a stormy planet — and “Darmok” — where Jean Luc Picard alone with a Tamarian must overcome a difficult communication barrier to survive.
I didn’t even mind the alone on a planet with a Gorn premise that harkened back to The Original Series episode “Arena,” that debuted that iconic Trek alien because “Terrarium” felt different enough and was showing us a new side of this series’ reimagined take on the Gorn. Until once again this season the writer lazily plagiarized the ending almost exactly from The Original Series rather than deliver something strange and/or new.
Not only does writer Alan B. McElroy have one of The Metrons from “Arena” show up to perform the same function in this story but this isn’t even the first time this season the writers stole an ending from The Original Series. The Trelane episode “Wedding Day Blues” cribbed its ending from “The Squire of Gothos.”
Season three has become incredibly frustrating with the writers’ obsession with recapturing the franchise’s past glory days. Season one may have ended with its alternate universe take on “Balance of Terror” but that episode, “A Quality of Mercy,” was sufficiently transformative, serving more to help Pike confront the trauma of knowing his own dark fate than as an exercise in fan service. And for as divisive as the numerous gimmicky storylines last season may have been, you can’t accuse season two’s writers of not trying new things.
Another issue concerns Ortegas’ limited gender normative thinking with regards to the Gorn, asking if the Gorn identifies as male or female. In the 23rd Century, she shouldn’t have to be Starfleet to imagine a larger spectrum of options for humans, let alone a completely alien species of lizard people. It might not even have been worth noting if not for Strange New Worlds noticeable retreat back to the hetero-normative.
For all my criticisms of other modern Trek series like Discovery, Picard, and Lower Decks, they at least embraced gender and sexual orientation diversity. Hell, Lower Decks even gave us a now canonical alternate universe Bashir and Garek relationship. Current Uhura portrayer Celia Rose Gooding is themselves nonbinary. Strange New Worlds season one also featured trans actress Jesse James Keitel as nonbinary character Captain Angel and included a line implying Christine Chapel was bisexual.
Whereas season three has been, as I mentioned in an earlier review, aggressively heterosexual, almost regressing to Trek’s 60s era traditional gender norms. This season has featured at least five different romantic couples, all of whom have exhibited old fashioned gender roles at one point or another. It’s deeply disappointing at a time when the LGBTQ+ community is facing immense backlash in the real world.
Photo: Marni Grossman/Paramount+
My other nitpick is reserved for the director, Andrew Coutts. I don’t know if it was just the monitor I watched my screener on but the scenes on the planet were too dark. I felt like I was watching The Battle of Winterfell on Game of Thrones all over again. This episode gave us the most Gorn we’ve ever gotten on this show and I still feel like I wasn’t able to fully appreciate the hard work that went into creating these modern reimagined Gorn, no longer limited to a guy in a rubber suit. Perhaps the darkness was intentional to disguise flaws in the special effects but I’d prefer an imperfect special effect to the extreme darkness.
“Terrarium” delivered the strongest Erica Ortegas story yet. Seeing her finally do more than “fly the ship” and have to survive in the wilderness elevated my appreciation for her character. The episode also did a spectacular job of developing our understanding of the elusive Gorn, an iconic species from Star Trek’s early days that had been ignored for decades.
Critics worried this series would dehumanize the Gorn in favor of a more animalistic take; this episode alleviates that concern. Unfortunately though, much of the good will earned throughout the episode is diminished by a lazy ending that copy and pastes an ending from The Original Series.
New episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds release Thursdays on Paramount+.
You must be logged in to post a comment.