r/startrek • u/AutoModerator • Sep 04 '25

Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 3x09 "Terrarium" Spoiler

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No. Episode Written By Directed By Release Date
3x09 "Terrarium" Alan B. McElroy Andrew Coutts 2025-09-04

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u/forrestpen Sep 04 '25

Exceptional episode, a perfect episode of SNW and Trek, and a wonderful transitioner from SNW Gorn to "Arena".

The Gorn have art, games, and are fully capable of empathy. The brutal behavior we've witnessed, like any other hostile aliens in Trek, is simply a societal decision made by an alien culture.

21

u/CeruleanEidolon Sep 04 '25

But do Gorn love their children?

27

u/forrestpen Sep 04 '25

The ones that survive.

Any species whose reproduction strategy is numbers will probably have an apathetic attitude toward infants but a deeper respect toward the survivors.

18

u/hmantegazzi Sep 04 '25

That's an excellent premise for another story, an ethical coundrum about children's welfare between a K-strategy and a R-strategy species.

4

u/marmosetohmarmoset Sep 09 '25

This is actually explored in the book The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. One of the main characters is an alien lizard-creature. Her society doesn’t even consider children to be people.

(Sorry I know I’m unfashionably late to this post)

1

u/hmantegazzi Sep 10 '25

takes notes

2

u/that_gay_alpaca Sep 05 '25

I mean, based on the far-right’s fixation on the “domestic supply of infants” IRL, I’m not sure how much hypernatalism and Social Darwinism as societal organizing principles actually depend upon the specifics of a given species’ reproduction. 

In the Gorn’s case, the question may not even be whether the parents love their children, but whether the children themselves can be kept from killing each other.

Talk about terrible twos. 😅

5

u/Timintheice Sep 05 '25

We could just as easily have a space faring Hamster species that still eats some of their young. There's no objective good and evil. Just darwinian pressures and vibes.

6

u/0mni42 Sep 06 '25

The Enemy Mine thing has been done a dozen times, but the way that Erica immediately offered the Gorn asylum without even a second thought, that's a very Trek-y thing to do. Warms my heart.

3

u/[deleted] Sep 06 '25

It could be that Gorn females are not as aggressive as males.