Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 Episode 9 Review — Terrarium

This Star Trek: Strange New Worlds review contains spoilers for season 3 episode 9.

If it feels like you’ve seen the penultimate episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3 before, it’s probably because you have. Sort of. Stories featuring enemies who must suddenly work together to survive or some sort of reluctant enforced proximity that leads to greater understanding are a dime a dozen in the science fiction space, and it’s a well that Star Trek itself has gone to several times in the past. Truthfully, there’s not much in “Terrarium” that Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Enemy” didn’t do first, only with a Romulan instead of a Gorn. 

Yet, the episode works because of its full-steam-ahead commitment to the bit—of course, in the world of Strange New Worlds, a particularly mistrustful human and a vicious Gorn could not only learn to survive together, but genuinely bond. After all, one of the foundational principles of this show (heck, of this franchise), is generally that things we have in common are greater than the things that divide us, regardless of species. As a result, many moments in this hour are both entertaining and genuinely moving, and the story itself deftly ties into future canon in a way that makes sense. Granted, it’s not entirely clear that leaving this episode so late in the season did it any favors, but on the whole, it’s a solid hour, and a welcome return to form after two mediocre to outright bad episodes in a row. 

The hour’s setup is intriguing enough. The Enterprise is exploring an area of uncharted space that’s legendary for its stories of strange phenomena and general unexplained weirdness, like gravity waves that are so odd that Spock can’t explain their behavior. Of course, the only way to find out what’s up is to send in a shuttle to investigate, and Ortegas is the ship’s best pilot. That she has somehow been cleared to go on this mission alone is…well, it’s certainly a choice, and probably reason enough to side-eye some of M’Benga’s medical protocols. And when a wormhole suddenly pops up and essentially swallows the shuttle, well, the Farscape vibes are hard to deny. (Love you, John Crichton!)

On paper, this is a cool twist for many reasons. Wormholes are neat, generally, and the idea that Ortegas has been sent some distance across the galaxy into unknown space on her own is exciting stuff. It helps that the survival element comes with real stakes attached, as Ortegas is one of the few members of the main Strange New Worlds crew who doesn’t have the plot armor that comes with a known future (or at least a role to play in some capacity on Star Trek: The Original Series). She could easily die here. She doesn’t, but there are more than a few moments where you wonder if she might, and that’s a specific kind of tension this show doesn’t get to indulge in very often. 

Crash landing onto the moon of a gas giant whose elliptical orbit means its surface will be raked with toxic gas regularly, unable to communicate with the Enterprise, and facing a disconcerting lack of food and water, Ortegas has plenty of problems to solve, and that’s all before she discovers that a Gorn pilot has also crash landed on the same desolate world. (The convenience of this is more than a little pat, but “Terrarium” at least bothers to give a reason for it by the end of the hour. Credit where it’s due.) 

As soon as the badly injured Gorn is revealed, it’s kind of apparent where this episode is going. It helps that, for whatever reason, the Gorn makes the first move toward kindness, saving Ortegas from a large centipede-like creature, and sharing the meat with her afterward. (Maybe this is where the suspension of disbelief is meant to come in, since we’ve not really seen anything, well, ever, that indicates a Gorn might behave this way.) At any rate, the two stranded travelers ultimately seem to decide that they need one another, and reach a state of relatively peaceful coexistence that ultimately—with the help of a montage, because why not—-become something like friends. The pair shares food and shelter, learns to communicate in a rudimentary way, and teaches each other games from their respective cultures.

 It’s all strangely cute, and draped in a ragged cloak, the Gorn looks more like a creature from The Dark Crystal rather than a bloodthirsty killing machine. And though it’s a bit reluctant about the prospect of rescue, Ortegas is confident it can come back to the Enterprise with her. Together, she says, they’ll teach her people that not all Gorn are monsters. This…seems wildly idealistic given how many people we’ve seen the Gorn attack, kidnap, violently kill, or preserve as living food stores in the three seasons this show has been on. But, hey, if Ortegas can change her mind, anything is possible, right? Her insistence that she’s not leaving her new friend behind to die certainly feels genuine, and while her sudden acceptance of Gornkind is certainly narratively convenient, it’s also mostly believable for the situation she currently finds herself in.

Despite all this, what most people will likely remember about this episode is its ending. Thanks to dodgy science, a captain willing to take risks in the name of his crew, and a lot of luck, the Enterprise manages to find the needle in a haystack location where Erica has crashed, send a rescue party, and save the day. Well, not entirely. Because, of course, La’an immediately shoots and kills Ortegas’s new Gorn friend, assuming it was attacking or harming her. Erica is distraught, a situation that is made even worse by the sudden revelation that her presence on the planet was all part of a larger setup outside of her control.

Turns out that the Metrons—the dramatically dressed beings who will later appear in The Original Series episode “The Arena,” where Kirk infamously fights a Gorn trial by combat style—are the source of the strange flashing lights seen throughout this episode. They engineered the arrival of both pilots in the name of an experiment: To determine whether two barbaric races like humans and Gorn could co-exist in peace. Ortegas, it would seem, passed their test, but La’an did not, though her immediate decision to choose violence is something the hour doesn’t really address directly. Uhura claims she was protecting Ortegas, and that’s where the episode leaves it, but we don’t see La’an’s reaction to any of this for good or ill.

All told, it’s kind of a downer of an ending, particularly since the Metron erases Ortegas’s memory of meeting them, and Erica’s stuck in a complicated emotional space where she’s lost one friend at the hands of another. The Metron does, at least, allow her to remember her experience with the Gorn, and the final shot of the episode is of the bone game piece the creature made. And, in the end, it all adds a satisfying new layer to Kirk’s experience in “The Arena.” He, you’ll remember, ultimately chooses mercy and refuses to kill the Gorn he defeats. La’an didn’t pass the Metron’s test, but Kirk will, and not all that long from now. That’s got to mean something, doesn’t it?

New episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds premiere Thursdays on Paramount+, culminating with a finale on Sept. 11.