Posted in: Paramount+, Star Trek, streaming, TV | Tagged: akiva goldsman, Henry Alonso Myers, Martin Quinn, paramount, star trek, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Star Trek: The Original Series

Strange New Worlds Showrunners on Sulu, Bones Appearing, Gorn Return

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' Henry Alonso Myers & Akiva Goldsman talk bringing on Sulu, Bones & other TOS characters, Gorn return & more.

When it comes to one of the biggest changes in the Star Trek canon in Strange New Worlds, it's The Gorn, which was created by Gene Roddenberry and The Original Series designer Wah Chang. We're long removed from the Kirk-Gorn fight that saw the original incarnation of a lizard alien in a non-emotive rubber mask in the TOS season one episode "Arena." Now the Federation must fight them on three different fronts: in space, their voracious young that feeds off their hosts until they're ready to gestate and kill them, and their adult form, which was introduced in the SNW season two finale "Hegemony." Showrunners Henry Alonso Myers (who wrote the episode) and Akiva Goldsman spoke about the Gorn's evolution. The following contains major spoilers.

The episode finds the Enterprise responding to a distress signal from Captain Batel (Melanie Scrofano) from the U.S.S. Cayuga who are in trouble on Parnassus Beta from the Gorn, and they must find a way to get to the planet without violating Starfleet's orders to cross the border into Gorn space. Pike (Anson Mount) personally leads an away team to rescue the planet's inhabitants and the survivors of the Cayuga. Season one saw the reintroduction of the Gorn in a story like the xenomorphs in the Alien franchise as the Enterprise finds themselves marooned on a planet as they try to escape uncertain doom with the loss of their original chief engineer. As far as season two plans go, "We always knew we were going revisit them — the finale is just where it ended up," Myers told Variety. "We were trying to do something really big, and seeing the adult Gorn was a thing we knew would take time. It takes a lot of design; one of the reasons it came later in the season was we knew that we'd have a lot of work to do. It just sort of worked out as a finale."

When it came to pulling off their updated look from TOS, "It was hard to do it well. It was hard to do respectfully," Myers admitted. As far as how the opportunity presented itself and how it leads into TOS, "Well, this is one I would like to punt to Akiva, but only because a lot of what the Gorn became for the show was a vision that he had — this was something that had not really been explored that we had an opportunity to make in a way that had never been done," he explained. "The Gorn, for me, were not intentionally comedic — they were just executed about as well as they could be executed at that point in the run of the show at that time," Goldsman explained. "Like, it was just a bad suit — and let's not even talk about the Metrons. But I looked at the intention, which is: scary, scary, scary, Other, Other, Other. One thing that we always do in 'Star Trek' is… we empathize — that's in large part the purpose of our show. We're kind of an empathy generator. It's a carnival mirror on modern society."

Goldsman wanted to establish the Gorn from where they came from before we see them as they are in TOS. "But in our desire to express compassion first, which I think is the right desire, sometimes we forget that real monsters exist. I thought it was important for there to be real monsters in our galaxy. That doesn't mean that 10 years, two seasons from now, we won't be having a nice chat with the Gorn. But right now, in Seasons 1 and 2 and 3, they're the monsters. By the way, many of the other 'Star Trek' antagonists began as alien, as Other — forgive the use of 'alien' — but we learned to connect with them. Not so the Gorn. The Gorn are not understandable to us in this way, not relatable to us in this way. Part of our galaxy is 'be good, be kind, be empathetic,' and also understand that evil exists because seeing with compassion does mean you should be blind to horror. The Gorn are monsters."

When it came to officially introducing Martin Quinn's Scotty (originally played by James Doohan on TOS) on the planet, "We've been talking about ways to surprise the future of the story. It just sort of came up as we were talking about the story. Initially, it had been someone else completely," Myers said. "And then Akiva and I were talking, and I was like, 'Well, what about Scotty?' And then we both fell in love with the idea. We started doing some searching for the people who could play Scotty and what kind of character that would be, and then it took its own life at that point."

As far as if that will lead to Bones and Sulu, "The longer we stay on the air — do we still say that? — the longer we stream, the longer we do whatever it is we do to let people watch us, the more likely it becomes. Given our druthers — because Henry and I are both greedy and gluttons for punishment — we'd go right into the TOS era and see what happens. So, if we're around long enough, sure," Goldsman said. "The one thing I will say is — I try to respect everyone's approach to this. But we're not telling the story of who they are [in the future]; we're telling the story of who they are now," Myers added. "They don't know who they're going to be. That is the unique opportunity of our show that allows us to tell these stories in ways that they haven't been told before. That's the fun of it for us. If we meet other people, they will surprise you. That's all I'll say."

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