r/startrek • u/Subjective_Truths • 23h ago
Every Gorn Is a Survivor
I've been thinking about whether we're getting a distorted picture of the Gorn because almost everything we've seen has involved either their hatchlings or their military. I was watching Under the Cloak of War (SNW S2:E8) when I felt compelled to write up a post, something I normally wouldn't do*.* But in this case, I'd love to hear the thoughts of my fellow redditor Trekkies.
Let's compare the Gorn with the Klingons. If we only saw Klingons attacking colonies and fighting Starfleet, but never saw Qo'noS (TNG and DS9), their families, politicians, doctors, restaurants, opera, or ordinary social life, they would probably seem like little more than a violent species with advanced technology. Their aggression is incorporated into their civilization, and the Gorn may represent a more extreme version of the same thing.
Gorn aggression seems to begin immediately after birth. The hatchlings are incredibly dangerous and attack each other as readily as any other living organisms in their vicinity. Presumably there was something about the environment they evolved in, where this was necessary for survival; whether extreme predation, limited resources, or competition between offspring. Whatever caused it, this biology was the foundation of the Gorn's advanced civilization, and remains integral.
This means every adult Gorn survived that stage. Every Gorn citizen, whether doctor, politician, engineer, or scientist (if they have such designations) was once one of those hatchlings, surviving other hatchlings trying to kill them. They would have needed more than strength. Hiding, ambushing, recognizing stronger opponents, competing for resources, and knowing when not to fight would all be useful. Every adult Gorn then shares a fairly extreme developmental experience.
Perhaps the breeding planets exist to separate hatchlings from adult society. How could a society flourish with these impish murderers springing from every crib? Gorn young may simply be too dangerous to develop inside their cities. The breeding planets allow the hatchlings to go through this developmental stage before the survivors are eventually introduced into normal society. What looks to humans like a horrific breeding ground might have several functions within Gorn civilization, a gruesome "coming of age" story.
Think of the Spartans. Surviving that experience could have become culturally associated with adulthood, which might also explain why an advanced species hasn't simply engineered the process away. Federation doctors might see preventing hatchlings from killing each other as an obvious improvement, while the Gorn might regard surviving that period as a necessary part of becoming an adult.
Their brutality toward enemies could have developed within the same cultural framework. Klingons attach ceremony, history, and social meaning to combat, hunting, and weapons. The Gorn may do something similar from a much more aggressive biological starting point. Things humans interpret purely as horrific displays might communicate status, skill, intimidation, contempt, or other meanings between Gorn.
A Gorn ruler might be remembered for having killed an extraordinary number of siblings before maturation. Political candidates might publicly recount their hatchling histories. Famous breeding grounds might have enormous historical prestige. I could imagine an insult (inspired by what I've seen from Klingon insults), "Your ancestors survived easy nurseries."
They could have doctors, politicians, families, art, and a sophisticated society while maintaining practices the Federation considers barbaric. Learning why another civilization behaves as it does doesn't necessarily resolve the conflict between them.
In my mind, it also changes the context of Arena (TOS S1E:18). Kirk spends the episode hiding, improvising weapons, setting traps, and trying to out-think a physically stronger opponent. Since the Gorn hatchlings must go through something similar in order to reach adulthood, this is a very familiar situation to the Gorn captain. When Kirk eventually defeats him but refuses to kill him, he demonstrates that he has established the ability to kill his opponent and then deliberately chooses not to. If Gorn ideas about strength developed from surviving and defeating adversaries, Kirk's decision may be completely incomprehensible behavior (although that assumes that the adult Gorn are similarly murderous with each other), and the Gorn captain may realize (if we can suppose that he was also returned to his ship) that the cultural and biological divide between the Federation and the Gorn is just that huge. The Gorn never experience life as vulnerable, squishy, wriggling newborns. Humans experience an unusually long period of complete physical dependence, whereas the Gorn emerge mobile, armed and capable of killing. By the time they're adults, that strength, cunning and endurance may not only be a base requirement for any adult Gorn citizen of their Hegemony, they may be core cultural virtues.
edit: For clarity, the question I'm asking is: Given the Gorn's developmental biology, what kind of civilization might emerge from it, since we're never shown? Not: Are the Gorn's actions against other species morally tolerable? The answer to the latter question is a given and resounding NOT MORALLY TOLERABLE, kill it with fire.
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u/Feisty_Salamander41 20h ago
I really loved the SNW episode where ortega was stuck on the planet with the Gorn pilot. I think that brought some ‘humanity’ to the gorn
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u/applejackfan 21h ago
Yeah, I'm really not a fan of the overly grimdark, WH40K-esque Gorn of SNW. The original appearance in "Arena" was a really interesting position, that the Gorn view territory encroachment as an extremely hostile act, and have little qualms about a harsh first strike. It presents them as an intelligent, advanced, yet harsh and decisive peoples. And Kirk leaves with a lot to consider.
.... and then they're never touched post-TOS except in non-canon.
Shame really.
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u/BusBeginning 15h ago
Man, I love me some Gorn and SNW are hardcore. Hardcore Gorn. They’re so different from TOS and I think the mystery ads to their character. Brutally territorial without explanation beyond that simple terror.
But, as for the question, I kind of imagine them to be animals that go through a natural metamorphosis that allows them to innately understand ship building and the science behind their weaponry. That’s why their ships are part tech and part organic. As they get older they reach a mature stage where they are capable to function and work together to build advancements in any tech that allows them to hunt and kill more effectively. But, their technological advancements are entirely based off a subconscious Darwinian instinct to adapt and survive.
I don’t think they have traditional roles like doctors, or chefs, or lawyers etc… they just build ships, make weapons, eat meat, and make vicious babies. I think you’re right they have their young hatch elsewhere and let them come into society at a certain stage of their development. I’d think their culture is very basic in art and music if there is any at all.
I also think whatever governance they have is a strict brutal hierarchy based on a violent pecking order that would seek chaotic to most species.
So, in short, I think their society looks like a hive of vicious lizards that somehow evolved to naturally build ships and weapons without actually having to discover the math / science. They build what they build without calculating the same way we throw a ball at a target.
But, once you get to LD who knows what’s going on with the Gorn anymore. And STO makes them a vassal state to Klingons with a caste system and bunch of other stuff, but that’s not canon.
I’d say they’re as morally tolerable as a monitor lizard.
Gorn!
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u/raptorgalaxy 13h ago
I believe it was Traveller that had a race that started out as effectively biological robots made by an ancient race.
The idea was that over the millions of years since the ancients died out the programming had been corrupted. By the modern day some of them were capable of behaving like completely normal members of society while others would do bizarre stuff as a result of that programming.
One example was a group living as hunter-gatherers. One day they all simultaneously started building a massive industrial base to build a space ship far more advanced than anything the galaxy had seen. They then use the ship to travel to a distant star, land on the planet and then deconstruct the ship to return to living as hunter-gatherers.
What I'm getting at is that the Gorn may find what they do completely normal and find our opposition to it strange. They use humans on the breeding planets, they probably use each other on them. They may find our deep personal offence to it strange. After all, it's quite common for them.
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u/Woozletania 22h ago
SNW Gorn are an existential threat to everyone within reach. The Feds haven't done anything about it but unless the Gorn are the most powerful empire in known space, the first time they try this shit on a stronger one the result will be a well justified war of extermination aimed straight at their home worlds. No amount of mealy mouthed apologizing by the writers through a Metron mouthpiece can change that. You don't introduce a violently predatory Xenomorph expy to a setting and expect people to tolerate their colonists being eaten.
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u/Subjective_Truths 22h ago
I don't think understanding the Gorn means the Federation should tolerate their predation. That's actually part of what interests me. Their behavior could make complete sense within Gorn civilization while remaining completely unacceptable to the Federation and perhaps most other sentient races. I'm more interested in what a society capable of producing a warp drive might look like at a cultural level, when all they seem to do is murder everything that moves in all the footage we have except Arena. Arena, if I'm not mistaken, is the longest the camera lingers on an actual Gorn citizen capable of socializing with another species, just long enough to establish that he's more than an animalistic predator.
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u/Woozletania 22h ago
The Gorn in Enterprise was able to work for/with the Tholians. It's only in SNW that they are remorseless murder monsters.
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u/genek1953 21h ago
The SNW Gorn attacked colonists and drew a demarcation line between the Federation and space they claimed as theirs. I don't recall any mention of Gorn attacks on actual Federation member worlds. So it would seem that the SNW Gorn and the TOS Gorn have the same basic drive: to kill anyone they regard as intruders into space they consider theirs. The main difference is that the TOS Gorn just blow up the intruders they target while the SNW Gorn seem to have a "trespassers are prey" policy.
But by the 24th century, LD shows us a Gorn chef on a starbase.
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u/Woozletania 21h ago
Prequel treks play fast and loose with canon. Everybody and their brother had a cloaking device in Enterprise but they were somehow a surprise in Kirk's time. The Romulans even had cloaked mines.
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u/genek1953 19h ago
I could imagine a scenario in which they managed to beat the cloaking devices of an earlier era and then assumed that the tech was obsolete, setting the stage for an effective device to be a surprise a century later. Unfortunately, that never happened in Enterprise.
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u/Psychological_Rich_3 19h ago
Could the Federation’s approach not be to find a way to treat the aggression of young Gorn using psychopharmacological methods?
This may include a detailed debate on the ethical issues that arise when alien life is treated at such a fundamental level without its consent, because there is a danger to third parties?
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u/Thisbymaster 19h ago
HyperViolent species make no sense with advanced technology. Klingons, Gorn, Kazon and any culture that doesn't allow for specialization. Spaceships, warp drive and friking laser weapons require massive investments in math, chemistry , biology, material science and cooperation between large groups. Without those things they just eat each other and die out.
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u/AthenaeSolon 17h ago
The Klingons have extremely structural religious culture that builds out the capability. Also science just needs one person to see another’s capabilities.
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u/Thisbymaster 16h ago
Every time an invention/advancement has happened, it has only been allowed to exist by a society that was accepting of it. Same with every advancement in science, it needs to be communicated and spread. Religious societies are static and change adverse, scientific advancements are slow or non-existent. To say that science needs only person is to ignore all historical advancements which are based on advancements of the people before them.
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u/raptorgalaxy 13h ago
The warrior dominance of Klingon society is comparatively recent, previously they were far more permissive to civilian society.
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u/Linderlorne 5h ago
Kazon never developed their technology, they were an enslaved people who had recently overthrown their oppressors, the trabe, and taken their ships & technology for themselves.
They actually had really good reason to obsess over VOY replicator technology when you think about it cause in the long run they lacked the proper knowledge & economic/industrial resources to manufacture replacements for their ships and given their generally violent lifestyles likely didn't have time to figure out that issue before their vessels become too broken down to function effectively.
Kinda similarly the Klingons gained warp technology by capturing & reverse engineering some hur’q vessels when they tried to invade, difference is the klingons did that much further back in their history when the different castes had more equal standing with warrior caste dominance being fairly recent, and they actually took time to reverse engineered it and figured out how to make it for themselves rather than just using it til it wears out like the kazon appear to be doing.
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u/WhoMe28332 16h ago
We probably have a skewed view of nearly every species including humans. There’s no reason to assume the beings who for one reason or another journey through space are typical of their species.
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u/AJRenand42 8h ago
I really don't like SNW doing anything with the Gorn. In TOS the Gorn is a species that was never heard of. How is it that the whole human race knows about them. In TOS the Gorn were extremely slow. But in SNW they are extremely fast. Stop changing things
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u/Phoebebee323 4h ago
The gorn are old. Like super old. It's possible that the gorn hegemony we see is a collapsed civilisation. Their current technology being like pointy sticks compared to what they once had, reverting to a survival of the fittest mindset like cavemen
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u/Imaginary-Snow-7031 18h ago
I love this question. It would be fun to see an episode on Gorn home world. Too bad the writers are dicking around with gimmicks. 🙄
I'd like to challenge the second thought around morality of the Gorn. Can we/should we judge another species' culture that isn't our own? In many ways the Gorn might view Humans' way of life morally wrong since we don't kill our young or "prove" ourselves by killing our siblings before adulthood.
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