Star Trek: Strange New Worlds writer Davy Perez explains a major canon change involving the Gorn. Star Trek: The Original Series introduced the alien race known as the Gorn in the classic episode “Arena,” which saw Captain Kirk battling one of their number on a barren planet at the behest of a powerful alien race called the Metrons. Since that introduction however, the lizard-like Gorn species hasn’t been heard from much in the Trek franchise (at least on the live-action side).
But this lack of Gorn in Star Trek has now been remedied in a big way with the arrival of the new Paramount+ series Strange New Worlds. Though the mysterious race has yet to be physically seen on the show, their presence was felt right away through the backstory of Lieutenant La'an Noonien-Singh, who was revealed to be the survivor of a Gorn prison camp. The Gorn then figured even more heavily in Strange New Worlds season 1 episode "Memento Mori,” which saw the antagonistic aliens attacking and damaging the Enterprise. By episode's end, not only had the Gorn made their presence known to the Federation, their physical appearance was also revealed to Spock when he mind-melded with La'an and shared in her memories of being imprisoned by the them. But as some Star Trek fans have pointed out, Spock must have forgotten whatever he knew about the Gorn after this, as he seems to have no knowledge of them in the TOS episode "Arena" (which of course takes place after the events of SNW). Indeed Kirk and company's encounter with the Gorn in that episode is recorded in Trek lore as official first contact between the Federation and the lizard-like race, but now it seems it wasn't first contact after all.
This seeming inconsistency is of course just one more example of how new Star Trek has played fast-and-loose with the franchise's long-established lore, sometimes to the chagrin of long-time fans. But speaking to Inverse, writer Perez gave some insight into why he felt it was OK to play around with the Gorn and the Federation's knowledge of them. He said:
"Kirk’s idea of the Gorn is different from what he is being told by the Metrons. The Gorn he’s meeting in ‘Arena,’ doesn’t sync with his expectations of them. It was a personal choice I made in my own headcanon that allowed me to have fun with the writing. Viewing it that way creates more possibilities for Gorn stories to continue. … Maybe Kirk has never seen them, he could even be one of those people who still doubts the stories, or maybe even he has seen them and they don’t look the same. I think the safest thing to say is we have no idea what the Gorn are really like.”
Lopez's remarks here seem almost to suggest that the Gorn are a shape-shifting race, or possess some other attribute that makes it incredibly difficult to pin them down. It's a matter of opinion of course whether his explanation really squares the seemingly large issue of Kirk knowing nothing about the species at the beginning of "Arena." Indeed it's possible that Kirk himself never encountered a Gorn before having to fight one to the death on Cestus III. But the Federation and particularly Spock surely knew about them, as Strange New Worlds has now made clear.
But again such canon inconsistencies as these are obviously becoming common in Star Trek, and are indeed unavoidable as new writers take on the task of creating stories set in the Trek universe. The important thing with the Gorn is that they’re something casual Star Trek fans have heard of before and might be interested in seeing, therefore making them worthy of being taken out of mothballs, even if some retconning is required to square things. It will now be interesting to see what new things are revealed about the Gorn - only to apparently be forgotten - as Star Trek: Strange New Worlds weaves them further into the fabric of the Trek Universe.
Source: Inverse