"Terrarium" Proves That Strange New Worlds Knows What It’s Doing, Eventually

On the face of it, "Terrarium" doesn’t do anything with the classic "Enemy Mine" format that "The Enemy," ‘Daybreak’ (or "Enemy Mine," for that matter) didn’t already do with the premise.

I mean, it’s a good premise: too vaunted enemies, trapped on a hostile world, unable to communicate but forced to work together against a ticking clock that will kill both of them before the running time ends. It keeps being done for a reason - it’s an excellent opportunity for character work, and of all the cast to dump into the situation, Ortegas is the correct member.

The premise is pretty by the numbers - Ortegas, alone, as the best pilot around, has to guide a shuttlecraft into the correct position to drop a sensor probe onto the edge of a dangerous space pocket. It goes wrong, leaving her stranded on the other side of a wormhole, out of contact with Enterprise and marooned on an alien moon that regularly destroys itself. Forced to work with an equally marooned Gorn spacefarer, they have to work together while Enterprise works against time to get back to her. It’s sort of a mash-up of “The Galileo Seven”, “The Enemy,” and “Arena” in many ways, which by no means is a bad thing.

Anson Mount as Pike, Celia Rose Gooding as Uhura, and Ethan Peck as Spock in season 3, Episode 9 of Strange New Worlds streaming on Paramount+. Photo Credit: Marni Grossman/Paramount+

At a base level, I am not mad that this episode exists. Navia needed the opportunity to be the centre of attention in a plot that demanded more from her than “I am Erica Ortegas and I fly the ship.” Between the introduction of her little brother and the exploration of her wider relationship with family, Starfleet, and warfare (Klingon, Gorn or otherwise), the development we have asked of her character has arrived in force. That’s a good thing. And I was intrigued by how the writers flip the traditional “enemy mine” script by having her be the initial aggressor, not the Gorn, who is just doing their best to survive. 

The Gorn hermit is, frankly, the best part of the episode. It’s also a serious relief after so bleeding long for the show to treat the Gorn like something more than irrational, barely sentient monsters who also, for some reason, have a functioning interstellar civilization. Making the Gorn be the party that shows empathy for Ortegas and be of help while Erica remains suspicious is good! It makes her look misguided, especially when she returns this kindness by trying to steal the Comms array. Hell, the Gorn is much nicer to Ortegas than I would be, considering the number of times she tries to kill her. They also work quite hard (and successfully) to give the Gorn a great deal of personality without having it say anything, which is hard enough to start with once they can finally attempt minimal communication (and chess). I like the chess sequence a lot. Gorn Chess grandmaster plus Gorn alien Board Game sequence is actually pretty fun.

The planet sequences suffer strongly from AR-Wall-itis: the lighting is low, the backgrounds are rather obvious, and as much as they try, it is very noticeable that Ortegas is functionally walking around in circles, especially during the multiple bug attacks. I do wonder how much the low lighting is also hiding the possible sins of the Gorn animatronic/costuming (also hidden under large numbers of rags, obviously). At a broader level, I would rather the costume look a little odd over having to turn the brightness up half the time, but that’s a subjective opinion.

Overall it is a good attempt at humanising the Gorn, especially once Ortegas begins to actively root for the dying pilot. It’s incredible how much an injured Gorn pilot is one of my favourite characters of the season so far. Which is, of course, why La’an, arriving to rescue Ortegas, shoots her in the face. Which sucks so bad.

Not as bad as the Metrons showing up to basically admit they’re doing an experiment. I do like the absolutely incomprehensible androgyny of the Metron form. I like less their general cop-out: that they dumped the two of them together to see what would happen. Then again, I am also more annoyed about the idea that the Metrons are just kind of screwing around with the Gorn and Humanity, altering their perceptions of each other like toys in a sandbox to see what happens.

The other plot thread - Uhura putting the Enterprise at risk by getting Pike to prop the wormhole open with the ship, and by functionally lying to Pike to get what she wants, is interesting. It’s definitely the most interesting thing the plot’s done in a while. Letting Uhura’s fear of losing people get ahead of her professionalism (and the lives of 4000 colonists on Epsilon Indi III) and putting the whole ship at risk is great, as is giving her a moment of prayer in Swahili in the moment of crisis. I do think they should have played a bit closer to the wire with the consequences of Uhura’s actions. She lied to try and save her friend (a noble thing in itself), but she still lied, and thus put thousands of lives in danger. 

Anson Mount as Pike in season 3, Episode 9 of Strange New Worlds streaming on Paramount+. Photo Credit: Marni Grossman/Paramount+

Does “Terrarium” work? I think so. It certainly lives up, generally, to the expectations I had going in. We got good character work, especially from Melissa Navia, who I think has managed to have the most complete arc possible of the main cast. I think it did a remarkably good job of humanising the Gorn as people - hell, the simple introduction of an alien board game with recognisable pieces of cultural significance is a brilliant piece of worldbuilding that stands out amongst a lot of more mediocre attempts in Strange New Worlds. Though there is a bit of cheese with the Gorn and Ortegas both being pilots, I think it worked as a point of connection, making them much more ornery and pessimistic than Ortegas also immediately gave their interactions a fun bit of edge. I also thought that the leaning on previously implied Gorn cultural norms about injury and threats was also good. The fact that the pilot had been (functionally) offered asylum by Ortegas makes the sting of La’an shooting her dead even worse.

And…okay, I know that people are not going to like that, but it is what one might call a necessary writing device. We can’t know the Gorn are normal, intelligent beings before “Arena.” Ortegas can! But Starfleet as a whole can’t! I also hope the death does cause some fissure between Ortegas and La’an. God forbid a television show invoke the consequences of its own plots.

I think my main issue is that, despite being a reasonably intelligent episode and a good character episode (both for Ortegas and Uhura), it is still quite by the numbers. At a broader level, there is little this does well as an individual story that hasn’t either been done already or done better by a previous iteration of this class Trek paradigm. I think Navia’s performance, taking the lead in a functional one-woman show for a great deal of the runtime, is quite good. It is deeply enjoyable watching her improvise a water filter from spare parts in a sequence that feels like a small homage to The Martian.

Again, there are a large number of individual beats, a rendezvous with Constellation to transfer vital vaccines is one I noticed, that also speaks to a desire to overtly evoke the plot paradigms of "Galileo Seven" a little too closely. At what point does it stop being an easter egg and start being a hindrance to newer and more ambitious storytelling? Though there are some clever twists. The Gorn thruster flare is a nice homage to Spock’s fuel flare in “Galileo Seven,” Generally, though, it is still quite predictable. In fact, the least predictable (though not by a lot) moment is the appearance of the Metrons, which…still feels honestly quite unnecessary. 

The whole plot works without their appearance, especially when said appearance will have literally no consequences whatsoever. They wipe Ortegas’s memory of them, they will continue to screw around with humanity and the Gorn for…an as-yet indeterminate amount of time, and promising to “change your perception of each other” means nothing to the characters and barely anything to the audience. They’re going to be rubber suits now? Okay! Great! Doesn’t make them more interesting to me! 

There is another part of me that, despite liking this episode, is still left a little miffed that this is the best they can get out at present. Strange New Worlds is not a cheap show to make, and when you’ve only got ten episodes per season, every moment has to make its mark, every plot has to be as good as you can make. There is a certain view that you’re allowed to have duds in Star Trek, and you are, when you’ve got 25-26 episodes a season, written and filmed back-to-back.

Strange New Worlds does not have that cushion.  When you’ve got 10 episodes, it’s always got to count. While I do not believe that “Terrarium” failed to use its 50-minute runtime, I do believe it could have done just that more with it: more Uhura under pressure, more Ortegas bonding with the enemy, and more struggles against the elements and the mission. Within this episode was the kernel of all the things that make Trek work, but coming nine episodes in a ten-episode run, I wonder if it’s too little too late.