Star Trek: 9 Ways Strange New Worlds Re-Imagined The Gorn

3. Gorn Starships

The Gorn wouldn't be very threatening Star Trek antagonists if they couldn't travel in space. While a Gorn starship is discussed in Arena, the episode didn't originally depict one. However, a CGI model designed by Visual Effects Supervisor Niel Ray was added when the episode was remastered in 2006. To stay consistent with the original intent of the story, the model was only shown at a distance and wasn't "skinned" which helped save precious and costly rendering time.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds depicts two classes of Gorn starships. The hunter is armed with plasma weapons and is capable of atmospheric flight. It can conceal itself from sensors by generating a hologram, however, scanning the area for polarized EM signatures can expose the hologram as an optical distortion.

The massive destroyer class is bigger than a Constitution-class starship. In fact, the destroyer deployed during the Gorn attack on Parnassus Beta filled the sky over the colony. Like the hunter, it wields plasma weapons and can operate within an atmosphere.

Both classes of ships use the Gorn system of visual communications for ship-to-ship messages rather than subspace radio or other forms of verbal communication.

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Frank Chavez is a freelance writer, playwright, and screenwriter from the San Francisco Bay Area. They live in the Census Designated Place outside the small city, outside of Oakland with their wife and numerous cats.