For all that this episode has become a meme, the heart of it is bloody fantastic. "Our enemies are just like us, and we should show mercy." Given that it was written in the Cold War, when the rhetoric was very much 'we must not show mercy to our enemy because they have none', it really was unique.
I prefer to take "Arena" on its own merit. While I am familiar with the jokes and the parodies, I can set them aside and simply watch Kirk show mercy to a fallen enemy. TOS at its best. 🖖😎👍
There's an episode of Mythbusters where Tory, Grant, and Kari test if Kirk's makeshift cannon and hastily fashioned gunpowder was feasible. In the end, the myth was Busted as the bamboo for the cannon wouldn't be strong enough to contain the explosion and the gunpowder that Kirk hastily made with the ingredients he had failed to yield the proper explosive force necessary. In fact, they suggested that Kirk should have given the cannon to the Gorn where it would then explode in the Gorn's face.
Ah yes, the episode where Kirk fights a lizard just outside the Power Rangers Command Center, and gave inspiration to Bill and Ted's robot duplicates on how to kill them.
What I find interesting about this episode is the number of sets/shot locations this took place at. Enterprise bridge, Transporer Room, Outpost, and Arena. With a lot of pyrotechnics, rather complex costume design and other effects. For TOS they really went all out. Only for the Fight scene to get called out especially as looking so fake.
What I love is the embrace of the cheese by so many fans. I've even seen parodies shirts on it. "Gorn with the Wind", "Gorn to be Wild", even "Gorn in the USA" (with a picture of a Gorn at Vasquez Rocks). And yet it also has a good message about the dangers of misreading intentions, making assumptions, and the desire for payback/revenge.
You can definitely tell that Shatner and whoever was in the lizard suit were trying their best to not damage the costume. It's sad when they have even less money than tokusatsu shows from the same time period.
The plot is so close to the short story "Arena" by Fredric Brown that they contacted him and gave him credit. Good for them for taking pains to avoid even unintentional plagiarism.
3:21 the shirt didn't rip but shatner's eardrums certainly did, this is the scene where originates his IRL tinitis (I am spelling it like this because English is not my primary language and I had to click out of an ad before being able to comment and I am not doing that again) that is why there's a cut there, if you have the og VHS or first gen DVD you see him clutching his head as he drops, it's not on Paramount last I checked.
I think Strange New Worlds robs this episode of almost everything they were trying to do with the Gorn, save the idea of them as an existential threat. They're not such a mystery that their ships and borders are unknown, and any Starfleet officer showing them mercy would be a fool. It’s the old comic book thing where art contradicts art by means of continuity.
Funny enough, the way SNW handles them is exactly what the episode was all against! And given how monstrous they made them (a hybrid of Xenomorphs and Magog that are more bloodthirsty than the Klingons), this time it won't work to make them misunderstood or influenced by some stupid stellar flares (which is what I assume they go for), since it renders the story in Arena pointless: "Oh, they're so vicious, with so many stories of them killing people, children and innocent, they're unbelievable nasty, but we got over that, during Pike's time. Oh, they're back a decade later? And a bit less bloodthirsty? Welp, need a frickin' God to teach us that we're still misunderstanding them!" It just doesn't work.
Strange New Worlds is a different timeline, the "prime" one. Which is the Kelvinverse's own interpretation of the original Star Trek canon, which they can use as a means to do whatever they like, while at the same time trying to deceive people by giving it the name "prime".
@@sargon6000 it's so ambiguous for me. On the one hand, in a show with a pretty great cast overall La'an is my favourite and I love Christina Chong's performance. But between the Gorn and Khan stuff she has the most eye-rolling backstory.
Always thought this episode was charming. In a way, the bad fight scene makes it MORE watchable. It might be crazy to say it's aged better over time, but there might be something to it. Plus it's classic old fashioned "Kirk totally tells off the supreme beings" type of Trek.
Watching this as a monster-loving kid, this was one of my favorites simply because of the reptilian alien. I was probably a decade away from knowing the word "kitsch" and two decades away from rejecting it as criticism.
This episode makes me really not like what they would do with gorn much later. It's hard to reconcile the gorn captain and Kirk's handling of it here with how they're shown in Strange New Worlds. Keeping them as villains? Sure, but there are limits to how far you can go and have the audience believe peace can actually be an option.
I disagree. Reimaging, or I think in SNW's case telling us of a different race or subspecies of Gorn was very effective and perfectly played into not only the Alien (in nature and cinematic reference) of the Gorn, but also what Kirk said of the Gorn: "The Enterprise is dead in space, stopped cold during her pursuit of an alien raider by mysterious forces. And I have been somehow whisked off the bridge and placed on the surface of an asteroid, facing the captain of the alien ship. Weaponless, I face the creature the Metrons called a 'Gorn'. Large, reptilian... Like most Humans, I seem to have an instinctive revulsion to reptiles. I must fight to remember that this is an intelligent, highly advanced individual, the captain of a starship like myself. Undoubtedly, a dangerously clever opponent."
@@Aezetyr Problem is, they still made the gorn into xenomorphs. And when everything you see of them is that not only are they all about putting their eggs in you (fatally for you) but just plain super violent generally, peace is kind of a dumb idea. This isn't the klingons or the romulans. This is a guilt-free "blow em all away" situation now.
Strange New Worlds is a different timeline, the "prime" one. Which is the Kelvinverse's own interpretation of the original Star Trek canon, which they can use as a means to do whatever they like, while at the same time trying to deceive people by giving it the name "prime". But even if one didn't know this, then it's at best a massive continuity error with the Gorn being known by Starfleet for years before Kirk encountered them.
@@MrGranten Perhaps so, perhaps not. It's not for us to make that decision. I'm all for there being a big bad implacable foe like the Borg were supposed to be (before Voyager cosmically faceplanted them). There's nothing wrong with that. If I recall there were even talks of other Gorn making a gesture of peace; but in reference to the end of S2 that might not come soon. I like where they are with the Gorn right now.
The treatment of the Gorn in SNW filled me with so much contempt and anger, I needed to watch this episode afterward as a palate cleanser. If SNW is what passes for good Kurtzman Trek, then this franchise is well and truly dead.
This episode would have been a real classic if the alien costume would have been better or just totally rethought as what it was supposed to look like.
I sometimes wonder if other prominent species encounter weird super powerful beings like the Metrons. Did a glowing talking cloud ever try to solve the occupation of Bajor by forcing a Cardassian and Bajoran to fight to the death? Does a member of the Q occasionally appear to annoy, tease and flirt with Gowron? Do horrifying extra dimensional beings ever play with Borg cubes like Lego bricks?
This episode filled me with Wonder and Curiosity for the Gorn. I had that for years. Strange New Worlds brought the Gorn back, but killed my wonder. Strange New Worlds Gorn were unrepentant monsters. TOS Gorn were nuanced beings with their own morality. Why does NuTrek have to take fascinating species and attempt to ruin their uniqueness?
Not having watched Kurtzman _Trek,_ I get the impression that the problem with his Gorn are that they're supposed to be these same guys, and they just aren't.
Federation citizens colonizing worlds willy-nilly without considering whether it creates conflict is kind of common in Star Trek. It's what brings them into conflict with at least the Gorn, the Sheliak and the Cardassians. I'm really curious about how this policy squares with the Prime Directive. After all, the Prime Directive is meant to prevent the Federation from repeating the mistakes of colonialism, but its settler policies seem to do exactly that.
The Prime Directive is A) a governmental rule, and the Sheliak and Cardassian examples aren't being done by the government (note also that the Cardassian borderlands settlers are, if not criminals, explicitly outlaws and IIRC Picard only bought time to remove the colony infringing on Sheliak space) and B) only affects pre-warp civilizations (most of the time, anyway) that they actually know about, which are two strikes against it having anything to do with _this_ episode, where the society in question is both star faring and unknown to the Federation. Also, it doesn't particularly have to do with colonialism, just interference in general. As many, often deeply stupid, episodes have reminded us, they aren't allowed to interfere in non-colonialist ways, either.
It's an interesting episode, if a bit very ham fisted. Kirk jurry rigging a pipe bomb out of convenient deposits is a bit much, and the commentary from the bridge crew during the fight doesn't add much to the episode AFAIR...
If you mean TOS, they weren't exactly rolling in money at the time and being blunt, that costume is awful. It really would have hurt the show to try to use them more, financially and in terms of people taking it seriously.
Did they, really? Maybe they published some products that actually did do some development, but they mostly showed up as the Lizardman Federation who had swapped in Temu plasma torpedoes for the Federation's photons.
Still hilarious Strange New Worlds somehow based its myth arc on this episode, while totally ignoring (rejecting, really) the entire point of it. Kinda sums up the shallow fanwakiness of NuTrek in general. SNW: Less progressive than a show from the 60s.
What do you expect from producers and writers who were responsible for all most of the lame action films from the late 2000s and early 2010s? They're not capable of writing anything but flashy action with superficial story.
This is one of those bad, but nevertheless, fun and entertaining episodes. E.g. what kind of "superior" and "god like" alien would force two aliens to fight to the death in an Arena, like Roman gladiators?
I think the episode makes more sense internally, and also makes more sense with later continuity, if you assume that the Metrons created a nemesis out of Kirk's mind as a test. This would explain (1) why the Metrons would act the way they do despite their superiority, (2) why the Gorn is incapable of killing Kirk even when Kirk is incapacitated and wounded, and (3) why this specific Gorn acts differently than the Gorn in Strange New Worlds, even though the actual attack on the planet is very similar to how the species acts later. Presumably they also tested the real Gorn captain in a similar way, and most likely he would be incapable of the same mercy.
I guess I don't understand why grown adults have a problem engaging with this episode. You should understand that a TV show is fictional and you're buying into the fantasy willingly. Once you have that grounding, the fact that the technical aspects of it aren't the best pales in comparison to the timeless lesson it's teaching. It's really not even that bad. Sure the choreography is lame and it's obviously a guy with no fighting experience vs. a stuntman who can't see what he's doing, but you aren't seeing cameramen or failed takes, or not being able to hear what's going on. It's technically competent but low-budget, is what I'm saying. Also Shatner is a good actor. The memes are funny, but don't mistake them for reality. The point is that he chooses to forgive a mortal enemy. It's literally biblical you hacks.
Bad effects break suspension of disbelief; you can no longer sustain the idea that Kirk is fighting an unstoppable lizardman, but can only see Shatner dancing, slowly, with a dude in a lizard costume. Where the line is differs from person to person, and of course if all you see is the bad effect clip you have no chance to buy into the story.
For all that this episode has become a meme, the heart of it is bloody fantastic. "Our enemies are just like us, and we should show mercy." Given that it was written in the Cold War, when the rhetoric was very much 'we must not show mercy to our enemy because they have none', it really was unique.
I prefer to take "Arena" on its own merit. While I am familiar with the jokes and the parodies, I can set them aside and simply watch Kirk show mercy to a fallen enemy. TOS at its best. 🖖😎👍
There's an episode of Mythbusters where Tory, Grant, and Kari test if Kirk's makeshift cannon and hastily fashioned gunpowder was feasible. In the end, the myth was Busted as the bamboo for the cannon wouldn't be strong enough to contain the explosion and the gunpowder that Kirk hastily made with the ingredients he had failed to yield the proper explosive force necessary. In fact, they suggested that Kirk should have given the cannon to the Gorn where it would then explode in the Gorn's face.
It was space bamboo. It's 10,000x stronger than your Earth bamboo.
@@thundercat_pumyra Exactly！
"Goooooorn... Good word. Very "woody" sound.... Goooooooooooorn."
- Graham Chapman, Monty Python series 4
Antelope!
Thats not woody at all.
No, there's an antelope on the croquet field.
Oh *BANG* Antelope gooooone.
Ah yes, the episode where Kirk fights a lizard just outside the Power Rangers Command Center, and gave inspiration to Bill and Ted's robot duplicates on how to kill them.
What I find interesting about this episode is the number of sets/shot locations this took place at.
Enterprise bridge, Transporer Room, Outpost, and Arena. With a lot of pyrotechnics, rather complex costume design and other effects. For TOS they really went all out.
Only for the Fight scene to get called out especially as looking so fake.
What I love is the embrace of the cheese by so many fans. I've even seen parodies shirts on it. "Gorn with the Wind", "Gorn to be Wild", even "Gorn in the USA" (with a picture of a Gorn at Vasquez Rocks). And yet it also has a good message about the dangers of misreading intentions, making assumptions, and the desire for payback/revenge.
You can definitely tell that Shatner and whoever was in the lizard suit were trying their best to not damage the costume. It's sad when they have even less money than tokusatsu shows from the same time period.
The plot is so close to the short story "Arena" by Fredric Brown that they contacted him and gave him credit. Good for them for taking pains to avoid even unintentional plagiarism.
It is always fun when your videos are on the same day as whatever episode you are commenting on are airing on H&I!
Glad I'm not the only one for the DS9 episodes the last week or som
H&I because who would want to stay up until 1 am for Enterprise? No seriously who would?
3:21 the shirt didn't rip but shatner's eardrums certainly did, this is the scene where originates his IRL tinitis (I am spelling it like this because English is not my primary language and I had to click out of an ad before being able to comment and I am not doing that again) that is why there's a cut there, if you have the og VHS or first gen DVD you see him clutching his head as he drops, it's not on Paramount last I checked.
I love the call back to the failed Wonder Woman pilot, pants to be darkened indeed.
I think Strange New Worlds robs this episode of almost everything they were trying to do with the Gorn, save the idea of them as an existential threat. They're not such a mystery that their ships and borders are unknown, and any Starfleet officer showing them mercy would be a fool. It’s the old comic book thing where art contradicts art by means of continuity.
Funny enough, the way SNW handles them is exactly what the episode was all against! And given how monstrous they made them (a hybrid of Xenomorphs and Magog that are more bloodthirsty than the Klingons), this time it won't work to make them misunderstood or influenced by some stupid stellar flares (which is what I assume they go for), since it renders the story in Arena pointless: "Oh, they're so vicious, with so many stories of them killing people, children and innocent, they're unbelievable nasty, but we got over that, during Pike's time. Oh, they're back a decade later? And a bit less bloodthirsty? Welp, need a frickin' God to teach us that we're still misunderstanding them!" It just doesn't work.
Strange New Worlds is a different timeline, the "prime" one. Which is the Kelvinverse's own interpretation of the original Star Trek canon, which they can use as a means to do whatever they like, while at the same time trying to deceive people by giving it the name "prime".
@@sargon6000 it's so ambiguous for me. On the one hand, in a show with a pretty great cast overall La'an is my favourite and I love Christina Chong's performance. But between the Gorn and Khan stuff she has the most eye-rolling backstory.
@@KiltedCriticStop spreading misinformation, it’s not a different timeline, it’s just a retcon.
Always thought this episode was charming. In a way, the bad fight scene makes it MORE watchable. It might be crazy to say it's aged better over time, but there might be something to it. Plus it's classic old fashioned "Kirk totally tells off the supreme beings" type of Trek.
Watching this as a monster-loving kid, this was one of my favorites simply because of the reptilian alien. I was probably a decade away from knowing the word "kitsch" and two decades away from rejecting it as criticism.
This episode makes me really not like what they would do with gorn much later. It's hard to reconcile the gorn captain and Kirk's handling of it here with how they're shown in Strange New Worlds.
Keeping them as villains? Sure, but there are limits to how far you can go and have the audience believe peace can actually be an option.
I disagree. Reimaging, or I think in SNW's case telling us of a different race or subspecies of Gorn was very effective and perfectly played into not only the Alien (in nature and cinematic reference) of the Gorn, but also what Kirk said of the Gorn: "The Enterprise is dead in space, stopped cold during her pursuit of an alien raider by mysterious forces. And I have been somehow whisked off the bridge and placed on the surface of an asteroid, facing the captain of the alien ship. Weaponless, I face the creature the Metrons called a 'Gorn'. Large, reptilian... Like most Humans, I seem to have an instinctive revulsion to reptiles. I must fight to remember that this is an intelligent, highly advanced individual, the captain of a starship like myself. Undoubtedly, a dangerously clever opponent."
@@Aezetyr Problem is, they still made the gorn into xenomorphs. And when everything you see of them is that not only are they all about putting their eggs in you (fatally for you) but just plain super violent generally, peace is kind of a dumb idea.
This isn't the klingons or the romulans. This is a guilt-free "blow em all away" situation now.
Strange New Worlds is a different timeline, the "prime" one. Which is the Kelvinverse's own interpretation of the original Star Trek canon, which they can use as a means to do whatever they like, while at the same time trying to deceive people by giving it the name "prime". But even if one didn't know this, then it's at best a massive continuity error with the Gorn being known by Starfleet for years before Kirk encountered them.
@@KiltedCritic No, it's not. It's the same timeline as all the other shows. It's the same one that we've been watching for decades.
@@MrGranten Perhaps so, perhaps not. It's not for us to make that decision. I'm all for there being a big bad implacable foe like the Borg were supposed to be (before Voyager cosmically faceplanted them). There's nothing wrong with that. If I recall there were even talks of other Gorn making a gesture of peace; but in reference to the end of S2 that might not come soon. I like where they are with the Gorn right now.
Maybe I'm reading too much into this but I find the timing that you put out this episode on here to be interesting.
Can't wait for you to cover the tholians web, my favorite episode in tos
I could never buy that there was more kinetic energy in the diamond cannon than in that huge boulder...
I agree, best to just pretend it was how sharp the diamonds were that dug into his skin rather than the fact this weak ass firework took him down.
First: 😂 wondered how long it would take to reach this episode
"I've lost that Horn, lost that Horn, found that Horn ... Gorn"
"Ill Wind" by Flanders and Swann
The treatment of the Gorn in SNW filled me with so much contempt and anger, I needed to watch this episode afterward as a palate cleanser. If SNW is what passes for good Kurtzman Trek, then this franchise is well and truly dead.
This episode would have been a real classic if the alien costume would have been better or just totally rethought as what it was supposed to look like.
Samsung Galaxy Note 7--deep cut! 🤣
I sometimes wonder if other prominent species encounter weird super powerful beings like the Metrons. Did a glowing talking cloud ever try to solve the occupation of Bajor by forcing a Cardassian and Bajoran to fight to the death? Does a member of the Q occasionally appear to annoy, tease and flirt with Gowron? Do horrifying extra dimensional beings ever play with Borg cubes like Lego bricks?
This episode filled me with Wonder and Curiosity for the Gorn. I had that for years. Strange New Worlds brought the Gorn back, but killed my wonder. Strange New Worlds Gorn were unrepentant monsters. TOS Gorn were nuanced beings with their own morality. Why does NuTrek have to take fascinating species and attempt to ruin their uniqueness?
Not having watched Kurtzman _Trek,_ I get the impression that the problem with his Gorn are that they're supposed to be these same guys, and they just aren't.
The Gorn being sooooo slow, Kirk should have put plenty of distance between them while he thought up a strategy.....bamboo canon not withstanding.
Federation citizens colonizing worlds willy-nilly without considering whether it creates conflict is kind of common in Star Trek. It's what brings them into conflict with at least the Gorn, the Sheliak and the Cardassians. I'm really curious about how this policy squares with the Prime Directive. After all, the Prime Directive is meant to prevent the Federation from repeating the mistakes of colonialism, but its settler policies seem to do exactly that.
The Prime Directive is A) a governmental rule, and the Sheliak and Cardassian examples aren't being done by the government (note also that the Cardassian borderlands settlers are, if not criminals, explicitly outlaws and IIRC Picard only bought time to remove the colony infringing on Sheliak space) and B) only affects pre-warp civilizations (most of the time, anyway) that they actually know about, which are two strikes against it having anything to do with _this_ episode, where the society in question is both star faring and unknown to the Federation.
Also, it doesn't particularly have to do with colonialism, just interference in general. As many, often deeply stupid, episodes have reminded us, they aren't allowed to interfere in non-colonialist ways, either.
It's an interesting episode, if a bit very ham fisted. Kirk jurry rigging a pipe bomb out of convenient deposits is a bit much, and the commentary from the bridge crew during the fight doesn't add much to the episode AFAIR...
I always thought this was a b- episode good but not great
Gorn were only developed further in Star Fleet Battles but not in the show. Frustrating.
If you mean TOS, they weren't exactly rolling in money at the time and being blunt, that costume is awful. It really would have hurt the show to try to use them more, financially and in terms of people taking it seriously.
Did they, really? Maybe they published some products that actually did do some development, but they mostly showed up as the Lizardman Federation who had swapped in Temu plasma torpedoes for the Federation's photons.
Still hilarious Strange New Worlds somehow based its myth arc on this episode, while totally ignoring (rejecting, really) the entire point of it. Kinda sums up the shallow fanwakiness of NuTrek in general.
SNW: Less progressive than a show from the 60s.
What do you expect from producers and writers who were responsible for all most of the lame action films from the late 2000s and early 2010s? They're not capable of writing anything but flashy action with superficial story.
Shove off.
This is one of those bad, but nevertheless, fun and entertaining episodes.
E.g. what kind of "superior" and "god like" alien would force two aliens to fight to the death in an Arena, like Roman gladiators?
I think the episode makes more sense internally, and also makes more sense with later continuity, if you assume that the Metrons created a nemesis out of Kirk's mind as a test. This would explain (1) why the Metrons would act the way they do despite their superiority, (2) why the Gorn is incapable of killing Kirk even when Kirk is incapacitated and wounded, and (3) why this specific Gorn acts differently than the Gorn in Strange New Worlds, even though the actual attack on the planet is very similar to how the species acts later. Presumably they also tested the real Gorn captain in a similar way, and most likely he would be incapable of the same mercy.
I guess I don't understand why grown adults have a problem engaging with this episode. You should understand that a TV show is fictional and you're buying into the fantasy willingly.
Once you have that grounding, the fact that the technical aspects of it aren't the best pales in comparison to the timeless lesson it's teaching.
It's really not even that bad. Sure the choreography is lame and it's obviously a guy with no fighting experience vs. a stuntman who can't see what he's doing, but you aren't seeing cameramen or failed takes, or not being able to hear what's going on. It's technically competent but low-budget, is what I'm saying. Also Shatner is a good actor. The memes are funny, but don't mistake them for reality.
The point is that he chooses to forgive a mortal enemy. It's literally biblical you hacks.
Bad effects break suspension of disbelief; you can no longer sustain the idea that Kirk is fighting an unstoppable lizardman, but can only see Shatner dancing, slowly, with a dude in a lizard costume.
Where the line is differs from person to person, and of course if all you see is the bad effect clip you have no chance to buy into the story.