Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ changed the Gorn and this one way stands out

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds did a great job with the Gorn but one aspect of them really stands out.

The folks at Star Trek: Strange New Worlds found a way to make the Gorn actually scary, and man, did they ever do a great job with it. While we’ve only seen younger, smaller, more impulsive Gorn on the show, we’ve also found out just how powerful they really are.

The Gorn have been redesigned by the franchise in a way that makes their encounter in the Original Series even more daunting. They added so many new wrinkles to the race, and in doing so, made Captain James T. Kirk an even bigger badass for dealing with one barehanded.

Now some people have compared the Gorn to the Xenomorph of the Alien franchise. To an extent, they now share some characteristics, but not so much that it’s harmed the Gorn.

In fact, ScreenRant did a great write-up on seven ways Strange New Worlds made the Gorn unique and different from how they were originally portrayed and one of those ways really highlights the uniqueness of the Gorn.

The way the Gorn implant eggs is horrifying

Strange New Worlds’ ninth episode,  “All Those Who Wander”, showed viewers one of the ways the Gorn implant their eggs. While the Gorn and Xenomorph are alike enow in some ways, they’re different, at least fundamentally, in how they create new offspring.

The Xenomorphs have to rely on their queen to lay eggs, and in these eggs is the first form of the Xenomporh, dubbed the Facehugggers. These little bastards have to attach themselves to the face of an alien so that it can implant its egg into the host. While fast, they’re mostly ineffective with a moving target, so the more evolved Xenomorphs trap the prey in egg rooms and wait for the Facehugger to do its thing to a restrained victim.

The Gorn are far more vicious. They not only spit acid which of course hurts, but they also implant embryos (or are they eggs?) into the human host, and wait until they hatch and explode outwards. Not too dissimilar from a Xenomorph but the ease with which they can infect a person makes the Gorn so much more horrifying.

That subtle change makes them not only more dangerous but far scarier too. You can do everything right but if one of those little green buggers tags you with their spit, boom, you’re pregnant and dead.