On paper, this is a cool twist for many reasons. Wormholes are neat, generally, and the idea that Ortegas has been sent some distance across the galaxy into unknown space on her own is exciting stuff. It helps that the survival element comes with real stakes attached, as Ortegas is one of the few members of the main Strange New Worlds crew who doesn’t have the plot armor that comes with a known future (or at least a role to play in some capacity on Star Trek: The Original Series). She could easily die here. She doesn’t, but there are more than a few moments where you wonder if she might, and that’s a specific kind of tension this show doesn’t get to indulge in very often.
Crash landing onto the moon of a gas giant whose elliptical orbit means its surface will be raked with toxic gas regularly, unable to communicate with the Enterprise, and facing a disconcerting lack of food and water, Ortegas has plenty of problems to solve, and that’s all before she discovers that a Gorn pilot has also crash landed on the same desolate world. (The convenience of this is more than a little pat, but “Terrarium” at least bothers to give a reason for it by the end of the hour. Credit where it’s due.)
As soon as the badly injured Gorn is revealed, it’s kind of apparent where this episode is going. It helps that, for whatever reason, the Gorn makes the first move toward kindness, saving Ortegas from a large centipede-like creature, and sharing the meat with her afterward. (Maybe this is where the suspension of disbelief is meant to come in, since we’ve not really seen anything, well, ever, that indicates a Gorn might behave this way.) At any rate, the two stranded travelers ultimately seem to decide that they need one another, and reach a state of relatively peaceful coexistence that ultimately—with the help of a montage, because why not—-become something like friends. The pair shares food and shelter, learns to communicate in a rudimentary way, and teaches each other games from their respective cultures.
It’s all strangely cute, and draped in a ragged cloak, the Gorn looks more like a creature from The Dark Crystal rather than a bloodthirsty killing machine. And though it’s a bit reluctant about the prospect of rescue, Ortegas is confident it can come back to the Enterprise with her. Together, she says, they’ll teach her people that not all Gorn are monsters. This…seems wildly idealistic given how many people we’ve seen the Gorn attack, kidnap, violently kill, or preserve as living food stores in the three seasons this show has been on. But, hey, if Ortegas can change her mind, anything is possible, right? Her insistence that she’s not leaving her new friend behind to die certainly feels genuine, and while her sudden acceptance of Gornkind is certainly narratively convenient, it’s also mostly believable for the situation she currently finds herself in.
Despite all this, what most people will likely remember about this episode is its ending. Thanks to dodgy science, a captain willing to take risks in the name of his crew, and a lot of luck, the Enterprise manages to find the needle in a haystack location where Erica has crashed, send a rescue party, and save the day. Well, not entirely. Because, of course, La’an immediately shoots and kills Ortegas’s new Gorn friend, assuming it was attacking or harming her. Erica is distraught, a situation that is made even worse by the sudden revelation that her presence on the planet was all part of a larger setup outside of her control.
Turns out that the Metrons—the dramatically dressed beings who will later appear in The Original Series episode “The Arena,” where Kirk infamously fights a Gorn trial by combat style—are the source of the strange flashing lights seen throughout this episode. They engineered the arrival of both pilots in the name of an experiment: To determine whether two barbaric races like humans and Gorn could co-exist in peace. Ortegas, it would seem, passed their test, but La’an did not, though her immediate decision to choose violence is something the hour doesn’t really address directly. Uhura claims she was protecting Ortegas, and that’s where the episode leaves it, but we don’t see La’an’s reaction to any of this for good or ill.
