Parnassus Beta is a human colony just outside Federation space. The USS Cayuga has dropped by to render aid and assistance, with Captain Marie Batel supervising a landing party — including Nurse Christine Chapel, on her way to her fellowship with Dr. Roger Corby — and occasionally sparing a moment to FaceTime with Pike. Unfortunately, their friendly chat is interrupted... and replaced by a distress call: the colony is under attack by the Gorn.
Adm. April warns Pike to tread carefully: hasty action could be perceived by the Gorn as a provocation for war. And the Gorn are indeed here to stay: they are broadcasting an image showing a demarcation line, apparently staking out their territory. Pike is ordered to keep the Enterprise on the Federation side of the line. The Cayuga gets no orders as she's already been blown to pieces, leaving a wrecked saucer section and an Asteroid Thicket a mile wide from the stardrive. And the Gorn have put up a jamming field which impedes transport to and from the planet, not to mention transmissions back to Starfleet.
Pike cobbles together a plan: by welding debris to the outside of the shuttle, Ortegas is able to get a landing party — herself, Pike, M'Benga, La'an and George "Sam" Kirk — down to the surface. Meanwhile, Number One, Spock and Uhura stay topside, there to keep the peace and scan the Cayuga's wreckage for survivors. Spock has a very personal reason to keep looking, but as the blown-out hulk of the saucer section continues its slow rotations, they are able to visually verify that Sickbay is completely gone. Meanwhile, Uhura works with Pelia to determine the source of the Gorn jamming signal; it's a tower erected a short distance outside the settlement. She, Spock, Number One and Pelia hatch a plan: they already know the Gorn are disregarding the Cayuga's wreckage, so Starfleet can de-orbit (what's left of) the saucer section and crash it into the jamming tower. Spock makes an EVA to plant thrusters on the saucer section.
Pike's team infiltrate the colony, dodging Gorn and eventually narrowing down on a human lifesign. It's a trap laid by a wily engineer, Lt. JG Montgomery Scott (Martin Quinn) of the Stardiver, which likewise was attacked by the Gorn; Scott, the Sole Survivor, jury-rigged a Gorn IFF to sneak out. Lt. Scott leads them to the nearest human survivors, including Capt. Batel. She's furious that Pike has come; his one shuttle won't be able to get all the survivors out even if it could take off without the Gorn noticing, and she doesn't like her boyfriend having thrown himself into danger just for her sake. Nonetheless, the two hatch a plan to take Mr. Scott back to his shuttle and liberate the Gorn IFF. At the same time, they discuss Scott's story and come to believe that coronal mass ejections the Stardiver was investigating somehow sent the Gorn into a berserk state, resulting in the inexplicable attacks. While there, the three are menaced by a Gorn hatchling, but it turns away when confronted by Batel. She reveals she's been infected with Chest Burster eggs, and insists on making a Heroic Sacrifice by flying the shuttle (under cover of IFF) into the jamming tower.
Aboard the Cayuga, Christine Chapel wakes up on one of the few remaining pressurized areas of the ship. She spots the Enterprise in the distance and soon after Spock passing by the window, so she dons a spacesuit to catch up to him. The two are reunited on the bridge, where Spock plants the final thruster. After dealing with a Gorn scavenger, they deorbit the Cayuga's saucer section and it destroys the jamming tower. Pike orders immediate exfiltration by transporter; Batel is beamed directly to Sickbay, where Chapel works to stabilize her and remove the eggs. Meanwhile, Cmdr. Pelia is delighted to run into one of her most promising students, "Scotty"; the two rush belowdecks with the Gorn IFF to see what use they can make of it. But the rest of the colony survivors — not to mention La'an, M'Benga, Sam Kirk and Ortegas — never make it to the Enterprise; they were instead beamed out by the Gorn.
Gorn ships charge the Enterprise, guns blazing. Uhura reports that Admiral April, unaware of the crew's fate, has ordered the Enterprise to withdraw. Una, at the helm, asks Pike for orders.
Tropes:
- Art Evolution: An adult Gorn is seen in this series for the first time, and takes on a more iguana shaped head similar to the hatchlings seen in "All Those Who Wander" compared to the more dinosaur head design from TOS and ENT. They also evolve into a mix of Xenomorph Xerox with their breeding cycle and Prehensile Tail but acquiring a more humanoid upright stance and brawler moves akin to a Predator Pastiche.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Pike assigns Ortegas to join the landing party, referencing the fact that she's been asking for months to join one. Given they're dealing with the Gorn, she asks herself why she'd been so eager to.
- Book Dumb: Pelia and Scotty already knew each other, she called him the best student she ever had but got some of the worst grades. Given she starts arguing with him over the random junk he scavenged it seems she disagrees with his tendencies towards MacGyvering.
- Broken Faceplate: Spock kills the Gorn on the Cayuga by stabbing its helmet with a piece of metal. It quickly suffocates with its suit integrity compromised.
- Call-Back: When Batel asks Pike how he's doing, he says it's not so bad, as at least he isn't "bursting into song every ten minutes." (The previous episode was a Musical Episode.)
- Call-Forward:
- Pike and the Enterprise discovering the wreckage of the Cayuga resembles Picard and company discovering the wreckage of the Horatio a century later.
- If the demarcation zone is any indication, the Gorn are very protective of their territory. They displayed similar behavior with Cestus III in "Arena".
- Captain Obvious: When Scotty sees that Pike and his party walked into the trap he set for the Gorn.Scotty: You're not Gorn.
La'an: Obviously.
Scotty: You shouldn't-a walked into my Gorn trap, then. - Character Check: After earlier episodes dealt mostly with monstrous Xenomorph Xerox Gorn younglings, Spock and Chapel face off against a more familiar adult Gorn for the first time aboard the wreck of Cayuga. Additionally, the Gorn in this episode are actually shown attempting to communicate with the Federation after a fashion, if only to stake a territorial claim. Both help to set up the evolution in relations that will culminate in "Arena" and a truce.
- Cliffhanger: The episode ends with the Enterprise under attack by four Gorn ships with more on the way. M'Benga, Sam, La'an, Ortegas, and all the surviving colonists have been abducted by the Gorn. Batel is infected with Gorn eggs and sedated, with only the slim hope that Chapel can extract them. Starfleet orders the Enterprise to withdraw immediately. Una asks Pike for orders ... To Be Continued.
- Closed Circle: When Enterprise arrives in orbit they quickly realize the Gorn have placed a jamming device that cuts off all local communication, sensors and transporters. They are reduced to visual assessment only and no interaction between different groups, but Uhura and Pelia are able to analyze the static to at least get a bearing on the source of the jamming device.
- Colony Drop: To disable the Gorn jammer, Spock sticks rockets on the Cayuga's saucer section to put it into a decaying orbit that will drop it right on the jammer, betting the Gorn will disregard it as harmless until it's too late to stop the impact.
- The Coconut Effect: Martin Quinn's accent as Scotty is not precisely what people remember from James Doohan or Simon Pegg. This is because Quinn is actually Scottish, the first person of that nationality to take the role. (Doohan was Canadian and Pegg is English.)
- Coming in Hot: To avoid being detected by the Gorn, Ortegas has to drop to the surface with no engines and pull up once they reach 1,500 meters, practically scraping the floor on ascent. Even Pike, a former test pilot, is shocked by this insane maneuver.
- Continuity Nod:
- The episode title is a reference to the Gorn's official governmental body, which was first established in ENT's "Bound". Admiral April uses the title when explaining the situation to Pike.
- When Una realizes that Pelia and Uhura want to drop the Cayuga saucer onto the Gorn jammer, Pelia quips that she'd have given Una an A+ for that kind of intuition, referencing her C grade from "Lost in Translation".
- When defending her choice to make a Heroic Sacrifice to keep the Gorn eggs from hatching, Batel recalls Hemmer having done the same.
- The Gorn Hegemony's emblem is identical to the one briefly shown in Star Trek: Prodigy.
- Contrived Coincidence:
- There happened to be another ship, the Stardiver, one system over when the Gorn attacked, and the only man who got off happened to be a certain Scottish-accented engineer with a knack for inventing his way out of danger — and it just so happens that Scotty witnessed a crucial stellar incident that revealed a key detail about the Gorn that could help Starfleet against them. To Scotty's luck, his shuttle is forced to crash on the only inhabited planet in the system, which is on the other side of the Gorn territorial claim and just fell under attack from Gorn forces while the Enterprise is waiting on their side of the line as their troops move in to rescue the survivors.
- The only apparent survivor of the Cayuga's saucer section is Christine Chapel, and it just so happens her ex-boyfriend Spock has to journey to the remains of the saucer section as part of a plan to use it to take out the Gorn's communications jammer on the planet's surface, in exactly the right place for her to notice him.
- Crazy-Prepared: Of a sort. After previous encounters with the Gorn showing that standard phasers were ineffective against them, Starfleet spent time designing new weaponry to use against them. Once they are aware of who they're facing, Pike brings in a classified trunk kept in storage containing new phaser designs and liquid nitrogen grenades. This reflects the paradox of Starfleet, they want peace but when pushed they WILL find a way to kill you.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Batel's vessel, the Cayuga, is destroyed by the Gorn offscreen, seemingly shortly after their arrival at Parnassus Beta. When the Enterprise encounters the wreckage, the saucer section has a huge chunk blown out of it and the secondary hull has been reduced to a smattering of debris. There's no indication the Gorn even lost any ships in the battle. The promise of the Gorn doing something similar to the Enterprise is what fuels the episode- and season-ending Cliffhanger.
- Desperate Object Catch: During the fight with the Gorn on the Cayuga, the Gorn knocks Spock's phaser out of his hand and starts trying to break his helmet. Chapel has to desperately go after the phaser before it drifts out of the bridge and into open space, just barely managing to catch it by hooking her foot on a railing.
- Diabolus ex Machina: They were right on the edge of success, after destroying the jamming device the away team and remaining colonists are beamed aboard Enterprise and have a clear shot at a Hyperspeed Escape. Unfortunately, the image of the colonists with Erika and M'Benga being beamed up was not the Enterprise, but a Gorn ship. Pike, Batel, La'an, Chapel and Spock make it back but it took too long before they realized the others hadn't joined them. Starfleet gives them orders to disengage, while Pike is faced with a Sadistic Choice in leaving the others behind.
- Explosive Instrumentation: An explosion on the bridge knocks one Red Shirt off his feet, but he's not seriously injured.
- Face Your Fears:
- Sam Kirk admits that he was scared witless by the Gorn at their last encounter, but he wants another chance to deal with them.
- Scotty admits that he's terrified of the Gorn (perfectly understandable), but he owes it to the Stardiver and her crew to help Pike and Batel fight back.
- Fan of the Past: The colony was designed to resemble the US midwest for a homey, small town feel, complete with a barbershop with a spiral sign. This provides a contrast with the Starfleet officers walking around and shuttlecraft flying around.
- Fantastic Racism:
- If for understandable reasons, Pike refers to the Gorn as "monsters" in his conversation with Admiral April, and doubts there can be any discussion with them. To his credit, seeing the previously feral younglings behave cooperatively on the surface convinces him to look on the bright side of things.
- Sam also volunteers for the away mission, looking to study the Gorn and to better understand them — that is, to gain an understanding of how to kill them.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing:
- When a mysterious ship appears over Parnassus Beta, the Gorn leitmotif from last season plays, making it clear what's about to happen.
- An engineer with a Scottish accent? You knew it was Scotty even before he gave his name.
- A Gorn youngling refuses to attack Batel. In-universe and out, the obvious answer is that she's infected.
- When the jammer is destroyed and a Teleportation Rescue begins, M'Benga, Sam, Ortegas, La'an, and the colonists are beamed away by a green wavy transporter effect, definitely not the yellow, straight-line pattern of Federation transporters. Sure enough, the Gorn grabbed them.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Having been infected with Gorn eggs, Batel plans to sacrifice herself in a Suicide Attack on the Gorn tower. She has no idea that Spock has already sent what's left of the Cayuga to deal with that.
- Hiss Before Fleeing: The young Gorn facing down Captain Batel only resorts to doing this before scampering out of the shuttle, clueing in Pike that she is valuable to the Gorn because she's been infected with their eggs.
- Hope Spot: Spock succeeds in using the Cayuga's remains to destroy the jamming tower on the colony, only for the Gorn to beam all the survivors off the planet before Enterprise can lock onto them.
- Impeded Communication: The first sign bad things are going down is Batel and Pike having their conversation suddenly cut off. When she tries to reach the Cayuga and fails, it's clear this is more than a glitch, and is soon followed by a crashing shuttle and a Gorn mothership.
- In Case of X, Break Glass: When Pike unveils the crate filled with anti-Gorn tech, Ortegas quips, "Break in case of Gorn."
- Kill It with Ice: Starfleet developed liquid nitrogen grenades as an anti-Gorn weapon, given their vulnerability to freezing temperatures. M'Benga makes a point of noting that such a weapon would be equally deadly to warm-blooded mammals as it would to cold-blooded reptiles.
- Lured into a Trap: The away team are tricked into following a fake life signs beacon built by Scotty, trapping them behind a forcefield. He intended it to catch any Gorn coming by.
- Mass "Oh, Crap!": Everyone on Parnassus runs in terror when the Gorn arrive.
- Modern Stasis: Justified with the Parnassus Beta colony, which has been deliberately modeled after a typical, Midwestern American town of the late 20th/early 21st century despite the fact that they obviously flew there on an advanced starship.
- Moment Killer:
- Pike and Batel are having a pleasant conversation during The Teaser when comms fail...and then a wayward shuttle crashes, followed by the Gorn.
- The two of them then have another heart-to-heart conversation (this one about Batel's plan to sacrifice herself) when Scotty interrupts to warn them to hold on to something. A few seconds later, the saucer of the Cayuga comes crashing down.
- Monstrous Cannibalism: When the away team takes out a Gorn youngling, others soon swarm and devour the corpse. As La'an notes, the one they shot looked to be starving, so they've already eaten all the colonists they could find.
- Mood Whiplash: After last week's Musical Episode, the Gorn return, and anyone who crosses them is screwed.
- Mythology Gag:
- Although it's not played as a gag, using a starship's destroyed saucer section to take out a target on the surface of a planet where the ship was wrecked sounds a lot like the Kelvin timeline's Kirk and Chekov flipping the primary hull of the parallel Enterprise onto an enemy in Star Trek Beyond.
- Likewise, running into Montgomery Scott when he's been marooned alone (or nearly alone) on a planet recalls 2009's Star Trek when he is found on Delta Vega by the Kelvin timeline's Kirk and the prime timeline's Spock.
- The Needs of the Many: It's acknowledged that there may be survivors in pressurized sections of the Cayuga's saucer — Chapel being one of them — but the crew has no way to detect them beyond visual scans (which are inconclusive) and no way to rescue them besides. When a plan is devised to drop the saucer out of orbit and into the jamming tower, Spock carries out the mission despite his concern for Chapel because it represents the best shot at rescuing the most people, even though it would doom any potential survivors still inside.
- The Neutral Zone: A very thin one indeed; the Gorn claim a demarcation zone bisecting the Parnassus Beta system— and, as per Starfleet Command's orders, preventing Pike and the Enterprise from going in after the Cayuga survivors on the planet. (So, naturally, Pike goes in anyway.)
- No-Nonsense Nemesis: Continuing what has been seen and implied from previous episodes, the Gorn don't offer any warning and violence is swift. There is a very hard distinction made with a pristine, idyllic colony before they arrive and how badly it gets smashed up and blood staining the walls when the away team sneak in. The Cayuga is absolutely shredded by weapons fire with no signs of trying to capture it or any signs that she took any Gorn ships with her.
- Oh, Crap!: Scotty is not happy to see Pelia again.Pelia: Hello, Scotty.
Scotty: (can't maintain eye contact) Professor... - O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The pacifistic Pike, kind-hearted M'Benga, and mild-mannered Sam are all eager to go down to Parnassus Beta and start killing the Gorn.
- Parting-Words Regret: Spock reveals that before Chapel left the Enterprise, they got into a fight. He now wishes to apologize to her (assuming she's still alive).
- Prehensile Tail: The Gorn on the Cayuga grabs Spock by his neck with its tail before trying to claw his helmet open. Since the Gorn that Jim Kirk will encounter a decade later had no tail, said appendage was probably part of the suit it was wearing or was otherwise removed.
- Protagonist-Centered Morality: Spock states that some portions of the Cayuga may remain pressurized, sheltering survivors. He is shown to be correct, with Nurse Chapel still alive. This means there may be other Starfleet personnel trapped in the saucer section. This is barely given an acknowledgement when they devise the plan to hurl said saucer section — and its potential undocumented survivors — into atmo to destroy the jammer, with Spock putting the mission first despite his concern for Chapel, but you'd think he'd at least check for survivors while he's over there. Instead, they prioritize the lives of the away team and potential survivors on the planet over those in the saucer.
- Sadistic Choice: At the end, Pike must decide whether to obey Starfleet's order to withdraw, which would mean abandoning the remaining colonists and landing party members — who have all been captured by the Gorn — to their fates, or attempting to rescue them, which means risking the lives of everyone on board the Enterprise, the vital intel they've acquired about the Gorn and a full-scale war. The episode ends before we find out what decision he makes.
- Saved by Canon: Nurse Chapel is aboard the Cayuga when it is destroyed, but since she's still alive at least as late as the events of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, she winds up in a sealed section and manages to escape with Spock. Similarly, of the kidnapped landing party in the episode's final minutes, M'Benga and Sam at least must survive, and the Enterprise herself, plus Pike, Spock, Uhura, and Scotty won't be killed by the Gorn since they have other destinies to fulfill in a few years.
- Scenery Gorn: In a more literal sense than most; the Enterprise arrives at Parnassus Beta only to be greeted by the shattered wreckage of the Cayuga, Captain Batel's starship, which has fallen victim to the Gorn forces now claiming much of the star system. The colony is in a similar condition, with the idyllic small town looking like a disaster zone.
- See the Whites of Their Eyes: The Gorn communicate that there is a definitive line not to cross otherwise an open battle with ensue. A graphic is shown representing the moon, planet, Enterprise and Gorn ships with the debris field of Cayuga roughly on that line. When Chapel sees the Enterprise from the viewpoint of the smashed Cayuga saucer section it's a few miles away at most, hardly matching the visual graphic that was shown.
- Sequel Episode: To "Memento Mori" and "All Those Who Wander", as the Gorn make their return to SNW and continue the story arc that began in Season One.
- Shout-Out:
- A young Gorn menacing Captain Batel before leaving her alone because she's carrying Gorn eggs bears a lot of similarity to a Xenomorph leaving Ellen Ripley alone in Alien³ because she was incubating a Queen chestburster.
- The Gorn ship is shown entering the atmosphere slowly punching through the clouds in a manner similar to Independence Day, including the community being enveloped by a hard-edged shadow.
- Solar Flare Disaster: In a roundabout way. Scotty reveals the Stardiver was investigating an unusual series of coronal mass ejections from a star one system over, which seemingly provoked the Gorn into attacking. They then moved on to the nearest inhabited planet, Parnassus Beta, kicking off the plot. It's deduced that the Gorn likely responded to the massive light show on an instinctual level, a possible weakness that Starfleet can exploit.
- Starfish Aliens: Gorn continue to be enigmatic, only seen a handful of times and largely in shadow. But building off claims and speculation made in previous episodes, the characters comment that their behavior patterns are different now. Scotty has a theory that they may be impacted by differing forms of radiation depending on the system they are in.
- Teleport Interdiction: The Gorn have set up a jammer on Parnassus Beta blocking enemy transporters, as well as communications and scans. It also extends well into orbit, so any survivors on the remains of the Cayuga can't be detected, much less rescued, with it in place.
- To Be Continued: The episode ends on a To Be Continued card as Pike frets over whether to obey Starfleet or attempt to rescue his crew and the colonists from the Gorn.
- Took a Level in Badass:
- Mild-mannered xenobiologist Sam Kirk goes with the away team to study the Gorn and learn more efficient ways to kill them.
- Starfleet as a whole has been studying what little they know about the Gorn. Every starship now has a crate of weapons and other tech specifically designed for fighting them.
- Traveling at the Speed of Plot: When they get the Cayuga distress signal, Pike orders them to warp immediately while he makes contact with Admiral April. After a two-minute conversation with April they arrive in orbit. Maximum warp or not, that would put them close enough to have detected the Gorn ship entering the system themselves.
- Twist Ending: It sure looks like La'an, M'Benga, Sam, Ortegas and the colonists have been beamed to safety. Except they weren't; they were beamed to Gorn ships.
- Weapon of X-Slaying: When it becomes clear that a landing party will be necessary to rescue the survivors of the Cayuga and anyone else, Pike authorizes the use of Starfleet's latest anti-Gorn technology: scanners calibrated to bypass their natural defenses, phasers that kill younglings in a single shot, and nitrogen grenades to exploit their weakness to cold temperatures.
- Wham Episode: After two seasons of minor skirmishes and encounters, the Gorn begin to make their move in proper force, with the growing territorial tensions now carrying threats of all-out warfare against the Federation.
- Wham Shot:
- Enterprise warps to Parnassus Beta in response to Batel's Distress Call — and finds a debris field that used to be Cayuga.
- Pike and his team get caught in a trap that leaves them behind a force field. The man who set the trap walks out, revealing himself to be a young man in a red shirt. Then he opens his mouth, revealing a familiar Scottish accent as the crew learns their would-be-captor is one Montgomery Scott.
- Why Isn't It Attacking?: A Gorn youngling ambushes Pike, Batel, and Scotty while they're in Scotty's shuttle, but it faces down Batel for a few seconds, hisses a bit and then leaves, to everyone else's surprise. Turns out this is because she's been infected with Gorn eggs.
- The Worf Effect: As revealed by an in-episode infographic
, the Cayuga is a Constitution-class ship much like the Enterprise, but still ended up with the Red Shirt treatment on the losing side of an apparent Curb-Stomp Battle delivered by the Gorn warships in the Parnassus Beta system. It's a clear warning that the Enterprise and her crew could easily face the same fate, feeding into the Cliffhanger at the end of the episode. - Would Hurt a Child: A whole bunch of kids are among the colonists fleeing the Gorn when they arrive at Parnassus Beta. Given how few of the 5000-plus colonists are left sheltering in a diner with Batel and her crew's survivors, there's quite the inferred offscreen loss of life.
- You Say Tomato: This version of Scotty is perhaps the first person in the franchise to pronounce "lieutenant" as "lef-tenant".
- Zombie Infectee: A Gorn youngling refuses to attack Batel, immediately arousing Pike's suspicion. Batel is evasive, but eventually comes clean about having been infected with Gorn eggs, having never intended to allow Pike to take her offworld and risk harming others.
Uhura: Admiral April is ordering our immediate withdrawal. Sir, do I respond?
Mitchell: But the Gorn still have our people!
Una: Captain? Captain? Orders, Captain?
TO BE CONTINUED...
Mitchell: But the Gorn still have our people!
Una: Captain? Captain? Orders, Captain?
TO BE CONTINUED...
