Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3, Episode 9
"Terrarium"
Writer: Alan B. McElroy
Director: Andrew Coutts
Cast: Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, Jess Bush, Christina Chong, Celia Rose Gooding, Melissa Navia, Babs Olusanmokun, Martin Quinn, Rebecca Romijn
As I sat on my couch watching this season's penultimate episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, I couldn't help but feel as though I'd taken a trip back to 1985. Titled "Terrarium", this Enemy Mine-flavored fable finally turns the spotlight on Erica Ortegas — who's far from the bridge and hurled headlong into survival mode after a solo shuttle mission goes sideways. After being sucked into a wormhole and crashing onto a desolate, hostile moon, she puts her Starfleet training to work to secure water and warmth. However, food remains illusive.
Meanwhile, Captain Pike and the crew of the Enterprise face a dilemma. They're torn between rescuing Ortegas and completing a humanitarian mission for a pandemic-stricken colony. Uhura, convinced Ortegas is alive, pushes for continued rescue attempts even as computer simulations say the odds are against them. It's a classic Star Trek conflict as duty counters loyalty, but hope never fully frays.
Back on the moon, Ortegas soon learns she isn't alone. A Gorn pilot, stranded and injured, is there too. Given her past encounters, fear surges immediately. Yet things shift when the creature unexpectedly saves her from a local predator and even offers her food. It's a lifesaving gesture that lights the first sparks of a fragile trust.
That trust slowly grows into an unexpected bond. Ortegas treats the Gorn's injured leg and, in return, the Gorn helps her survive the moon's perils. Communication is rough at first, but with the help of a cobbled translator, she soon discovers the Gorn understands her. Together, they share moments that feel almost friendly: playing chess, teaching each other games, and even exchanging cultural traditions like Ortegas' paper starship ritual. What began as mutual survival turns into something more akin to an interstellar sleepover — an unlikely friendship bridging centuries of hostility.
Back on the Enterprise, Uhura proposes sending the whole ship through the wormhole. The numbers don't exactly line up, but Pike decides to take the risk anyway.
Meanwhile, time is slipping away for Ortegas and her new friend. Their shield battery dies and the Gorn's leg writhes with infection. With few options left, she hatches a plan to ignite the moon's atmosphere and create a massive signal. The Gorn, aware of the dangers inherit in the plan, reluctantly agrees. The flare works, the Enterprise sees it and beams down a rescue team.
But when La'an arrives, everything falls apart. Driven by her deep hatred of the Gorn, she kills the creature on sight. Ortegas is shattered. Her grief is overwhelming — until time suddenly freezes. A shimmering figure appears: a Metron, who reveals that they orchestrated this entire "experiment" as a means to see whether two barbaric species could learn compassion when forced to survive together.
Like I said earlier, this episode strongly echoes Enemy Mine — Wolfgang Petersen's 1985 sci-fi film about a human and a reptilian enemy stranded together who must learn to trust each other in order to survive. The parallel is clear: survival erases prejudice, and vulnerability sparks affinity.
"Terrarium" is a standout not just because it finally gives Erica Ortegas center stage, but because it captures some of the best themes within the Star Trek universe: survival, compassion, connection, and the eternal hope that even enemies can become allies under the right conditions.
Melissa Navia delivers an incredible performance this week. Alone on screen for much of the episode, she seamlessly blends vulnerability, strength, humor, and raw emotion into one incredibly human package. Watching her despair, laugh with an unlikely ally, and finally break down in grief by episode's end is both heartbreaking and surreal. The Gorn, too, is given a surprising amount of nuance — fear, understanding, and even playfulness come through in their body language and design. For once, the Gorn is not just a monster.
The episode also wears its Trek influences proudly, calling back to "The Enemy" and "Darmok" from The Next Generation while flipping the narrative of the TOS episode "Arena" on its head. Despite all these influences, "Terrarium" never feels like a retread. Instead, it lovingly deepens Star Trek's ethos, showing that compassion often emerges from the harshest crucibles, and that empathy can survive even when the odds say otherwise.
In just 45 minutes, "Terrarium" takes us on a roller coaster's worth of emotion, leaving us with a reminder that even in the darkest of places, hope and understanding can still shine through.
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