The recon is to the timeline and initial encounter with the species
Fair enough - I’ll backtrack slightly and say that if there’s a retcon, that’s where it is, rather than in the Gorn’s behaviour.
But there is a bit of wiggle room in “Arena”, I think. Kirk certainly seems unfamiliar with the Gorn, but they never really say it’s the first contact, and Spock doesn’t really say anything one way or the other (a very Spock-like thing to do in any situation).
They definitely have massaged that canon, but I don’t think they’ve really contradicted it.
I think. Kirk certainly seems unfamiliar with the Gorn, but they never really say it’s the first contact
There never say it’s first contact, but Kirk acts like he’s never even heard of the Gorn before.
" 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."
However, that is definitely not the retcon Goldsman was talking about. He specifically says, “t was an opportunity to retcon something into a real monster.”
To be fair, the old Gorn rationale for attacking the colony was, “You’re in our territory, and we assumed you had hostile intent”…while the SNW rationale is, “We lay eggs in your body, so our young have something to eat when they hatch”.
That’s a significant difference in character motivation.
The SNW Gorn literally pulled the classic sitcom “stay on your side of the line” routine - basically the same motivation as “Arena”.
Yeah, but in “Arena” there was nothing about using humans as incubators / hosts. That’s the part they added in, to make them more “monster-like”. Without that, their motivation is not much different than our own. With that, they are much more terrifying and alien.
Once they reach a certain age ~ the Gorn slow W A A A Y down. They begin wearing colorful tunics and can be easily subdued with a primitive blunderbuss.
