Star Trek: The Gorn Ship

The remastered version of Star Trek (TOS) inserts real ships into episodes where the original airing showed only a vague flickering light, if that. The Orion ship looks interesting, especially the rear section that explained the whirling lights in the original. The Eymorg and Medusan ships, unseen in the original eps (IIRC), look fascinatingly retro. I have a soft spot for advanced technology used to recreate something that looks low-tech, as if the guys 55 years ago would have made it if they’d only had the time and budget.¹

The Gorn ship, though, looks amazing. (In my eyes, at least.) Especially after the asymmetrical ugly mess the Gorn flew in Strange New Worlds,² it’s weirdly elegant, like some Gorn engineer saw a Constellaton class ship and thought, we could do much better. Prodigy recycled the same model for a Gorn trading ship, which implies that it’s a durable little ship and that the Gorn sell (lease?) their century-old ships as merchant transports.

(click to embiggen)

One can only imagine the bridge. Is it laid out like the Enterprise’s, a circular room with a captain, two pilots, and people at consoles around the walls? Is there a central control console like a TARDIS? La’an from SNW would probably contend there’s dead people hanging from the ceiling on the bridge in case the Gorn want a snack, and we’ve nothing to say otherwise.

BTW, in my headcanon their multifaceted eyes excel at spotting movement but can’t really focus on one spot. So their displays use some holographic trickery to make starfields and instruments look like moving prey. Camera eyes like ours, however, would see a blurry, headache-inducing mess like those “magic eye” stereograms that I could never see.

One also wonders what their 24th and 25th would century ships look like. Yes, I know, Star Trek Online has a bunch, but they just don’t look right to me. I prefer to imagine something that looks like a Galaxy class version of the ship above: sleeker, more stylized, and much bigger.