The title refers to the Gorn Hegemony, as their political entity is known (ENT: “Bound”). A hegemony is a system of government where one state is dominant - politically, culturally, economically, militarily - over other states in the same sphere of influence. This may indicate that Gorn space covers a variety of individual states or species, but with the Gorn themselves as the dominant faction, or hegemon.
This may also tie into fanon and beta canon about multiple species of Gorn, to explain the differences in appearance between the Gorn of TOS: “Arena” (and LD: “Veritas”) and the Gorn seen in ENT: “In a Mirror, Darkly” and in SNW: “All Those Who Wander”.
The use of Hegemony can be found in the 1992 novel The Disinherited and again in the 1997 novel Wrath of the Prophets - both by Peter David, Michael Jan Friedman, and Robert Greenberger. It’s also been named, in various licensed material, as the Gorn Empire, the Gorn Kingdom, the Gorn Alliance… but it was only when “Bound” was broadcast that it finally settled as Hegemony.
Of course, there’s the continuity inconsistencies with the Federation’s knowledge of the Gorn when matched with TOS: “Arena”, but now given Temporal War Shenanigans, people seem to have generally given up on reconciling them without it.
Batel’s log is Stardated 2344.2 and I think this is the first time we get a good look at the USS Cayuga, which is either a Constitution-class like Enterprise or a smaller Sombra-class like the USS Peregrine (“All Those Who Wander”).
The colony of Parnassus Beta, on the edge of Federation space, has not been mentioned before. Mount Parnassus is a mountain range in Greece, and in mythology was the home of the Muses. The planet of Parnassus VII was mentioned in the TNG game A Final Unity.
Chapel is on the planet, hitching a ride on Cayuga to her fellowship. Pike makes a reference to the events of SNW: “Subspace Rhapsody”. The colonists are wary of accepting Federation membership because it may put a target on them. I think Pike’s saying he misses Batel puts more of a target on her, trope-ily speaking. We see him with the Operlian Mariner’s Keystone she gave him in SNW: “Among the Lotus Eaters”.
As the Gorn ship appears, the soundtrack swells into a very TOS-ish piece of music, complete with dissonant trumpet blares. This is kept up as we first see the wreckage of the Cayuga, with a broken saucer reminiscent of the wrecked USS Constellation in TOS: “The Doomsday Machine”.
La’An theorises the Gorn have a weapon capable of rendering their enemies blind by interfering with comms, sensors and transport. In TOS: “Arena”, they were capable of faking subspace transmissions to lure starships in and interfered with ground-to-ship communications.
Spock identifies the incoming ship as a Gorn hunter, of the type the Enterprise battled in SNW: “Memento Mori”.
The map sent by the Gorn to Starfleet uses the same Gorn alphabet we first saw in “Memento Mori”. It may actually be transcribable directly into Latin letters, as seen in La’An’s memories of her notebook in that episode, but even her attempt was incomplete.
We see Cayuga’s registry number as NCC-1557, which might indicate it’s Sombra-class (Peregrine was NCC-1549, and most Constitution ships are in the 1600 or 1700 series), but production art shows it to be Constituiton.
Pike asks Transporter Chief Jay to transport a Crate 32 to the ready room, authorization code Pike Epsilon-C-6. The contents are labeled “Gorn Protocol Box / G32 95108 / N-1036”. These include phaser harmonics adjustments, recalibrations for tricorders to be now be able to scan them, and nitrogen grenades to freeze anything in a 10 m radius.
Spock’s PADD displays the following:
GORN PROTOCOLS
affected areas and should be regularly inspected. The use of surveillance equipment to monitor the areas as well as regular patrolling can be vital. The intention should be to establish secure areas which the Gorn will find difficult to penetrate. Securing by locking or other means of controlling access to unattended spaces adjoining areas could also prove necessary.
It is important that any response to an incident is well planned and executed, and those involved should be as familiar as possible with a starship environment. Therefore, those responsible within the security forces for responding to Gorn attacks against starships, whether in open space or in port, should be trained in the general layout and features of the types of ships most likely to be encountered and starship captains in consultation with Starfleet Command should cooperate with the security forces in providing access to their ships to allow the necessary onboard education/familiarization.
…..
PHASER HARMONICS ADJUSTMENTS
TO BETTER COUNTER THEIR DEFENCES
CLOSE-RANGE
Wavelength: 3.4E -11 M
Amplitude: 10 CM
Frequency: .967 S-1
LONG-RANGE
Wavelength: 4.6E -11M
Amplitude: 15 CM
Frequency: 0.648 S-1
SCANNER RE-CALIBRATIONS
TRICORDER SCANNER CALIBRATION
Rangescanner: 121021.132.13.401.40.000.00.102.10.501.50
Detection: 2.120.03.113.21450.45.010.01.521.52.210.21
Estimated Range: 100-150 M
Estimated Day Effectiveness: 90%
Estimated Night Effectivness: 80%
The Hunter ship is at the 4th Lagrange point. Lagrange points, named after Italian scientist Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736-1813), are points of gravitational equilibrium in space between two gravitationally massive objects. There are five Lagrange points that can be defined for two bodies. L1-L3 were discovered by Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler (1707-1783) with L4 and L5 (the ones identified by Lagrange) being the most stable and where debris will usually gather. The Lagrange points are well known in science fiction as locations where orbital colonies like O’Neill cylinders can be anchored with minimal need for thrusters to keep the vessel from drifting.
The landing party are wearing tactical gear (SNW: “Lost in Translation”, “Under the Cloak of War”). Una makes reference to the zombie movie trope where you act dead so they don’t notice you. As Erica pulls off her low altitude maneuver, the only one unperturbed by it all is M’Benga, for reasons obvious to the regular viewer. Pike praises Erica, which makes me worried for her now.
The Gorn interference beacon has a very Borg-ish shade of green, but maybe that’s just me.
Well, hello there, LT j.g. Montgomery Scott of the solar research vessel Stardiver! The only survivor of his ship that was ambushed one system over, he escaped when he jury-rigged his shuttle engines to increase their capacity, because of course he did. While this is technically his first appearance on SNW, we did hear a Scottish-accented crewman assisting alt-Spock in SNW: “A Quality of Mercy”.
Scotty pronounces "Lieutenant" as "Lef-tenant", in the British military manner here (he pronounced it "Loo-tenant" in TOS). The Stardiver may be a reference to the David Brin novel Sundiver, where the titular spacecraft is designed to fly close to the sun to investigate its chromosphere.
Martin Quinn, who plays Scotty, is a Paisley boy like David Tennant and Steven Moffat, which means using his natural accent will be easier to make out, as the Paisley accent is less harsh than, say, a Glaswegian one. He’s a bit young for Scotty though, at 28. Scotty was, chronologically, 147 in TNG: “Relics”, which means he was born in 2222, making him 38-39 at this point, although timeline changes may have made him more youthful.
Scotty gives us more details: the Stardiver was in the Shangdi (named after Shàngdi, a Chinese supreme deity) system, a red super giant. The Coronal Mass Ejections thrown off by the star apparently attracted them. Sam theorizes that certain stellar activity could trigger a consumption cycle. To hide himself from them, Scotty built a Gorn transponder from a Hubble K7C Stellar Assessment Array, making his shuttle scan like a Gorn ship. I got to say though, that I get emotional every time I hear them say, “Mr. Scott,” because it sounds so right.
Without going into the exact numbers provided on-screen, Parnassus Beta is clearly M-Class, with a rotation period of 28.5 hours, a revolution of 402 days and an oxygen/nitrogen ratio nearly identical to Earth, nearly the same proportion of water to land and with animal and plant life in both hemispheres. All in all, an ideal colony planet, if not for the Gorn.
Pelia needles Una that an answer like would have earned her an A-plus, referring to the C grade Pelia gave her in Starship Maintenance 307 (“Lost in Translation”).
As we found out in “All Those Who Wander”, the maturity cycle for Gorn eggs differs from host to host - for an Orion it took weeks. In humans it can take mere days.
The beam-up effect for the colonists is different, so that’s a sinking feeling confirmed later when we find out they were taken by the Gorn. Mass beam-ups of this sort were never seen in TOS, so it’s kind of cool to see in any case. Cargo transporters have the capacity, but according to the TNG Tech Manual they were not used for living matter because they were set to molecular instead of quantum resolution, like replicators.
Pelia says Scotty was one of her best students who received some of her worst grades. I wonder why…
As the Gorn attack, we see the traditional rocks of Starfleet electronics being scattered in the explosions. And as April orders the Enterprise to withdraw and Pike faces a no-win scenario, we end on another cliffhanger…