Can a Gorn Really Be a Friend? Terrarium Makes the Case for One Gorn, Not the Whole Species

To me, Terrarium proves that a Gorn as an individual can be a real friend. What I don't think it proves is that the Gorn as a people practice honor.

The Terrarium Gorn becomes Ortegas' real friend

Early on, it looks like the Gorn is reaching out. The episode later complicates that: the Gorn was badly hurt, and it needed her. What the episode doesn't complicate is what happens next.

The Gorn saves Ortegas' life more than once. They work through the planet's trials together. They play games. They joke. By the end, they call each other friends, and the episode means it. Of every episode I've covered, this is the most sympathetic Gorn on screen, and to me, it deserves full credit for that.

The Gorn's own society would execute it for being weak

Then the Gorn explains why it won't go home. It's been hurt, and its own people would see it as weak and kill it. The way I read it, two episodes show the same rule, which means the best Gorn on record is one its own society would execute.

Ortegas offers to take the Gorn home with her to the Federation. We'll never know if that would have worked.

La'an reads the moment the way her life taught her, and I think she's wrong

At the end, Ortegas is rescued and the Enterprise team arrives. She falls, and the Gorn moves toward her. La'an kills it on sight.

It would be easy to call that prejudice, and La'an's history certainly loads the trigger. From where she's standing, a Gorn is closing on a downed crewmate, and every Gorn she has ever met would have meant that as an attack. She reads it the way her whole life taught her to. In my view, this time she's wrong. The survivor ends the piece.

What Terrarium proves about the Gorn, and what it doesn't

So what does Terrarium prove? To me, it proves that a Gorn as an individual can be a real friend. The Gorn have the capacity to be exactly what Kirk wanted them to be.

What I don't think it proves is that the Gorn as a people practice honor. The same Gorn tells us its own society would kill it for being weak.

Do you think La'an made the right call, or was the Gorn only trying to help Ortegas?