Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' Gorn Explained By Legacy Effects Co-Founder

Summary

Legacy Effects, the VFX house behind Baby Yoda in The Mandalorian, designed the Gorn in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 1 and returned for the season 2 finale.
Co-founder J. Alan Scott discusses how the season 2 finale features the USS Enterprise crew fighting different generations of Gorn, including an adult Gorn in a zero-gravity fight with Lt. Spock and Nurse Christine Chapel.
The Gorn's ability to speak and communicate has not yet been decided, but the show aims to continue revealing and exploring more about the Gorn in future seasons.

Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2's Finale, "Hegemony"The Gorn return in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2's finale, and they're deadlier than ever thanks to the visual effects work of J. Alan Scott and the team at Legacy Effects.

Legacy Effects, the famed VFX house that has created numerous props and visual effects, such as Baby Yoda in The Mandalorian, came aboard to design the Gorn in Strange New Worlds season 1. The season 2 finale of Strange New Worlds ups the ante with the crew of the USS Enterprise fighting different generations of the man-eating Gorn, from hatchlings to younglings, to the reveal of an adult Gorn who has a zero gravity fight with Lt. Spock (Ethan Peck) and Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush) in outer space.

Screen Rant had the pleasure of chatting with Legacy Effects' Co-Founder and Owner J. Alan Scott about bringing the Gorn to life in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, whether the alien reptiles will speak, and how they executed the zero gravity Spock vs. Gorn fight in Strange New Worlds' season 2 finale.

J. Alan Scott Of Legacy Effects Talks Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Screen Rant: Hey Alan, I take it you're responsible for all of my Gorn nightmares? Should I send my therapy bills to you?

J. Alan Scott: No. (laughs) I leave that to the executives, I just execute the vision.

I looked up the amazing work Legacy Effects has done. The list of shows and movies you've worked on is incredible. Besides the Gorn, can we discuss some of your past Star Trek work?

J. Alan Scott: We started doing a little bit work on Discovery with props. We made a couple little creatures for them. And the conversations just continued. And then, we actually were called when the Klingons were going to be redesigned. And it was a very exciting and daunting offer. But with our timeline, and what we were able to, we couldn't take it on at the time in the timeline that they had. I didn't think we can do it justice, so we had to on that opportunity. We continued the conversation. And then we came on with Strange New Worlds.

I love the serialized version of Strange New Worlds. I love that it's not necessarily a monster of the week, but I love the continuing characters. I also love the the idea that there's something new every week that you're gonna see. It's what everybody loved about The Original Series. The overarching stories and characters that you get to grow with them. It's cool. That's part of the fun about what we're doing. Yeah, it's stressful at times, because you're not exactly sure what you're doing, you know, a month before you're doing it. But that's kind of why we do what we do.

When you found out the plan for the finale of Strange New Worlds season 2, and it was an adult Gorn fighting Spock in space in zero gravity, what was your reaction?

J. Alan Scott: My reaction was like, "Why didn't we talk about this earlier?" And then, "Can we start now?" It's very, very daunting doing creature work, especially to the caliber of what the expectations are with the Gorn and being respectful to that franchise, and that character from The Original Series added on top. Now we've got to design a suit around it that hints at what's inside, but doesn't reveal what's inside. And, and then on top of that, all the technical parts of dealing remotely from 3000 miles away, and finding an actor or performer that can be in the suit.

We had already designed kind of where it was going and how it was going to be executed. But then the mechanics of, gotta get the guy, we gotta start now, because there's a lot of testing that needs to happen. And then we're going to put him on wires, and it's going to be in zero G the entire time. So it's none of the things that we've done before, built on things that we had done similar, but all combined into one big sequence.

We've got to take an actor that I'm not gonna be able to see, or maybe once because of COVID, and then build a suit, and hope it all works, that we want to take it up [to Toronto] mere days before we're supposed to shoot it. And then, that's our first experience with the Strange New Worlds stunt team, to get them to put on the wires and let Warren experience this incredibly sophisticated and heavy suit than what we had when we worked with him before. And then, add in all the wire work on top of it, and then to be able to perform with all of those unknowns. So very challenging, but I'm very happy with the way that it all laid out.

You always go back and wish you had more time. Or, "I wish I had done that differently." But that's just our life. You've got this moment in time, and you've got this much money, and this is the crew that's available. And then these are all the particular scenarios, but you just take every minute that you can and put as much energy into it as you can. I say there's always time to improve, and until they say "wrap," we're not done. We are continually changing and improving things as we start to experience what the expectations are on set. So it's daunting, but it's so exciting. Every step of the way, I love the problem solving of it. That's what I thrive on: getting the script pages, getting their descriptions, and then starting to try and realize the vision of the writers and the directors, the creative team, and what they've seen in their heads. And it's our job to try and bring that to reality. That's the best part of the job.

There were such cool close-ups in the fight with Spock of the Gorn helmet and the Gorn's face. In The Original Series, the Gorn Captain speaks to Kirk. Are the Gorn's mouths designed to speak in Strange New Worlds? Would they be able to communicate at some point?

J. Alan Scott: We've discussed that and we're ready to do either, but as far as I know, that decision hasn't been made yet. But that's part of it. As we design the creature, you ask those questions right away. Is this going to be subtitles? Is this gonna be a language they don't understand? Is it going to be guttural clicks? Or do we have to form words when it comes to the design? I actually don't have that answer yet. We haven't had to do it yet.

The Gorn reveals have been slow and incremental and exciting in that way. So, it's capable [of speaking]. It's got lips. We made sure that it wasn't just a T-Rex or a raptor. That's the lips couldn't close. But we don't know yet if it's going to be speaking English, or if there's going to be a translator. I love that because if it's that alien, why would you already understand it no matter what your technology? And figuring out the structure of language, at a certain point was like, you don't know its intent or what it's saying. And I think that adds to the mystery and the scariness of it.

I rewatched "Arena" the other day, and I always assumed it was the Metron that was using their powers or magic, and was translating. I didn't think the Gorn could speak English. I just thought it was Metron that allowed communication to happen.

J. Alan Scott: Right, yeah. And I think even if it's a translator that they've provided so that there's something for the two contestants, it's [a plot device] more for the audience. But I love the idea of you are dropped into the moment. With the Enterprise, or Spock, or whoever's experiences, they don't have the luxury of all this canon and backstory. I love it when the audience is dropped in with the same thing, and they have to figure it out at the same time as the cast . You don't get to throw in all your back knowledge into it. It's fun because that's what we love about it. We love being immersed in the franchise. But at the same time, from a storytelling point, when the audience is on the same page, they're figuring it out at the same time as the characters.

Strange New Worlds season 2 ended with a cliffhanger, and so, the Gorn are obviously back at least for season 3's first episode. Without spoiling, are their plans to up the ante even further with the Gorn from what we've seen so far?

J. Alan Scott: That's always been the plan. That's always been incremental. When we started with season 1, we designed the Gorn life cycle, and then we put aside the second half, and we focused on the hatchlngs and the younglings. But we had to do the whole thing to focus on the first part. And so, we haven't revealed everything yet. So that is the intent, to continue to reveal and explore the Gorn and what they are like. I'm excited to see what they look like. How do they pilot ships? How do they hold weapons? How do they communicate with each other? What does the bridge look like? What does the interior of their ships look like? We've only seen the outside.

We started deg some of the EV suit before season 1 aired. And then we're like, "Oh, wait, they're showing up in ships? Oh, can I see that?" So they sent us the designs and some of the rough sequences. And we were like, "Oh, we need that. We need to use that technology. That informs their E suit technology, which would inform, eventually, their weaponry and other things." So we did designs after we saw their ships' movements and the way they tumble and roll. We designed an EV suit that was very similar. Because it's a common language. This is what their technology does. This is how they move and maneuver and fight. So why wouldn't their EV suit? It's just a smaller version of their ships.

As Spock experiences and sees it, the audience goes, "Oh my God, there it is. That's the Gorn." It was a cool idea. And that's the fun part of figuring out the storytelling of it. Because that's ultimately what matters the most. The audience and Spock realize together that this is a creature, and it can't survive in space. So it's going to have to have a technology that would give it an Extra Vehicular ability to move around just like we do.

About Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2

Christina Chong, Paul Wesley, Anson Mount, and Rebecca Romijn in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2 follows Captain Christopher Pike and the crew of the USS Enterprise in the 23rd century as they explore new worlds and carry out missions throughout the galaxy during the decade before Star Trek: The Original Series.

Check out our other Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2 interviews here:

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2 is streaming on Paramount+.