Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 Sets Up A Terrifying Conflict We've Never Seen In The Franchise Before

Spoilers for "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" follow.

In the season 2 premiere of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" — "The Broken Circle" — Spock (Ethan Peck) gets his shot at commanding the Enterprise. Specifically, while Captain Pike (Anson Mount) is away, Spock and his command staff commandeer the ship to intercept a distress signal from La'an Noonien Singh (Christina Chong) in Klingon territory. Along the way, the Enterprise crew prevents a war with the Klingons from igniting.

Admiral Robert April (Adrian Holmes) lets Spock off with a warning. The episode's final scene reveals this wasn't just in recognition of the crew's good work or because the Admiral was feeling magnanimous. No, Starfleet needs all hands on deck because a Gorn attack ship was spotted entering Federation space.

The Gorn are a reptilian race dating back to the Original Series episode "Arena," where Captain Kirk (William Shatner) battled a Gorn captain. After being mostly left out of past "Trek" iterations, "Strange New Worlds" has given the Gorn more spotlight. They are depicted as savage raiders who reproduce like Xenomorphs (i.e. with living beings as incubators). La'an's backstory is she was abducted in a Gorn raid and then rescued as a child.

The Gorn were the villains of two season 1 episodes — "Memento Mori" and "All Those Who Wander" — so further conflict with them makes sense. As for "Arena" treating the Enterprise's encounter with them like a first contact? "Strange New Worlds" uses canon as only loose guidelines.

If war does break out between the Federation and Gorn later this season, this won't be the first time "Star Trek" has chronicled an ongoing war. The last two seasons of "Deep Space Nine" were taken up by Dominion War, about an alliance of the Federation, Klingons, and eventually, Romulans fighting against the Cardassians and the eponymous invaders from the Gamma Quadrant. "Star Trek: Discovery" also featured a brief war between the Federation and Klingons; that war and its lingering scars are the crux of "The Broken Circle."

However, both "Deep Space Nine" and "Discovery" were rather dark, serialized series; a war plot fit into the pre-established show. The question then becomes, what kind of "Star Trek" show does "Strange New Worlds" want to be? So far, it's been back-to-basics; the series is about the Enterprise having adventures on the edge of the galaxy, encountering heretofore undiscovered phenomena along the way. The problem the Enterprise crew faces in any particular episode is what's important, not the connective tissue between those episodes.

We've never seen the Federation and Gorn at war with one another in "Star Trek" before. With what "Strange New Worlds" has been like so far, I'm willing to bet that record won't be broken — at least not for very long.

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