Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3, Episode 9 Review - "Terrarium" Finally Delivers The Ortegas Story Fans Have Been Waiting For

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds finally gives Lt. Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia) the much-deserved spotlight in a story that's pure Star Trek. After a divisive comedy episode last week,

Strange New Worlds gets back to basics with "Terrarium," delivering a simple story reminiscent of some of Star Trek's most celebrated episodes.

Directed by Andrew Coutts and written by Alan B. McElroy,

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3, episode 9, "Terrarium," begins with a personal log from Lt. Ortegas as she describes the current mission of the Starship Enterprise. The ship is exploring a strange area of uncharted space full of gravitational anomalies, and Ortegas gets to take a shuttle out for a solo mission.

When a wormhole appears out of nowhere, Ortegas and her shuttle are pulled into it, emerging potentially light-years away from the Enterprise. Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) refuses to leave one of his officers behind, and Ensign Nyota Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) desperately searches for ways to rescue her friend. Meanwhile, Erica soon discovers she's not alone on the desolate moon where her shuttlecraft crashed.

Lt. Erica Ortegas Finally Gets Her Moment To Shine (& It's Worth The Wait)

After being severely injured by the Gorn in the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3 premiere, Lt. Ortegas has struggled with PTSD-like symptoms. Her story has taken a backseat throughout much of the season, but episode 9 finally puts Erica front and center, and Melissa Navia more than delivers. After her shuttle crashes on a barren moon, Ortegas finds herself stranded without a way to contact the Enterprise.

Lt. Ortegas spends much of the episode alone, talking herself through her situation as she uses parts from her shuttle to build a water condenser and searches the rocky moon for food. When she ventures out to explore some strange lights, she encounters another survivor who crash-landed on the moon, and who also happens to be a Gorn (Warren Scherer).

Ortegas immediately goes on the defensive, and the Gorn seems poised to attack, but then it doesn't. In a surprising reversal, the Gorn kills one of the scorpion-like aliens that inhabit the moon and offers some of it to Erica as food. Erica and the female Gorn form an unsteady truce that grows into a friendship. Sure, the image of Erica teaching the Gorn to play chess is a bit silly, but the storyline mostly works and helps to humanize the Gorn.

"Terrarium" echoes classic Star Trek episodes like Star Trek: The Next Generation's "The Enemy" and "Darmok," as well as Star Trek: The Original Series' "Arena," which first introduced the Gorn. It's a slow and fairly straightforward episode, and maybe it borrows a bit too much from other

Trek stories, but I still found myself getting emotional by the episode's end.

Captain Pike & His Crew Refuse To Leave A Fellow Officer Behind

"Terrarium" spends much of its runtime with Ortegas and her new Gorn buddy, but the episode regularly checks in with Captain Pike and his crew. They postulate that Ortegas and her shuttle were pulled into the wormhole, but they don't have much time to search for her. The Enterprise is set to rendezvous with the USS Constellation to deliver vaccines that will aid 4,000 sick colonists.

Number One (Rebecca Romijn) reminds Pike about this obligation numerous times throughout the episode, pointing out that Ortegas is one life compared with the 4,000 who need the vaccine. Ensign Uhura, in particular, refuses to give up on her friend, and she comes up with an unconventional plan to use the Enterprise to

"prop open" the wormhole so the crew can scan for signs of Ortegas.

Should Captain Pike risk his entire ship and crew to rescue one officer he's not even sure is alive? Maybe not, but it makes for good television, and truthfully, it makes sense for Pike as a character. He never leaves a crew member behind, and he waits until the last possible second before calling off the rescue mission. Right as Pike calls off the search, Erica and the Gorn manage to ignite the moon's atmosphere, catching Pike's attention and nearly cooking themselves in the process.

"Terrarium" Reinvents The Gorn Yet Again & Brings Back A TOS Foe

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has already altered the Gorn significantly since their first appearance in Star Trek: The Original Series,

but "Terrarium" provides a nice explanation for that. When Lt. La'an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong) arrives on the moon with a landing party, she immediately clocks the Gorn as an enemy, and before Erica can protest, the Gorn is dead.

It's an abrupt ending to the Gorn whom Erica has come to call a friend, but I appreciate that the episode didn't pull its punches here. As Ortegas rages at the unfairness of it all, everything around her freezes, and a strange being appears. This being identifies themself as a Metron (Dariush Zadeh), the same powerful race of beings who stranded Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and the Gorn Captain on a barren planet in "Arena."

The Metrons brought Ortegas and the Gorn to this moon just like they did with Kirk and the Gorn Captain. Before unfreezing everything, the Metron says that Erica won't remember them, and that the Metrons

"may need to reset [humanity's] perception of the Gorn." This nicely explains any discrepancies between the Gorn of TOS and the Gorn of Strange New Worlds.

With "Terrarium," Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

delivers another solid episode that may not do anything revolutionary, but gives fans the Ortegas story we've been waiting for. Melissa Navia carries the episode, spending most of it either alone or acting alongside a mostly CGI Gorn, bringing more personality to her character than she's been able to for most of the series. Although she may want to avoid away missions for a while.

Fire Country's Diane Farr Got Candid About Billy Burke's Exit, And Revealed How He Broke The News To The Cast

We’re five episodes into Fire Country’s fourth season; however, as the show continues to air on the

2025 TV schedule, Vince’s death is still making a huge impact. Billy Burke leaving the show and his character tragically passing were arguably the biggest shakeups we’ve seen on the CBS hit. Now, Diane Farr, who plays his wife Sharon on the show, has opened up about his exit and how he broke the news to the cast.

Following the end of Fire Country’s third season, there were questions about who was staying and who would be leaving due to reports about Stephanie Arcila and Burke exiting

the show and the disastrous cliffhanger the finale ended on. And while it seemed logical that Vince would tragically die, it wasn’t confirmed. It wasn’t confirmed to the cast either until their summer break, as Diane Farr told

Us Weekly:

I found out over the summer. None of us knew what was happening. Billy, Jeff [Fahey] and I went into the fire and we didn’t have any more information.

So, not only were fans left on a cliffhanger about who would survive the fire that Sharon, Vince and Walter were stuck in, but the cast was too. Sadly, the story didn’t have a happy ending, and that meant bad news had to be broken to the actors as well as the fans.

It turns out, Burke himself was the one to relay that news to the cast. Speaking about the note the Vince actor shared with his co-stars when he learned that he wouldn’t be returning for Season 4, Farr said:

It was very clear that the producers or writers were going to make some kind of change. It was Billy who told us all. He told the cast in a group note saying that he wasn’t coming back — it was pretty devastating. Everyone was sad and I felt like I was coming back in with only half my character because they’re so tied.

This really is a monumental loss, especially for Sharon, so it makes sense why Farr was so emotional about it. She also made it clear that she wanted her character to grieve the loss of Vince “for a really long time.”

Up until the start of Season 4, Fire Country’s cast of regulars had’t changed. While guest stars came and went, the actors who played Bode, Sharon, Vince, Gabriela, Manny, Eve and Jake were always there. However, that seriously changed this year. That was hard for all of them to swallow, it seems, but I’m happy Burke was the one who got to tell them. I’m sure it all meant a lot to everyone involved.

After explaining how she learned about her TV husband’s departure from Fire Country, Farr said she hopes Burke (and Arcila) will come back. While it would be easy to work Gabriela back into the story following her

exit in Season 4’s premiere, it will be harder to incorporate the Vince actor back into the story. However, the Sharon actress has ideas, as she said:

I think now we’re always going to have the OG cast — the original seven. The hope for all of it is I would love to see Gabriela and Bode have a more adult version at some point. I would love to see Sharon start to have dreams where she sees Vince. This is the risk we take when we let these amazing actors go out and be free. They may be unavailable [to come back].

Well, I certainly hope all these dreams can come true, too. However, for now, the characters on the show are still very much grieving and dealing with the fallout and consequences of Vince’s death (like the situation with that note).

Also, behind the scenes, Farr did admit that she’s “still worried” about more characters leaving. That’s because the tragic reality of being a firefighter is that everyone’s lives are on the line, and that point was really emphasized by Vince’s passing.

So, now, to see how the story continues, you can watch new episodes of Fire Country on CBS every Friday at 9 p.m. ET, and you can stream new episodes the day after they air with a Paramount+ subscription. Oh, and if you have that subscription, you can always go back and watch old seasons of the show to see Billy Burke in action as Vince Leone.

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