In "All Those Who Wander", we see the Enterprise away team visit the crashed Peregrine, find frozen and/or mutilated bodies of the crew outside and inside, two survivors inside, and a log from the captain explaining that they'd picked up three castaways, one of whom (an Orion) killed himself with a plasma grenade to prevent the Gorn eggs he was previously infected with from hatching, and this caused the crash. We don't ever get a detailed explanation of what happened.
Memory Alpha says:
After a week of contending with the Gorn, Gavin and her remaining crew, numbering approximately twenty out of an initial complement of ninety-nine, decided to lure the hatchlings outside to protect their civilian passengers. However, in doing so all of them would succumb to hypothermia or Gorn attacks.
( https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/USS_Peregrine )
This leaves a lot of open questions:
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The Gorn eggs inside Buckley can be explained by him having been infected before the Peregrine picked him up (gestation period can vary per species) or having been sprayed by a Gorn before the Enterprise away team arrives. But what happened to the Gorn that the Peregrine's crew were originally fighting?
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Do we just assume that the Peregrine crew's plan worked, all those Gorn were lured outside, and then died in the cold somewhere that their bodies were not found, instead of getting back inside? If the plan worked, where are the civilian passengers? Did one or more Gorn stay inside/go back and kill them? If so, where's that Gorn?
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The Orion blew himself up, and this damaged the ship enough to crash, but did not kill the Gorn inside him, as they were still able to attack the crew. That seems a bit of a stretch.
It's a great episode (and 100% fine by me they're borrowing from Alien lore to develop the Gorn as antagonists), but 2/3 viewings later these seem like gaping oversights. Could it be some sort of big play for later when we discover something like a Gorn ship arrived there before the Enterprise and interfered with the crash site/beamed Gorn off?
Thankyou for that input, you've explained the gaps I was struggling with.
The big mistake I made was taking "to protect their civilian passengers" to mean some other civilians we didn't see, when in fact it meant the remaining two castaways (Buckley and Oriana). I didn't give enough weight to the facts that the area is prone to sporadic heavy snow storms, and that there was no time for a thorough initial search by the Enterprise away team. It is possible the Peregrine crew deliberatly launched their plan just before a big storm was incoming, to make sure the Gorn would be trapped in it, which of course makes sense that the crew themselves would all die from Gorn attacks or from the storm (as supported by M'Benga's assessment of the bodies outside).
I'm still a bit hung up on the plasma grenade not killing the gestating Gorn, but I suppose it is reasonable. I think the Peregrine captain's log even mentions "but he didn't succeed" (in killing the Gorn inside himself) or something. If gestating Gorn can survive later stages without being "attached" to a living host, this may also give some clues into possible twists with the Batel situation.
I will rewatch with all of this in mind. Thankyou for untangling my brain-knot!