“I hope this means we have to fight Gorn”: NASA Just Confirmed about Mars What One William Shatner Star Trek Episode Predicted 57 Years Ago

Star Trek has fed our creative imaginations for the past 60 years in an endless litany of exploratory stories stretching out into strange new worlds across the intergalactic universe. And while that in itself is an entertaining prospect, the realities of the world outside often clash with the illusions of these imagined stories.

However, what started in 1966 with the premiere of Star Trek: The Original Series is a story neither impossibly unreal nor fantastical. With its roots embedded in physics and scientific curiosity, some aspects of the franchise often come off as strange premonitions of a more scientifically advanced Earth.

Star Trek Foreshadows a Real-World NASA Discovery

Helmed as one of the best episodes in the entire Star Trek franchise, including film and television, Star Trek: The Original Series Season 1 episode Arena stands out due to its unique premise between the ever-familiar Captain Kirk of the USS Enterprise and an unknown alien, known as Gorn.

The ensuing trial by combat that the two champions must then face after entering into uncharted territory is a mid-20th century combination of Hunger Games, Maze Runner, and Survivor.

While the episode in itself remains a fascinating spectacle of the glory of the Star Trek IP and its brilliant characters, Arena also came attached with a ton of lore and data to be added to the canon via The Original Series. Among the new lore was the backstory about Gorn’s alien species, the new unexplored planet Cestus III, and their evolved inhabitants, the Metrons.

In Arena, William Shatner’s Captain Kirk and Gorn’s trial by combat left each party hunting the other with no weapons or resources available at hand other than the ones that the strange planet provides. In the process, each character ends up discovering a wealth of resources on the planet, ranging from diamonds to bamboo, that they then use to strike down each other’s enemies.

While an interesting episode in itself, Arena also becomes a somewhat precautionary tale when it comes to the real-world scenario that we live in and how the exploration of space and new, uncharted, and unexplored planets also presents us with an abundance of resources to claim as our own.

Recent NASA Discovery Repeats a Star Trek Storyline

On June 19, 2024, the Curiosity Mars rover discovered a surprise hidden beneath the rocky desert terrains of the Gediz Valley Channel of the red planet. After driving over some shiny rocks and cracking one open, piles of pure sulfur were found within — a discovery that had never been made on Mars before.

Understandably, the excitement of a new discovery on an alien planet has led some sci-fi fans to immediately find a connection to the existing lores and mythologies, especially within the Star Trek franchise.

According to a Reddit user named IAmABurdenOnSociety, a fun theory was proposed that mixes reality with fiction, highlighting how close the human species is to the imaginary era shown in the Star Trek IPs:

So NASA found elemental sulfur in convenient piles in an unexpected sulfur oasis in the Martian desert.
Just like Captain Kirk found sulfur in convenient piles on planet in that TOS episode “Arena.”
Does this mean we have to fight Gorn to colonize Mars? I hope this means we have to fight Gorn.

While an interesting proposition, a 21st-century Earth is hardly equipped to understand the physics behind hyperspace travel, let alone take on a vicious new alien species in a one-on-one battle to the death.

Star Trek: The Original Series is available to stream on Paramount+