** SPOILERS **

** SPOILERS **

"While on a routine mission to a Federation colony on the planet Finibus III to deliver a much-needed atmospheric processor (AP 350), the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise discover a colony gone silent and a destroyed satellite. Una’s landing party only finds evidence of a massacre, complete with bloody drag marks, but no bodies. On an old ore freighter they find survivors and a terrified girl, Fig, warns them of monsters, and La'an realizes that the Gorn have returned. The starship comes under attack from this malevolent force, nearly destroying it, and Pike brings all his heart and experience to bear in facing the crisis, but the security officer La'an Noonien-Singh warns him that the enemy cannot be dealt with by conventional Starfleet means. He orders the crippled ship into the dense toxic atmosphere of a brown dwarf where they will have no shields, sensors, or coms, and the ship risks being crushed. They are pursued by the Gorn ship and a game of cat-and-mouse begins, reminiscent of the 'Balance of Terror'. There are many wounded - including Una - and deaths, and La'an suffers from flashbacks of herself as a child when her family's colony ship SS Puget Sound was attacked by the Gorn. Pike manages to destroy the Gorn ship with the last photon torpedo, but that only signals three more Gorn vessels to join the Enterprise hunt, including an immense mothership. Hemmer and Uhura are trapped in the cargo bay with the damaged AP 350. Spock and La’an volunteer to take a shuttle to see if the coast is clear and they soon come upon the last two Gorn ships flashing lights at each other, triggering a hazy memory in La’an. Spock uses a mindmeld on La'an to bring back her childhood memories and she flashes back to her childhood, where she was hunted on a Gorn breeding planet. She remembers how her older brother Manu had worked out the code of the flashing lights - a kind of Morse code - before he sacrificed himself to save her. They use it to trick the big Gorn mothership into destroying its smaller companion vessel by spoofing a message about being boarded by filthy humans. Even though the odds now are even, time is running out for the Enterprise in more ways than one as the black hole is consuming the brown dwarf rapidly, while the damaged AP 350 is on a countdown to overload, which will destroy the ship. With the Gorn still lurking around, Pike decides to take a risk and make a break for it, using a combination of the black hole’s light distortion and the exploding AP 350 as a diversion. He slingshots around that black hole - the 'Pike maneuver' - and drops off the AP 350 out into space from the cargo bay. The plan succeeds and the crew is saved. Una is recovering thanks to a transfusion direct from M’Benga. Finally they can celebrate Remembrance Day"

"There's supposed to be hundreds of people here."

"I'm not getting any human life signs."

"Rushed to evacuations?"

"Rushed under fire."

"Those are blast marks."

"Definitely a skirmish here."

"It looks like the bodies were all dragged here."

Fig: "The monsters are coming."

La'an: "What monsters?"

Fig: "It makes noises. Like this."

La'an: "It's the Gorn."

Photos

The landing party searching for survivors.

"All hands to battle stations." La'an, Ortegas, Spock and Pike on the bridge facing the enemy.

Sickbay: Christine, M'Benga and Una.

Videoclip

• Sneak Peek

Side notes:

The Gorn are never seen in this episode.