FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT STAR TREK ALIENS
This is the HTML version of a regular posting to rec.arts.startrek.misc by Otto Heuer.
From: Otto Heuer
Subject: [FAQL] STAR TREK ALIENS last updated 12 March 1995
This posting is intended to cut down on the "often asked questions" that
seem to pop up every few months in the rec.arts.startrek.misc newsgroup
about the aliens in Star Trek. It is one of a number of periodic postings
posted to r.a.s.*:
Please refer to the "LIST OF PERIODIC POSINGS TO r.a.s.* NEWSGROUPS"
article for a full list of periodic postings, and to the "LIST OF ACRONYMS"
article for acronyms used in this and other postings.
- Klingons Home Planet
- Klingon Foreheads
- Klingon Rituals
- Ferengi Headgear
- Ferengi Rules Of Acquisition
- Ferengi Minds Unreadable By Betazoids?
- Betazoids (Telepaths/Empaths/etc.)
- Betazoid Eye Color
- Vulcan Mating Ritual
- Vulcan Moon
- Horta
- Why Does Everyone Speak English?
- Why Do Most Races Look Alike?
- Why Are There So Many Planets That Look Like Earth?
KLINGON HOME PLANET
Kling is the homeworld of the Klingon Empire according to the trade
paperback book "The Aliens of Star Trek" which was released back in the
late 1980s.
Klinzhai (sp) was the name John Ford came up with.
In the Star Fleet Battles universe, the capital is named "Klinshai".
ST6 "The Undiscovered Country": Referred to as "Kronos", which is spelled
QonoS in Klingonese. Michael Piller is going around at conventions
recently telling people that this is in fact the official name of the
homeworld. At the end of ST6, Qonos was evacuated. Since it is referenced
in TNG, etc., it was either repopulated or another planet was thereafter
referred to as Qonos.
TNG has been trying to use the generic "Klingon Home World" to avoid all
this confusion.
TNG "Heart of Glory": Referred to as "Kling", but the reference is very
vague and can be interpreted in a number of ways.
TNG "Yesterday's Enterprise": Captain Garrett's crew took the E-C to glory
at Narendra III, which was NOT Khitomer (the planet where Worf's father and
mother died).
DS9 "House of Quark": Quark asks where he is. He is told he is on the
Klingon Homeworld, to which he replies: "Kronos? How did I get here?"
Guy Vardaman, who is an extra on TNG, mentioned at a 9/25/93 Creation
Convention that the official name of the Klingon homeworld is Qo'nos
(pronounced "Kronos").
In the audiotape "Conversational Klingon," Kronos is specifically referred
to as the Klingon Homeworld.
KLINGON FOREHEADS
There's no real explanation as to why the Klingons have spiny foreheads in
TFS and TNG but not in TOS. Gene has said "they always looked like this"
and we're supposed to ignore the lack of the pizza bats on the foreheads in
TOS. Theories outside of Gene run from genetic engineering to "several
races of Klingons".
FASA explains in their role-playing game (and possibly also mentioned by
John M Ford) that the TOS Klingons are actually Klingon-Human fusions
bio-engineered by Imperial Klingons (ridge-heads) to deal with
humans/Federation. Sometime before TNG they were exiled or something.
This was originally printed in "The Aliens of Star Trek".
Shane Johnson's "The Worlds of the Federation" explains it on page 114:
"It is interesting to note that for many years the true appearance of the
Klingon race was unkown. The "Klingons" encountered along the Federation
border with the Empire were a Klingon-human fusion, genetically created to
make infiltration into Federation areas easier. The interception of the
Amar transmission during the V'Ger incident revealed the true nature of the
Imperial Klingon race and stunned Federation science. Before that time, no
one had suspected that the Klingons were capable of such advanced genetic
engineering, and a great deal of rethinking was done concerning the level
of Klingon technology."
- The bonding of Worf and Jeremy Aster. ("The Bonding")
- Worf's rite of asscention with Klingon pain sticks ("The Icarus Factor").
- The Klingon tea ceremony is performed by Worf and Pulaski. The beverage
is poison to humans, so she drank the antidote. ("Up The Long Ladder")
- Worf and K'Ehlar almost go through the Klingon equivalent of a marriage
ceremony.
- When a Klingon dies, other Klingons warn the dead that a warrior is
coming by staring into the stiff's eyes and howling upward.
Ferengi head covers (the Arab-esque cloth on the back of some Ferengi
heads) were invented because the original design had a gap between the
bottom of the head prosthesis and the top of the uniform. They had to
re-do the heads or make taller collars on the uniforms. To cut costs they
decided to use a piece of cloth.
Some explanations for why Quark (and a few others) don't wear them is that
they are civilians, and the headgear is a military designation.
Here are the Laws of Acquisition that have have been used so far (out of
285 total):
-
-
- 1
- Once you have their money, you never give it back. ("The Nagus")
- 3
- Never spend more for an acquisition than you have to. ("The Maquis,
Part II")
- 6
- Never allow family to stand in the way of opportunity. ("The Nagus")
- 7
- Keep your ears open. ("In the Hands of the Prophets")
- 9
- Opportunity plus instinct equals profit. ("The Storyteller")
- 16
- A deal is a deal. ("Melora")
- 21
- Never place freindship above profit. ("Rules of Acquisition")
- 22
- Wise men can hear profit in the wind. ("Rules of Acquisition")
- 31
- Never make fun of a Ferengi's mother. ("The Siege")
- 33
- It never hurts to suck up to the boss. ("Rules of Acquisition")
- 34
- War is good for business. ("Destiny")
- 35
- Peace is good for business. ("Destiny")
- 47
- Don't trust a man wearing a better suit than yours. ("Rivals")
- 47
- Don't trust a man wearing a suit better than your own. ("Rivals")
- 47
- Never trust anyone whose suit is nicer than your own. ("Rivals")
[someone want to get this exact for me? --ed] :)
- 48
- The bigger the smile, the sharper the knife. ("Rules of Acquisition")
- 57
- Good customers are as rare as latinum; treasure them. ("Armageddon
Game")
- 59
- Free advice is seldom cheap. ("Rules of Acquisition")
- 62
- The riskier the road, the greater the profit. ("Rules of Acquisition")
- 75
- Home is where the heart is, but the stars are made of latinum. ("Civil
Defense")
- 76
- Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of
your enemies. ("The Homecoming")
- 102
- Nature decays, but latinum lasts forever. ("The Jem'Hadar")
- 103
- Sleep can interfere... (but Pel may have made this up) ("Rules of
Acquisition")
- 109
- Dignity and an empty sack is worth the sack. ("Rivals")
- 111
- Treat people in your debt like family; exploit them. ("Past Tense,
Part I")
- 112
- Never have sex with the boss' sister. ("Playing God")
- 139
- Wives serve; brothers inherit. ("Neccesary Evil")
- 194
- It's always good business to know about new customers before they walk
in the door. ("Whispers")
- 214
- Never begin a business negotiation on an empty stomach. ("The Maquis,
Part I")
- 217
- You can't free a fish from water. ("Past Tense, Part I")
- 285
- No good deed ever goes unpunished. ("The Collaborator")
- 286
- When Morn leaves, it's all over. ("The House of Quark") [It has been
repeatedly stated that there are only 285 Rules of Acquisition; when
Quark states Rule #286, Rom objects that there is no such Rule, and
Quarks says "There should be." Hence, be warned that #286 is not an
official Ferengi Rule of Acquisition; it is included here only because
Quark stated it as a Rule. --ed]
- ???
- ___ tingling [of the] lobes ___ ("Progress")
TNG "The Battle": Deanna Troi says of the Ferengi ship captain Daimon Bok,
"Captain, I sense considerable deception from Bok and danger".
TNG "The Forsaken": Another reference that they can't.
TNG "The Price": Deanna's powers help against the Ferengi.
TNG "Menage a Troi": The Betazoid Ambassador says "We betazoids are
uncomfortable around the Ferengi, whose minds we cannot read".
TNG "The Loss": The non-readability of the Ferengi mind is collaborated.
TNG "Menage a Troi": Data also started to explain once why he suspects
that Betazoids can't read Ferengis: "Perhaps it is because the Ferengi
brain is separated into four..."
So two episodes claim Betazoids *can* read Ferengi minds and four claim
they *can't*... The only explanation that could really account for this is
that *Deanna* is able to (at least partially) read Ferengi minds because
she is only part Betazoid.
Full-Betazoids are telepaths.
Deanna, being half-Betazoid and half-human, is only an empath (though she
and Riker seemed to be talking telepathically in "Encounter at Farpoint").
The novelization picks up on Troi's line "Do you remember what I taught
you...", and suggests that Troi could speak to Riker telepathically because
they had been so close.
TNG: Betazoids all have big black eyes. Majel Barrett and Marina Sirtis
are wearing black contact lenses--their eyes are not that dark.
Vulcan males seek a mate every seven years of their adult life. Reference
TOS "Amok Time" and ST3.
TOS "The Man Trap": Spock says that Vulcan has no moon (when Uhura
mentions romance).
At the beginning of ST:TMP, Vulcan appears to have a very large moon.
"Spock's World" rationalises that Vulcan has no moon, but a twin planet.
Other books say it has one or two moons/sister planets.
TOS "The Devil in the Dark": Every 50,000 years the race of Horta all die
except the one mother Horta.
The easy answer is that the universal translator is somehow patched in to
all communications.
Some sources refer to the official spoken language of the Federation of
Planets as "Standard".
TNG "The Chase" attempted to explain this. They explain that there are a
lot of biped humanoid carbon-based life forms because before there was life
on earth there was one race of beings in the galaxy. They were nearing the
end of their existence and so distributed pieces of their genetic code
throughout the galaxy on a number of different planets. When the right
combination of DNA fragments was reassembled, it created a program which
produced a holographic image of one of those aliens and explained the
above.
It is also sort of explained in a couple of TOS episodes:
In "Bread and Circuses" Kirk mentions "An excellent example of Hodgkin's
Law of Parallel Planet Development."
In "The Paradise Syndrome", they mention "The Preservers" seeding the
galaxy. The Preservers probably seeded humans on Omega IV ("The Omega
Glory"), Ekos (""), The Second Earth ("Miri"), The Roman Planet ("Bread and
Circuses"), and The Paradise Planet ("The Paradise Syndrome").
Like Miri's planet (which looks like Earth except there are no clouds).
If you know of any other topics that should be included in this list, feel
free to email me at one of the addresses below. Be aware that about 10% of
the mail I send out bounces, so if you don't get a reply from me, it isn't
because I'm ignoring you. :-)
This article is Copyright 1994 by Otto Heuer. It may be freely
redistributed in its entirety provided that this copyright notice is not
removed. It may not be sold for profit or incorporated in commercial
documents without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Permission is expressly granted for this document to be made available for
file transfer from installations offering unrestricted anonymous file
transfer on the Internet free of charge.
--Otto "HACK-MAN" Heuer
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Last modified: Thu Mar 13 01:08:43 1997 Stardate: [-31]9013.88