ENT species in 24th Century novels?
- Thread starter RoJoHen
- Start date
One of my favourite Andorian references on DS9, Quark is finishing of a joke with "then the Andorian says 'that's not my antenna.'" Morn just stares at Quark, clearly not getting the joke.
For that matter, we only ever saw part of Andor in "The Aenar." It's possible that other parts of the surface were much more temperate.
That´s why I like the DS9 Relaunch so much. There we have Shar, one of my favorite characters. And we learn more about the Andorians and Shar being torn between his Starfleet duty and his family obligations.
Yeah. I think people forget that planets are big. Now, this is science fiction and therefore not every inhabited planet has to follow the physical styling of Earth, but surely any planet's equatorial latitudes have temperature differences compared to the planet's polar latitudes.
On a side note, one of the things that annoyed me about ENT was that despite acknowledging Alpha Centauri (III) as one of the first human extrasolar colony worlds, ENT never actually visited the Alpha Centauri system.
With regard to the OP, the Tandarans have appeared in DTI - Watching the Clock and TOS - From History's Shadow. Kreetasans have appeared in TNG - The Buried Age and DTI - Watching the Clock. a Vissian appeared in SCE - The Future Begins. And the silver-skinned Rigelians briefly featured in Stargazer - Oblivion were retroactively identified as Jelna, who were the sole onscreen Rigelians in ENT.
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I love the DS9 relaunch, and the exploration of the Andorians is one of my favorite parts. I really loved the complicated and alien relationship Shar had with his bondmates. It's more interesting to see alien relationships that are structured differently from Earth's standard nuclear family structure.
Jhemal and Shran's conversation during his convalescence would make that a little suspect, though. His response to her question about if it ever gets above freezing would be a little odd if there were places on Andor that do; you'd think he'd mention that if so, rather than talk about how warm other places get. And then there's the original Kumari, which was specifically an icecutter that circumnavigated Andor.
And while planets are big, moons aren't necessarily so. The climate on, say, Titan (which seems to be the sort of thing they were going for with Andor in ENT, a glaciated moon heated by tidal interactions with its primary body) doesn't vary appreciably from pole to pole.
And it's possible for even a big planet to have a fairly uniform climate at certain epochs in its history. The "Snowball Earth" periods of Earth's remote prehistory, for instance, when the planet was almost completely frozen over and was essentially Hoth.
(I keep wondering -- if the ice planet in the Star Wars galaxy is Hoth, why isn't the lava planet called Coldh?)
(I keep wondering -- if the ice planet in the Star Wars galaxy is Hoth, why isn't the lava planet called Coldh?)
I always thought "Hoth" was a great name for an ice planet. It sounds just like the huff of warm breath that clouds upon contact with the cold air. Or it sounds smothering, like a freezing blizzard. Howling, the sound of the gale winds; hugging oneself "brrrr, it's cold". I could so easily see early visitors charting the planet naming it "Hoth". Maybe it's even the onomatopoeic sound of a warming breath among the culture who charted it?
Turns out that it was named, apparently, for an historical figure, one Lord Hoth, who was said to have a very cold demeanour. How disappointing.
Agreed. 22nd century Andoria seems to be a very cold place, and seems to have been this for some time.
Titan has one-sixth of the surface area of Earth, so there is there.
I would suggest that to count as a class-M planet at all, with an environment very broadly comparable to Earth's and a similar level of gravity and all, Andor would have to be substantially larger than Titan.
Much depends on the details of Andor's orbit around Andoria and the two worlds' common orbit around their sun. Do we even know if Andor is in Procyon or Epsilon Indi?
Star Charts aside (since there's many places as it is where it disagrees with Treklit), do we know for certain that it is classified as class-M?
I think that present Treklit has established that its primary is Procyon, but if you mean in canon then no. (Minor note, though: If I remember right, it's also established that Andoria isn't the name of the gas giant, but rather an alternate name for Andor; "Andoria" is to "Andor" what "Terra" is to "Earth", a name that outsiders use and that isn't technically incorrect but that isn't the proper modern name according to most locals.)
I wrote a Suliban character - Khob, the medic on the S.S. Snipe - in The Poisoned Chalice.
^ If there actually is a ship called Snipe, then how do promising Academy cadets fall for the "Snipe hunting" joke? 
Has anything outside of Star Charts actually referenced Procyon as Andor's primary? I still think that wasn't really a good placement. Of course, I don't really think Epsilon Indi works much better. I think I tend to agree with one of the RPGs (I forget if it was LUG or Decipher) that postulated that Andor was actually much further away from Earth than the other founding members.
It's at one extreme, as Vulcan is at another. It's sufficiently Earth-like to host an apparently indigenous sentient species that is apparently comfortable with Earth-normal gravity and a nitrogen-oxygen environment akin to our own.
Tidal forces can definitely work on larger worlds, too.
I think that present Treklit has established that its primary is Procyon, but if you mean in canon then no.[/QUOTE]
Fallen Gods has Andor be in the Procyon system, but the more recent The Poisoned Chalice seems to establish Andor as being in the Epsilon Indi system (the seal the Andorian envoy carries is described as emblazoned with Epsilon Indi, et cetera). Plus, the identification of Andorians with Epsilon Indi apparently goes as far back as the classic Star Fleet Technical Manual.
On astronomical grounds, Epsilon Indi works better than Procyon. Because the bright subgiant Procyon A has a close-orbiting white dwarf companion, B, the only planetary orbits that would be suitable for a broadly Earth-like planet would be presumably rare retrograde orbits. Apparently more conventional planetary orbits, where the planet revolves around its sun in the same direction that the sun rotates, would be disrupted by B, and could only be located within the inner boundaries of Procyon A's circumstellar habitable zone. Epsilon Indi is a stable Sun-like star without any close companions. An ice giant or a gas giant with a broadly class-M satellite could definitely exist in that star's circumstellar habitable zone.
Was Archer's encounter with the Andorians at P'Jem first contact?
It was, yeah. Archer had never even heard of Andorians before then.
I think the reason Star Charts moved Andoria from Epsilon Indi to Procyon is because ENT established Vulcan and Andoria as neighbors. ENT's astronomy is a real mess. The first couple of seasons seem to treat Vulcan as a distant world, but season 4 overtly places it 16 light years away, consistent with its usual placement at 40 Eridani.
I think it's a bit more ambiguous than that. The crews of the Kumari and the NX-01 had never heard of one-another's peoples before, but that doesn't preclude the possibility of earlier, low-level, or unofficial contact between Humans and Andorians, particularly if the contact wasn't followed up upon by either world's government.
