Matching up Tal's hosts before Adira

[Markonian]

Adira's Tal symbiont is centuries old.
The episode "Forget Me Not" establishes the chronological order of the hosts' names.
It also shows all the hosts. But the episode doesn't match up those two data sets.

What we've got:
The hosts: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Unnamed_Trill#Tal.27s_hosts
Unknown: Lieutenant Tal (operations officer), Captain Tal, 2 civilians (male/female).
named
1. Kasha 2. Jovar 3. Madela 4. Cara 5. Senna 6. Gray 7. Adira

We know who's Senna, Gray and Adira.
"The Sanctuary" establishes that the first host Kasha learned to play cello and is a woman.
It can't be Lieutenant Tal, because her uniform places her around the 29th-32nd centuries. She cannot be the first because Captain Tal has the uniform of 2399 and is therefore older.
Thus, the civilian-looking woman in that group is Kasha Tal!

That leaves us with Lieutenant, Captain and civilian (male), and the unassigned names Jovar, Madela and Cara.

It depends on where the civilian comes in chronological order. He could be any of the three.
Captain Tal cannot be last (before Senna), so he's either Jovar or Madela.
Lieutenant Tal cannot precede the captain, so she's either Madela or Cara.

Do we have enough material to marry the names to the faces?
Do you think season 4 might shed some light?

 

[Tosk]

The episode "Forget Me Not" establishes the chronological order of the hosts' names.

Does it actually do that, or is this supposition? Real question, I can't recall.

 

[Timo]

The list of names culminates in the three previously known ones, in chronological order; it would be odd were the first four not chronological as well.

I agree that Kasha, the first host, has to be the civilian female who first learned to play the cello.

IMHO, the Captain must be next, and thus Jovar, because pushing a 2399 host any further up the list would mean the remaining host would have to be really, really long-lived to span the gap. Better leave at least two folks between 2399 and Senna's 31st-32nd century! Although that's still something like 300 years per host, and we might want to speculate on the existence of a "secret" host in between, Joran Dax style...

This leaves Madela and Cara as the Lieutenant and the male civilian. There's no real telling which is which, although we might surmise the writers would consider Cara a female name, and that the costumers would consider the Lieutenant's uniform a model close to the one worn by Senna.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Markonian]

Does it actually do that, or is this supposition? Real question, I can't recall.

Yes, Adira recites the names of their previous hosts to Guardian Xi after returning from the zhian'tara communion.

I agree that Kasha, the first host, has to be the civilian female who first learned to play the cello.
[...]
This leaves Madela and Cara as the Lieutenant and the male civilian. There's no real telling which is which, although we might surmise the writers would consider Cara a female name, and that the costumers would consider the Lieutenant's uniform a model close to the one worn by Senna.

Timo Saloniemi

To explain the gaps, I'm going with the suggestion that the symbiont returned to the caves for centuries at a time. Like you said, it makes sense for Captain Jovar Tal to be next, then have an interminable gap.
The civilian could slot in between any potential gap. It makes sense for Cara to be the woman in uniform, to lead directly into Senna.

 

[Tim Thomason]

Yes, Adira recites the names of their previous hosts to Guardian Xi after returning from the zhian'tara communion.



To explain the gaps, I'm going with the suggestion that the symbiont returned to the caves for centuries at a time. Like you said, it makes sense for Captain Jovar Tal to be next, then have an interminable gap.
The civilian could slot in between any potential gap. It makes sense for Cara to be the woman in uniform, to lead directly into Senna.

And there's also a huge Time War between 2399 and 30-whatever, so a time skip of a few centuries for Jovar's successors isn't out of the question. Or maybe he went on some extragalactic scouting mission of a couple hundred years with liberal use of stasis chambers (and his son, Madela Tal, arrived back five or six hundred years later).

Maybe Lieutenant Cara helped restore contact between Trill and the Federation after the Burn, and was granted an old, retired symbiont who had been resting for hundreds of years. And many years later, Admiral Senna was the only Trill available when Cara caved over at Federation HQ and Senna was trying to find a way to Trill through Earth when he caught a nasty bug (another one), and lucked out with a Trill named Gray nearby and so on and so forth.

 

[Markonian]

Those ideas sound plausible.
Makes we wish for a The Lives of Tal anthology to be published after we've learned more host tidbits from Adira and Gray next season.

 

[Tim Thomason]

That would be nice, but I need canon confirmation. Send in Captain Jovar Tal as Clancy's assistant in the next season of Star Trek: Picard.

 

[Angry Fanboy]

Kasha, Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Comet, Senna, Blitzen...

 

[Deks]

And there's also a huge Time War between 2399 and 30-whatever, so a time skip of a few centuries for Jovar's successors isn't out of the question.

Actually, the Federation fought for most of the 31st century to uphold the Temporal Accords (at least that's the information we learned from Vance when he debriefed Saru and Burnham)... but those were the actual Temporal Wars (which turned 'hot').
The Temporal Cold War on the other hand was comprised of minor factions conducting smaller attempts at temporal manipulation, but this still didn't turn into an all out hot war until the 31st century.

So I'd surmise that officially, it wasn't until the 26th century it all started (its the time frame in which TNG establishes first notion of historians travelling to the past to study it when the ENT-D encountered that 26th century time travel pod with the fake professor inside), and possibly, when the Temporal Accords were established.

 

[Tim Thomason]

Well the Time War technically started in 1944, according to Enterprise, it's just that different factions jumped in at different points (the Federation, apparently, in the mid-31st century).

Based on the reactions to Discovery by Vance and co, I don't think they were the first ship to time skip into the future. It's probably a pretty good tactic in any temporal war to take ships and stuff out of the equation by skipping them ahead (or behind or sideways) in a form of temporal exile.

 

[Tosk]

Yes, Adira recites the names of their previous hosts to Guardian Xi after returning from the zhian'tara communion.

But do they specify that they are doing it in order? I know it's natural to assume chronological order, and it could even be the intention (especially with Senna, Grey, and Adira being in order)...but if you're having trouble making the timeline fit then perhaps Adira simply mixed up the order. They are literally minutes from being confused and memory-less, after all.

 

[Markonian]

I don't see why we would assume that Adira has any reason to cite them out of order.
When the memories were restored, remembering the rota of the previous hosts must've been like reciting the alphabet.
Plus, with three out of seven names in the correct order, jumbling the first four would not fit the pattern.

 

[Markonian]

So far, if I wanted to combine certainty and speculation, the most straightforward order is:
1. Kasha, the civilian musician, TNG era
2. Captain Jovar Tal, PIC era
3. Madela, the young man, somewhere between 25th-30th century (perhaps a temporal agent?)
4. Lieutenant Cara Tal, the Burn era
5. Admiral Senna Tal, post-Burn era
6. Gray
7. Ensign Adira Tal

 

[Tim Thomason]

Of course, not to throw water in the fire, but if we're presuming temporal agents, Captain Tal could've been Senna's immediate predecessor (Cara) who was just sent on loads of time missions, including some to the Picard Era where he posed as a Captain (just like Daniels posing as a Crewman in Enterprise era). Senna is likely old enough, based on classic Trill aging (Curzon) to have been around during the Burn and perhaps the end of the Temporal Hot War.

Tal, overall though, could be less than two hundred years old.

 

[Timo]

Another consideration: it would be odd for a host to appear at Captain rank if he eventually made Grand Admiral, Upper Quarter With Laurels. This goes double for a Lieutenant. So we basically are to assume that the Lieutenant died young, or otherwise got rid of Tal before earning her third pip.

This puts even more pressure on the male civilian to carry the torch, ah, the slug, for the better part of 700 years. But conversely, it doesn't appear likely that Tal would have willingly entered a geriatric Senna, so the eventual Admiral might have been a dashing young Ensign a couple of centuries earlier on when granted possession of the symbiont. Or possibly a famed ventriloquist who only switched careers at 210 or so.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Angry Fanboy]

Why not just go with the correct order being the order they were cited? Yes they could have been said in the wrong order but honestly in the absence of any information to the contrary why make it harder than it needs to be?

Like how if someone asks me the months of the year I could say April, November, February, August etc but realistically I'll start at the beginning.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Makes we wish for a The Lives of Tal anthology to be published after we've learned more host tidbits from Adira and Gray next season.

That's kind of a Tal order, isn't it?