Why have Tellarites been so ignored in Trek

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I suspect the reason we don't see more Tellarite worldbuilding is that the writers don't know how to accurately depict how Tellarites argue.

I mean, It seems clear that it's not just about hurling random insults, there's got to be a more complicated aspect to it. And that'd be really hard to depict in a way that the audience can understand.

It's like the novelverse's Civil Conversation. It's a style of spoken Tellarite language that depends on very specific intonations and phrasing, which can make all the difference between constructive arguing and just random crude bullshit. And I doubt that'd be easy for writers to do.

 

[shapeshifter]

The Escape Artist is my favorite Tellarite appearance.

The whole, they like to argue shtick is just stupid and needs to go.

 

[Herbert]

They are not that interesting.

If you don't do anything with them, they're not

 

[fireproof78]

If you don't do anything with them, they're not

Could someone point me towards an interesting Tellarite? Even when I was doing RPGS I avoided them.

 

[Shawnster]

Ugnauts?

Seriously, all the Star Trek aliens were boring until they were fleshed out. Andorians? Did we hear any Andorian even speak in TOS? The one in Journey to Babel wasn't even Andorian. He was an Orion in disguise complete with fake antenna.

It just takes a good writer to make interesting Tellarites.

We did see Tellarites Lower Decks, I believe. Definitely in Enterprise and Discovery.

Heck, since canon doesn't matter we can even throw out their argumentative nature if that gets in the way of story development and creativity.

 

[MAGolding]

Ugnauts?

Seriously, all the Star Trek aliens were boring until they were fleshed out. Andorians? Did we hear any Andorian even speak in TOS? The one in Journey to Babel wasn't even Andorian. He was an Orion in disguise complete with fake antenna.

It just takes a good writer to make interesting Tellarites.

We did see Tellarites Lower Decks, I believe. Definitely in Enterprise and Discovery.

Heck, since canon doesn't matter we can even throw out their argumentative nature if that gets in the way of story development and creativity.

Actually Thelev the fake Andorian worked for the Andorian Ambasador Shras who did speak in the episode.

 

[MAGolding]

That's tie-in stuff. All that's said in "Metamorphosis" is Kirk asking "Zefram Cochrane, of Alpha Centauri?" when Cochrane confirms his true identity. There's no dialogue that establishes if he's a native to Alpha Centauri or if he's someone who became famous because of his association with the place, like Lawrence of Arabia. So just taking that TOS episode in isolation, you can interpret it in practically any way you'd like. The 1988 Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens novel Memory Prime mentioned that Cochrane was a native of Alpha Centauri, which the Reeves-Stevens themselves contradicted in their novel Federation six years later.

On the question as to which planet ZC is native to, it's telling that in "Metamorphosis" Cochrane asks Kirk & company if they're human and then shortly thereafter recognizes Spock as a Vulcan. So the episode seems to imply that Cochrane is human and that he disappeared sometime after first contact with the Vulcans.

Also interestingly, Zefram Cochrane is never called the person who invented warp drive in "Metamorphosis." Kirk just calls him "the discoverer of the space warp" like space warp is a natural phenomenon.

The idea that Cochrane was a native of Alpha Centauri was used as early as The Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology by Stan and Fred Goldstein, in 1980. I don't remember what the Star Trek Maps and their Introduction to Navigation booklet, also 1980, said about Alpha Centauri and it possibly being the home world of Zefraim Cochrane.

Since I more or less alternated between tHinking that Cochrasne was born on Earth or on Alpha Centauri up until Star Trek: First Contact, any version of Star Trek canon which doesn't include productions that say Cochrane was an Earthman are free to depict Cochrane as born on Earth or on Alpha Centauri. Or maybe as being born on one of those planets and being teleported to the other one by some mysterious factor and feeling driven to disocver or invent a way to get home.

 

[Greg Cox]

Finally watched the first ep of PRODIGY and see that we have a Tellarite engineer as a series regular, so it looks as though we'll be seeing more of them after all.

 

[fireproof78]

Andorians

Ambassador Shras, whom Thelev worked for, states his people are a violent race and asks Spock to forget logic as he pursues the motive of attacking Kirk.

It just takes a good writer to make interesting Tellarites.

We've had Tellarites for 50 years, and no good writers have decided to tackle it?

 

[Weyoun 251]

Because they can't be made to look hot, and if they're not hot then they won't generate any money.

I'm Rick Berman and I approve this message

 

[ELCHawk]

I like the Tellerite on Prodigy. He is a good character.

 

[MarkusTay]

I always imagine Tellerites are those aliens in that old Twilight Zone Episode with the pig-faced people. But then, Saturday Night Live did it better.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Maybe they have halls of rhetoric and debate. Perhaps that's how Humans won them over...by winning a debate.

 

[Shawnster]

Actually Thelev the fake Andorian worked for the Andorian Ambasador Shras who did speak in the episode.

Meh, all blue skins look the same.

Thanks, been a while since I've seen the episode

 

[Farscape One]

Meh, all blue skins look the same.

Zhaan would be deeply disappointed at hearing that...

 

[fireproof78]

Zhaan would be deeply disappointed at hearing that...

Thrawn would analyze it for weakness.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I like the Tellerite on Prodigy. He is a good character.

And he's legit 3 feet tall.

 

[Neopeius]

Could someone point me towards an interesting Tellarite? Even when I was doing RPGS I avoided them.

In the 80s, when we would play homebrew Star Trek RPGs, our crew had a Tellarite Chief Engineer named Mr. Gau. He was an interesting character.

 

[fireproof78]

In the 80s, when we would play homebrew Star Trek RPGs, our crew had a Tellarite Chief Engineer named Mr. Gau. He was an interesting character.

It's funny to me that in the 10 years I have done various Trek RPs this is the first Tellarite character I've heard about being interesting. Most are NPC stand ins who are used to fill out a crew roster or die.

 

[Mudd]

Because they piss people off.