The ending of 'Paths of disharmony' could go either way: Making the andorians leave the federation could actually be beneficial for the andorians (as a species in the trek franchise), in the sense that it would bring them to the forefront, provide future books with something of substance to develop and, thus, assure future in-depth development for them - as opposed to the relative neglect the species suffered until now. This would be a 'gutsy' choice. Of course, at the end of the book, the andorians could remain in the federation, in tune with the 'rebuild' optimistic theme authors claim, on this site, will characterise future trek lit books. Will they still be dying in this case? Most likely yes; this is one of the few particularities of the species that can be interestingly used in the future.
I'd like the Andorians to leave the Federation. Until now, they've not had another multi-species political entity to join and they are far more militant and aggressive than most of the Federation's other members. It would make more sense for them to join the Typhon Pact and as stated would allow them to be explored as a species. We know next to nothing about most Federation members, compared to knowing tonnes of history and backstory to the Cardassians, Klingons and Romulans. The only Federation member we do have an extensive backstory for is the Bajorans because we focused on them for an entire series of Star Trek.
Oh? Really? 'Cos I'm remembering their depiction in ENT; they were the victims of Vulcan aggression on numerous occasions -- Vulcan's illegal spying operation on P'Jem, Vulcan's forced relocation of an Andorian colony on Weytahn in the 2090s, Vulcan's attempt to invade and occupy Andor on the basis of falsified intelligence in 2154. Meanwhile, the Andorian ambassador in TOS's "Journey to Babel" wasn't the one who provoked fights with Sarek the way the Tellarite ambassador did, and the Andorian Federation Councillors seen in the 24th Century novels have never been particularly militant or aggressive. That's not to say they were pure and virtuous, either, but the Andorians are no more militant or aggressive than the Vulcans or other Federation Members.
Some thoughts: 1. Boy do I really really wish someone had said trade paperbacks had basically replaced hardcovers in that they eventually get a MMPB release. That would have been helpful information in that I wouldn't have spent twice as much money on what ended up being pretty awful books (Treason, BTRW). I don't believe I will buy the next NF and ENT books in TPB. LOL. 2. Overall a nice distribution of the series. A little bit of everything. Vanguard gets two, but a bit surprising there isn't more Titan (at least besides the Typhon Pact installment). You kind of want to bemoan the fact there's again no DS9 even as you remember it's in the month just prior to 2011. 3. The cover for the Titan Typhon Pact is a bit unimaginative. Nice colors (it's in the magazine), but suffers from Floating Head Syndrome. I figured following the cover for the first one, we'd at least see the Titan. 4. Will Cast No Shadow be classified as a Lost Era book? 5. I guess I'll give the NuTrek books a try.
It was just my opinion, and if you look at the Human-Vulcan-Andorian troika, the most aggressive of the three are the Andorians. The Vulcan aggression of 2154 was Romulan-insired, not Vulcan. I just think it will be interesting to see what happen if a founding member of the Federation joined the Pact.
The Vulcan aggression of that particular year may have been Romulan-inspired, but those policies wouldn't have been possible had Vulcan not already developed an aggressive, imperialistic foreign policy long before V'Las came to power. Remember, the episode "Home" establishes that the High Command only really solidified its grip over Vulcan after the P'Jem spy installation was exposed and the First Minister was dismissed. And it was Vulcan that invaded an Andorian colony on Weytahn in the 21st Century, not the Andorians. And both Vulcan and Andor were equally guilty of using the Coridanite civil war as a proxy war. Really, the only genuinely aggressive thing I think we ever saw the Andorians do was try to steal Xindi weapons technology -- and even then, they managed to be at least helpful to Earth by giving it their schematics of the Xindi weapon. And it was an Andorian ship that helped save Earth from the Xindi when the Vulcans were refusing to get involved. The Vulcans are at least as aggressive and militaristic as the Andorians, if not more so.
It just goes to show that you can't define a whole civilization by a single label, or assume that the same word that best describes a culture's priorities necessarily describes its government's priorities. Shras didn't say in "Journey to Babel" that Andorians went around invading people and waging war all the time, just that "My people are a violent race" and that they would see passion and gain as motives for murder. It could be that they were individually prone to fierce emotion and aggression, but that doesn't automatically translate to a militant foreign policy, since they may have directed that aggression on a more personal level or used it primarily for defense. Conversely, a people like the Vulcans may pride themselves on peace and order, but convince themselves that it's logical to use military force to put down threats to that peace and order. It's often frighteningly easy to justify harmful acts in the name of the greater good. So a culture doesn't have to be stereotypically violent on an individual level in order to have a government policy of military force.
Point conceded. I just feel that given what is known about the Andorians and their culture on Memory Alpha, that they are more militant and aggressive. Their military is an Imperial Guard after all, which denotes an empire which in turn is inherently aggressive and militant. With a violent history as we know must have been due to the Aenar passivity and their inherent dislike of Andorians in general because of the latter's violent tendencies, it makes sense for the Andorians to be a part of a political entity which has a number of aggressive, expansionist, xenophobic species already. Just my two cents, for whatever they're worth.
a couple things.. between the time of enterprise and the time of tos things seem to have improved between the andorians and vulcans. shras seemed to respect sarek. and in telev we hear about the importance of family to andorians which seems to balance out the agressive nature. and the andorians may see the federation as their "family" and who knows a faction may also believe that they would be better staying within the federation where they may have an even more important role as protectors rather to just blend into the very agressive natured typhon pact.
Well, first off, I want to make sure you don't feel like I'm harassing you or trying to belittle you. It's nothing personal, but I think you're raising a few points that need to be addressed. And that's this: You're basically citing things like names and the Aenar/Andorian antipathy, but you're not citing actual behavior or policies. Yes, there's an Andorian Imperial Guard, and apparently the Andorian state is called the Andorian Empire. But that doesn't actually mean they're an aggressive, expansionist, or xenophobic people. I mean, hell, there are numerous "Imperial" institutions over in the United Kingdom, and Great Britain hasn't had an empire for two generations now. The Andorians could easily have had an imperialistic phase in their history without that being their present-day policy, and names like "Andorian Empire" can be largely ceremonial. In fact, the novel Andor: Paradigm by Heather Jarman established that the Andorian state is legally a constitutional monarchy, with an Empty Throne as the vacant but legal head of state and a cabinet chosen from the majority party of the Parliament Andoria as the actual leaders. And goodness knows that we've never seen any evidence that the Andorians have any subject worlds they've conquered. Even on their own world, the Andorians allowed the Aenar to remain legally and culturally independent -- even though the Andorians looked down on the Aenar's pacifism, and even though the Aenar looked down on the Andorians' willingness to use violence in self-defense. That hardly seems like the behavior of a genuinely aggressive, expansionistic, xenophobic culture to me. And we've never seen evidence of Andorian xenophobia. Goodness knows Andorians were a hell of a lot more accepting and respectful of Human culture than Vulcans were in ENT.
Though I am becoming American, I am still British and know of no "Imperial" institutions in the UK, so please tell me what they are. I never said that the Andorians were expansionist and not all empires are all the time, most empires go through expansionist phases, certainly, but a constant state of expansion is a sure way for an empire to fall as more than a few have in the past. I cannot cite specific behaviours and policies, precisely because we have barely seen anything to go on in canon Trek, and there has just been Shar in the DS9 novels and Heather's novella on Andor to give us anything on the Andorians' culture in the twenty-fourth century. Even Enterprise hardly gave us anything on the Andorians, just allowing a glimpse of the Andorian Imperial Guard as seen through the eyes of a single man, Shran. I'm not saying that the Andorians are currently miliant and xenophobic, or even expansionist, they can't be to be a Federation member state. What I am saying is that in the wake of the Borg invasion, the military or some other aspect of Andorian culture may well decide that the Typhon Pact represents a more realistic view on the galaxy than the overburdened Federation. After all, the members of the Typhon Pact combined probably do not make up half the volume of Federation space.
The Imperial College of Science, Technology, and Medicine (aka, Imperial College London). Its students union is the Imperial College Union, and its constituents include the Imperial College School of Medicine and the Imperial College Business School. Affiliated is the the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. The Imperial War Museum in London. Its branches, Imperial War Museum North in Manchester and Imperial War Museum Duxford in Cambridgeshire. The Imperial State Crown is one of the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom, worn by Her Majesty during every State Opening of Parliament and traditionally worn at the end of every royal coronation. There's even the Imperial Tobacco Group, the world's fourth-largest international tobacco company, and Imperial Buses, which provides public transport in Greater London. Fair enough -- and I think that's a more realistic assessment of Andorian culture than what you seemed to me saying before.
That doesn't follow. An empire is a multicultural political entity in which one state rules over a number of others. Not every empire is created by military conquest. A lot of subjects of historical empires have been persuaded to join voluntarily because of the benefits they could gain: the resources of a large empire, the access to its economic, educational, cultural, and other institutions, the protection of its military, etc. True, there's often been an implicit threat of conquest if you didn't play along voluntarily, but that's just history for you. Empire is motivated by a state's pursuit of economic growth, resources, security -- the same things that motivate any state. It's not an indicator of a particularly savage nature, it's simply one solution to the economic, cultural, and political needs of a state. It can be built on altruistic motives, even if misguided ones. The British Empire was built on the sincere if condescending belief that the rest of the world would be better off and happier if they learned to do things the British way. If they resisted, it meant they were the savage ones who needed to be controlled by force for their own protection. Sure, from a postcolonial perspective we can see how arrogant and domineering that was, but the British themselves weren't motivated by the desire for blood and combat and brutality (well, not all of them were).
I was referring to the military aspects of imperial nature, not academic institutions created during the time of the empire or in honour of/by the Crown. The UK does not now practice anything imperial in nature other than a measurement system which is also used in part by the United States (miles and liquids)
^ That's Sci's point, though-- the Imperial Guard could have easily acquired its name during an earlier era or somesuch. It doesn't mean that the Andorians now practice imperialistic policies. Some people in this discussion might be interested in picking up The Tears of Eridanus come December.
Christopher, since I am British, much of my knowledge of history, indeed most of it, comes from being taught history by the victors of a sort, and is of course skewed. Throughout my schooling, I was always taught that being an empire, Britain was necessarily aggressive so that its neighbours did not have the ability to counter us at any turn which they were wont to do after the way we had mistreated them as subjects, allies or indeed enemies. And indeed the British Empire fell, as all empires do. Even the Federation will fall at some stage, for it is still an empire, benign as it may be in most cases. Anyways, I think I need to find a copy of the magazine. Either my subscription has run out or the British distribution is screwing up sending my copy overseas, again.
"Chen, what kind of experience do you have with Andorians?" "Both kinds of girls, and one of the guys. The butch ones." ""
Jeez, and I thought American school teachers had a thing about painting America as the international bad guy. It's amazing there aren't mass suicides in Britain out of historical guilt. May I recommand Simon Schama's "A History of Britain" for a slightly more balanced approach?
Ah, see, what I meant was, there are institutions that bear the word "Imperial" in their name without that meaning that the United Kingdom now has an empire. Which was exactly my point: Just as the Andorian Imperial Guard's name does not necessarily mean that Andor is an imperial power, the names of these institutions in the U.K. does not necessarily mean that Great Britain is an imperial power.