The Bolian in Conspiracy looked badass. Other bolians havent looked as good though true...
Why no Andorians in the TNG/DS9/VOY era?
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The Bolian in Conspiracy looked badass. Other bolians havent looked as good though true...
The reason was that Berman thought they looked goofy. But, I've said it before and I'll say it again - the NUMEROUS aliens whose only difference from Humans was an attachment to the forehead looked much more goofy.
Yes, but if you looked at the best Andorian they could come up with on TNG's budget in "The Offspring" Berman was right to think they wouldn't look that good for anything more than a cameo. By ENT the FX tech they had was able to make them better looking.
Personally, I don't care about how they look. I would have been willing to suspend disbelief and accept them.
And it's not like I'm talking about making an Andorian a regular cast member. I think the makeup would have been perfectly acceptable for a role that was slightly bigger than a cameo. Maybe even a guest role in an episode here and there.
The lack of Andorians and Tellarites (two of the UFP founder members) in TNG, DS9, and VOY always bugged me. Thank God ENT did something with them.
The "ST Medical Reference Manual" cleverly extrapolated a partial exoskeleton, not extending it to the forearms because we saw the bare forearm of an Andorian in "Whom Gods Destroy".
However, there used to be an Andorian listserv I belonged to, whose key members hated this idea, saying that it would make Andorians too heavy to move if a humanoid had such an exoskeleton.
I liked the way Tholos seemed to eye off both T'Pol and Tucker in his two episodes.
*annoying nitpick*
It was never canonically established that Andorians have four sexes though.
All of this is apocryphal speculation based on the following lines from "Data's Day":
Data: "In an effort to be helpful, I am trying to calculate the variables involved in a successful marriage."
Troi: "Good luck."
Data: "There are many different opinions. On Galvin Five, a marriage is considered successful only if children are produced within a year of the wedding. Andorian marriages require groups of four people unless two..."
1) Data didn't say "Andorian procreation requires groups of four people" or "Andorian marriages require groups of four people, one from each sex". In fact, the only thing he says is that it is considered a requirement for a "successful marriage" on Andoria.
2) The "unless two..." part implies that there are other forms of marriage than the four-people variant.
Given that no third or fourth sex was ever mentioned or shown during the entire run of "Enterprise, I'm inclined to say that polygamy/group marriages are just very common on Andoria. Just like the Denobulans have three husbands/wives.
*nitpick ends*
It was never canonically established that Andorians have four sexes though.
All of this is apocryphal speculation based on the following lines from "Data's Day":
Data: "In an effort to be helpful, I am trying to calculate the variables involved in a successful marriage."
Troi: "Good luck."
Data: "There are many different opinions. On Galvin Five, a marriage is considered successful only if children are produced within a year of the wedding. Andorian marriages require groups of four people unless two..."
1) Data didn't say "Andorian procreation requires groups of four people" or "Andorian marriages require groups of four people, one from each sex". In fact, the only thing he says is that it is considered a requirement for a "successful marriage" on Andoria.
2) The "unless two..." part implies that there are other forms of marriage than the four-people variant.
Given that no third or fourth sex was ever mentioned or shown during the entire run of "Enterprise, I'm inclined to say that polygamy/group marriages are just very common on Andoria. Just like the Denobulans have three husbands/wives.
*nitpick ends*
Had we seen a character like shan much earlier on in the franchises, Im certain we would have seen far, far more andorians....then again jefferry combs is a great actor and is what made shran so likeable
I thought I was the only one who felt this way. The whole "four sexes" things never made much sense to me.
I'm not into the four sexes thing myself.
One thing that didn't carry on over to ENT was the fact that Andorians only have antennae, not ears....(I say it's 'fact' but I don't think it was something canon). Andorians would have to bend their heads so they would be able to hear; I think it was something speculated in the TOS 'Babel' episode where we had Ambassador Shras keeping his head lowered...
That was a speculation of Bjo Trimble, interpreting the episode for the "ST Concordance". Similarly, she speculated that Andorians didn't have veins and arteries, based on McCoy's line about intramuscular injections into an Andorian in "Whom Gods Destroy".
Eileen Palestine further extrapolated these theories in the "ST Medical Reference Manual".
But Fred Phillips himself, creator of Andorian makeup, gave his female Andorians ears (and the first ridged foreheads!) in ST:TMP and the balding Andorian shown by Tom Burman in ST IV also had ears (below):
Yeah I thought it was quite a leap myself. In a story outline I did, I had the Andorians in group marriages centered around a female. I also made their cuture a matriarchy.
At the time of the planning for the "Avatar" duology that kicked off the post-DS9 novels, editor Marco Palmieri looked at what possible paradigms would give the best, freshest story ideas that could unfold over a long arc. Since almost all ST aliens to that point had been of two familiar sexes, it was felt that Data's curious one-liner, in "Data's Day", gave a fresh angle. Thus there were four Andorian sexes to go with the four partners mentioned on air, that wouldn't just sound like a typical human polygamy.
Well, I like the fact that they made an alien race a bit more alien, rather than just humans who look a bit different.
But biologically, it really doesn't make sense, once you start thinking about it. See this thread. Because two of the sexes would be far rarer than the other two - by my calculations, statistically there should be 3 zhens and 3 thaans to 13 chans and 13 shens. Which might be a reason why the Andorians are dying out, but the four person marriage makes no sense in that context.
That was a speculation of Bjo Trimble, interpreting the episode for the "ST Concordance". Similarly, she speculated that Andorians didn't have veins and arteries, based on McCoy's line about intramuscular injections into an Andorian in "Whom Gods Destroy".
Eileen Palestine further extrapolated these theories in the "ST Medical Reference Manual".
But Fred Phillips himself, creator of Andorian makeup, gave his female Andorians ears (and the first ridged foreheads!) in ST:TMP and the balding Andorian shown by Tom Burman in ST IV also had ears (below):
All these years, and I didn't notice that!
Looking at the TMP Andorian make-up, I definitely prefer the classic TOS, ENT, and the make-up for TVH above...
Keep in mind though that the TMP Andorians were only background extras, and so didn't need makeup that would hold up to scrutiny.
Keep in mind, though, that when Fred Phillips was trialing this then-new "slip latex" for creating appliances (rather than the old days where everything had to be baked daily in a kiln, used once, then tossed out and new ones baked again), he didn't know that Robert Wise would delegate all the new UFP aliens to the background.
Combs owned that role--probably the most stand out performance in he whole Enterprise series. I would love to see more Andorians played like this. So well done. It made the goofiness of the character/race disappear.
weren't there andorians in the background on TNG an Ds9?
There was one Andorian we saw in TNG, it was when Data's daughter was choosing various forms it could assume (before she decided she was a "she"). One of them was an Andorian male, but the FX tech back then (TV budget) wasn't advanced enough for the Andorian design to look good enough so they kept them off-screen until ENT when the tech could show good Andorians.
^ That's good old Rick Berman for you. He thought that the makeup for Andorians (and for Tellarites as well) looked too corny - like something out of a 1950s B movie. So he refused to use them until ENT came along and the makeup department was able to convince him that they could make them look "good."
And we actually see two Andorians on TNG - the one which Anwar pointed out and another one in Captain's Holiday - he's on Risa, but we only see his back during the scene where Picard is reading his book.
And we actually see two Andorians on TNG - the one which Anwar pointed out and another one in Captain's Holiday - he's on Risa, but we only see his back during the scene where Picard is reading his book.
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