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Spoilers Alien races who got expanded on recently

The Overlord

Fleet Captain
Fleet Captain
I saw this article about the Orions being expanded upon through Tendi in Lower Decks and the Emerald Chain in Discovery:

https://slate.com/culture/2021/01/star-trek-discovery-lower-decks-orions-sex-slaves-pirates.html

It does seem like a lot of Star Trek alien races were expanded upon recently, Lower Decks made the Pakleds into a threat and Picard explored Romulan society and religion.

What do you think of these expansion on somewhat underdeveloped alien races in Star Trek and what other alien races would you like to see expanded upon?
 
I love the expansion. World-building is mother’s milk for this sci-fi geek.

Though, more if there’s a point than just to fill in every box. I don’t necessarily care what the third largest religion is on the second most populace colony world of a blurry background alien seen once in Quarks. I have only so much time and mental bandwidth. I do care if it’s interesting in some way that makes me wonder about religion, or some curious characteristic of its species that makes me thing about real life.

My hope is that next season PIC tackles another alien race. That DSC visits more worlds of the Federation in their new 32nd Century predicaments. That LD introduces something redeemable about the Pakleds.
 
I love it. One of the things that annoyed me the most in Trek was all the one shot aliens and the way they designed random new aliens for the background instead of expanding on existing ones. I'm so glad they are spending more time on the Andorians, Trill, Vulcans and Orions. I love that they have given cameos to the Saurians, Betegeusian, and Morn's species. It would be nice to see the Deltans given some attention. If you read the TWoK novelisation, they sound really interesting.
 
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I'd like to see some of the first members of the Federation expanded upon. Enterprise did a bit with the Andorians and Tellarites, but I'd like to get some kind of canon with the first handful beyond that. Who joined up straight away? Alpha Centauri is considered to be the fifth member, are they a race or a human colony? Who was sixth; Denobulans? Deltans? Rigellians? Did a bunch of them join at the same time, or was it a slow start? Did anyone want to join but was turned down because another member vetoed their membership? Did the requirements for Federation membership change in any way in the first few decades after learning a few harsh lessons? Did anyone join and leave, threatening the whole thing so early on? What did other non-aligned worlds think of this new alliance building up on their doorstep, were 'classic' Federation members we know and love a bit anti-Federation when it started? So many questions.
 
the expansion of the Romulans, visually as well as lore-wise is one of the few things I liked about Picard. And yes, I really liked the expansion on Orions LD gave us. On principle I also appreciate that Season 3 of DISC gave the Orions and Andorians some prominence, but...I dunno what they are doing with the makeup on that show, but why do all their aliens look so puffy and dopey? Saru's species and the Saurians look alright, so why what's going on with the Klingons, Orions and Andrians? What do they do to the faces of the actors?

I also liked that LD brought back so many one-off or background aliens, like those rat/dog people from S1 of TNG, and that we have a Kzinti doctor on that show and that Edosian captain and all that.

I kinda still wish any of those shows could come up with....something....anything....interesting about Betazoids. For all the years Troi and Lwaxana were prominent characters, we know next to nothing about their people and the one time we saw their planet was yet again played by that park in Los Angeles. Not even the novels set on Betazed come up with anything about them. It's all very beige.
 
How can Discovery get Orions wrong? It's green body paint and a black wig, what's so hard about that?

IKR? And the worst part is those Orions from Season 1 looked *great*, but the ones in Season 3...what the hell was wrong with Tolor's face? The actor playing him does not look like that. To me it looks like they put a latex mask on him rather than painting (or colour correcting) him green.
 
I would love the Betazoids to have been drastically changed by their life under the Dominion. Maybe they're all going through a Lon Suder moment but this idea of a once peaceful telepathic Federation member now turned malevolent causing trouble would be an interesting storyline.
 
I would love the Betazoids to have been drastically changed by their life under the Dominion. Maybe they're all going through a Lon Suder moment but this idea of a once peaceful telepathic Federation member now turned malevolent causing trouble would be an interesting storyline.

I had this idea once about the Betazoids being distrusted by the Post Dominon-War Federation and treated as pariahs because their occupation was "cosy" (meaning there was minimal/negligible or even no loss of life or destruction both during the fall of the planet or during the time they were occupied, as opposed to places like Benzar, where there was considerable fighting)
That's because the Dominon hand-picked Betazed as their beachhead in Federation space precisely because it had a civilization of telepaths and they knew how to control those with minimal effort, both to save resources and to use the planet as a propaganda tool to other Alpha Quadrant worlds "submit and we will be good and merciful overlords!"

What actually happened was that during the fall of the planet, the Vorta commanding the Dominion forces agreed to meet with the Betazoid leaders (who'd naturally attempt to negotiate their way out of the situation as their plan a)
Said Vorta, probably a new incarnation of Kilana, or someone similar to her, chosen exactly because the Betazoids would react positively to her, was a kind of Trojan Horse, carrying a sort of engineered telepathic virus or parasite that would spread to the minds of the leaders as they tried to "read" her and from them to the rest of the population.
Night impossible to detect this virus/parasite would not take-over the Betazoids or anything "coarse" like that...but instead it would subtly and insidiously alter them to become the perfect, obedient subjects by altering the way they experience fear to put them into a constant state of blank terror. Those that were strong enough to overcome that mental conditioning would encounter the second stage of that mental infection; finding their mind overcome with graphic images of what happened to species in the Gamma Quadrant that rebelled against the Dominon, of what would happen to them, to their loved ones, to their world if they resisted. And those Betazoids who overcame even this second stage and still wanted to fight back...well those are the ones who'd account for the "negligible causalities" mentioned earlier.
So for their whole occupation the Betazoids would find themselves forced into lockstep by that terror virus/parasite and would comply with whatever the Dominon demanded of them, including aiding their attacks on other Federation worlds with supplies and the repair of ships. Any resistance was extremely limited, short lived and ineffectual.
A "vaccine" for the virus/parasite might have been negotiated as part of the reparations the Dominion was obliged to provide, but the mental scars from living in mortal fear for so long would remain, causing a change in the behaviour of the whole species to be, among other things more guarded, suspicious and nervous.
Or, since the parasite/virus is hardly detectable, the Dominon might never reveal what they did and it would take considerable time after the war to discover and counteract it.

I can imagine a good number of non-telepathic species would dismiss the severity of what was done to the minds of the Betazoids "So they frightened you? We were frightened too, and we still fought back!" Especially planets who were the targets of Dominion attacks launched from Betazed would be particularly unforgiving of the Betazoid failure to offer serious resistance and they might even be considered collaborators by some.
Certain individuals would be protected against this backlash (Troi, for example, because of her connections) but the bulk of the Betazoid people would be faced with this backlash.

Sorry for the length, I came up with that for a fanfic I never wrote, because I find Star Trek pretty challenging to write.
 
Love the different takes on the Betazoids. Whether they become avenging Furies reeking havoc as they tear through the galaxy...I’m seeing a mix of Vorlon-touched Leeta from Babylon 5 and Renaissance art of Classic ones causing all manner of spine-chilling havoc.

Or if they’re no a pariah species who got off easy by the Dominion and are now distrusted as well as uncomfortable for non-telepaths who see them as disconcerting, and soft and aristocratic...

There’s another book, easy, in how different Betazoid peoples fared differently during the invasion, occupation, and aftermath.
 
I find it, and Imzadi, rather unspectacular. Those books are the reason I don't like the novel verse.

I stopped reading the novels for both Star Wars and Star Trek years ago because it seemed like authors I thought were really terrible kept getting novels and nothing ever changed. Trek was always reset at the end and Wars may have claimed the (now Legends) novels were Star Wars continuity, some were just terrible and one author in particular was so bad he would take whole blocks of dialog from the movies and put it in his novels.

Funny, I found Ep. 7 TFW terrible for just that same reason - lets take the exact same plot, in almost the exact same sequence, and use it in our new movie with just a couple of minor name tweaks.
 
I really like the idea of exploring undeveloped or underdeveloped species before. I've enjoyed what DISCO has done with the Orions and Lower Decks by having Caitian and Orion characters and with the Pakleds (plus all the neat cameos of TAS species), more than Picard did with the Romulans, but I give them points for doing more with them.

I would like to see even more done with the Andorians, Romulans, Orions, but the Tholians, Caitians, Kzinti, Deltans, Tzenkethi, Sheliak, Gorn, Suliban, and Breen, along with a return of the neural parasites, "Silent Enemy" aliens, "Schism" aliens. I would like to see some VOY species as well like Species 8472, Vaadwaur, Swarm, and the Voth get more development.

When it comes to Trek novels, I used to really be into them in the 90s and early 00s but starting losing interest not long after the Destiny trilogy. I loved the novel Imzadi, which has to be my favorite Trek novel, and I also enjoyed the Battle of Betazed. For some reason, it's just hard to get into Trek novels these days for me. The last one I finished was the first for DISCO, "Desperate Hours". I've been struggling reading DISCO: The Enterprise War as well as the Picard prequel. I've had a much easier time reading Trek comics, though I'm not a consistent buyer and reader of them.
 
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