Alien to Alien Crossbreeding Examples?

[Timo]

...Who knows, perhaps the two are the same species after all? One or both might just have decided to toy with their phenotypes a bit during their supposedly very long histories. And with their genotypes, as "Second Skin" et al. make it clear that there is an easily detectable difference. But that latter fact should already make creation of offspring difficult, even if it happens that Cardassians, too, have reproductive systems and processes that make the mother sneeze a lot during pregnancy...

As regards the abundance of humanoid life, we might just as well figure in the likelihood that the galaxy is full of Earth-like worlds. After five billion years of sapient life, it would be highly unlikely for the planets to be "natural" any more: all would have been mined, exploited and, whenever possible, terraformed. That is, originally several civilizations would do their own 'forming to their own specs. Soon enough, one would become dominant, and re'form the worlds of the others. And any civilization coming afterwards would emerge from a terraformed planet and find the skies full of the same sort, making it easy for the civilization to expand and then add to the number of terraformed worlds. Competing civilizations, preferring other environments, would be at a massive disadvantage and would wither and die.

That doesn't yet explain why all the civilizations feature bipeds much like us. One needs something like "The Chase" for that, and this requires technologies beyond our current understanding (whereas making all the planets in Milky Way duplicate Earths does not).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Christopher]

Well, Trek canon has been inconsistent about the ease of interspecies breeding. Generally it's been assumed that it can happen as easily as same-species procreation, though I can't think of any cases where it's been overtly accidental besides Dukat's illegitimate children. Roddenberry's Inside Star Trek album in the '70s established that Spock's conception had needed technological intervention, but the idea wasn't made canonical until "Demons"/"Terra Prime" on Enterprise. And DS9 established that Worf and Jadzia would need medical help to procreate. But those are the only instances I can think of in canon where that was established.

 

[Timo]

There's also "The Emissary" for the difficulty of Klingon-human mating:

Troi: "I didn't know it was possible for a human and a Klingon to produce a child."
K'Ehleyr: "Actually, the DNA is compatible, with a fair amount of help. Rather like my parents."

When in "Lineage" Tom and B'Elanna want to have a child, difficulty is established, but possible chemical or other medical intervention is not:

EMH: "I don't mean to be indelicate but, weren't you trying to get pregnant?"
Torres: "Well, of course. I mean, we knew we wanted a family."
Paris: "But the odds against human-Klingon conception are so high..."
EMH: "Well, apparently you've beaten the odds. May I be the first to congratulate you."

Perhaps the two were popping the same pills B'Elanna's parents originally were. Or perhaps that first time was enough, and conception after the first-generation intervention becomes rather trivial (meaning Alexander might also have been an accident, rather than a deliberate and devious medical intervention by K'Ehleyr).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[borgboy]

There are examples of accidental Klingon/human pregnancies in the novels, most notably Kevin Ryan's Klingon/TOS Errend novels come to mind. And I seriously don't believe that K'Ehleyr got pregnant on purpose.
I just interpret this that although interspecies conception is rare and difficult, it is possible that it can happen without extra help.

 

[Timo]

And I seriously don't believe that K'Ehleyr got pregnant on purpose.

Heh. Things would work out a bit better, actor-age-wise, stardate-wise and dramatically, if Alexander was actually conceived back when Worf and K'Ehleyr really were an item... And was going to be mentioned, really was, until Worf went all traditional and K'Ehleyr got cold feet.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[YellowSubmarine]

Klingon + Klingon-Human is still different from Human + Klingon-Human. I also suspect that for some of the difficulties it also depends on who is the father and who is the mother. I cannot imagine Naomi Wildman would cause her mother the same difficulties during the pregnancy if the mother was Ktarian.

 

[Timo]

Indeed. But one wonders if, given that there seems to exist a way to overcome the interspecies genetic discrepancy in certain cases, there doesn't exist a generic way around such a discrepancy in all cases. Just tell your pharma-replicator the combination you need, and it adds the necessary extra chemicals or adjusts the relevant amino groups.

That is, while medical help might be needed, anybody with access to a lunch (that is, to a replicator) could anonymously make him- or herself compatible with the prospective partner. No need to expect a doctor to make a house call in the middle of the night (and of the bed).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Enterprise1701]

Well, Trek canon has been inconsistent about the ease of interspecies breeding. Generally it's been assumed that it can happen as easily as same-species procreation, though I can't think of any cases where it's been overtly accidental besides Dukat's illegitimate children. Roddenberry's Inside Star Trek album in the '70s established that Spock's conception had needed technological intervention, but the idea wasn't made canonical until "Demons"/"Terra Prime" on Enterprise. And DS9 established that Worf and Jadzia would need medical help to procreate. But those are the only instances I can think of in canon where that was established.

As borgboy said, Kell/Jon Anderson got Leslie Parrish pregnant by accident in Errand of Vengeance/Errand of Fury. McCoy theorized that Kell/Jon's Klingon nature was the reason that "the usual precautions" failed. Plus, in S.C.E. - Wounds, Elizabeth Lense unintentionally got pregnant by Saad in a parallel timeline/dimension. In that case, though, Saad happened to be a member of his species who possessed exceptional DNA.

 

[Christopher]

^Hmm... Well, if Kell was a QuchHa' (smooth-headed) Klingon, then he would've had human DNA in him courtesy of the Augment virus. Maybe that could explain it.

 

[borgboy]

^Hmm... Well, if Kell was a QuchHa' (smooth-headed) Klingon, then he would've had human DNA in him courtesy of the Augment virus. Maybe that could explain it.

That is a very elegant solution.

 

[Mojochi]

Implicitly, there were plenty of more exotic aliens out there, just not on the planets the ship tended to visit. And indeed TOS gave us a bunch of weird monsters -- salt vampires, Gorn, Hortas, Mugatos, Melkots, Excalbians, etc. Ironically, the '80s and '90s shows, with their much higher effects budgets and more advanced makeup technology, featured far less diverse aliens than TOS showed and implied.

I really feel like that's a widely accepted misrepresentation of at least TNG. The Crystalline Entity, The Calamarain, The Sheliak, Nagilum, Tin Man, Junior, The Farpoint Entity, etc... You can even include the Nanites, the Exocomps, & those "Ugly bags of mostly water" beings & any number of energy type beings that possessed half the crew

 

[borgboy]

It occurred to me that in alternate timeline on Voyager Kes had a daughter with Tom Paris, who grew up to have a son with Harry Kim. So there's an Ocampan/human hybrid and a 3/4 human 1/4 Ocampan.
There was also talk of the possibility of Kes having a child with Neelix. It didn't happen, but at that time they seemed to the think they could have a child together.

 

[Christopher]

^And in both cases -- and in the case of Miral Paris -- they had the assistance of the most advanced medical science in the Federation courtesy of the EMH. Again, there's a difference between the question of whether it's possible at all and the question of whether it requires the help of medical science that's advanced enough to make it routine.

 

[Markonian]

I would have liked it if another storyline was eventually chosen for the explanation.

There are these others aliens that we keep avoiding – Tholians, Gorn, Melkots – as if there's an almost instinctive mistrust that goes both ways between humanoids and non-humanoids. It is eventually discovered that early homo species on Earth, considered unintelligent and insentient at the time, were taken as slaves by the more advanced civilizations in the galaxy, and due to their surprising almost people-like abilities ended up flooding half the quadrant. Eventually, through different means, most freed themselves, and – now everywhere and more curious than everybody – began to become the most commonly seen species in our part of space. But once we met again, we had diverged so much that we were no longer the same species, and the link between our cultures had been severed, practically making us aliens to one another..

A similar storyline is the basis for the Star Trek: Invasion! novel miniseries from the 90s. An alliance of monstrous aliens occupied local space and enslaved various species. They were overthrown eventually but became the source of mythological monsters (werewolfs, vampires, etc.).

 

[Orphalesion]

Of course it would happen differently with different couples, since individuals are not totally uniform. The novel didn't say that all human-Betazoid couples would have as hard a time as Will and Deanna did; indeed, it's a major plot point that it was far more difficult for them than they expected even after the fertility treatments.

See, individual difficulties I can accept, as I wrote and if the novel really stated that Will and Deanna were unusual with their difficulties to conceive that makes it even better.
Maybe that was the reason for Deanna being genetically bonded to Wyatt in the first place despite him being human and it being a Betazoid custom: something about his genetic makeup made him more likely to successfully conceive with Deanna (with less or no medical assistance) than the average human or Betazoid male.

 

[Christopher]

^As I've been trying to explain, I see "needs medical assistance" as a distinct issue from "is difficult to achieve." Again, I figure it's like warp drive: it's impossible without Sufficiently Advanced Technology, but the Federation has that technology perfected to the point that it seems effortless -- except in rare cases when something goes wrong. Destiny treated the medical therapy to allow Will and Deanna to conceive as routine, and the difficulties they subsequently faced despite that therapy as an unexpected complication.

So I'm not even talking about whether it's difficult. I threw in Destiny and real-world infertility as examples to illustrate one thing -- that something normally impossible can be achieved with technological assistance -- and evidently gave the totally wrong impression about the point I was trying to make, and I guess that's my mistake. I'm just trying to say that I think it's implausible for interspecies conception to happen by accident, without deliberate intervention. That's like having a character accidentally travel faster than light without the use of a ship.

 

[Orphalesion]

^ I think I made the mistake of looking at those issues from a early 21st century perspective. Like current fertility treatments or the relatively low amount of people who would choose to have 5 children, due to the obvious difficulties associated with that.

If its just a hypo-spray each day, it naturally sounds much more doable. Likewise getting access to those treatments, as well as feeding and clothing a large number of children, would be far, far easier in a post-scarcity civilization.
I made the mistake of looking at it from a modern perspective instead of a future perspective.