Origin of Andorian Marriage Customs?

[Therin of Andor]

Trek said:
you'd have though it'd have come up

It seems that Andorians are capable of forming twosomes after their responsibilities to the bondgroup is completed, especially interspecies ones ("The Sound of Her Voice", DS9).

Some lines in "United" (ENT), when Hoshi and Mayweather are trying to find a loophole to excuse Archer from duelling, make it sound like Shran already has heirs. ie. A combatant is excused from ushaan if he has no offspring. And we'd seen Talas courting Shran in adulthood, with no mention of other bondmates - but if Shran has heirs, he no long requires the three bondmates of his youth.

 

[Sci]

QUOTE Trek said:
^Good point.

Spoiler: Glass Empires

Did'nt stop him sleeping with her though - you'd have though it'd have come up

[/QUOTE]

Spoiler: Glass Empires

Not necessarily. So long as he has, well, some sort of equipment, there's no reason that he and Hoshi couldn't have gotten their jollies. For one thing, it's logical to presume that a thaan has some sort of physical apparatus for the transmission of part of the gamete -- in other words, that they have something akin to male genitalia -- and, secondly, even if they don't, it's not like that stops people in *real* life (just ask Ellen DeGeneres), so why would it stop Shran and Hoshi?

 

[JD]

^Besides, I believe that they said in the DS9r, that they can do it with people of two sexed races, hence the Shar/Prynn relationship.

 

[foravalon]

Therin of Andor said:

foravalon said:
The great thing about Enterprise though was that nothing was shown that inherently contradicted anything in the books. Even the casting choices seemed to fit nicely with the gender types explicated in the books.

Agreed.

Shran = thaan
Tholos = chan (Tholos seemed quite androgynous!)
Tarah = shen
Talas, Jhamel = zhen.

Leslie Fish also wrote fanfic featuring Thelin (of "Yesteryear", TAS) and his "Aunt" Shras ("Journey to Babel")!

See that's interesting

I would venture to say that Shran, like Shar, is a chan. Despite all the masculine warrior bluster he's just got that inescapable quality of femininity to his frame and demeanor. Of course I might be mixing the actor up with the character.

Talas is also on the fence with me, being such a hardcore warrior I would lean toward shan, with Jhamel as definitely a zhen.

as for some of the old school:

Shras = Chan (not fooling anybody...)
Thelev = Thaan (impersonator of course)

 

[Geoff]

captcalhoun said:
my feelings on the ludicrousness of four-genders are well known, i'll leave it at that.

Um, yeah, cuz... y'know, all alien lifeforms should be exactly like us...

 

[captcalhoun]

i never said that.

Spoiler: MU Sorrows of Empire

The MU Andorians also got slaughtered in SOE when the Alliance invaded the 'Terran Republic'

 

[Stevil2001]

I like the idea of Shran as a thaan because then you can retcon "Thy'lek Shran" to be an Anglicized version of something more Andorii, such as th'Ylekshran.

 

[Sci]

Steve Mollmann said:
I like the idea of Shran as a thaan because then you can retcon "Thy'lek Shran" to be an Anglicized version of something more Andorii, such as th'Ylekshran.

Though, in terms of the ENT Relaunch, that's a bit of a moot point, since The Good That Men Do established Shran's full Andorii name as being Hravishran th'Zoarhi.

 

[foravalon]

Well that clinches it, Shran is definitely one of Comb's more masculine characters anyway. Now if you were to put Weyoun into the blue with a couple antenna, you get chan aaalll the way.

 

[Stevil2001]

Sci said:
Though, in terms of the ENT Relaunch, that's a bit of a moot point, since The Good That Men Do established Shran's full Andorii name as being Hravishran th'Zoarhi.

Ah, I didn't know that-- I'm only a couple of chapters into the novel at the moment.

 

[JD]

foravalon said:
Well that clinches it, Shran is definitely one of Comb's more masculine characters anyway. Now if you were to put Weyoun into the blue with a couple antenna, you get chan aaalll the way.

Is chan the more feminine male?

 

[foravalon]

yup, that's what our Shar is, sort of a cute femme boy. But, as with us crazy humans, the spectrum of gender traits can be pretty wide and varied, so sometimes, the science just isn't exact. Whatcha gonna do...

 

[Ronald Held]

What is the breakdown of what each sex provides to the fertilization?

 

[Therin of Andor]

Ronald Held said:
What is the breakdown of what each sex provides to the fertilization?

During the conception of an Andorian child, the chan (androgynous male) adds his gametes to those of the shen (female), which have already been fertilized by the thaan (alpha male). The zygote is then implanted into the pouch of the zhen (birth mother). ["DS9: Unity" (Pocket, 2003) by SD Perry.]

 

[captcalhoun]

which is why i say it's ludicrous. there's just so much potential for something to go wrong why in the name of all that's holy would a species evolve that way?

that, to me exemplifies the 'OMFG, THAT'S SO ALIEN!!!!!!!!!11' approach some SF writers take to alien life. like the Xenomorphs in the Alien series, complete nonsense.

 

[Trent Roman]

captcalhoun said:
which is why i say it's ludicrous. there's just so much potential for something to go wrong why in the name of all that's holy would a species evolve that way?

Off the top of my head, complex mating patterns could keep an unusually fertile species from overproducing offspring and leaving themselves at an evolutionary dead-end through overconsumption of resources. Or, it could help promote strong social groupings and cooperative behaviour, which in turn can help spur a species into a distinct evolutionary niche that emphasises behaviour over biology (like ours).

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[KRAD]

which is why i say it's ludicrous. there's just so much potential for something to go wrong why in the name of all that's holy would a species evolve that way?

Because evolution is full of dead ends. People forget that survival of the fittest means that there are some unfit folk who don't survive. And the whole point is that the Andorian species is dying....

 

[Ronald Held]

Therin, thanks for those details.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Andorian Genders at Memory Beta.

 

[Trek]

Q420 said:
Andorian Genders at Memory Beta.

Good article.