Origin of Andorian Marriage Customs?

[Sci]

KRAD 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?

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....

Exactly. Evolution is not a deliberate, organized process. Evolution is, in point of fact, chaos with feedback; clearly, the gradual depopulation of the Andorian species due to the difficulty in reproducing and achieving and maintaining replacement-level population consistutes exactly the type of feedback one might expect from a species that has developed a trait that hinders its ability to survive and reproduce.

 

[Arpy]

Hold on. The Andorians have managed to survive for millennia and flourish into the stars - something real world humans have yet to accomplish. I'd hardly call them evolutionary failures.

So their reproductive process is complex by human standards. Well, BFD. Countless life-forms have tried to evolve in countless ways; the Andorians just so happen to be one of the four-gendered life-forms that made it. How many others haven't? Sure maybe the more genders required the fewer number of species there may be, but that doesn't negate the possibility that some may flourish.

By that thinking, shouldn't there be countless more single-gendered species out there than double-gendered? Sure there's a greater diversity via gene-sharing, but who's to say other species produce more random mutations? Or have superior epigenetic abilities. Or simply that single-gendered species arise in nature in as superior numbers from double-gendered species as double-gendered ones do from triple or quadruple-gendered species.

Who's to say there isn't a species out there in the immense and ancient universe that managed to defy the odds and develop 32 genders, producing hundreds of offspring in each batch? Even if the overwhelming majority of them don't procreate, or want to, they may still live long (by human standards, maybe astonishingly long) happy, healthy lives. And perhaps just enough of them do procreate to keep the species, the civilization, afloat and expanding into the stars.

Hell, maybe they can breed in different combinations of genders producing all sorts of sub-races and a mind-boggling spectrum of diversity within their single species. Maybe that diversity even makes them more able to reproduce with other species (on-world or off) than us mere two-gendered humans, and with more diverse types of offspring.

Okay, rant over. To sum up: this is science-fiction - the realm of the possible, not probable.

And the probablility of their being more fewer-gendered species than Andorians out there is well represented via the hundreds of other Star Trek aliens we've seen.

 

[Trent Roman]

Arpy said:
By that thinking, shouldn't there be countless more single-gendered species out there than double-gendered? Sure there's a greater diversity via gene-sharing, but who's to say other species produce more random mutations? Or have superior epigenetic abilities. Or simply that single-gendered species arise in nature in as superior numbers from double-gendered species as double-gendered ones do from triple or quadruple-gendered species.

That's a good point. We think of four-gendered reproduction as being a complicated affair, but wouldn't a species that reproduces asexually, perhaps via parthenogenesis, view a species incapable of producing offspring without two individuals coming together in the same way?

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I can only imagine what an Andorian porno flick would look like.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Their definition of an orgy would be...intense.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

And how big must an Andorian *bed* be, in order to fit four people on it at once?

 

[foravalon]

Regarding the thoughts of evolutionary failure, I think that yes, the required four gender thing may and obviously has presented a bit of a problemfor the Andorians. But Evolution has also compensated in their favor by providing them with a problem solving intellect capable of overcoming that failing through culture and science. This same compensation can be seen in Humans who by all right should be extinct many times over, instead they have survived through philosophy and technology. The same can be said for the Vulcans who escaped their own destruction through the adoption of Logic and reason.

 

[Ronald Held]

Perhaps the Andorian problem is more a cultural one than biological one?

 

[Therin of Andor]

Ronald Held said:
Perhaps the Andorian problem is more a cultural one than biological one?

Most definitely. As demonstrated by Shar and Thriss, who went against Andorian Law and secretly consummated their bond, to the exclusion of their other two bondmates. Andorian societal practices reflect the needs for encouraging population control, as do Earth-based ones control ours (laws about homosexuality, availability of the Pill, abortion, surrogate parents, adoption, financial support to new parents - even ZPG, as in Zero Population Growth in some cultures).

Some have speculated that Earth societies' condemnation of homosexuality dates back to the survival of early community groups (ie. "populate or perish"). So, while bisexuality might have once been a legitimate option, requiring no thought as to life choices (ie. bisexuality also doubles your chance of finding a date for Saturday night), it doesn't always result in offspring, so early communities with lots of bisexuals and homosexuals didn't grow as fast, and were more easily conquered by other communities.

A study of earth snails (where the two snail partners fertilize each other's eggs), seahorses (where the eggs are passed to the male's pouch after fertilization), pandas (where the young resembles a blind, helpless foetus at birth), giraffes (where a fully-formed young can stand up mere hours after birth), crocodiles (who can change the sex of their unborn eggs by burying them at different depths in the sand), axolotyls (which can breed as "tadpoles" without ever maturing into adult salamanders), clown fish (which can change sex if too many of one gender dominate the school) and playpuses and echidnas (which are egg-laying mammals) present a huge variety of Earth forms.

Australia recently lost a rare species: the mouth-brooding frog. Confined to areas either prone to drought, or densely populated by tadpole predators, this frog used to swallow several of its fertilized eggs - which would otherwise have dried up or been eaten - and incubates them in their bodies. Here the tadpoles hatched and grew to froglet size, when they would be "coughed up", rather than born. Bizarre - and now, extinct - because it couldn't simply couldn't compete with the further losses of its habitat.

Makes a four-gendered species sound quite believable to me.

I'm sure there are biologists tinkering around with other theories of evolution and reproduction that are more alien than any SF novel.

 

[Extrocomp]

Sci said:

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.

So does that mean that Thy'lek is some kind of a nickname or title or what? Is the biography from In a Mirror Darkly not canon?

 

[Therin of Andor]

Extrocomp said:
So does that mean that Thy'lek is some kind of a nickname or title or what? Is the biography from In a Mirror Darkly not canon?

Mike Sussman, who wrote the Archer and Sato biographies seen in "In a Mirror, Darkly", had no idea the text would be as visible as it was on TV monitors, and therefore the pieces never went to the executive producers for proper approval. The bios are also peppered with spelling errors, and contained a few dates he suspected would be overwritten by the still-to-be-filmed "Demons", "Terra Prime" and/or "These Are the Voyages", so Mike said in interviews, and TrekBBS posts, at the time to treat the two bios' contents as "soft canon".

Memory Alpha wiki, however, has a hard and fast interpretation of canon: if it's onscreen, it's canon.

It seems that Paula Block at CBS Consumer Products has happily approved both Thy'lek (in Sussman's recent MU novel with Dilmore & Ward) and the more traditional (novel) full Hravishran th'Zoarhi name proposed by Mangels & Martin for "The Good That Men Do", almost simultaneously.

But it's not worth getting into knots about. Maybe one day Shran takes on the name, or honorific, of Thy'lek, leaving his old name behind?

What's in a name, Shran?

Wiki talk

Edit: removed term "live action"

 

[captcalhoun]

MA also accepts TAS as canon.

 

[Sci]

Extrocomp said:

Sci said:

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.

So does that mean that Thy'lek is some kind of a nickname or title or what? Is the biography from In a Mirror Darkly not canon?

I don't see how something that appeared on a computer screen for two seconds and was barely legible over TV -- I sure couldn't read it on my TV -- could possibly be considered part of the body of information that CBS says new Star Trek productions and novels have to be consistent with (i.e., the "canon").

captcalhoun said:
MA also accepts TAS as canon.

MA accepts a lot of things as "canon" that Trek's actual owner does not. They're not always a reliable resource in that regard.

 

[Ragua]

Therin of Andor said:

A study of earth snails (where the two snail partners fertilize each other's eggs), seahorses (where the eggs are passed to the male's pouch after fertilization), pandas (where the young resembles a blind, helpless foetus at birth), giraffes (where a fully-formed young can stand up mere hours after birth), crocodiles (who can change the sex of their unborn eggs by burying them at different depths in the sand), axolotyls (which can breed as "tadpoles" without ever maturing into adult salamanders), clown fish (which can change sex if too many of one gender dominate the school) and playpuses and echidnas (which are egg-laying mammals) present a huge variety of Earth forms.

Australia recently lost a rare species: the mouth-brooding frog. Confined to areas either prone to drought, or densely populated by tadpole predators, this frog used to swallow several of its fertilized eggs - which would otherwise have dried up or been eaten - and incubates them in their bodies. Here the tadpoles hatched and grew to froglet size, when they would be "coughed up", rather than born. Bizarre - and now, extinct - because it couldn't simply couldn't compete with the further losses of its habitat.

Makes a four-gendered species sound quite believable to me.

I'm sure there are biologists tinkering around with other theories of evolution and reproduction that are more alien than any SF novel.

Given that Andoria (Andor?) has a pretty harsh climate, it would be logical to assume that raising children to adulthood was a very difficult venture before the advent of technology. An infant being raised by four parents, rather than two, would have an advantage. In addition, the complexity in the actual biological process of procreation would limit the population, thereby making less competition for scarce resources. It may seem weird to a two-gendered species, but it is possible to see the Andorian procreational quartet as a creation of natural selection.

Or I could just be talkin' outta my ass.

 

[Ronald Held]

One might ask how intelligent life evolved on a completely ice covered world.

 

[3D Master]

Emh said:
I prefer the novels take on the subject over the RPG book's take. I think the idea of four genders is very fascinating and is one of my favorite aspects of the post-finale books of Deep Space Nine.

I don't, I've got the exact opposite. A culture based upon clans and very family oriented, and producing a four marriage of two genders is such a completely different culture from anything we've seen on Trek before, it would be good and fresh. Till now, just about all good guy cultures are variations of Christian cultural themes; this would have been drastically different. But four genders is just again our mating culture; except that there are four genders instead of two. The culture itself is the same - 1 of each gender required for reproduction - just different biology.

 

[foravalon]

Ronald Held said:
One might ask how intelligent life evolved on a completely ice covered world.

Ahh, but that's a big assumption, who said it's completely covered in ice? The only part we've ever seen up close was the "Northern Wastes".

 

[JD]

I have an Andorian reproduction question, who's family name does the offspring get? Is it the the zhavey, because I know Shar's zhavey was Zh'Thane.

 

[Therin of Andor]

JD said:
I have an Andorian reproduction question, who's family name does the offspring get? Is it the the zhavey, because I know Shar's zhavey was Zh'Thane.

Yes, the offspring takes the zhavey's clan name.

 

[foravalon]

I wondered that too, and I think that is indeed the case, as with "Shar" Thirishar ch'Thane and his Zhavey, Charivretha zh'Thane, there is also Shathrissia zh'Cheen and her Zhavey Sessethantis zh'Cheen.

And it seems the Zhavey's family name is preceeded by the gender prefix of the named individual, like Ch'Thane, Sh'Thane, or the lispy Th'Thane, if Shar had Shen and Thaan siblings.

But that might be a simplification considering the name of Pava Ek'Noor sh'Aqabaa and her mother Undeieela zh'Noor. Although thier names might not be accurate.
For example, I'm not sure where the name Aqabaa first came in. In the SFA comic I read with Pava's mother, she was only called "Undeieela Noor", some Memory Beta contributor might have correctly added a Zh' to the name but incorrectly added it to "Noor". The full name of Pava's mother is then perhaps "Undeieela Noor zh'Aqabaa", with Pava's "Ek'Noor" paying some kind of regard to that.

If that's the case it could also be that as a famous author of romantic holonovels the name "Undeieela Noor" is akin to something like "Rita Sue", a first name by which she is notoriously known.

It can work...