What about the Ubarrak from the Stargazer series? Did the Cardies clean their chronometers?
Remembering Trek Lit Aliens
- Thread starter Arpy
- Start date
Yay!^ Amusingly, I was just today looking at FASA's interpretation of the Kinshaya and, er, uh -- no. It won't be that.
I consider the Nasat or Aurelians screen aliens, but I wouldn't mind someone suggesting Ford's Klingons as more of lit aliens they'd like to see.
Christopher, I really enjoyed The Buried Age. For me, it brought to life a part of Trek history that was always there, but needed an artist to chisel it out. Orion's Hounds before it too was a joy - it did the same for space-born life. And, as someone also said in another thread, it for me too made the Titan series feel more like the continuation of TNG in the lit than its own recent titles.
Readers of Christopher's annotations page may remember the following subject(?) species of The Regnancy of the Carnelian Throne:
Gororm
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Unnamed_humanoids_(24th_century)#Aliens_with_long_faces
Brunyg
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Unn...#Aliens_with_blue_skin_and_facial_bone_plates
Now all you have to do is write a DS9 novel featuring these guys http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Unnamed_humanoids_(24th_century)#Buck-toothed_aliens , these guys http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Unn...ds.2C_pimply_skin_and_external_bone_mandibles , and these guys http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Unnamed_humanoids_(24th_century)#Tailheads. Oh, and the green guys with V horns along their foreheads. These are some of my favorite background aliens from DS9 that made the station seem more a seedy nexus of exotic alien life from across the galaxy it started out as.
In fact, I thought it was poor form of the show when Laas in DS9's "Chimera" pointed out how most aliens on the station were basically humanoids with differently bumped foreheads...it was the show's own fault for not going more Farscape or Babylon 5 in the first place. This is the payback I get for suspending my disbelief enough to account for your budgetary and creative limitations?!
But I digress...
The Mabrae
From Christopher Bennett’s site – see esp. image of fountain they’re based on
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cach...AgeAnnot.html+mabrae&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7&gl=us
Excerpt from excerpt of The Buried Age from:
http://www.voyagesofimagination.com/buriedexcerpt.html
Once Picard and Langford had made their case to the local officials, they found the Mabrae to be a more agreeable people than they had appeared at first blush. Indeed, once past the initial suspicion of outsiders, they took considerable pride in the abundance their world could provide to guests. They were actually quite beautiful, like something out of a fairy tale. They were graceful and elfin, and instead of clothing, their bodies were adorned with actual live plants. It was a symbiotic relationship that had evolved on their cool, oxygen-poor homeworld, the plants providing the mammals with extra oxygen while the mammals provided the plants with warmth and nutrients, the latter supplied by microscopic root tendrils that penetrated their skin. The horizontal ridges on their cheeks and temples extended to the backs of their hairless heads and were found along their sides and limbs as well, providing anchor surfaces for the plants—terraces of skin on a millimeter scale.
Over their history, the Mabrae had learned to cultivate and eventually bioengineer their epiphytic raiments into a wide array of specialized types. Picard had already seen the armor of their defense forces, indeed an analog of tree bark, but engineered into a dense organic-polymer resin that could stop a bullet. Other Mabrae’s bodyplants were less all-concealing, but still specialized to fit the jobs and social roles of their hosts. Some were functional; laborers had abundant leaflike pockets for holding tools and equipment, desert-dwellers had broad sunshades on their heads and fleshy succulents for water retention, athletes wore very little covering to facilitate free movement. The politicians and diplomats bloomed with colorful flowers of countless personalized types. It was unclear whether these represented lifelong social castes, or if a Mabrae could change professions by crop rotation, so to speak.
Although they used refined metals where such materials worked best, much of the Mabrae’s technology was built of strong and adaptable resins, rubbers, and plastics, if not actual wood. Their homes were interwoven with living trees or coated throughout the interior with vines. Some of these “houseplants,” as Langford dubbed them, were specialized to provide fruits and vegetables, others grew large, spongy leaves for seating, while others provided the equivalent of plumbing and sanitation. (The Mabrae slept in what were essentially beds of mulch. Perhaps their small noses were a survival trait, though the fragrances of their floral attire were generally quite pleasant.) Picard had rarely seen such advanced bioengineering, despite the Mabrae’s technological limitations in other fields.
Christopher, I really enjoyed The Buried Age. For me, it brought to life a part of Trek history that was always there, but needed an artist to chisel it out. Orion's Hounds before it too was a joy - it did the same for space-born life. And, as someone also said in another thread, it for me too made the Titan series feel more like the continuation of TNG in the lit than its own recent titles.
Readers of Christopher's annotations page may remember the following subject(?) species of The Regnancy of the Carnelian Throne:
Gororm
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Unnamed_humanoids_(24th_century)#Aliens_with_long_faces
Brunyg
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Unn...#Aliens_with_blue_skin_and_facial_bone_plates
Now all you have to do is write a DS9 novel featuring these guys http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Unnamed_humanoids_(24th_century)#Buck-toothed_aliens , these guys http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Unn...ds.2C_pimply_skin_and_external_bone_mandibles , and these guys http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Unnamed_humanoids_(24th_century)#Tailheads. Oh, and the green guys with V horns along their foreheads. These are some of my favorite background aliens from DS9 that made the station seem more a seedy nexus of exotic alien life from across the galaxy it started out as.
In fact, I thought it was poor form of the show when Laas in DS9's "Chimera" pointed out how most aliens on the station were basically humanoids with differently bumped foreheads...it was the show's own fault for not going more Farscape or Babylon 5 in the first place. This is the payback I get for suspending my disbelief enough to account for your budgetary and creative limitations?!
But I digress...
The Mabrae
From Christopher Bennett’s site – see esp. image of fountain they’re based on
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cach...AgeAnnot.html+mabrae&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7&gl=us
Excerpt from excerpt of The Buried Age from:
http://www.voyagesofimagination.com/buriedexcerpt.html
Once Picard and Langford had made their case to the local officials, they found the Mabrae to be a more agreeable people than they had appeared at first blush. Indeed, once past the initial suspicion of outsiders, they took considerable pride in the abundance their world could provide to guests. They were actually quite beautiful, like something out of a fairy tale. They were graceful and elfin, and instead of clothing, their bodies were adorned with actual live plants. It was a symbiotic relationship that had evolved on their cool, oxygen-poor homeworld, the plants providing the mammals with extra oxygen while the mammals provided the plants with warmth and nutrients, the latter supplied by microscopic root tendrils that penetrated their skin. The horizontal ridges on their cheeks and temples extended to the backs of their hairless heads and were found along their sides and limbs as well, providing anchor surfaces for the plants—terraces of skin on a millimeter scale.
Over their history, the Mabrae had learned to cultivate and eventually bioengineer their epiphytic raiments into a wide array of specialized types. Picard had already seen the armor of their defense forces, indeed an analog of tree bark, but engineered into a dense organic-polymer resin that could stop a bullet. Other Mabrae’s bodyplants were less all-concealing, but still specialized to fit the jobs and social roles of their hosts. Some were functional; laborers had abundant leaflike pockets for holding tools and equipment, desert-dwellers had broad sunshades on their heads and fleshy succulents for water retention, athletes wore very little covering to facilitate free movement. The politicians and diplomats bloomed with colorful flowers of countless personalized types. It was unclear whether these represented lifelong social castes, or if a Mabrae could change professions by crop rotation, so to speak.
Although they used refined metals where such materials worked best, much of the Mabrae’s technology was built of strong and adaptable resins, rubbers, and plastics, if not actual wood. Their homes were interwoven with living trees or coated throughout the interior with vines. Some of these “houseplants,” as Langford dubbed them, were specialized to provide fruits and vegetables, others grew large, spongy leaves for seating, while others provided the equivalent of plumbing and sanitation. (The Mabrae slept in what were essentially beds of mulch. Perhaps their small noses were a survival trait, though the fragrances of their floral attire were generally quite pleasant.) Picard had rarely seen such advanced bioengineering, despite the Mabrae’s technological limitations in other fields.
Thank you!
The second species you list there was one of my candidates for Carnelian member races, but I didn't get around to using them. Other candidates included "Aliens with large, triangular head," "Beaked aliens," and "One-eyed alien."
I would've liked to use the "Tailheads" and maybe the "Buck-toothed aliens," but they were both seen in the "Tapestry" flashbacks in 2327, so they weren't right for the Carnelians, a civilization that wasn't contacted until c. 2360.
I don't know why you used a Google cache link, but I'm getting a "fraudulent site" warning on Opera when I click on that. Maybe it's a quirk in my system. Anyway, the direct link to my annotations page is: http://home.fuse.net/ChristopherLBennett/BuriedAgeAnnot.html
