Revisiting the Breen

Discussion in 'Future of Trek' started by Nerroth, Jan 11, 2022.

  1. Orphalesion

    Orphalesion Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Oct 19, 2014
    So we agree it was laughable? Then I don't understand what you want from me?

    All I said that if the Breen ever show up, then i want them to show us what they look like. I didn't say I particularly wanted them back, I just said, I found the whole "oooooo nobody as ever seen what they look liek under the helmet" stupid.
     
  2. Dukhat

    Dukhat Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Dec 26, 2007
    Location:
    Maryland, USA
    Who's saying I want something from you? I'm just pointing out that I feel that it would be a pointless endeavor to develop them further because they had nothing going for them in the first place, other than the mystery of what they look like. And 20+ years after the last time was saw the Breen, if someone new wanted to show what they looked like, it's simply not going to have the same effect as it would have 20 years ago, and it definitely wouldn't be something jaw-dropping or head-exploding. Like with the TOS Klingons to TNG Klingons, you'd basically be creating a new race from scratch and ignoring what was there before.
     
  3. Mr. Laser Beam

    Mr. Laser Beam Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    May 10, 2005
    Location:
    Confederation of Earth
    Perhaps Breen suits have some kind of failsafe device that vaporizes the wearer upon death, so nobody who opens one of their suits can ever see who's inside.
     
    YouAreDooomed and somebuddyX like this.
  4. XCV330

    XCV330 Premium Member

    Joined:
    Sep 24, 2017
    Location:
    XCV330
    The Breen are a species of Carrie Fisher clones but made of camphor. They sublime into vapor as soon the the seal is broken on their helmets.

    Honestly never showing the Breen was interesting for about an episode and after that it just came off as a cheap trick to avoid having to develop even more forehead prostheses for yet another species. I qould have loved for them to have been six legged or related to those flying-flapjack things from TOS, anything but the princess leia disguise.

    Any anyone who says that DOESN'T resemble the ROTJ costume are really trying hard to see five lights. The custome designer Robert Blackman apparently said (I don't have the reference any longer) that it was a homage to the Boushh costume.
     
    shapeshifter and Richard S. Ta like this.
  5. somebuddyX

    somebuddyX Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Nov 14, 2014
    [​IMG]
     
  6. YouAreDooomed

    YouAreDooomed Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

    Joined:
    Sep 6, 2019
    Location:
    Behind your back
    Nah, there is a wee bit more. The Breen are warlike, interested in expanding their territory, some small hints indicate they got an unpleasant history with the Romulans, there is the mystery/ running gag concerning their home planet usually described as a frozen rock until Weyoun states it is actually not, and they don't tell anyone why refrigeration suits are worn anyway. "Full of surprises." :shifty: :)

    I'm pretty sure those comments are supposed to be ironic, this part alone...
    gives it away, no?

    They probably just wanted the Klingons to look more alien.

    Because everyone and their mother in the ST universe can barely open their mouths without mentioning the Excelsior's transwarp drive, the soliton wave propulsion, the *Genesis Device, and a ton of other technologies or events (from the 23rd century).
    Why would you expect mentions of a classified, failed experiment (from the Federation's point of view)?

    *Well, Genesis gets a single, very brief reference in VOY, but in hundreds of episodes before (and after) there was nothing, not even when a scientist revives a dead star with protomatter in DS9.


    No, it would only make it contrived and silly like the Klingon Augments. Sometimes reality simply retcons stuff like outdated computers, cheap sets, no female captains (TOS), limited budget for make-up etc., and it's just better to accept the outside-of-universe reasons.

    Since when? Tuvok says they have "organic-based vessels" - and we don't even know what exactly this means - so not necessarily EVERY Breen ship is organic, while only one ship class is known that actually may be (partially) organic, it's not like they all have to look like giant squids or something. Perhaps only the inner structure is made of o. material, perhaps the outer hull is but appears to be metallic, perhaps their military doesn't even use them in the first place...
     
  7. Dukhat

    Dukhat Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Dec 26, 2007
    Location:
    Maryland, USA
    That was the problem. Any tidbit you learned about them, such as their planet actually being a paradise, or why they wanted to occupy Romulus after the war, was never expanded upon. They instead just came up with more rumors to say about them, but never had any intention of actually developing the things they mentioned. After a while, you realize that it's all BS: The writers aren't going to give you any kind of payoff because it's all being done to give the Breen a false sense of importance, when the reality is that they're nothing more than a plot device to move the story along.

    Yes, we do know what it means. It means that their ships are organic, like Vorlon vessels or Gomtuu. But that's not what we saw. We saw ships made out of metal. And we saw a ton of them. And they all looked exactly the same. And not a single person in DS9 pointed out that the ships were organic. Because they weren't organic.
     
  8. Vger23

    Vger23 Vice Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Apr 19, 2014
    Location:
    Enterprise bowling alley
    The Breen:

    [​IMG]

    I think future iterations of Star Trek have more important things to dive into.
     
    Dukhat likes this.
  9. The Old Mixer

    The Old Mixer Mih ssim, mih ssim, nam, daed si Xim. Moderator

    Joined:
    Feb 4, 2002
    Location:
    The Old Mixer, Somewhere in Connecticut
    The Breen are the Jenny Piccolo of Star Trek aliens.
     
    XCV330 likes this.
  10. YouAreDooomed

    YouAreDooomed Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

    Joined:
    Sep 6, 2019
    Location:
    Behind your back
    Yeah, wouldn't claim there were any real developments or payoffs, but at least a few more attributes than unknown faces. If the Breen return, writers may build upon them.

    No, we don't. let's just skip the "my headcanon is true because I say so" game.


    For the record, full quote from VOY:
    http://www.chakoteya.net/Voyager/321.htm

    It means they have ships - no one says ALL their ships - that are completely or partially organic. "Organic-based" may or may not imply giant, living, Gomtuu-like living organisms, it could refer to the inner structure possibly including the computer and power distribution systems or something else.
    Again, we saw a ton of ships of ONE class, and the apparent (or ostensible) metal could in fact be some kind of organic armour. The more or less organic Breen vessels might also be exclusively civilian. Hell, it's even possible those vessels Tuvok mentions get withdrawn from service by the outbreak of the Dominion War.

    Proves nothing.
     
  11. Dukhat

    Dukhat Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Dec 26, 2007
    Location:
    Maryland, USA
    This is a fictional tv show. The universe is completely at the whims of the writers. When that Voyager writer wrote that Breen vessels are organic, they were organic. When we saw the ships in DS9, they weren’t. So either the DS9 producers forgot about that line from Voyager, or they just didn’t care. The bottom line is that Breen ships are not organic. It’s not head canon, it’s what we saw on screen. It’s your head canon to say that ‘maybe not all Breen ships are organic.’ I’m only going by what was seen on screen, which is the only evidence we have. Anything else is just speculation.
     
  12. YouAreDooomed

    YouAreDooomed Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

    Joined:
    Sep 6, 2019
    Location:
    Behind your back
    It's like you didn't even really bother to read what I posted.
    Lol, actually, it's a perfectly logical possibility which Tuvok's very vague statement entails. Your specific interpretation is obvious fan fiction, sorry, but that's the way it is.
     
  13. Dukhat

    Dukhat Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Dec 26, 2007
    Location:
    Maryland, USA
    I indeed read what you posted. I found its logic to be flawed. Tuvok knew what he was talking about, because that’s what the writers wanted. If they wanted something different, they would have made him say something else. He didn’t say ‘some Breen ships are organic and some aren’t,’ he said ‘Breen ships are organic.’ Any other interpretation of his line is head canon. Sorry, but that’s the way it is.
     
    Last edited: Feb 1, 2022
  14. STEPhon IT

    STEPhon IT Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Jan 27, 2010
    Location:
    Sunny California
    The design of the Breen was so lazy, when I heard about the Breen on TNG I had the image in my head the species would be more "Mr. Freeze" than something aped from "Star Wars". Not surprising DS9 was running out of ideas by the time that boring war was going on.
     
  15. Dukhat

    Dukhat Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Dec 26, 2007
    Location:
    Maryland, USA
    TNG hadn’t yet established that the Breen wore suits because their planet was cold. That didn’t happen until the 4th season of Deep Space Nine.
     
  16. Tuskin38

    Tuskin38 Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Jul 24, 2011
    I liked the Novel'verse explanation. But I'd rather have a unique one for canon.
     
  17. Nerroth

    Nerroth Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Nov 21, 2004
    Location:
    Ontario, Canada
    Personally, I would lean towards having the organic component of Breen starship technology evolve over different design generations.

    Say, if the Breen were a star-faring power back in the 23rd Century, I would have that era of ships use little to no organic components. Perhaps a more primitive equivalent of USS Voyager's bio-neural gel packs, at best.

    For the ships we see in DS9, I'd go with a hybrid approach: the exterior of the ship still looks "metallic", but much larger portion of the "innards" of the ship would use organic technology.

    Future eras of Breen starship design might see them progress further along this path, though whether or not they ever go quite as far as Species 8472 - or as the White Stars seen in another franchise - is another matter.
     
  18. Dukhat

    Dukhat Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Dec 26, 2007
    Location:
    Maryland, USA
    What was the novelverse explanation?
     
  19. XCV330

    XCV330 Premium Member

    Joined:
    Sep 24, 2017
    Location:
    XCV330
    organic just means it has carbon in it. doesn't mean the ships are living things. hell by that token the Space Shuttle was organic.
     
    dupersuper likes this.
  20. Tuskin38

    Tuskin38 Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Jul 24, 2011
    The Breen are made up of multiple species, but to stop discrimination, they all wear identical suits to hide their species.

    There's a species with a snout, so the helmet has a snout, there's a gaseous species that lives on a cold planet, so the suit has the option to be refrigerated etc.

    https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Breen#Subsidiary_species
     
    Last edited: Feb 1, 2022
    Sci and Dukhat like this.