Seeking background on Orion culture

[chrinFinity]

Hi,

Anything in the novelverse that fleshes out the Orions' culture, particularly material to reconcile their depictions throughout TOS and in Enterprise?

The whole "men are the slaves, the slave women manipulate them by pheromones" was a total fucking botch-job from a feminist standpoint, and I'd like to see if anyone's taken a shot at explaining how their culture actually works.

I'm mostly interested in more mainstream materials, like recent~ish litverse-compatible novels, and less interested in comics (though I'll take what I can get), but I don't think materials like the decades-old RP stuff would be very helpful for what I'm looking for. I know there was some kind of huge Orion roleplay pack about a million years ago, but I don't think it's going to have what I'm looking for.

Anyone with a particular interest in Orions wish to share what they know?

 

[DimesDan]

Interesting.

 

[Christopher]

Hi,

Anything in the novelverse that fleshes out the Orions' culture, particularly material to reconcile their depictions throughout TOS and in Enterprise?

The Orions are recurring antagonists in my Enterprise: Rise of the Federation series, and I've tried to explore how ENT's revelations fit in with the rest of what we know about the Orions from other shows and books.

The DS9 post-finale novels feature an Orion ex-slave named Treir as a major character, and the TNG Cold Equations trilogy explores what the Orion homeworld is like in the 24th century, though it's become a very different society by then, at least on the homeworld.

 

[Sci]

Hi,

Anything in the novelverse that fleshes out the Orions' culture, particularly material to reconcile their depictions throughout TOS and in Enterprise?

The Orions are recurring antagonists in my Enterprise: Rise of the Federation series, and I've tried to explore how ENT's revelations fit in with the rest of what we know about the Orions from other shows and books.

The DS9 post-finale novels feature an Orion ex-slave named Treir as a major character, and the TNG Cold Equations trilogy explores what the Orion homeworld is like in the 24th century, though it's become a very different society by then, at least on the homeworld.

Yeah -- Orion in the 2380s has become this sort of corporatist, extreme individualist/libertarian society, which is somewhat in marked contrast to the presence of open slavery and the prevalence of Mafia-like crime syndicates in the 22nd Century.

 

[Paris]

...Yeah -- Orion in the 2380s has become this sort of corporatist, extreme individualist/libertarian society, which is somewhat in marked contrast to the presence of open slavery and the prevalence of Mafia-like crime syndicates in the 22nd Century.

Crazy what 200+ years can do to change a society

 

[Christopher]

^Although the Orion Syndicate is still around in the 24th century and still keeps slaves such as Treir. But we never saw an actual Orion member of the Syndicate in DS9. I get the impression that by the 24th century, the Syndicate has branched out largely beyond its Orion origins. Maybe the homeworld was liberated from its kleptocratic rule and the criminal organization migrated elsewhere.

 

[Markonian]

I get the impression that by the 24th century, the Syndicate has branched out largely beyond its Orion origins. Maybe the homeworld was liberated from its kleptocratic rule and the criminal organization migrated elsewhere.

I wonder whether something like that happened with Nausicaa as well. In the Worlds[/] RPG, Starfleet visited Nausicaa and demanded an end to their piracy, and they turned into traditionalist isolationists on their homeworld, and bouncers/bodyguards in the wider universe.

As with the Orions, it adds a facet to the Trek universe to see an alien society undergo a gradual off-screen change without turning into Federation-membership material right away.

 

[JD]

^Although the Orion Syndicate is still around in the 24th century and still keeps slaves such as Treir. But we never saw an actual Orion member of the Syndicate in DS9. I get the impression that by the 24th century, the Syndicate has branched out largely beyond its Orion origins. Maybe the homeworld was liberated from its kleptocratic rule and the criminal organization migrated elsewhere.

I've had similar thoughts. It seemed weird to me that we got whole DS9 episodes revolving around The Orion Syndicate, but never saw a single Orion or visited their homeworld. I wondered if something happened that separated the Syndicate from it's Orion origins.

 

[Christopher]

I tend to figure that DS9 avoided the Orions for basically the same reason the Berman-produced shows avoided the Andorians for so long -- because they thought that aliens that were just people with bright green skin were too silly. So they limited it to the name drop.

 

[Enterprise1701]

^Although the Orion Syndicate is still around in the 24th century and still keeps slaves such as Treir. But we never saw an actual Orion member of the Syndicate in DS9. I get the impression that by the 24th century, the Syndicate has branched out largely beyond its Orion origins. Maybe the homeworld was liberated from its kleptocratic rule and the criminal organization migrated elsewhere.

That's how the Star Trek Online continuity treats it. Though post-TV episodes, Orion members seize dominant control of the organization back from non-Orion members (bye bye Raimus). And forge an alliance with the Klingon Empire.

 

[Markonian]

I tend to figure that DS9 avoided the Orions for basically the same reason the Berman-produced shows avoided the Andorians for so long -- because they thought that aliens that were just people with bright green skin were too silly. So they limited it to the name drop.

That's too bad, because both species are pretty cool, as we saw with their portrayal in ENT. Species with distinctive skin colors like the green Orions, red Thallonians and yellow thrall on Triskelion make for easily recognizable aliens and provide variety to the rubber-forehead aliens, Imho.

 

[Christopher]

^Again, I'm only speculating, but I imagine that on a show that used advanced latex prosthetics to create aliens, the idea of just slathering somebody otherwise human-looking in brightly colored makeup seemed too low-tech and cheesy. When they did finally show Orion males on ENT, they added the body piercings to give them something more distinctive going on.

Personally, I wish they hadn't been so restricted by TNG-era Roddenberry's insistence that every alien must have some visibly human attribute. They experimented a bit with more exotic aliens like the Selay and Antedeans, but I would've liked to see more use of sophisticated animatronics. They probably would've gotten better at it if they'd tried it more often. One of the things I like about ENT is that it did experiment with more nonhumanoid aliens through CGI, something Voyager also dabbled with occasionally.

 

[Jarvisimo]

Yes this was something I enjoyed in Babylon 5 too, although I remember that cheesy mantis in season one.

 

[Christopher]

Yes this was something I enjoyed in Babylon 5 too, although I remember that cheesy mantis in season one.

Yeah. I like nonhumanoid aliens, but ideally they shouldn't just be a bigger or more bipedal version of an Earth animal, because aliens looking identical to any Earth species, human or not, is equally implausible.