The Sheliak... What happened to them?

[Melakon]

The Tholian live in extreme conditions, very hot for one thing, one would think their silk would need the same constraints, they certainly couldn't wear OUR silk, could they?

That's why it's called THOLIAN silk. It's doubtful any terran silkworms live there.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

The Tholian live in extreme conditions, very hot for one thing, one would think their silk would need the same constraints, they certainly couldn't wear OUR silk, could they?

That's why it's called THOLIAN silk. It's doubtful any terran silkworms live there.

My point is that I doubt that their silk would be suitable for a terran woman to wear, let alone comfortable. They are crystalline beings (silicon based, unlike us that are carbon based) and their living conditions include a temperature of over two hundred degrees Celsius. Their silk is likely to be some kind of glass wool!

 

[JD5000]

I always had the impression that it was called 'Tholian Silk' because it came from Tholians. Not like as an industry, but some kind of physical byproduct of Tholians themselves. If that's the case, I doubt they wear it themselves. Gross.

 

[Orphalesion]

^That was also my impression the silk is either some sort of biological product (possibly waste?) of the Tholians themselves or some other creature on their planet. The Tholians have no use for it, so they trade it to others.

Or it could be that it reaches Federation space through Tholian space with them acting as middlemen so to the Federation it is (or at point was) Silk coming to them from the Tholians and the name stuck.

 

[publiusr]

I get re-using the armus costume what with budget and time constraints--but their ship--a combination of Vulcan shuttle and Merchantman--a simple saucer might have been a better choice.

 

[Kronos]

The Federation quietly subjugated them, same thing they always do to species we don't see again.

 

[Ethros]

re: the Sheliak and the Dominion War. Weren't they miles away from the Federation core in that episode? (you know what I mean by miles )

I haven't got them to hand and I know they're not canon, but the Star Trek Star Charts puts them pretty far out. ie its not like they were that close to Cardassian space

 

[JD5000]

Relatively, Bajor is pretty 'far out' if you use Sol as a central point, but the Federation found an interest in them. The Cardassian occupation had been going on for decades, next to the Cardassian, Tzenkethi, Ferengi etc borders but suddenly in 2368 Bajor became important when the Cardassian-Federation war ended and the Maquis started messing with things. Then the magic wormhole was discovered a couple years later, and it became even more important.

I guess the Sheliak were isolationist and far removed from the current drama on the other side of the quadrant, and as Winglsey pointed out, the writer that created them quit, so they weren't a species that the series would have focused on.

It would have been interesting to see the whole Dominion War story arc focus on a truly alien species like the Sheliak instead of the Cardassians. The whole Trek universe would be very different if the wormhole had been discovered in their neighborhood.

 

[Marsden]

The Tholian live in extreme conditions, very hot for one thing, one would think their silk would need the same constraints, they certainly couldn't wear OUR silk, could they?

That's why it's called THOLIAN silk. It's doubtful any terran silkworms live there.

My point is that I doubt that their silk would be suitable for a terran woman to wear, let alone comfortable. They are crystalline beings (silicon based, unlike us that are carbon based) and their living conditions include a temperature of over two hundred degrees Celsius. Their silk is likely to be some kind of glass wool!

This is one occasion I agree with you, I think someone wanted a "Star Trek word" to plug into a script, had a vauge recollection of seeing Tholian Web somewhere, concluded Tholians are like spiders and make silk.

 

[Timo]

Relatively, Bajor is pretty 'far out' if you use Sol as a central point, but the Federation found an interest in them.

Bajor doesn't seem to be physically distant from Earth - according to dialogue and events, it only takes about a week to get there in a runabout or like vessel, and less than that in a proper starship. (Say, Jouret VI, credited in "Best of Both Worlds" as being one of the outermost colonies of the UFP, is potentially also about a week away - but counted at the top speed of Starfleet's mightiest vessel, which may well move thousands if not millions of times faster than a speeding runabout.)

It's more like Bajor was psychologically distant: there was nothing interesting there, and she was being occupied by enemies of the UFP but the Feds weren't in a position to do much about it and probably felt embarrassed about that.

In contrast, the Sheliak are in Star Charts associated with Beta Lyrae, which is a real star far away (950 ly) and is often called by the name Sheliak in the real world. This may be a false connection, of course, and the similarity in names is mere coincidence...

The colony claimed by them was Tau Cygna, which also need not be the real Tau Cygni which is just 69 lightyears away.

Timo Saloniemi