Where did all the dangerous races go?

[FordSVT]

^It is a good joke.

I always half-expected to see the Sheliak in DS9, joining sides with the Dominion. An anti-humanoid league would have been fun.

The Dominion weren't anti-human, they were anti-solid. They were afraid of those who could not take a myriad of forms and who they felt were limited by their single, isolated shape. In that reguard it would appear the Sheliak were no different than Humans, as I doubt a shape-shifter exposed amongst the Sheliak ranks would provoke positive feelings.

However, if they're truly isolationist and xenophobic towards all other races as they were presented, the Dominion might not even see them as worth the resources to attempt to conquer.

And BTW, I never saw the Sheliak as being "more advanced" than the Feds as the OP contends, all we know about them is that they have a ship with comparable weaponry to the Enterprise D. They might have one of them and that's it, and they might have inferior technology in many other areas. Just because the Federation made a treaty with them doesn't mean they were superior or threatening, it's what the Federation does, they make agreements and try to maintain good or at least stable relationships with other societies.

 

[Myasishchev]

^It is a good joke.

I always half-expected to see the Sheliak in DS9, joining sides with the Dominion. An anti-humanoid league would have been fun.

The Dominion weren't anti-human, they were anti-solid. They were afraid of those who could not take a myriad of forms and who they felt were limited by their single, isolated shape. In that reguard it would appear the Sheliak were no different than Humans, as I doubt a shape-shifter exposed amongst the Sheliak ranks would provoke positive feelings.

However, if they're truly isolationist and xenophobic towards all other races as they were presented, the Dominion might not even see them as worth the resources to attempt to conquer.

And BTW, I never saw the Sheliak as being "more advanced" than the Feds as the OP contends, all we know about them is that they have a ship with comparable weaponry to the Enterprise D. They might have one of them and that's it, and they might have inferior technology in many other areas. Just because the Federation made a treaty with them doesn't mean they were superior or threatening, it's what the Federation does, they make agreements and try to maintain good or at least stable relationships with other societies.

All valid points.

My notion of an anti-humanoid league doesn't require the Founders to actually have any great respect for non-humanoid solids, but given that the great majority of solids seem to be humanoids and that the Fed Alliance was at least almost totally comprised of not just solids but humanoid solids, I think it would have been easy propaganda to perpetrate.

Kind of like how the Imperial Japanese tried to paint themselves as the vanquishers of the colonialists during the Second World War (despite being some of the most vicious colonialists themselves). It is transparently obvious today, and almost certainly must have been even at the time, that the Japanese could not give a single crap about the conquered colonies other than how best to exploit them, but a good number of "liberated" colonial subjects wound up working, somewhat voluntarily, with the Japanese. For example, more than 40,000 Indians joined the Japanese-sponsored Indian National Army under Bose.

I could see this kind of propaganda working well in the humanoid-dominated AQ, if not with the legalistic Sheliak then perhaps the Tholians or the Gorn or whoever. Perhaps the anti-humanoid crusade was the never-stated reason that brought the Breen to the table, who knows?

 

[DevilEyes]

I could see this kind of propaganda working well in the humanoid-dominated AQ, if not with the legalistic Sheliak then perhaps the Tholians or the Gorn or whoever. Perhaps the anti-humanoid crusade was the never-stated reason that brought the Breen to the table, who knows?

We don't know what the Breen look like, do we? For all we know, they might be humanoid... their bodies certainly seem so - we even know that their uniforms can be worn by Bajorans and Cardassians! That at least implies a similar body shape.

 

[Myasishchev]

We don't, is true. Just speculatin'.

I always thought of them as based on an ammonia biochemistry. That would permit them to still technically follow a humanoid body plan, but they would be more biochemically alien than most.