The Monstrefact: The Andorians of Star Trek

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Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of Iheartradio.

Hi.

My name is Robert Lam, and this is the monster fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time.

In this episode, I'd like to begin a series on various aliens and creatures from the Star Trek universe.

Now first of all, I will be the first to admit that I am not an expert in Trek lore, but I very fondly remember, as a kid in the nineties, watching reruns of Star Trek The Next Generation every weeknight at 9 PM.

I also fondly remember a book that I had to special order from the local bookstore, Star Trek, The Worlds of the Federation, written and illustrated by Laura Johnson, writing as Shane Johnson.

This was an encyclopedic collection of alien profiles, you know, think of it as a monster manual, if you will, covering 32 different Federation member alien species as well as a number of neutral and hostile aliens.

This was a 1989 publication, so it's far from current and is not considered part of current Trek canon.

And I'm to understand some Trek writers took issue with some of the entries.

Still, it's a book that meant a lot to me as a young Trekkie, and I suspect it meant a lot to others from this time period as well.

So I'm gonna go ahead and cite it along with some other sources with the caveat that again it's not canon much in the same way I cited the Dune Encyclopedia in some of my Dune related entries.

With all of that in mind, let's turn to the Andorians.

These blue skinned, white haired, antennae equipped aliens are iconic original series aliens, but they were rather exotic for me as they're virtually absent from both Star Trek The Next Generation and Star Trek Deep Space 9, which constituted my Prime Trek viewing.

The reasoning for their absence according to the excellent, memory alpha, was largely twofold.

First of all, Trek creator Gene Roddenberry preferred that many original series aliens be avoided in favor of new ones on the next generation.

Secondly, the makeup was allegedly difficult to get right and avoid looking silly.

They overcame these hurdles in subsequent shows and in the current Star Trek Strange New World series, which I'm enjoying quite a bit, we encounter an albino subspecies of Andorians known as the Yeenar as well as an Andorian special forces officer, and neither of these aliens looks remotely silly.

But let's come back to the biology of the Andorians.

The worlds of the Federation describes them as a mix of mammalian and reptilian features with both an endoskeleton and a limited exoskeleton, and the antennae are described as enhancing otherwise colorblind vision with a, quote, complex matrix of light sensitive cones in addition to auditory functions.

All of this together would amount to an enhanced sense of sight and smell.

Fair enough.

Obvious sense organs do sense organ things.

Antennae and terrestrial organisms remember very greatly and depending on the species may utilize senses of touch, air motion, heat, vibration, smell, or taste.

But again, the worlds of the federation came out in 1989 before a particular 1993 episode of The Next Generation shed a great deal of canonical light on the biology of Star Trek.

The episode titled The Chase, which I specifically remember from my childhood, revealed the reason so many Star Trek alien species are humanoid and resemble each other, often with minor alterations to facial and cranial features.

All of this via a revelation of ancient intentional panspermia via a single advanced progenitor humanoid species.

In other words, all of these Trek species look similar not because they're all humans in makeup, but rather because a single ancestor species spread their own DNA among the various worlds to seed them.

I've always found this to be a clever way of addressing the seeming lack of biological diversity in many of the tracked civilizations.

Now you might reasonably wonder, okay, fine.

But realistically, would these distantly related species still look so similar to each other?

Well, Susan and Robert Jenkins explore this question in their book, The Biology of Star Trek published in 1998.

They point out that based on what we know about evolution, it's not at all unreasonable.

The evolutionary clock runs slowly, they write, and it has a built in bias against major overhauls.

Because speciation is brought about by multiple random changes in DNA and the changes must allow the organism to survive and reproduce, small changes are favored over large ones.

Small changes are less likely to compromise the tested survivability of the original.

Given this constraint, 2 species that start out alike remain similar over a rather long time even under different sets of environmental pressures.

They add that particular environmental pressures would, of course, have their impact and a trend towards facial symmetry would likely stay in place.

They go into greater detail in this great book about not only the speculative biology of all of this but also the connections between human facial cues and the way we imagine the facial features of Trek's aliens and they do get around to considering the Andorians.

They point out that while nothing resembling a human with antennae exists in the natural world, we, of course, do have mammalian species with enhanced whiskers, and I would point out that we have, other things, like the unique proboscis of the star nosed mole and the twin feelers of the tentacled snake to get into the reptile world.

For the Andorians, however, they propose an interesting notion.

Perhaps, the Andorian home world contains multiple atmospheric variations and this results in various microclimates requiring enhanced sensation of atmospheric content temperature and pressure for any species that regularly travels outside of a narrow region or microclimate.

They even go so far as to discuss how tissues in human embryos might develop into antennae under the right survival pressures.

Quote, human embryos have several segments called embryonic pharyngeal arches in what will become the head and the neck.

They supply the developing tissue for jaws and some neck organs.

In fish, however, the pharyngeal arches develop into gills because these structures have been adapted for very different purposes.

They might evolve to provide the organ substrate for the nervous tissue in an antenna like organ.

More broadly, they point out that added sense organs could potentially detect any number of factors in a given environment provided there was an evolutionary incentive to do so.

Memory alpha provides little canonical data on all of this as far as I could tell, but it does point out that we know that Andorian antennae can be moved independently via voluntary muscle control, that they regenerate if they are injured or, you know, blasted off.

And, they also seem to play a role in balance and gesticulation and, of course, therefore communication.

I think all of this is quite reasonable.

Now coming back to Star Trek Strange New Worlds, the Yeenar character, Hemmer, in that show is depicted as having been born sightless, but is more than able to make up for his lack of sight in part due to his other senses as a member of an antennae equipped Andorian subspecies.

Tune in for additional episodes of the monster fact, the artifact, or Animalia stupendium each week.

I'm gonna try and press on with more trek selections for the monster fact.

So please send in your recommendations and, that may help me figure out what the next 3 or 4 of these will be.

As always, you can email us at contact atstuffedibleyourmind.com.

Stuff to blow your mind is a production of Iheartradio.

For more podcasts from Iheartradio, visit the Iheartradio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Today's episode is brought to you by Visible.

The future of wireless is here, and it's transparent.

Switch to Visible, the wireless company that makes wireless visible.

Get a one line plan with unlimited 5 g data powered by Verizon, just $25 a month, every month, taxes and fees included.

No hidden fees.

No surprises.

No.

Really.

What are you waiting for?

Get with the times and switch to visible@visible.com.

Monthly rate on the Visible plan for data management practices and additional terms, visit visible.com.