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ToS Aliens... when?
macfelly
Member Posts: 107 Arc User
With the new tokens it was briefly mentioned that ToS aliens would eventually be introduced. STO has a track record of mentioning things then hoping the player base just forgets about it, so I want to keep it fresh in their minds.
Apparently not loyal enough 
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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I don't think they mentioned SPECIFICALLY TOS Aliens. They did talk about the possibility of opening up other species options because of the Captain Alteration Token. Which means the possibility of TOS Caitians exists alongside all the other 2409 options.
Most were seen together in Journey to Babel but some came from other episodes:
Federation members:
Non-Federation or unclear as to whether they are members or not:
In TOS, Starfleet ships were implied (but never explicitly stated, though Intrepid was said to be a "Vulcan ship" and her crew was described as "over four hundred, all Vulcans") to be built to standardized designs by member worlds who would crew them with their people with maybe a few from other races in the mix (like Spock on the Enterprise) instead of a mix of native ship types like today's NATO or UN Peacekeeper forces since they only had the Enterprise model to work with for budgetary reasons, but a starbase or whatever would have a mix of everyone from the various ships in port or assigned to the base (though the majority would probably be locals so there would not be a need to change the current base personnel NPCs. Similarly, there would be little or no need to unlock 'Alien' for the boffs and doffs, but it would be nice to be able to play one of the more exotic races for RP purposes.
I assume it was not because of the quality of the TFO, but the scale. 20 man TFOs, other than Shuttle Fleet Alert, were notorious for not popping because you needed 20 people. Most preferred the standard 5 man TFOs. Shuttle Fleet Alert, on the other hand, was probably the most popular during the old Shuttle Events.
Well I mean they did hint/address it in Enterprise in several ways...T'pol being affected negatively by the pheromones, everyone outside thought the women were slaves when in reality they were in control and it turned out the men were more like the slaves than the women were portrayed as
Being fake slaves was their way of infiltration
SNW addresses it as well, but from the other side, by showing a ship and crew from one of the non-syndicate Orion factions. The unusual type of factionalization the Orions have is probably what confused the Federation since it is probably not something they encounter much in spacefareing nations, and their somewhat naive, optimistic attitude probably does not help either.
The Orions had a big starfaring civilization which apparently lasted for quite a while before something happened that shattered it into little kingdoms or whatever, and those factions drifted apart culturally while at the same time retaining a sense unity and a sort of "don't talk about balkanization" policy, and when negotiating with any of the factions all of them claim that they are the one true government of the Orions and speak for all legitimate Orions everywhere and handwave away any factionalization as just small bands of criminals.
Considering how into sociopolitical analogies and humanist issues Roddenberry was back in the 1960s I suspect that he created the Orions as an analogy to the Red China/Taiwan situation, which he mixed with a Hollywood "Middle Eastern" trope (in case anyone is interested, the exaggerated decoration and whatnot was a style set-dressers often referred to as "Arabian Nightmare" as a wordplay on the collection of stories of a similar name).
Part of the blending was probably to camouflage it a bit from NBC since they forbid him from doing anything having to do with Vietnam (or any other Eastern conflict) because they were afraid of a viewer kickback because of the anti-war sentiments of the time. NBC had not yet caught on to the fact that (as people who knew him often said), the fastest way to get Roddenberry to work on doing something was to tell him not to (he had a lot more of the "contrary nerd" in him than most people realize, a large part of what made him so difficult to work with). Also, the Middle East was almost as much a complex patchwork as it is now (though it had not come to a boil yet) which would have made that trope a good hint at the Orions' (largely obscured) cultural complexities.
As Tandy pointed out in LD, that pheromone thing is a specialized skill that not all Orions can even do. Even the ones who can pull off that pheromone flood probably don't do it as a general thing and use it specifically for that kind of infiltration and takeover operation, so they could probably work alongside Vulcan females in other pursuits without irritating them too much.