Andorians in Discovery Era.

shalenn1 · August 2022

I wish Andorians were a playable race/species in the Discovery Era.Because,they are a founding member of the United Federation of Planets and the storyline has an Andorian captain {Shren} and a crewman.If we ,the players can get this,it would be nice.But,if not,I'll understand.Please let us know why we can't play Andorians if the race/species is unavailable? Thank you and take care!

rattler2 · August 2022

They're actually working on that. Last report was that DSC Andorians are close. If it will be cosmetic options for existing Andorians or a subspecies like how they split TNG and DSC style Klingons, I don't know. But word is they are coming in some form or another.

baddmoonrizin · August 2022

rattler2 wrote: »

They're actually working on that. Last report was that DSC Andorians are close. If it will be cosmetic options for existing Andorians or a subspecies like how they split TNG and DSC style Klingons, I don't know. But word is they are coming in some form or another.

Kahless, I hope it's a cosmetic option and not a separate race. I don't like that they made DSC Klingons a separate race instead of a cosmetic option for all Klingons.

paradox · August 2022

rattler2 wrote: »

They're actually working on that. Last report was that DSC Andorians are close. If it will be cosmetic options for existing Andorians or a subspecies like how they split TNG and DSC style Klingons, I don't know. But word is they are coming in some form or another.

This right here, also would like to announce that I've returned.

Unknown · August 2022

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allyoftheforce · August 2022

Yes, more Andorian Barbies for my BOffs, erm I mean...

angrytarg · August 2022

Also Tellarites, please?

wraithshadow13 · August 2022

baddmoonrizin wrote: »

Kahless, I hope it's a cosmetic option and not a separate race. I don't like that they made DSC Klingons a separate race instead of a cosmetic option for all Klingons.

Or like the did the Caitians/Ferasans for the KDF? I wonder if they will do that for the different Era Gorn, as well. I'll be curious to see what SNW does for the Gorn.

As for me, i am NOT a fan of disco's redesigns of most of the race, but that's a personal preference and i am ALL for getting more options and improvements to the character creators. And let's be honest... no matter how much i might dislike the disco designs, it's better than some of the horrors we already see walking around from the alien creator, lol

wraithshadow13 · August 2022

Random double post... sorry.

Unknown · August 2022

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phoenixc · August 2022

baddmoonrizin wrote: »

rattler2 wrote: »

They're actually working on that. Last report was that DSC Andorians are close. If it will be cosmetic options for existing Andorians or a subspecies like how they split TNG and DSC style Klingons, I don't know. But word is they are coming in some form or another.

Kahless, I hope it's a cosmetic option and not a separate race. I don't like that they made DSC Klingons a separate race instead of a cosmetic option for all Klingons.

Considering Glenn Hetrick's comments about not all Klingon houses being native to Qo'nos it might literally be a case of different races fused into a single cultural entity called "Klingon". If that is the case then the various wildly different looks could either be entirely different races physically or they could have been mixed somehow in the past and various groups show different mixes of the original features or whatever.

While the mix option is more complicated, even it would not be too unbelievable since it has been done in sci-fi before with races that were manufactured by combining several others genetically or by other techniques by alien overlords seeking the perfect slave work or fighting force, which then turned on thier creators/overlords and kicked them out/killed them all/whatever (which would fit Klingon lore reasonably well).

rattler2 · August 2022

I honestly view the TNG vs DSC appearances as different ethnic groups, like here on Earth. After all... those of European decent look different from African, who in turn look different from Asian...

With alien species those differences could be a lot more extreme.

legendarylycan · August 2022

Differences apparently as extreme as elongated skulls, which did not exist before Discovery, and I don't see a feature like that evolving naturally (then again, this is the franchise with LEGO genetics, so maybe it did) - there are some ethnic groups with elongated skulls among humans, but that was done DELIBERATELY to mirror the appearance of crystal skulls. So unless crystal skull aliens also exist in Star Trek, visited Klingons at some point and those Klingons also decided to bind their children's heads to mimic that for...whatever reason, there's still no explanation for that difference other than change for the sake of change.

inferiority · August 2022

TOS Andorians are merely regular Andorians with different cosmetic options.
TOS Gorn are merely regular Gorn with different cosmetic options.
DSC Klingons are likely a different species due to them having a different character model.
DSC Andorians only have a very subtle set of cosmetic differences over other Andorians so we'll probably just have regular Andorians with cosmetic options.

rattler2 · August 2022

legendarylycan#5411 wrote: »

Differences apparently as extreme as elongated skulls, which did not exist before Discovery, and I don't see a feature like that evolving naturally (then again, this is the franchise with LEGO genetics, so maybe it did) - there are some ethnic groups with elongated skulls among humans, but that was done DELIBERATELY to mirror the appearance of crystal skulls. So unless crystal skull aliens also exist in Star Trek, visited Klingons at some point and those Klingons also decided to bind their children's heads to mimic that for...whatever reason, there's still no explanation for that difference other than change for the sake of change.

There wasn't an explanation over TOS vs TNG Klingons for a LONG time. Behind the scenes apparently it was "they were always supposed to look like that." On screen the best we got was "we don't like to talk about it" joke in DS9. It wasn't until Enterprise we got an explanation for the TOS Klingons.

And after DSC s2, the Klingons look more TNG like, AND with Picard s3 coming up, Worf still looks like himself. Maybe a bit more detail on the ridges, but he looks full TNG style.

angrytarg · August 2022

We know through behind the scenes stuff that DSC changed Klingons because they wanted to. Only due to the backlash they backpedaled a bit. Same with the Gorn in SNW by the way. They were portrayed like they were for no other reason than 'it's cool'. They wanted to include H.R. Giger - esque designs so badly we got DSC klingons, and the Gorn became straight alien xenomorph rip-offs. Someone's behind the scenes is so obsessed with that particular design language it'll happen again and again while canon is in damage control mode with half-hearted flimsy excuses ('we shave our heads in war' - sure, except, no, never...)

phoenixc · August 2022

The real main reason for the difference between TOS and TNG Klingons is that Paramount Pictures wanted to coattail the much more flamboyant Star Wars to attract the moviegoers who flocked to it, and the latex appliances were a major part of that effort. While the Klingons were the main casualty of that Hollywood rubber revolution, it also led to the unending "rubber forehead of the week" that became such a stale, overused thing in the Treks after TOS.

There have always been two main camps in sci-fi about spacefaring species, one where spontaneous intelligence is rare and there are few distinct intelligent species out there, and the other (sometimes called the "alien zoo" school) exploding with a plethora of unique alien forms everywhere you look. Star Trek firmly established itself as the former style in TOS where most humanoids were related to each other in some distant past (more about that later), while Star Wars went the second route (which makes sense since it is the most common in space opera style novels).

Another common split is the forerunner-cycle style were civilizations rise up, go for a while, then fall for various reasons, usually leaving widely scattered isolated worlds who begin the cycle again, and its opposite the static long history style where early spacefarers rise up until they hit some sort of plateau where technology and society start stagnating for multiple millennia.

Star Trek TOS firmly established itself as forerunner-cycle style and most of the worlds were populated by people who were essentially different ethnic groups (sometimes adapted to local conditions) composed of the survivors of those cycles (and also some who were descendants of people abducted and moved by the Preservers) rather than separate species that somehow developed in close enough parallel evolution to actually be interfertile with each other, while Star Wars is typical of the stagnant style.

In attempting to shoehorn Trek into the Star Wars mold, Paramount created an uneasy situation that forced Trek to tightrope-walk between the two styles, (as well as to attempt to navigate the realspace vs. hyperspace style divide, but that is another subject), which only became manageable by making the Progenitors and their humanoid-farming efforts to explain how all the crazy rubber-appliance-feature people could be somehow biologically compatible across species lines.

As for the Andorians, it turns out that they were one of the UFO mythos nods they did in TOS. The Talosians were a "more rational and realistic" depiction of the Grays (the big eyes just looked silly and fake with the appliance tech of the time, so they left those out), and are fairly obvious for what they are supposed to be, but surprisingly enough to anyone not familiar with the UFO mythos of the time the Andorians were a nod to one of the types of Men in Black.

There was a relatively famous incident in ufological circles which was heavily featured in occult/UFO magazines like Fate back in the mid 1960s that is probably what the Trek writers based them on. In that incident the three MiBs who approached the witness were a variant of the classic "Nordic alien" type (there are actually a lot of MiB types, including human, btw). They had skin that was too smooth, pale and slightly bluish, and fine features but a strange look in their eyes. As they got nearer a gust of wind blew the hat off of one of them, which revealed translucent white hair and (not very well described) antennae before he caught and replaced his hat.

The TOS Andorians are considerably bluer than the ones described, but otherwise they do match pretty well, the ENT ones somewhat less so with their wrinkly foreheads, but still reasonable.

The Aenar from SNW does not fit at all, but ironically he is slightly similar to a different MiB myth from 1973 where a woman named Pauline saw a UFO close up and was afterwards visited by an "Old Man in Black" who was skeletally thin with his skin bunched up and wrinkled like a hound and had red eyes that smoldered like hot coals. He was dressed in a shabby black suit and had a 1950s style fedora hat. He compelled her to invite him into her house and held her mind in thrall while he harangued her and warned her to never, ever, speak of the UFO incident, then left.

The mental hold broke when the door shut and she went to it and looked out, but the OMiB was gone and in his place a sinister-looking black dog with exactly the same red eyes. The dog stalked around threateningly, seeming to radiate waves of malevolence until a black Cadillac with dark tinted windows from about the same time period as the OMiB's suit pulled up and the door opened, whereupon the dog jumped in and the car pulled away.

rattler2 · August 2022

The Aenar were first seen in Enterprise though.

paradox · August 2022

angrytarg wrote: »

We know through behind the scenes stuff that DSC changed Klingons because they wanted to. Only due to the backlash they backpedaled a bit. Same with the Gorn in SNW by the way. They were portrayed like they were for no other reason than 'it's cool'. They wanted to include H.R. Giger - esque designs so badly we got DSC klingons, and the Gorn became straight alien xenomorph rip-offs. Someone's behind the scenes is so obsessed with that particular design language it'll happen again and again while canon is in damage control mode with half-hearted flimsy excuses ('we shave our heads in war' - sure, except, no, never...)

Like couldn't those designs be better used on a new species instead of previous established ones, like use it to design the Anti-Q, a demonic equivalent of the Continuum.

rattler2 · August 2022

paradox#7391 wrote: »

Like couldn't those designs be better used on a new species instead of previous established ones, like use it to design the Anti-Q, a demonic equivalent of the Continuum.

That feels a bit too much like a rehash of the Prophets/Pah Wraiths relationship covered in DS9.

phoenixc · August 2022

rattler2 wrote: »

The Aenar were first seen in Enterprise though.

True, they were first seen ENT, but I was mainly talking about Hemmer (I had forgotten his name when I wrote that previous comment) and his extreme LaTexification being similar to the OMiB in the myth from 1973.

I think he might be a bit of an outlier though, unless they are a lot less similar to the blue Andorians in NuTrek than they were in ENT, since the DSC Andorians do not have quite the pug level of wrinkles and crags that Hemmer has (though some of them are headed that way more than others).

Also, the blue Andorian at the bar in the background in Spock Amok, while not clearly visible in any of the scenes, if you look very carefully at the way the light plays on the blur their skin is smooth at least from the eyeline down to the chin without the lumps bumps and ridges the DSC ones have (while it might just be skimping on the makeup for a barely visible character, it could also mean that NuTrek has both the ENT types and the DSC types).

angrytarg · August 2022

It‘s the same with the Tellarites, really. Every time we saw them they looked quite radically different from the last time. TOS had them be regular sized people with pig noses and dark eyes, the make-up test in the credits still had the more bestial hoof-style hands which however and sadly never turned up again. Then a few background cameos in the movies which may or may not be tellarites at all made them more bald and wrinkly. ENT went full on melted dwarves, even shrinking them across the board for whatever reason. DSC then has them be regular sized again, gives them a warthog aesthetic, again completely different from before. LD had them more or less back at TOS with ENT/STO beards. And Prodigy suddenly reintroduced the three-fingered hands again.

At this point there is very little consistency.

legendarylycan · August 2022

Or, you know, Hemmer is just old - humans can look like pugs when they reach old age too.

paradox · August 2022

angrytarg wrote: »

It‘s the same with the Tellarites, really. Every time we saw them they looked quite radically different from the last time. TOS had them be regular sized people with pig noses and dark eyes, the make-up test in the credits still had the more bestial hoof-style hands which however and sadly never turned up again. Then a few background cameos in the movies which may or may not be tellarites at all made them more bald and wrinkly. ENT went full on melted dwarves, even shrinking them across the board for whatever reason. DSC then has them be regular sized again, gives them a warthog aesthetic, again completely different from before. LD had them more or less back at TOS with ENT/STO beards. And Prodigy suddenly reintroduced the three-fingered hands again.

At this point there is very little consistency.

Personally I'm more of a fan of the Pig/TOS and Warthog/DSC tellarites over the Melted Dwarves/ENT tellarites.

paradox · August 2022

rattler2 wrote: »

legendarylycan#5411 wrote: »

Differences apparently as extreme as elongated skulls, which did not exist before Discovery, and I don't see a feature like that evolving naturally (then again, this is the franchise with LEGO genetics, so maybe it did) - there are some ethnic groups with elongated skulls among humans, but that was done DELIBERATELY to mirror the appearance of crystal skulls. So unless crystal skull aliens also exist in Star Trek, visited Klingons at some point and those Klingons also decided to bind their children's heads to mimic that for...whatever reason, there's still no explanation for that difference other than change for the sake of change.

There wasn't an explanation over TOS vs TNG Klingons for a LONG time. Behind the scenes apparently it was "they were always supposed to look like that." On screen the best we got was "we don't like to talk about it" joke in DS9. It wasn't until Enterprise we got an explanation for the TOS Klingons.

And after DSC s2, the Klingons look more TNG like, AND with Picard s3 coming up, Worf still looks like himself. Maybe a bit more detail on the ridges, but he looks full TNG style.

Also kind of like TOS Romulans and TNG Romulans with Picard explaining that the forehead thing is a regional variant, like Northern/Canadian Romulans having forehead ridges and Southern/American Romulans having no ridges, I figured I'd use Canada and America as examples of North and South to get the point across.

legendarylycan · August 2022

Or, you know...you could use North America and South America since we're talking about GLOBAL north and south.

rattler2 · August 2022

Compared to some of the Andorians we've seen, he looks about right to me. And if we use Captain Shran from STO as another example, seems about right to me too. They could have tweaked the look because he's Aenar, or he could be a bit older than we suspect. We don't know. But IMO the DSC style antennae feel like a cross between the TOS and ENT style. Thicker like the TOS, but mobile like the ENT. And in an environment like Andoria, I can see that being a thing because of the harsh terrain.

At the end of the day though its probably similar to the Romulans, essentially ethnic groups. (In universe explanation)

tmassx · August 2022

paradox#7391 wrote: »

Personally I'm more of a fan of the Pig/TOS and Warthog/DSC tellarites over the Melted Dwarves/ENT tellarites.

I have exactly the opposite tastes, I like most the eternally angry fatties from ENT.

stark2k · August 2022

baddmoonrizin wrote: »

rattler2 wrote: »

They're actually working on that. Last report was that DSC Andorians are close. If it will be cosmetic options for existing Andorians or a subspecies like how they split TNG and DSC style Klingons, I don't know. But word is they are coming in some form or another.

Kahless, I hope it's a cosmetic option and not a separate race. I don't like that they made DSC Klingons a separate race instead of a cosmetic option for all Klingons.

hmm? Opening that option for existing ones are nice, but remember for those who create a NEW character in the disco era, it needs to be somewhat separate. It's hard because there are only 2 options in DISCO era tutorial, humans and vulcans. The third one which is alien I do not count per se.

Having the options to create an Andorian and a Tellerite Captain in the DISCO tutorial is what I myself desire. That includes the DISCO badge icon for your Captain and disco crew - separating them from your standard starfleet badge icon or temporal badge icon.

paradox · August 2022

stark2k wrote: »

baddmoonrizin wrote: »

rattler2 wrote: »

They're actually working on that. Last report was that DSC Andorians are close. If it will be cosmetic options for existing Andorians or a subspecies like how they split TNG and DSC style Klingons, I don't know. But word is they are coming in some form or another.

Kahless, I hope it's a cosmetic option and not a separate race. I don't like that they made DSC Klingons a separate race instead of a cosmetic option for all Klingons.

hmm? Opening that option for existing ones are nice, but remember for those who create a NEW character in the disco era, it needs to be somewhat separate. It's hard because there are only 2 options in DISCO era tutorial, humans and vulcans. The third one which is alien I do not count per se.

Having the options to create an Andorian and a Tellerite Captain in the DISCO tutorial is what I myself desire. That includes the DISCO badge icon for your Captain and disco crew - separating them from your standard starfleet badge icon or temporal badge icon.

Just give them the same treatment as a TOS Tellarites, where they're faction locked option until the 25th century, or make them like TOS Klingons where you unlock the cosmetic options for 25th century Klingons by doing the "Battle of Caleb IV" mission, like making DSC Faction a requirement for it.

Andorians in Discovery Era.

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