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For the love of M'ress
telbasta7386
Member Posts: 761 Arc User
Please work on adding TOS Caitians as a playable race. I can't believe we've gone this long without it. Seems like such a simple addition, all of the assets are there, and we have three canon cases of Caitians being federation members during the TOS era.
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have we had any proper Prime universe live action Caitians since the TOS movies? I know the Kelvin timeline ones claimed to have some but those looked more human then the Miqo'te from Final Fantasy XIV.
Yep, How hard is it to make a Suthay Khajiit, that's the like closest thing a Caitian design.
We have to be accurate: The movies never claimed the twins were Caitian. Canonically they aren't. The reason people think they are is because they had tails (which literally is EVERYTHING they had to go on) and someone asked the producer/director "Are those two the same species as M'Ress from TAS". The person asked - clearly - did not know what the questioner was talking about and replied "Yeah, sure." with no follow up. The original design process for these characters did not involve a Caitian design *at all*.
So, technically, no the twins are not Caitians in canon, and the out-of-universe line that declares them Caitians is questionable at best.
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Actually, the twins were called Caitians in the script, and according to Damon Lindelof that is exactly what they were supposed to be. Corroborating that, according to an interview with the chief makeup artist for the film they were instructed specifically to develop a Caitian makeup for the twins. The problem was that everything they tried with fur on the faces looked really hokey and ugly when trying to keep the face as humanoid as the cartoon, so they tried different sprayed-on skin patterns to simulate very short, fine fur.
They sent models in just the face/chest makeup upstairs to get a greenlight on that version instead of gluing fur on but got the reply "Perfect! Don't change anything, we will add the tails with CGI.", and pointing out that they didn't have the cat ears, eyes, or anything else fell on deaf ears. He mentioned that there were rumors that JJ Abrams was concerned that the film would be banned in some areas because the scene could be interpreted as bestiality if they went too anthro with the makeup, but they never actually got a definitive answer for the change from their original instructions.
Illustrations of what they were trying for in that article showed a Caitian makeup that was reasonably close to how M'Ress looked in TAS, not the monkey girls that were in bed with Kirk in the film.
So, they were indeed supposed to be Caitian and you can blame Abrams getting cold feet for the inaccuracies. In the old days when continuity was more of a concern with the fans (many have given up on it due to NuTrek) they would probably be reconned into a variant race of Caitian (like how Caitians and Kzinti are supposed to be related) to help settle the fanbase down, though if something like that happens now it would be best if they at least put the ears and eyes back on.
That would be pretty cool.
they won't, because the first thing the palyers will say is why cant i use a rifle AND a pistol at the same time? and if the allow that there will be players that cry about OP. it's a lose lose for the dev team
And that's on TOP of having to make a whole new animation set for everything. Emotes, dances... EVERYTHING.
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I can't verify that, so I take your word for it. I just know the make-up designs which didn't involve any fur or cat accessories at all. And even if the script intended them to be Caitians, what we saw *clearly* weren't, so visual evidence trumps intention. It is just open for debate whether we assume they were Caitian and what we saw was a mistake (like one of the numerous costume errors throughout production history) or if we take what we saw as face value. And since they looked nothing like Caitians in any other instance and they weren't identified in dialogue, I lean towards "they weren't Catian".
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> I can't verify that, so I take your word for it. I just know the make-up designs which didn't involve any fur or cat accessories at all. And even if the script intended them to be Caitians, what we saw *clearly* weren't, so visual evidence trumps intention. It is just open for debate whether we assume they were Caitian and what we saw was a mistake (like one of the numerous costume errors throughout production history) or if we take what we saw as face value. And since they looked nothing like Caitians in any other instance and they weren't identified in dialogue, I lean towards "they weren't Catian".
Just chalk it up to the Kelvin timeline being "weird". Just like how their scorpion fighters look drastically different.
> @heroes#9154 said:
> Better yet, give us the Edosian species, I want to make a Arex type Captain with three arms and three legs - we have a semi template with the Undine, just need to add a third arm.
You mean sfc2 hydrans? =p
That would be great, especially if they add some more parts (like more skintones and patterns) to the alien kit to represent more of the TOS aliens.
They are equally likely to take any of those options, or they might even go for yet another makeup that ignores everything that came before (NuTrek is notorious for that kind of thing after all). On the other hand, if they choose to embrace all of them inclusively as different subtypes the Progenitor virus lore does support it, in fact it would be very mild compared to the Xindi situation of developing from totally different species on the Xindi homeworld.
Patterns, skintones. But also fur options, more different kinds of horns, additional head options like breathing tubes, additional eyes...
I'm still hoping that one day we can create realistic Xindi Arboreals, Voth, Caeliar and Heralds.
Add Klingon Hair and tails,
I already have a design in mind for a custom alien species but that to work, I need a tail and some body fur, as for the design itself let's just say I was inspired by the Monkey King and Planet of the Apes, plus I already placed their planet on the Romulan side of the Neutral Zone.
> Whilst you're at it, please give the Catians and Ferasians the barefoot option they already have in off-duty outfits and put it into their standard uniforms, (Flaming, trolling comments moderated out. - BMR)
I agree.
Before you ask, Yes I'm counting Kzinti and Ferasan as two different offshoots despite Ferasans being STO's answer to Kzinti, we also have the Lyrans and the Mirak, from this information it seems like the Caitian people experimented with genetic enhancements quite a bit.
So, originally there were the Kzinti, and it's theorized that the caitians and ferasans are offshoots of the Kzinti.
Mirak and Lyrans are also said to be offshoots on the Kzinti.
However, this all comes down to copyright politics. The creators of STO and SFC2 did not have legal rights to use the Kzinti and were denied when asked, so they came up with "stand-ins"; those being the Caitians/Ferasans and Mirak/Lyrans.
In SFC2, Mirak and Lyrans were two different species, but there were lore hints that they were from the same source, and that pissed off both of them because they hated each other so much which led to the wars between them. Mechanically, this was done so that the two factions of that game ('allies' and 'bad guys') could have equal numbers of empires working for each. Similarly, in STO, we started off with Caitians being added (probably to appeal to the players like myself who like these kinds of races), and in response to the KDF side always complaining about being treated unfairly with game content releases they were given the ferasans years later as an equivalent.
Ultimately, they're all Kzinti by a different name.
I'd say its more they're both feline races and that's about it. In STO we know there's a big rivalry between Caitians and Ferasans, almost like one's an offshoot of the other and they're still antagonistic towards each other. But I wouldn't call them Kzinti as it is possible to have more than one feline race evolve independantly from the Kzinti. It would be like saying that the lythe Caitians are the same species as the bulky Kilrathi from Wing Commander since they both happen to be feline.
SFC2 wanted to use the Kzinti but couldn't, so they made the Mirak, which comes across more canine.
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So they're like Space Hyenas?
The Lyrans looked identical to Kzinti, tbh.
And there's a lot of comparisons here between the Lyrans and Mirak, and the Caitians and Ferasans. They both have rivalries with one another, they're both said to be stand-ins for Kzinti due to legal reasons, chances are they're all the same race, or subsets of the same race.
Back on topic, TOS aliens sounds like a good idea for at least captains, since for boffs you can always use 2409s and buy the TOS uniforms.
Feline races were very popular in sci-fi back then (along with the shortcut of describing alien races by comparing them to the nearest real-world Terran animal), and there were quite a few in different works. If anything, the Caitians are more like Andre Norton's very civilized and hedonistic Salariki than they are to the aggressive, militaristic Kzinti.