The Monstrefact: The Andorians of Star Trek

In this episode of STBYM’s The Monstrefact, Robert discusses the blue-skinned, antennae-equipped aliens of the Star Trek universe… 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hi, my name is Robert Lamb, 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,

(00:31):
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 nine PM. I also fondly remember a book that
I had a special order from the local bookstore, Star
Trek The Worlds of the Federation, written and illustrated by

(00:52):
Laura Johnson writing as Shane Johnson. This was an encyclopedic
collection of alien profiles. Think of it as a monster manual,
if you will, covering thirty two different Federation member alien species,
as well as a number of neutral and hostile aliens.
This was a nineteen eighty nine publication, so it's far
from current and is not considered part of current Trek canon.

(01:16):
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 Treki, and I
suspect it meant a lot to others from this time
period as well, So I'm going to 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

(01:37):
related entries. With all of that in mind, let's turn
to the Andrians. These blue skinned, white haired, antinny 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 Nine,

(01:57):
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

(02:18):
get right and avoid looking silly. They overcame these hurdles
and subsequent shows, and in the current Star Trek Strange
New World series, which I'm enjoying quite a bit, we
encounter an albinos subspecies of Andrians known as the Nar,
as well as an Andrian Special Forces officer, and neither
of these aliens looks remotely silly. But let's come back

(02:41):
to the biology of the Andorans. The Worlds of the
Federation describes them as a mix of mammalian and reptilian features,
with both an indoskeleton 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

(03:03):
enhanced sense of sight and smell. Fair enough obvious sense
organs do sense organ things. Antenny interrestrial 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 nineteen eighty nine before a particular nineteen ninety

(03:25):
three 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,
reveal 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

(03:49):
of ancient intentional pan spermia via a single advanced progenitor
humanoid species. In other words, all of these Trek species
look similar not because they are all humans in make up,
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

(04:10):
seeming lack of biological diversity in many of the core
Tract civilizations. Now you might reasonably wonder, okay, fine, but realistically,
with 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

(04:31):
nineteen ninety eight. 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

(04:52):
are favored over large ones. Small changes are less likely
to compromise the tested survivability of the original. Given this constraint,
two 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

(05:15):
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 treks 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

(05:37):
mammalian species with enhanced whiskers, and I would point out
that we have other things like the unique probosis of
the star No's mole and the twin feelers of the
tentacled snake to get into the reptile world. For the Andrians, however,
they propose an interesting notion, perhaps the Andorian home world
contains multiple atmospheric variations, and this results in various micro climates,

(06:01):
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

(06:22):
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.

(06:44):
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 Andoran and Kenny can be moved
independently via voluntary muscle control that they regenerate if they

(07:06):
are injured or 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's Strange New Worlds, the nar
character Himmer in that show is depicted as having been
born sightless, but is more than able to make up

(07:28):
for his lack of sight in part due to his
other senses as a member of an antennae equipped and
Dorian subspecies. Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster Fact,
The Artifact or Animalius Stupendium each week. I'm going to
try and press on with more Trek selections for The
Monster Fact, so please send in your recommendations and that

(07:51):
may help me figure out what the next three or
four of these will be. As always, you can email
us at contact at Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
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