The Monstrefact: The Andorians of Star Trek

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 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. 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 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, 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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

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

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 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, 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 Andoran and Kenny can be moved independently via voluntary muscle control that they regenerate if they 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 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 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.