A few years back I did a couple years of “Alien Sundays” where I would introduce ideas for alien species. Eventually those posts had to wind down, but just because I haven’t posted about them in a long time doesn’t mean that I’ve stopped thinking about my aliens. I do an awful lot of worldbuilding that I don’t tend to put on my site because I hope to use it in stories, but then I never get around to writing those stories.

Over the past few months Youtube has been suggesting an increasing number of speculative biology videos to me. I love that sort of thing, so the algorithm is correct to suggest them to me, but more importantly, it occurs to me that if there are so many videos on the topic, there may be some audience out there who may have a hunger for the kinds of ideas I’ve been working on. The problem is that those videos are done by smart people who have done actual scientifically valid calculations and thoughts of how their imagined lifeforms would evolve. I didn’t do that.

For example, my Strondovarians: I had the species name in some notes for a story idea. I also had a sketch of an alien with weird legs and four arms that I doodled once. When I felt like working on it, I decided that that alien sketch could be a Strondovarian. It was only then I started fleshing out their world. I did it utterly backwards compared to the speculative biology folks I enjoy so much. But y’know what? That’s fine. My universe is already one in which magic and monsters exist, so it was never scientifically accurate. I can just have my fun.

So I’ve decided I’m going to first go public with my notes relating to the planet Gurx, home of the aforementioned Strondovarians (Strondos for short). I figure I have enough in my notes to do a weekly post for a year, so it’ll be just like old times, only moreso!

The Strondovarian Body Plan

This is Nibnassin, a fairly typical Strondovarian. In the hopes of making it into medical history books, Nibnassin has volunteered to be scanned by various medical devices for the benefit of students. Thankfully this means I can teach you some of the basics of the Strondovarian body plan (bearing in mind that PDR’s drawing style is oversimplified and cartoony).

Here we have Nibnassin without their clothing and tattoo. Don’t feel embarrassed for our volunteer Strondo, though, because the Gurxian monoculture holds no taboos about nudity. This allows us to see the main bits of a Strondo. Two eyes and a mouth in a layout that humans would be familiar with, and an orifice between the legs involved in reproduction, again in a place that humans would recognize. Light fuzz on the top and back that can occasionally grow long. It is, of course, worth noticing that the Strondos have four arms in addition to their two legs.

Here we have Nibnassin from behind. On his head there is his breathhole. The Strondo mouth is not connected to the respiratory system, all oxygen is taken in through this orifice. Down in what humans would call the butt region we have what looks like a little tail, but is actually a tube with a hole that is the end of the Strondo digestive system. They expel their waste through there.

Well, I’d hoped I could be getting into the inside parts of a Strondo in this post, but it’s already much too long, so we can do that next week.

Later this year I plan to do a series of writings all about aliens and how we depict them in fiction, but before I can get to that, I want to write up what has to be one of the most niche things I’ve ever written, and on this site that is saying something.

I am declaring it loud and clear:

This is about Star Trek, and it is about Star Trek so obscure that I bet most people who actually love Star Trek wouldn’t care about it. But to me, this is a chance to do something cool.

It’s like this: On the Star Trek series Enterprise, there was a species of aliens called Arkonians who were enemies of the franchise’s more famous aliens, the Vulcans. They only appeared once. On the Star Trek series Discovery, we saw an alien yeoman serving on the bridge of Christopher Pike’s Enterprise. She didn’t do much.

You may notice that the yeoman doesn’t actually look all that much like the Arkonian. I disagree. It is only in the world of Star Trek, where a few ridges on your nose or a point to your ears makes you an alien, that these two individuals don’t look like the same species. Sure, I admit that they have different skin colours and eye colours and one has hair and the other doesn’t but, little known fact, you can find examples of the human race on Star Trek where one has a different hair colour or skin colour or more/less hair than another. And the show expects us to believe that those are members of the same species. So, why not use this as a chance to show some variance in what Arkonians look like and make them seem more like a real species?

But there’s more to it than that. Star Trek has a long tradition of turning former enemy species into friends. The Next Generation gave us a good Klingon, a species who had been an enemy in the original show. Deep Space Nine gave us good Ferengi and Voyager gave us good Borg, both of which were enemies on TNG.

I don’t even know if this yeoman is going to show up on the new Star Trek show that will be continuing Pike’s adventures, but if they do, why not make her an Arkonian? What’s to lose? I don’t know if she’s the first Arkonian to join Starfleet or if the Arkonians were the first species to join the Federation after the founding four or what, but it’s the right choice to make.

I yield the remainder of my time.

When Farniconigon, former Space Army captain, retired from the service after the war against the Flartians, Farniconigon went into politics and wound up as the mayor of the Capital City of the Nexus Planet, which some citizens consider the most important city in the galactic neighbourhood.

Numbo

Numbo came to the Nexus Planet to escape a bad scene back home, on a planet run by mobsters who Numbo had angered. When Numbo arrived, everyone apparently mistook them for someone else, and Numbo went along with it at first because it was convenient. When it became clear that they thought they were the new Deputy Mayor, Numbo had to double down for fear of being exposed and deported back to their dangerous homeworld. So now Numbo has to pick up how to be a Deputy Mayor without letting anyone catch on that they’re a fraud, all while being worried that the actual Deputy Mayor will show up.

Mememem

The Mayor’s press secretary, Mememem is a something of a joker. He grew up on the Nexus Planet and knows how to connect to the press like a pal and win their confidence. He absolutely cares more about being liked than doing his job well.

Dvuncan

Dvuncan was rescued by Farniconigon during the war, so he is very loyal to the mayor. Now serving as Farniconigon’s personal bodyguard, he is the only one who has suspected anything strange about Numbo, but Numbo keeps deflecting suspicion with elaborate lies.

Goirby X

The head of security at City Hall, Goirby X is convinced the place is haunted. Secretly spending every night prowling the halls looking for evidence of ghosts, Goirby never got around to looking into Numbo’s background and certainly has no reason to suspect anything now.

Raybles

A writer for the administration, Raybles gets to lounge around and think up ways to put Farnicongion’s policies into words that will sell them to the public. Unfortunately, Raybles is perhaps a bit too philisophical in his approach and keeps using metaphors about buckets that only a Blegbo really could appreciate. Mememem wants him fired.

Obviously this self-serving excuse to flesh out my Farniconigon character would not ever be picked up as a sitcom.

A human is in a science accident and finds himself teleported to the planet Hurch. Though the Hurchans have the technology to travel in space, Ben has no idea where in the universe Earth is, so his prospects of getting home are pretty grim. Luckily, some nice locals agree to let Ben live with them until a solution can be found. Comedy ensues.

Ben Nakamura

On Earth, things were not going Ben’s way. He was sure he was going to lose his funding if he didn’t start showing results on the science work he was doing, so he panicked and rushed it and messed up, only to find himself on the planet Hurch. In some ways, he liked Hurch a lot better than Earth, which makes sense considering it is a virtual paradise. Though he bumbles through his attempts to connect to the Hurchans, he is eager to impress them, because he doesn’t actually want to go home.

Leebo Deeb

Leebo is a fun-loving Hurchan who has volunteered to look after the human guest who appeared in his home one day. Though sarcastic and quick to mock Ben’s foibles, Leebo is extremely nice and already sees the stranger as his new best friend.

Nusterwold

Nusterwold is a stodgy civil servant who has finally found a purpose in life: making sure that the human doesn’t mess up Hurchan society. Most Hurchans are pretty happy that their world is a paradise, but Nusterwold always felt that some danger would make life more exciting, and then this human came along and with him came the possibility that something could go wrong. Now, with supreme diligence Nusterwold keeps watch over the human, preparing to punish any wrongdoing.

Shalekky

Shalekky is a scientist who wants nothing more than to research Ben and his alien world. Shalekky is apt to showing up uninvited and asking all sorts of questions. Ben actually doesn’t mind the attention and will offer things like hair or blood samples as enticement to get help from Shalekky, often helping distract Nusterwold.

Blipples

Blipples is the wacky neighbour.

What we have here is a situation I call, the Reverse Meego. In the standard Alien Comes To Earth sitcom, the idea is that the wacky alien figure, your Alf or your Mork or your Meego (Blessings Be Upon Him), comes to Earth and we get to see the outsider fail to act ways we consider normal. Maybe, in the end, it actually teaches us a little bit about ourselves. Ben From Planet Earth has a problem: the human audience would not know what to expect from the alien society any more than Ben would. I feel like this would be a frustrating show to watch. It might find an audience after it is cancelled, but it would definitely be cancelled.

And the Hurchans would totally be puppets.

To end this calendar year, I am going back to the “Superfluous Sunday” idea, where I take minor characters from existing PDR stories and flesh them out more.

Zoftak

Zoftak is a space cop. He often works undercover (such as when he posed as Space Pirate “Zoftak the Mighty”). While the Space Army has been able to relax since the end of the war against the Flartians, there is still plenty of Space Crime to keep Zoftak busy.

Since last we saw Zoftak, the powerful cop has been infiltrating a galaxy-spanning robot-smuggling syndicate. The rules of the Space Government lay down some very clear restrictions on the use of robots and how they are allowed to be spread about to various worlds, but some scofflaws just don’t care about that. Zoftak, posing as a bodyguard to a particularly scummy trader, has been gathering information to bring them down, but has just been hit with a major curveball: the biggest stolen robot shipment Zoftak has ever seen was just made, and the buyer was none other than the Chief of Space Police. If corruption goes that high up the ladder, who can Zoftak trust?

Churg

Churg is an immigrant from the Underground Kingdom of Mederex to SecGov City. Life in that underground realm is not great for Lizard People, so even though Churg was a highly respected medic among his people, he still thought it better to take his family above-ground, to the Robot city where he was convinced he could help more people while shaking off the shackles that would have held his children. But SecGov City wasn’t so kind to Churg and his kin. The robots there, already primed to think that Mederex’s citizens are primitive and the Lizard People most of all, found that this guy who had no money was hardly likely to be useful in any kind of medical field. Still, Churg persevered. He started a store where he could sell organic food to the few humans that existed in town (he had to import food for his own use anyway), and though it isn’t he life he wanted, he is making the most of it.

Churg was first seen on this page of Secret Government Robots.

Gus White

In the opposite of Gus’s situation, Gus White has left SecGov City to live in Mederex’s Kingdom, where he has been given a position as a Baron by Mederex, and gets to live in his own subterranean cave/castle. Though there is a Baroness (popularly known as the Black Baroness), Gus does not see much of her. She does her own thing, while Gus works mostly as a representative of either SecGov or Mederex’s Kingdom to the other group. Though the two forces remain at peace, there is always the chance things could go awry, so Gus deftly tries to make and keep allies in both locations, and across the other Secret Factions across the world. He is not trying greedily to gain power, but he is deathly afraid of losing what he has.

Gus made exactly one appearance in Secret Government Robots, turning up at a war meeting on this page.

Unable To Fly Man

Carlton G. Carlton is one of those superheroes with way so many powers that it isn’t fair for the bad guys. He’s got super strength, super speed, super senses, sonic screaming, ice beams, fire breath, lightning control, nigh invulnerability, telepathy, raygun reversal fields, invisibility, ghost-smelling, phasing, the ability to talk to animals, turn undead, water knowledge, recipe summoning, computer affinity, cloud loyalty, emotion vision, and that is just the tip of the iceberg.

But he can’t do everything. Carlton is completely unable to fly (he also can’t hover or levitate or even super-jump). When it comes to getting off the ground, Carlton is just out of luck. Still, in spite of this terrible problem holding him back, he has made good of his life. He is now the leader of the Team of Superheroes, and though he does worry a bit too much about public opinion of the team, he gets to help them do a lot of good.

If I’d been better at drawing comics, my plan had been to do a story of Hover Head and friends every couple years, but it hasn’t worked out that way. Still, I have mentally fleshed out the characters a lot and hope to get back to them at some point.