In one of my previous Trek Thoughts posts I mentioned that I was trying to say something about Bolians, but I got off track. And considering all my Trek Thoughts posts since have also NOT been about Bolians, I guess I never got that train of thought back on track. Well, I have a lot of thoughts about Bolians, so maybe I can just say a bunch of those things and probably cover what I wanted to say.

Of the many species we see in Starfleet, Bolians are one of the most common and most recognizable. They’re always turning up in crowd scenes in Federation space. We’ve seen them in civilian roles on starships and space stations all the way up to being Captains and Admirals. I’ve not crunched the actual numbers, but I expect that if we looked into it, we may have seen more Bolians in Starfleet than Andorians.

So here’s some stuff about Bolians:

• I Was Disappointed That Bolians Were Not A Federation Founding Species: They have, I believe, appeared in most of the shows in the Star Trek franchise since The Next Generation, meaning they missed out on TOS and TAS, but also the key one for point, Enterprise, the show that depicted the founding of the Federation. There we saw that that the founding races of the Federation were Vulcans, Andorians, Humans, and Tellarites. All species that have been shown to be all over Starfleet’s upper ranks in similar proportion to Bolians (except those humans, who really crowd out the other species). IF they were taking a look at the demographics that made up Starfleet and saying the most popular ones are the founding ones, Bolians should have made the list. I have to assume it’s just the fact that no Bolians appeared in TOS or TAS that held them back. And that’s a shame. For what it’s worth, we’ve seen Bolians on Strange New Worlds, so we know they were around back in those days. If they were founders, I guess maybe they were early joiners. Or did they join… at all???
• Are Bolians Even A Federation Species?: As far as I can remember, we’ve never been told outright that Bolians are a member species of the Federation. But that’s the thing: in spite of the way it is often spoken about, including by me a mere sentence ago, the Federation is not actually made up of member species, it is made up of member planets. It could very well be that the Bolian homeworld –without looking it up, I want to say Bolius, but the fact I don’t know for sure says something of the predicament here– it could be that that homeworld is NOT actually a member of the Federation, but that there are simply enough other Bolian worlds that one of them is a member. Or, there could be Bolian immigrant populations in other Federation worlds (an idea I like, actually). Going solely from my memory, one bit of evidence that they not members would be the existence of a prominent bank on their homeworld that I think someone on DS9 robbed one time or something? The Federation is famously a post-currency organization, so why would they need a bank? Well, plenty of reasons. They have to deal with other galactic interests, some who do have currencies. And also there’s the existence of things like safe-deposit boxes. Basically what I’m saying is that that could be evidence, but isn’t necessarily. We also know that when a Bolain on Lower Decks was promoted to captain of a ship and arrange an all-Bolian bridge crew (pictured), this was seen as a novelty, perhaps even progressive. Is that a sign of a non-Federation species finally being well represented, or is it just that ANY non-human species making it big in Starfleet is big news? Again, I could see either case. Anyway, there probably is a solid answer on Memory Alpha, but that isn’t what this is about.
• I Think Bolians Like Wigs: Bolians are almost always depicted as being hairless. ALMOST always. And personally I think they are hairless, I think that they just have things that are like wigs that they wear for fashion reasons. I mean, why wouldn’t they? If humans can shave their hair or wear fur coats, there’s bound to be aliens who do similar things from different angles.

Those are my thoughts on Bolians. Thank you. Have a nice day.

I’ve said before that I’d like more interestingly-designed aliens in Star Trek and I’m about to do it again.

Early in my days as an uncle I bought many books for the kids. I want them to enjoy books. That included some sort of Alphabet of Star Trek book. It wasn’t a great book. The art is wonderful! Colourful and fun. But the text is boring. They don’t even make the effort to rhyme or anything. It’s certainly not a great introduction to the franchise for children.

But remember, an important thing about me is that I like aliens. That’s a big thing for me. So when I got to the page for letter S, which is about Starfleet Academy, and found this gang of student waiting for me, I was pleased.

Sure, I’ll admit that they aren’t EXTREMELY alien aliens. They basically fall in line with Trek’s preference for humanoids with little difference, but the differences are significantly bigger on these ones than they are on Vulcans or Betazoids or whatever. More eyes. Fewer eyes. Fancy skin tones. Gills. It’s not much, but it’s something (after all, we are meant to understand that these are aliens who can exist easily on Earth and could serve on Federation ships alongside their more well-known species). These ones look like something I’d find in a Space Quest game, which is a compliment for sure (and it would be nice if the franchise had aliens as cool as its parodies).

So obviously, we need to make these aliens canonical to the Star Trek universe. Certainly it’d be harder in live action than on a cartoon, so do it in a cartoon. And you could even staple it to the existing lore to help a sense of verisimilitude. On Deep Space Nine we got a mention of a Doctor Trag’Tok, who had three eyes, but we never saw him. He could easily be the same species as the blue cadet there.

Also, I’d want the two one-eyed cadets to be two examples the same species. There are big differences between them, sure, but not so big as we can find between humans. Let the aliens have some diversity for once.

Now, you might say “PDR, you only want to see these aliens used again because they were in a book you gave to your niblings.” and I would say “Yes, that’s correct. But also, all that stuff about how I want Trek to have better aliens on top of that.”

Hey, Star Trek: Discovery ended. Why not do a post about that, PDR? Okay, I will! It’s time I pulled Discovery aside and looked deep into its eyes and gave a teary-eyed speech about how much I believe in it.

Discovery is, by no means, my favourite Star Trek. I don’t think I was the target audience. Discovery came after an era of relative Treklessness and I’m certain the goal was to appeal to a new generation of fans. Well, the problem is that I generally have different tastes from what appeals to new audiences. For example, I am on the record as thinking that almost all of our fiction these days is at least 20% too action-packed. Discovery was too action-packed.

I don’t want to be fully negative about the show, though. Sure it did a lot of things I don’t approve of. I didn’t like the way it felt the need to tie itself so directly to old Star Trek characters like Spock. First of all, I feel like that makes the universe feel smaller, but also I don’t understand why you’d do something like that when you’re trying to make an accessible new show. I also didn’t care for the show’s reliance on Trek concepts that generally I’ve had enough of, like Section 31 and the Mirror Universe. Not only was the show not giving me anything new, it was the stuff I enjoyed least?

But really, I don’t want to be so negative. Sure it had a real bad time with introducing a supporting cast. I genuinely believe it didn’t intend for characters like Detmer, Owo, Rhys, et al to matter. I think they had them as featured extras and then got stuck with them. We’d occasionally get one of them stepping up to give a whole paragraph about their backstory or personality. I noted it when Airiam was killed and we were supposed to care as if any of the characters mourning had ever been anything but props prior to that point. It got better, though. I came to kinda like those characters after all.

Heck, let me just work out some more of my negativity: Discovery more serialized than I like out of a show, especially early on. I can’t imagine myself ever sitting down to watch season one or two in full casually. I think an idea Star Trek is one where you can go back and watch a single episode and get a full story. And then! The later seasons still had overall plots, but presented in largely episodic chunks. I liked that, though it didn’t help their case that the last season is basically a sequel to The Chase which felt like a personal sleight against me. ALSO it bugged me how nobody seemed to like to sit down on the show. I felt like most of the big discussions were people standing in a circle, tensions roiling. I felt like this was a way to “improve” on the Next Generation-style conference room scenes. But I like those. People on Discovery should have demanded chairs.

Okay, but Discovery did have good stuff. First and foremost: it brought Star Trek back to me. Also, I liked some of the cast. Saru, for example. Which reminds me: cool aliens! The show had some! Most were relegated to background extras, which is fine by me, but they also gave us a closer look at Saurians with Linus. And the Osnullus (pictured)! They appealed greatly to my desire to see a more visually diverse Starfleet. I hope we’ve not seen the last of them with the end of this show. Oh, and I’m also glad to hear that we’ve not seen the last of the extra-distant future setting. I don’t want them to abandon that era just to set shows at a time when they can pull in characters from other shows. Again, that would make the universe feel small.

Anyway, I will watch any Star Trek show. That’s a fact. The question is, would I have watched Discovery if it had been a show of equal quality but NOT a Star Trek? I don’t know. But even if I didn’t, I would have seen it as a show with some neat ideas.

Oh and— wait— did the finale reveal casually that Book is a beekeeper?

I’m one of those Star Trek fans who doesn’t think the United Federation of Planets is a perfect utopia (you can often recognize us by noting that we think Deep Space Nine the best show). It is a governmental system with a lot of flaws. But I’ll say this: it sure seem pretty darn close. So much so that, were I a human born into that society, I sure wouldn’t leave. And yet we see humans on Star Trek all the time who seem to prefer to leave the relative paradise of the Federation to just go elsewhere.

A lot of the time these unaffiliated humans seem to just be scoundrels who want to go to places where they can scheme and profit. Maybe they just feel like the “rules” in the Federation don’t give them room for that. We’ve seen that kind of personality exist within the Federation (Richard Bashir comes to mind), but if that’s how you get your jollies, certainly leaving the Federation may be your only choice. And then I suppose there’s some amount of people who have a kind of wanderlust, but also an aversion to structure that makes them avoid Starfleet or any of the other various scientific organizations the Federation has to offer. Certainly I, PDR, would never feel at home in Starfleet, so I can understand that much. But you know what I don’t understand? The people who live on Tasha Yar’s homeworld. Sure, they ones born there are presumably caught up in it through no fault of their own, but surely the adults are trying to leave, right? Get out of there, people! There are whole worlds for humans that are paradise, just around the corner. Surely the Federation would take in such refugees the way they did Tasha, right?

Anyway, it says something about the Federation that humans are willing to leave it, but I’m not sure what right now. All I know is that I started this as a post about Bolians and it changed to this as I started writing, so my next Trek post will have to be the one about Bolians.

Look, I get it. I like Spock. Spock is great and is, realistically, a big reason why Star Trek was ever a success to begin with. But Star Trek doesn’t have to revolve around Spock.

When Star Trek: The Next Generation happened, they made a wise choice. The sequel show was going to feature an all new cast unrelated to that of the first show. In spite of being called “the Next Generation” it isn’t about the original cast’s children even. It’s about the same universe, but different characters, later. It gave permission for us to think of Star Trek as not being about seven or so chumps, but to be a vast sci-fi universe bristling with interesting characters with lives to get invested in.

A couple shows later, Voyager brought in Tuvok, another Vulcan, and there were Spocklike elements, but he was a different character in a different role. It wasn’t too bad. Then came Enterprise, which sought more directly to parallel the original setup with its Vulcan, T’Pol, being in the second-in-command role, but she was again a bit different, so it wasn’t the same thing. But after that, Star Trek decided it just can’t not have Spock. The reboot movies took the exact setup from the original series and did that again, and even occasionally doubled-up on Spock thanks to time travel. Discovery allowed itself to get near Spock by giving him a sister and making her the main character, which allowed Spock to show up as a guest star and also allowed the Discovery spin-off Strange New Worlds to just put Spock back on the original Enterprise in almost the exact role he had in the beginning (and on a canonical track to become exactly what he was in that original role).

Here’s the thing about a sci-fi franchise set in a supposedly vast galaxy full of adventure: if one guy is always there, and all the important events revolve around him or his family, the galaxy feels a lot less vast.

And it isn’t just Spock. The franchise seemingly just won’t do a show ever again that did what TNG did and create a fresh new cast for us. That’s not what popular culture is anymore. We don’t let characters rest anymore. We apparently just want everything back forever and for things to never end. I don’t like it, but I’m not the one making money off these big successful franchises.

So I don’t know, as with everything I post on this site, I’m just rambling my opinion as if it is correct in a space where nobody cares about arguing with me. Personally, I’d be thrilled to see a new Star Trek featuring a cast utterly unrelated to those that came before and maybe, just maybe, we can see the old cast now and then just for fun. I’m just saying that the Star Trek universe is a fertile one with plenty of room for ideas to grow, and if we stagnate, that’s, I dunno, illogical I guess.