What About Bolians?

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.

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