Star Trek Just Brought Back the Weirdest Version of Its Oldest Aliens
Star Trek: Lower Decks begins its final season by bringing back the weirdest version of the aliens who have been with the franchise from the start, the Orions.
This Star Trek: Lower Decks article contains spoilers.
When it comes to Star Trek aliens, inconsistency is consistent. Klingons, Trills, and Ferengi have all undergone revisions, some very radical. Heck, Spock is all smiles and happy-go-lucky in the first Star Trek pilot “The Cage.” So it isn’t too much of a surprise that the Orions, the other long-running species introduced in “The Cage” are quite different today than they were back then.
In their few appearances in The Original Series, Orions only appeared as seductive, scantily-clad women with green skin. Orions did not show up in any of the ’90s Trek shows, with the exception of Enterprise, in which the Orion Syndicate is a pirate organization, feared throughout the galaxy.
That reputation makes life difficult for good-hearted D’Vana Tendi of Star Trek: Lower Decks, who proves that Orions can also be kind and competent Starfleet officers. Lower Decks‘s fifth and final season begins with Tendi fighting alongside her sister D’Erika, forced to join the family piracy business. Along the way, Tendi and D’Erika encounter another group of Orions, a patriarchal order who pronounce their people’s name differently, have blue skin and blonde hair, and wear outrageous supervillain type get-ups. What the heck is going on here?
These types of Orions have only appeared once before in canonical Trek, and you can probably guess where. In “The Pirates of Orion,” the season two premiere of Star Trek: The Animated Series, Kirk must match wits with the Orions to recover a life-saving drug needed to save the afflicted Spock.
Although Kirk and co. have dealt with Orions before, they pronounce the race’s name as “Or-ee-On” instead of “Or-RYE-On” in this particular story, and they never comment upon the pirates’ outrageous new costumes or different shade of skin. The differing pronunciation has a simple explanation, as the script for “The Pirates of Orion” (written by Howard Weinstein, directed by Bill Reed) did not include a pronunciation guide. And as rabid as we fans today are about canonical consistency, William Shatner and James Doohan didn’t have worry too much about that back in the day.
The other changes can be chalked up to the same reasons behind changes in the depictions of Klingons or Tellarites. The producers had a limited budget and had to make do with the demands of their medium. While TAS managed to make a traditional green Orion with Devna from season one’s “The Time Trap,” the green skin given to most Orions turned blue as the original color didn’t work well in animation. Likewise, the rags of most Orions didn’t pop in cartoons, so when the story called for the aliens to be pirates instead of seducers, TAS gave them supervillain costumes, not unlike those found in other Filmation cartoons.
“The Pirates of Orion” marked the last appearance of the Orions for 30 years. When Enterprise brought them back for “Borderlands,” the race retained the penchant for piracy and firing first depicted in “The Pirates of Orion.” But they also had green skin again, and much less flamboyant costumes. Moreover, they treat sex slavery as part of their piracy, streamlining depictions in TOS and TAS.
It’s those elements that have continued in later Star Trek series. In addition to Tendi’s pursuits and family squabbles, the Orions appear in Discovery as slavers and pirates. The Orions continue those practices 900 years later. Even as Starfleet and the Federation and the Romulan Star Empire lose power, the Orion-led Emerald Chain ascends.
Despite this evolution, Star Trek has largely ignored the blue skin and crazy costumes of the TAS Orions. It seems that the franchise followed Worf’s lead, when members of the Deep Space Nine crew traveled with him back to the TOS era and saw the smooth-foreheads of those Klingons. When asked about the discrepancy, Worf simply growls, “We do not discuss it with outsiders.”
But, of course, Lower Decks never forgets any bit of Trek lore and is always happy to discuss it. In the season five premiere “Dos Cerrito” and the second episode “Shades of Green,” we learn that the blue-skinned Orions, now officially called “Azures,” are a patriarchal splinter group, who distinguish themselves by pronouncing their name differently. And by wearing crazy costumes.
As these two episodes bring Tendi back home to the Cerritos, they at once integrate and seemingly disregard the Azures, treating them as laughable buffoons that no one on Orion respects. Yet, at the same time, the non-canonical Star Trek comics have found a place for at least one Azure. A female Azure called Nymira plays a key role in Star Trek: Defiant, the spin-off series by writer Christopher Cantwell. Once a physician forced to become a smuggler, Nymira joins the rag-tag team that Worf put together, fighting alongside Spock, Ro Laren, Lore, and others, albeit with a smirk and a crazy costume.
As always, the TV shows and movies take precedence over any books or comics, which means that Nymira and Orions like her are likely discarded, despite the rich world-building Cantwell did with the character. But because Lower Decks is the one building this new interpretation of these very old Trek aliens, we may very well see Nymira and her type return. After all, evolution is part of every race, especially aliens on Star Trek.
New episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks season five stream on Thursdays on Paramount +.