Let’s talk about making babies in Star Trek. Well this video isn’t going to get monetized
is it? Hi Ric here and throughout Trek, we often
meet a variety of characters, some even main cast members who are of two, sometimes even
three species parentage. We, as humans, share most of our DNA with the other species on
this planet, from other animals to vegetables and we cannot create a human-broccoli hybrid.
So, in a Scifi universe as a big as Trek’s how come there are so many different species
of alien out there to meet, who share our emotional values and physical form enough
to create a sense of attraction, even love. This is where I say something sappy about
the heart wants what it wants, or love conquers all, but a blanket statement like that still
has too many caveats to be true and I’m pretty sure I have a lump of coal where my
heart should be. So I’m not. Instead, what get me curious is, why can so
many of these aliens from completely different worlds, (some of which don’t even share
iron-based blood) exchange enough DNA to create healthy offspring? There are also numerous
contradictions within the series or issues that you’d think would also be a problem.
Such as Vulcans and Romulans sharing a common ancestor, yet being unable to share blood
transfusions. But they can have kids. There is the existence of the precursor ancestor,
the hyper-advanced species who originally travelled through the Milky Way and ceded
early life bearing worlds with the humanoid form as a genetic template to evolve towards.
This has created a common link between many of the species of the galaxy and is used as
an in-universe reason for the prolific humanoid form. Undoubtedly plays a large factor in
the production of viable hybrid species. So let’s take a look at some of these characters
in the lore that are confirmed to be the product of interspecies… YouTube-unfriendly dance
routines. Humans and Betazoids. This seems to be a relatively
uncomplicated affair. Lwaxana Troi, daughter of the Fifth House, holder of the sacred chalice
of Rixx, …that’s where my chalice went. Anyway, she was the mother of Deanna Troi
and Kestra, whose father was a human Starfleet officer, Ian Andrew Troi. On top of this,
Deanna went on to have two children with William Riker, Kestra and Thaddeus, one of which,
Thaddeus, did develop an illness, however the cause of this was a silicon-based virus.
There was also officer, Lieutenant Jr Grade Walter Peirce who was one quarter Betazoid.
It seems that even people with only quarter of Betazed DNA in their lineage are still
capable of some telepathic or empathic feats, although these lessen the further from the
telepathic ancestry they get. Human Klingons. B’elanna Torres is probably
the first who comes to mind. She was the daughter of Miral, daughter of L’Naan and John Torres.
But there was also Alexander Rozhenko’s mother, K’Ehleyr. She had a child with Worf
of House Mogh, leading to the three quarter Klingon Alexander. Torres also conceived a
child with fellow crewman, Tom Paris which she named Miral after her mother. With Miral,
there was an issue with a curved spine that required some in utero therapy which was due
to her Klingon DNA, however, her full-Klingon grandmother, Miral had the same issue, so
we see this is not a result of her being quarter-Klingon, but a familial issue. Apart from the cranial
ridges, which appear to be a very dominant gene, there seemed to be few issues in conceiving
a child between Klingons and Humans. However, the Klingon temperament, strength and aggression
would be passed on to the children in varying degrees.
There are also examples of Klingon-Romulan, such as Ba’el from the Romulan world, Carraya
IV. Again, the Klingon genes appear to be dominant, and with the variation in cranial
ridges in Klingons, there were generally no outward signs that she was a hybrid. As with
other Klingon mixes, she retained the deepened aggression, but spent much of her life supressing
or unaware of it. Humans and Vulcans; probably one of the first
parings that came to mind and with good reason. Spock, the most famousest of the Vulcans was
a half-Vulcan half Human mix. His father Sarek was the Federation Vulcan Ambassador and as
such thought it a logical idea to marry a human woman as a symbol of unity and totally
not because he loved her. Nope, that would be an emotion. Spock is not alone in this
regard however, we have one of the earliest mixes in Elizabeth, the daughter of T’Pol
and Trip Tucker in 2155. Unfortunately the child died, the cause originally suspected
to be incompatibilities in the DNA, but in truth, it was just poor cloning on behalf
of the organisation that made her. With Vulcan-Human hybrids, the Vulcan DNA seems almost entirely
dominant, Vulcan Copper based blood usurping the Human’s Iron and the internal physiology
being entirely Vulcan. They also retained the entirety of Vulcan abilities, strength,
telepathy, electromagnetic field, katra, the lot. Perhaps the only inherited human traits
were psychological, a lessened emotional control or perhaps even greater emotional control,
it’s hard to tell with Vulcans. Romualns and Vulcans can also produce mixed
species offspring. One example is Commodore Oh of Starfleet Security who was able to pass
as a Vulcan for her entire Starfleet career, suggesting again, that Vulcan traits are dominant,
as she too retained the full use of Vulcan abilities. However, her emotional control
was merely a façade as she fully embraced Romulan ideals.
Romulans and Humans, were compatible too, with Sela. Her mother was an alternate timeline
Tasha Yar and an unnamed Romulan General. This general fell in love with Yar and spared
the crew of the Enterprise C if she became his consort. Sela was born a year later and
got her mother killed during an escape attempt. With Sela, we can see that the Romulan heritage
is in fact, taking a back seat. Sela has blonde hair, I think a trait completely unseen in
Vulcans and Romulans, as well as a lack of brow ridges. However the last fact may be
down to the General being a Southern Romulan, who lacked the angled brow. She did have pointy
ears however, a trait that would be shared by another Romulan-Human hybrid, crewman Simon
Tarses. Due to lingering Federation-Romulan tensions, Tarses had lied on his Starfleet
application, saying that he was in fact one quarter Vulcan, not Romulan. This sort of
suggests that although the Vulcans and Romulans are different enough to read as differing
species, add some human to the gene-soup and it makes it a lot more difficult to tell based
on cursory scans. There is also the unborn child of Gabriel
Hwang and Pel in 2399, who would be half human and half Romulan. Although Pel was visiting
a prenatal clinic, she didn’t seem overly concnerned, so I don’t think there’s an
issue here. Cardassians and Bajorans. The Cardassian Occupation
of Bajor led to a large amount of war-orphans and hybrid children, such as Tora Ziyal. From
what we can see, Ziyal, who adopted much Bajoran culture retained traits of both Cardassian
and Bajoran physiology, namely the Bajoran nose coupled with some more smoothed out Cardassian
ridges. Another hybrid, from the same father, Dukat was born in 2375, although the mother
was a follower of his Pah-Wraith cult, Mika. There were no medical complications during
the pregnancy so it seems that Cardassians and Bajorans are compatible.
Cardassians and Kazon. This is even more far flung, showing that those ancestors that spread
the humanoid form really didn’t skimp on the fringes of the galaxy. All the way in
the delta quadrant, Seska, a Cardassian woman, produced a child with First Maje Culluh of
the Kazon Nistrim. The child appeared outwardly to lack many of the Kazon characteristics,
but apparently these would develop later in life.
Naomi Wildman is a human and Ktarian. She was the first Federation citizen born in the
Delta Quadrant to Xenobiologist Ensign Samantha Wildman and Greskrendtregk. Guess which one
isn’t human. This one did come with complications however, as a Ktarian has forehead horns and
a human female is …ill-equipped to deal with that. On top of this, the infant Naomi
was raised in a sterile Starship environment and fell ill when the crew was stranded by
the Kazon on a desert world. Although this would likely happen to any species’ baby.
The Ktarians also had a shorter adolescence and this was shared by Naomi who aged to approximately
a human I dunno, eight year old? In 3 years. We also have Talla, and Andorian-Aenar hybrid,
which is less unexpected really as the Andorian and Aenar shared a homeworld and were even
closer than most other species on this list. There are also a surprising number of children
being the products of abandoned timelines and universes where characters had settled
down and got… schwifty. Brota, a Klingon-Trill hybrid seems to be
an exception to the dominant Klingon appearance genes, as he lacked forehead ridges altogether,
so either it’s a rare occurrence of recessive gene pairs or Trill DNA is even more dominant
than Klingon. In another timeline, Worf had another daughter with Troi, Shannara. This
never came to pass in the Prime reality, but was chronicled in TNG’s Parallels.
There was also Yedrin Dax, a human-Trill mix from an alternate timeline who must have had
enough Trill in him to support a symbiont. This isn’t as surprising as it first appears
as we’ve already established the Trill DNA may be dominant, but also a human can act
as a temporary host for a symbiont in the short term to keep it alive. So there’s
already some cross over in there somewhere. Enterprise had an entire time-displaced alternate
crew in the expanse which had a human-Vulcan captain in Lorian. His father was Charles
Tucker and mother T’Pol, the same DNA coupling that was used to create Elizabeth. In this
timeline, Phlox also hooked up with another wife in Amanda Cole and had nine half-Denobulan
children while Archer had a human-Ikaaran child who and the chain culminated in Karyn
Archer who was mixed with 2 other species. Without ever meeting a Ikaaran, we can’t
really judge how much she resembled her mother, but the general rule when adding human DNA,
seems to be take the alien traits and dial them down a notch.
We have a Voyager timeline glimpsed by Kes that saw her have a child with Tom Paris which
would have made her Ocampan-Human. She shared the rapid life cycle of an Ocampan and had
slight signs of the Ocampa ears, but apart from this inherited mostly human traits.
There are a multitude of other mentioned hybrids and many that appear from one-time species
so it seems that in Star Trek, many aliens are close enough genetically to mate despite
all the improbabilities that entails. Not to mention the time where Trip got knocked
up by another alien without his consent in Enterprise, or when that happened to Troi
too. But in these two instances, I think the child was all of a single species.
Of course, most of these may have come with medical complications that were glossed over
or abundant amounts of gene therapy or augmentation to allow for a viable contraception, but this
was not acknowledged or denied and considering the Federation’s stance on genetics, I don’t
know. Plus there are times like when Worf’s foster-brother knocked up the Boraalan, Dobara
and considering the Boraalans were in a societal equivalent to the Medieval period, I doubt
they had access to extensive genetic technology. All in all, most species in Star Trek seem
compatible no matter how absurd it seems. I place this as a conscious from that common
humanoid precursor. After all, they intended all their populated species to come together,
hopefully in peaceful cooperation so making them all uh… ‘compatible’ could be seen
as another way to ensure that. In instances where there are two incompatible physiologies,
often one seems to take complete dominance over the other, like in Vulcan pairings. Other
times, the two seem mostly on even footing, resulting in a blend of traits, such as Klingons
and Humans, while some have very recessive traits, like apparently the Romulan genome.
Of course, species should not be conflated with culture and a child of two worlds often
faces some tough choices, will they be accepted by one, both or be shunned like Ziyal was?
In purely the survival of intelligent life however, it seems that love conquers all and
life finds a way. That was something soppy wasn’t it? I said I wouldn’t do that.
I’m going to go now. I’ve been Ric, goodbye.