Thursday, July 6, 2017

Spock has a 12th-level Intellect

This is something I was thinking about while traveling the other day: certain parallels between comic book alien species and those in Star Trek. What's the use of it? I don't know. Trek with different aliens or different backstories for the aliens? Supers with Trek aliens? Some sort of Wold-Newton Space (Woldspace)? Make of it what you will.

Skrulls and the Founders/Changelings
The Founders are a shapeshifting race that runs an expansionist space empire and so are the Skrulls. DC's Durlans would fit in a way, too. They've faced prejudice like the Changelings, but they don't run an empire.

Shi'ar and the Romulans
One species has a space empire with a bird motif and a sprinkling of Roman Empire terminology and the other is the Romulans. Sure, the Romulan Star Empire never seems as multi-species as the Shi'ar, but no reason it couldn't be. Might want to drop the link to Vulcan, though...

Coluans and Vulcans
Turning to DC comics for the Federation species, I'll not the somewhat emotionlessness and computer-like logic of the Vulcans and Brainiac's people, the Coluans.

The other other identifications I thought of, but some are too similar to add anything particularly interesting (The Khunds and the Klingons) and some distant enough to be suggest substitution (Thanagarians and Andorians. Thanagarians might stand-in for Romulans, too, depending on which version we're talking about) but you get the idea.



7 comments:

RandyB said...

This was the first thing I thought of when I read this post.

https://web.archive.org/web/20081012172349/http://members.aol.com/legionair/stfc/index.htm

I had to go to the Wayback Machine to find it, but I've had that site bookmarked for a long time.

Tallgeese said...

I guess comics and TV SF tap similar veins when it comes to aliens. Broad brush cultures, a few defining attributes. There's also the interesting question of whether - if you had to be conquered by aliens - you'd rather be part of the Dominion or the Skrull Empire?

Simon J. Hogwood said...

I'm totally down with a Wold Newton-inspired mashup sci-fi setting.

Amusingly, the Romulan secret police is actually called the Tal Shiar, but as far as I can tell it's probably a coincidence.

Trey said...

@RandyB - Interesting!
@John Till - The Skrull have been all over the place in their portrayal over the years so it's tough to say. Marvel history has them as largely benevolent back in the Kree's early days of space travel, though.
@Simon J Hopgood - Yeah, we were talking about that coincidence on Gplus too! The Vulcan method of execution by strangulation was called tal-shaya. I wonder it that's related to the Romulan word?

Simon J. Hogwood said...

Memory Alpha (the Trek wiki) says that the writer who named the Tal Shiar was indeed riffing on tal-shaya.

Logan said...

Hmmm... I'm thinking about a StarTrek-crossover with the Marvel/DC-aliens. This could be very nice... :D

Jason Galterio (Legionair) said...

Wow... I was the GM to the Star Trek: Future Champions game mentioned in the first comment.

I was amazed to find a reference to that old website. Brought back a bunch of great memories.

Thanks. :)