Orions Are Now One Of Star Trek’s Best Aliens After 57 Years

Thanks to Star Trek: Lower Decks, Orions are now one of Star Trek‘s best aliens. Orions are one of Star Trek‘s first aliens, debuting in Star Trek: The Original Series’ first pilot, “The Cage”, when the Talosians tempt Captain Christopher Pike (Jeffrey Hunter) with a vision of Vina (Susan Oliver) as a scantily-clad, green-skinned Orion slave girl. TOS establishes Orions as slavers and pirates, a reputation that endures into Star Trek‘s expansion into a franchise, with the Orion Syndicate criminal organization playing a part in several episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Star Trek: Enterprise seeks to recontextualize the problematic elements of Orions in Star Trek: The Original Series by explaining Orion women aren’t slaves at all, but actually the ones in charge thanks their ability to secrete a pheromone that puts most men in their thrall. Enterprise season 4, episode 17 “Bound” shows Orion women who simply pose as slaves in a bait-and-switch tactic that adds to their own expanding holdings, while perpetuating the narrative of their sexual appetites. Granting power to Orion women through retroactive continuity doesn’t necessarily make them less problematic, since Orions remain sexualized until Star Trek: Lower Decks.

Star Trek: Lower Decks Made Orions One Of Star Trek’s Best Aliens

Lt. D’Vana Tendi’s Perspective Improves Orion Culture in Star Trek

Star Trek: Lower Decks makes Orions one of Star Trek‘s best aliens through Lieutenant D’Vana Tendi (Noël Wells), the first Orion in the main cast of a Star Trek series. Tendi bucks every stereotype of Orions previously established in Star Trek, with boundless optimism, a giddily nerdy love of science, and desire not for carnal pleasures but for platonic friendships. Tendi even calls out Lieutenant Beckett Mariner’s (Tawny Newsome) insensitive stereotype of Orions as pirates. Tendi’s surprise combat skills and title as “Mistress of the Winter Constellations” are explained by Tendi’s visit home, where it’s revealed Tendi eschewed her destiny as prime assassin for a Starfleet science career.

Star Trek: Lower Decks reconciles previous depictions of Orions and extrapolates from them to create a rich, lived-in culture nonetheless based on piracy. On Orion, Tendi guides Mariner and Lieutenant T’Lyn (Gabrielle Ruiz) through a society marked by normalized violence and sensuality, with knife-throwing as a casual greeting, kidnapping as a bridal tradition, and yes, even Enterprise‘s pheromones as a potent drug for willing Orion men. The matriarchal Tendi family simultaneously values deception and personal gain as organized criminals while loving both D’Vana and her sister D’Erika (Ariel Winter), who capably manages the family business with incongruous warmth and guile. This is the real Orion, finally, and it’s great.

Everything We Know About Orions’ Future In Star Trek

The Emerald Chain and Starfleet Orions in Star Trek: Discovery’s 32nd Century

Orions exist well into Star Trek‘s future, with their depiction in Star Trek: Discovery season 3 still underscored by criminality. In the 32nd century, Orion leader Osyraa (Janet Kidder) is Minister of the Emerald Chain, a powerful criminal union of Orions and Andorians that callously exploits others for personal gain after the Burn. The Emerald Chain operates with impunity, stripping even pre-warp planets of limited resources through enslavement. Even when trying to unite the Chain and the Federation, Osyraa won’t disavow her civil rights violations, considering them necessary means to an end in a post-Burn galaxy.

However, Osyraa isn’t representative of all Orions in the 32nd century any more than the Orion Syndicate is in the 24th. In Star Trek: Discovery season 4, Orion delegates appear at a Federation conference, indicating some Orions disagree with the Emerald Chain. Bashorat Harral is named as the author of an Emancipation Bill to free the Chain’s slaves, and his son is a cadet at the newly reopened Starfleet Academy and the younger Harral’s (Seamus Patterson) struggle to be taken seriously is not unlike Lt. Tendi’s in Star Trek: Lower Decks. This further development beyond stereotypes that also acknowledges their history helps make Orions some of Star Trek‘s best new (but old) aliens.