Bolians: a Talkative Species?

[Six of Twelve]

I've noticed that Mot the barber in TNG and Chell in Voyager are both talkative to the point of annoying others around them.

I wonder if excessive talking is something the Bolian species is noted for?

 

[locutus101]

Picard certainly thought so when he pretended to be Mot and started talking people's ears off. There's a Bolian in The Muse that puts a wig on to impress a Dabo girl, seems that he also chats her up. In Fields Of Fire, a Bolian gets killed by a Vulcan serial killer. Ezri surmises that it is because of a picture where he's laughing, but maybe the Vulcan worked with him and couldn't stand to hear him prattle on anymore. BTW, they say in that episode that he has a wife and a co-husband. Maybe there is a dearth of women on their planet and they're willing to work extra-hard to seduce women off-world., hence the excess of labial exercise.

Not only does Chell talk too much but he also specializes in very bad puns, BTW.

 

[The Wormhole]

They might be. There was also that Bolian in Insurrection who tried to discuss with Picard a paper he wrote.

 

[locutus101]

In "You Are Cordially Invited" Mourn gets in a fight with a Bolian. People keep complaining at how chatty Mourn is. Maybe the Bolian tried compete with Mourn in that area and that's why they got physical.

 

[Erik Pressman]

Its a form of nervous overcompensation for all the plugged up hypertoilets they leave behind

 

[The Wormhole]

So what do you think? On the Bolian homeworld outhouses are as plentiful as payphones were back in the pre-cell days?

 

[Erik Pressman]

So what do you think? On the Bolian homeworld outhouses are as plentiful as payphones were back in the pre-cell days?

I imagine they are forced to be nomadic for this very reason.

 

[locutus101]

What I find strange is how someone from a species that doesn't have hair on their heads becomes a barber...

 

[Tenacity]

What I find strange is how someone from a species that doesn't have hair on their heads becomes a barber...

Today there are male gynecologists.

 

[locutus101]

Today there are male gynecologists.

Apples and... pumpkins. We're talking about a species that doesn't have hair and that means that their only way to becoming barbers is to get off world. Men and women do not belong to different species living on different planets!

(regardless of the Men are from Mars, Women are for Venus book)

 

[The Old Mixer]

Everyone keeps saying they don't have hair. The (fake) female Bolian in "Allegiance" had hair.

 

[locutus101]

Everyone keeps saying they don't have hair. The (fake) female Bolian in "Allegiance" had hair.

You're right of course, but it really looks like a wig. Plus there is a Bolian that has a wig on in The Muse. Jake even says so. Why would he surmise that it was one if Bolians were supposed to have hair?

 

[The Wormhole]

You're right of course, but it really looks like a wig. Plus there is a Bolian that has a wig on in The Muse. Jake even says so. Why would he surmise that it was one if Bolians were supposed to have hair?

Ignorance.

 

[cultcross]

What I find strange is how someone from a species that doesn't have hair on their heads becomes a barber...

That, I suspect, was the joke.

 

[locutus101]

That, I suspect, was the joke.

Possibly.

 

[Tim Thomason]

You're right of course, but it really looks like a wig. Plus there is a Bolian that has a wig on in The Muse. Jake even says so. Why would he surmise that it was one if Bolians were supposed to have hair?

Two possibilities come to mind:
1) Some women (like Mitena Haro and the background trade official) do grow hair. And male Bolians like Mot enter this profession for their benefit. Maybe there's even an expectation for male barbers on Bolarus.

2) Even if everyone on Bolarus is bald, they've been dealing with other races for centuries. The several (at least three) wigged Bolians show an appreciation of hair, at least, so it's not out of the question that this fascination is cultural, and Mot (and V'Sal, and the two other Bolian barbers seen in TNG) gravitated towards this as a career to escape the duldrums of their homeworld.

 

[locutus101]

Two possibilities come to mind:
1) Some women (like Mitena Haro and the background trade official) do grow hair. And male Bolians like Mot enter this profession for their benefit. Maybe there's even an expectation for male barbers on Bolarus.

2) Even if everyone on Bolarus is bald, they've been dealing with other races for centuries. The several (at least three) wigged Bolians show an appreciation of hair, at least, so it's not out of the question that this fascination is cultural, and Mot (and V'Sal, and the two other Bolian barbers seen in TNG) gravitated towards this as a career to escape the duldrums of their homeworld.

That's plausible.

 

[locutus101]

Bolians are not the only ones to be bald, assuming they all are, of course. The woman who pretended to be Janeway in Live Fast And Prosper didn't seem to have hair of her own. In fact she even seemed incommoded by the wig she had to wear for her scam.

 

[UnknownSample]

2) Even if everyone on Bolarus is bald....

Isn't the planet called Bolius? As in breaking the Bank of Bolius in DS9?

This discussion made me picture a stage full of Bolians performing the title song from "Hair"...

 

[Vandervecken]

I think this is a recurring SF trope, the Ironic Species.* I know I can remember a book where someone's cook was a master chef of a race that could taste nothing. It feels like a Zelazny thing and I want to say somewhere in the Francis Sandow stories, but I am not sure.






*Alternatively, the Ironic Species may refer to an alien race that only presses pants.