The Biology of Alien Hybrids

[Albertese]

Thinking about the half-aliens we meet in Star Trek and wondering about the biological implications.

For one thing, let's ignore the facts of actual science which would have us believe that a human is more closely related to an oak tree than to an animal from another planet. We see that in Star Trek, when a human and an alien fall in love, there's a good chance they might make a halfbreed baby. But let us consider the characteristics of the child.

Spock, as a Human-Vulcan, seems to most observers to be indistinguishable form Vulcans. Only Harry Mudd seems to recognize he looks more human than do most Vulcans. Keylar and B'Lana Torres both look as Klingon as many Klingons do. Sure, their ridges are a little more subtle, but then, so were General Chang's and we have no reason to assume he was half human. I don't know enough about Voyager to recall about the Wildman kid, someone can fill me in. And I guess Tom Paris and Torres had a baby too? It seems to me that human-alien hybrids tend to appear very much like their alien parent rather than the human one.

So here's the idea that hopped into my brain: in general, the hybrids are human/alien, never really alien/alien (Tora Ziyal I'll get to in a moment). So my thought is that perhaps being able to blend genomes with aliens is a peculiarly human trait. Humans, and perhaps some especially human-like aliens, like Bajorans, are rare in their ability to create viable children with alien species. And probably not with all alien species. Just a handful which happen to be close enough. So it's some factor in the human genome that allows the hybridization. A factor that is only found in very few species here and there.

This might also explain why the Talos IV report Kirk and Mendez review describes Spock as "half-Vulcan" without specifying the other half. Perhaps in the Federation, humans are the only ones who could hybridize (the is the 23rd Century UFP, remember) and so there would be no need to specify the other half is human because only humans could possibly be half-something.


I admit I haven't been thinking this through for very long, so perhaps I'm missing some relevant evidence. And I never got to be a big fan of Voyager or Enterprise so maybe I'm missing some critical piece. But what do you think?

Discuss.

--Alex

 

[FormerLurker]

General Chang sanded his forehead ridges down to prove he was tough.

 

[Tracy Trek]

I had also thought that it seemed that humans tended to be the ones that had the hybrid children more than others. Tora Ziyal is the only one I can think of at the moment that wasn't half human. Well, there's Seska's baby which she thought was half human, but he was actually half Kazon.

I don't think Ziyal was a test tube baby, she was the result of the affair of Dukat with his Bajoran mistress.

Yes, there was a Paris/Torres baby and she had subtle ridges. Apparently Klingon traits dominate for more than a couple of generations. She also appeared to have a higher forehead than mom though. Someone joked on another message board I used to belong to that maybe she inherited the Paris hairline.

My personal theory about Chang and any of the other 23rd century Klingons who had fainter ridges is that their DNA hadn't been fully restored to pure Klingon from the Augment virus a century before. That they were only starting to get their ridges back.

 

[UssGlenn]

There is also the Klingon/Romulan Hybrid that Worf meets in the Romulan Prison Camp

 

[Tracy Trek]

You are right, I forgot about her.

Another case of alien/alien hybridization I remember. In the Voyager episode Scientific Method, Neelix says one of his ancestors was from another race that lived on a planet near Talax. I think he called them Myleans. And when his DNA was tampered with in that episode, it was causing his recessive Mylean traits to show up.

And there's that baby that Lwaxana was going to have in DS9's The Muse.

 

[JesterFace]

I like that theory that humans would be able to have offspring with other species...

However, this subject has bothered me a little bit for a while. I like to live in a bubble where all "halfbreeds" are "products" of help from genetic specialists, it couldn't happen naturally.

 

[Voth commando1]

You forgot Sela and Simon Tarses-both human/Romulan hybrids . And in Voyager before and after its stated ocampa/human hybrids are possible.

And Seska apparently believed human/cardassian hybrids were possible as well.

 

[Six of Twelve]

The TNG episode, The Chase, told of an ancient alien race, that had a "blank template, basic humanoid" appearance, seeded multiple planets in the galaxy with related DNA, which should explain why so many humanoid species can have children together. Humans, the closest looking to the ancient humanoids with our smooth, ridgeless faces and small, plain ears, might explain why we're especially compatible with many species.

It could also be a factor similar to blood type in the way that some types are universal donors and some are universal recipients. Humans might be both, which would make the sex irrelevant, where in some alien/alien hybrids, the sex of each parent might be a factor in determining if a hybrid is possible, which might explain why hybrids with one human parent are more common.

With human/alien hybrids, such as with Klingons, the sex of the Klingon parent may determine how strong the Klingon features are. K'Ehleyr, who had a Klingon father and a human mother, had much more prominent Klingon features than did Torres, whose parents were the opposite combination. Indeed, Torres looks one quarter Klingon compared to K'Ehleyr.

It seems to hold true for human/Vulcan hybrids as well. Spock, with the human mother, looks full Vulcan. But the son of Trip and T'Pol, captain of the alternate reality Enterprise that was thrown into the past, shows his human side in both appearance and temperament, despite having Vulcan ears.

Human/Cardassian hybrids are apparently possible, as the Cardassian scientist who came on to O'Brien, assuring him she could bear him healthy children, apparently knew this was so. If it followed the pattern of humans with Klingons and Vulcans, perhaps the human features would be more prominent in this case, than if the combination had been the reverse.

With Cardassian/Bajoran hybrids, we've seen only Cardassian father, Bajoran mother. Remember that Dukat had a second hybrid child with the Bajoran woman on Empok Nor. The pattern seems to follow here, too, as Ziysl's Cardassian features were the most prominent. We'd need to see a hybrid of the opposite combination to see if that followed the pattern as well.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Humans having babies with other races is good TV and not the most scientifically questionable thing in the Star Trek world by a longshot.

Human/alien hybrids are most common because writers think anything more will be confusing to the audience.

I agree it seems questionable that human/alien hybrids tend to be just more reasonable aliens. The trouble is aliens tend to be designed after one aspect of humans, so writers have trouble imagining what the human part would contribute.

 

[Six of Twelve]

I'm trying to imagine a hybrid Quark and Grilka would have had. And also, if Rom and Leeta did, as I believe one of the more recent novels mentioned.

 

[Tracy Trek]

I wonder what the child would look like if Kes had went ahead and had a child with Neelix.

 

[Six of Twelve]

I wonder what the child would look like if Kes had went ahead and had a child with Neelix.

I'd say it would have mostly Talaxian features, but softer and less prominent. And, of course the elfin ears of Kes.

 

[maneth]

The viewers are human, so we're going to see the kid as more alien than human. Spock is said to be half Vulcan, because I don't think viewers would have imagined his other half to be anything other than human when TOS aired.

One of my classmates in high school had a Nigerian father. The Finnish side of his family saw him as more black than white, whereas the reverse was true for the Nigerian side. We don't really know how the aliens would see half-human hybrids.

 

[Timo]

Would humans perhaps be more sensitive to spotting the humanness in a hybrid than a third-species observer? Could anybody from our species have repeated Harry Mudd's feat? I could easily see such subtle things happening: humans from given races (insert your preferred synonym) today are more sensitive to things like facial expressions from their own race than from others, against apparent odds.

The focus on humans is quite acceptable in-universe, as we follow a set of heroes that is predominantly human. A story about a Klingon crew might have plenty of Klingon/alien hybrids in it, were such a story to exist (and that no such story exists is the only "out-universe" aspect here, the result of humans forming 100% of the sapient audience for the story).

As for genetic compatibility, not only did the Ancients give the Trek species "similar" DNA, they gave them DNA that works miracles on its own right. It has at least one hidden functionality, that of hijacking the nearest piece of technology and modifying it into a holoprojector. If it can do that, then forcing the course of evolution and reproduction ought to be both a breeze and a plausible feature to be included by the Ancients! A major element in the Ancient project may have been to ensure that future humanoids would all interbreed and never die out simply because an individual species was too stupid to survive on its own.

FWIW, we know that the species threshold can be crossed by minor things just as well as by major ones such as procreation. Species was no limit when donors for certain blood elements were sought for the dying Romulan in "The Enemy", and Vulcanoids were apparently no more compatible than humans or Klingons in that respect, statistically speaking.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[KelisThePoet]

Spock, with the human mother, looks full Vulcan. But the son of Trip and T'Pol, captain of the alternate reality Enterprise that was thrown into the past, shows his human side in both appearance and temperament, despite having Vulcan ears.

As for temperament, I'd chalk the difference up to the fact that Spock was raised on Vulcan and T'Pol's son was raised on Enterprise amongst a mostly human crew.

As for appearance, is it possible that the mixture is variable from couple to couple and hybrid to hybrid, or would all hybrids be very similar? I don't know enough about real hybrid species to say. Are there some mules that look horse-ier, others more like donkeys? I know that among humans, superficial markers of genetic heritage are variable. In fiction, it's common to cast or design a human character who shares a fairly even balance of maternal and paternal traits, but in reality, it's just as common for a child to resemble only one parent strongly (or sometimes neither).

 

[BJ Wagner]

I generally think the reason in Trek that several races can interbreed is that they share the common origin race of the Preservers or Ancient Aliens from the TNG episode, The Chase. And because all the aliens are basically humans with 'stuff' added to make them look different, the human race is the default design. We're the most boring and least detailed shape. That's why whenever we have a hybrid, the alien physical attributes appear more pronounced.

 

[Mojochi]

There is also the Klingon/Romulan Hybrid that Worf meets in the Romulan Prison Camp

And in an alternate reality of TNG's Parallels, it is mentioned that Worf has a son & daughter with Deanna, who'd be one-quarter Betazoid, & quite possibly empathic, to some extent. I've often mused about a Klingon with telepathic abilities ever since that episode. Could make for some good fan fiction

 

[Richard Baker]

I am mostly interested in the internal physiological structures being so different and how a hybrid would configure.
While most of the aliens look like humans with 'stuff' added (almost like an actor), the insides of the beings is very different. Vulcans have most the same organs but rearranged and the blood is based on copper, Klingons had duplicate organs, including two spinal cords,- these are not trivial differences. When a Vulcan and a human mate- what decides where stuff goes and how the metabolism functions. Iron or copper blood, heart where the liver should be, it seems Spock had pretty much everything Vulcan and only got a bit of human temperament. How did Amanda carry him to full term if the fetus has radically different blood- it needs nutrients and oxygen transfer via the cord but that means they are sharing the blood.
I know this is all explained by some technobabble, but I still wonder how and which attributes are chosen to result in a particular hybrid. Would another human/vulcan be mostly human in configuration?

 

[Ronald Held]

Why expect these mating to produce children? I assume, perhaps incorrectly, that the children are produced via genetic engineering.

 

[FormerLurker]

And Seska apparently believed human/cardassian hybrids were possible as well.

This has been said twice in this thread. I haven't seen the episodes in question since they aired, so my memory is spotty, but I recall Seska stating once the child was born that she knew it was half Kazon, and not half human, but told Chakotay it was his so Voyager would be lured back so the Kazon could steal the ship.

 

[Voth commando1]

This has been said twice in this thread. I haven't seen the episodes in question since they aired, so my memory is spotty, but I recall Seska stating once the child was born that she knew it was half Kazon, and not half human, but told Chakotay it was his so Voyager would be lured back so the Kazon could steal the ship.

I seem to recall she was as surprised as Chakotay was and took advantage of the fact it was the kazon's afterwards.