Tzenkethi
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Here's the Memory Alpha (canon) article about the Tzenkethi:
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Tzenkethi
And the Memory Beta (non-canon) article about them:
http://startrek.wikia.com/wiki/Tzenkethi
Interestingly the Memory Alpha article suggests that they might be connected to TAS' Kzinti. Maybe they look cat-like, too. But writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe (who co-wrote DS9's "The Adversary") saw them as "heavily armored lizard things".
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Tzenkethi
And the Memory Beta (non-canon) article about them:
http://startrek.wikia.com/wiki/Tzenkethi
Interestingly the Memory Alpha article suggests that they might be connected to TAS' Kzinti. Maybe they look cat-like, too. But writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe (who co-wrote DS9's "The Adversary") saw them as "heavily armored lizard things".
read the article again, it only says the name reminds of the TAS Kzinti ... nothing more.
I always assumed that the Tzenkethi are "really" the Kzinti (notice the names - "Tzenkethi" can be rearranged to "The Kzinti"), written back into the Trek universe after Larry Niven retconned them out of it.
Gene Roddenberry retconned the Kzinti out, not Niven. They're definitely not intended to be Kzinti surrogates in any case, though I know that's a common perception of them. While hardly original, they weren't really there to 'replace' anything - if anything they're a bit like Vilix'Pran - an alien species they can reference and assume looks weird, but won't show because it'd be problematic on the budget.
^
That the Tzenkethi were a cat-race that are a kind of backdoor Kzinti has been a popular theory for years. Hewitt Wolfe only offered his explantion in 2006, IIRC. But on the other hand, Hewitt Wolfe invented the Tzenkethi, so I presume he knows what he's talking about.
That the Tzenkethi were a cat-race that are a kind of backdoor Kzinti has been a popular theory for years. Hewitt Wolfe only offered his explantion in 2006, IIRC. But on the other hand, Hewitt Wolfe invented the Tzenkethi, so I presume he knows what he's talking about.
Kegek said:
That the Tzenkethi were a cat-race that are a kind of backdoor Kzinti has been a popular theory for years. Hewitt Wolfe only offered his explantion in 2006, IIRC. But on the other hand, Hewitt Wolfe invented the Tzenkethi, so I presume he knows what he's talking about.
Correct. Marco Palmieri, editor at Pocket Books, also made some enquiries to quash the coincidental anagram theory.
However, before Christopher L Bennett did the diggng to get Wolfe's comments, many fans had been uploading their own Photoshopped theories on kzin-like Tzenkethi - and a Tzenkethi male was briefly described as a "feliform" biped (in the non canonical DS9 short story, "Infinite Bureaucracy") in Pocket's "Strange New Worlds VII".
In 2006, the screenwriter Robert Hewitt Wolfe, who coined the term "Tzenkethi" for DS9 recalled, "I basically made them up. And yeah, I named them. But I can't remember if I was making a purposeful homage to Niven or not. If I had to guess, I suspect I did my usual and combined a couple things. Probably Kzinti and Tsankth. But when I picture them in my head, they weren't big cat people. I thought of them as more like the Hakazit."
The Tsankth are from "RuneQuest"/"HeroQuest" the role-playing game. The Hakazit are from Jack L Chalker's "Well World" SF novels, and are described (inconsistently in the series) as either three-metre tall Tyrannosaurus Rexes with powerfully strong arms, or large mosquitoes.
The Tzenkethi are earmarked for a major focus in a forthcoming "The Lost Era" novel from Pocket Books. The book is not yet scheduled and no author has been announced.
I consider them to be feline-like.
AFAIK, Niven wrote in the beginning of Man-Kzin Wars IV that he no longer wanted the Kzinti used in the Trekverse.
In that link, he references the Hakazit from the well of souls books as what he envisioned. I think that would have been and be a great way to go. If you are looking for a fierce and terrifying species from a scary world with a horrific habitat, something like the Hakazit are it.
WHAT GIVES HIM THE RIGHt.
the fact that he created the Kzinti and wrote the TAS episode they appeared in?
And nowadays, TAS is gradually working itself back into canon, so it's all good.
I don't suppose that Lost Era novel involving the Tzenkethi War (and Sisko on the Okinawa) is still upcoming?
Actually there were two sentient species on that world, the Wot-the and the Hakazit, and no one knew how to describe them during first contact
Of course it is.
Well, a 1989 memo, with the letterhead of Gene's "Star Trek Office" at Paramount at the top, to the licensees of Star Trek tie-ins, and signed off by Roddenberry. The memo ceased to have influence following Gene's death in 1991.
The winding down of Filmation in 1989, and lots of red tape, also aided in TAS's (temporary/partial?) banishment from ST canon.
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