What do we think 10-C means?

[Mike Doyle]

Not who they are but what it means. Clearly some kind of scale. A number for technological advancement and a letter for something else?

From Memory Alpha we have three scales:

A technological rating was a measurement of a planet's level of technology. http://www.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Technological_rating#See_also

The industrial scale was a system used to rate the extent of industrial development on different planets. http://www.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Industrial_scale#See_also

Richter's scale of cultures was a method of describing cultural achievement. http://www.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Richter's_scale_of_cultures#See_also

 

[Cyrus]

It’s short hand for DMA aliens

 

[Jack Wolfe]

It's a designation. A placeholder name. It could have just as easily been 5.5/Apple/28 instead.

 

[NCC-73515]

The Sheliak are R-3.
The 10-C are simply from Tennessee, and their language changed over the centuries.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

Its short for species wait-10-C

 

[The Wormhole]

The full name is literally Unidentified Species 10-C. So clearly they are one of ten alien species the Federation doesn't have a name for, while the C likely means they are adjacent to the tenth unknown species somehow and that there are likely two others also somehow adjacent to this tenth species, a 10-A and a 10-B.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I think we all need to lighten up a bit. The situation is getting much too tense-C.

 

[Yistaan]

For all we know, 10-C were just regular Milky Way aliens who became gods after crossing the galactic barrier without shielding.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I'd guess a scale of advancement from 1-10. And letter suffixes for .... ummm... destructiveness?

 

[Locutus of Bored]

In-universe it's just a random designation, the next alpha-numeric code for the next unidentified species encountered or referenced in some way. Like when they name a hurricane based off the next name on the list.

From a production standpoint, I have a feeling it's going to turn out to be some kind of subtle hint at the nature of what they'll find, like there's only ten children (10-C) remaining of this alien civilization and they built the entire hyperfield around the star just to provide a protective nursery for them, and the DMA to mine Boromite for the Omega Modules at its core to keep it running.

That's why it's all automated and there's been no corrective action to avoid inhabited systems, because there's no one left alive back home other than the "infants" to correct its path. Maybe when it started its mission collecting Boromite elsewhere there were no inhabited system and we came along later, it's just been doing it for so long.

So all the defenses Discovery is going to encounter are going to be automated, and then once they get inside they'll discover the children are all that are left. That's why the enotional pheromones around them were all love and comfort while everything outside the emergency nursery found in the last episode were of pain and terror, because they all died to protect their young and ensure the survival of a small part of their species.

That's my theory anyway.

 

[Finn]

Was there a species 9-C or 10-B?


Maybe they had one for the Ferengi before they managed to connect certain rumors and heresay with the name Ferengi prior to TNG.

Archer might have given them one.

On that note, why haven't we seen a speaking Ferengi. The ones we saw had a weird gaze, not saying anything. They've gone a long way from where they were in the 24th. Rom wouldn't be able to live among them.

 

[SJGardner]

They were named by Kovich, a notable 20th century history buff. Something about them reminded him of a vintage late-20th-century calculator. Or maybe he had one on his desk and just offered a line-of-sight name.

I said the above in jest, but looking at the disambiguation page, it turns out that the interstellar radio surveys of the University of Cambridge that are used to build catalogs of radio emission sources are incrementally named 1C, 2C and so on, with 10C being the most recent in 2017. The species name is still most probably just a random code thought up by one of the writers, but I found it an interesting bit of trivia nonetheless.

 

[dupersuper]

It's obviously an alliance between the Cardassians, Calamarain, Changelings, Capellans, Cairn, Caitians, Caldonians, Chameloids, Corvallen and Cytherians.