Titan Fleet Yards

A Bzzit Khaht ambassador.

• Federation Member: Althos IV
• Member since: 23rd century
• Rationale: Member of the Federation Council

This is the first Federation Members entry focusing on one of the FASA derived aliens. In the 1986 Star Trek IV Sourcebook Update, the chapter on Federation members lists the majority of aliens seen in the Council chamber scenes of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. 

There are three reasons I include FASA’s names in this list of Federation members. Firstly, there is some circumstantial evidence that at least some of the names originated from production sources. The Efrosians were named after Mel Efros for example. Secondly, even for the completely made-up names, the FASA sourcebook seems to be the only widely referenced and accepted source of names for these particular aliens. Finally, at the time of publication, FASA was a licensed party. This usually has no bearing on the ‘truthfulness’ of material, there are several cases of later productions using FASA information as canon (most importantly the various Constitution-class registry numbers).

The alien in question was actually a puppet only very briefly seen in the Council chamber scenes. The puppet is ’seated’ on the right side of the room, close to the viewing screen. The image above is from a behind-the-scenes feature on the DVD. The puppet was also showcased in an episode of Hollywood Stuntmakers with makeup artist Richard Snell. 

FASA calls the alien a Bzzit Khaht from the planet Althos IV. It goes on to describe Bzzit Khaht society in detail. These kinds of background descriptions are of course not based on anything canon, but I will briefly summarize the information.

Althos IV is described as a cool, water rich planet with major gemstone deposits. It is home to a Federation research facility. The Bzzit Khaht are a species of amphibious reptiles, who spend significant time in the water, living in beaver dam like ’seatowns’ and living from seabed agriculture. Seatowns are egalitarian communities, although there are specialized roles. The Bzzit Khaht have some psionic powers that allows a world-wide sense of purpose, negating the need for governments. According to the story, the Bzzit Khaht were only contacted (and immediately made Federation member) 5 years prior to the movie, and are effectively a pre-warp civilization with some intra system spaceflight capabilties. They are still being extensively studied by the Federation. It’s not made clear how and why they became Federation members.