Titan Fleet Yards

With the release of Star Trek on DVD, I finally had the opportunity to do a feature on the new Federation aliens spotted in this alternate version of the 23rd century.

Starfleet Academy

Star Trek (or Star Trek 2009 as I will call it when there is confusion) has a very distinct look that sets it apart from other Star Trek. Just as the space ships, uniforms and sets, the aliens have a different style. Although sadly the majority of alien designs barely made it into the final movie, appearing only in far away background shots, the few major aliens and the behind-the-scenes features show very elaborate  masks with moving parts, sometimes even combined with post-production digital effects. Most of the Star Trek movies have used their larger budgets to create more alien looking aliens than the television shows could afford. But it’s also true that in nearly all cases, these aliens appear only in the background, and we never really get to admire the wonderful designs in much detail. I hope we’ll get more information on the weird and wonderful aliens in this Star Trek, but until then, we have to rely mostly on blurry screengrabs for a lot of them. As this post intends to list new Federation aliens, I’ll limit myself to aliens seen in Starfleet uniforms.

Monchezke

Alnschloss K'Bentayr of Monchezke

The first alien we see is an officer on the bridge of the USS Kelvin in the opening act of the movie. According to the script this is Alnschloss K’Bentayr. The Intel viral website Starfleet Shipyard states that comes from the planet Monchezke.  And yes, it appears to be a male. The Aliens feature on the DVD explains that, like the Talosians in “The Cage”, this alien was played by a woman yet intended to be a male alien. Physically, the Monchezkeans (Monchezkites?) appear to be be slender humanoids with webbed hands and a large head.

The making of Alnschloss K'Bentayr

Alien doctor

The Kelvin doctor

Another alien crewmember of the Kelvin is the doctor that accompanies Winona Kirk during the evacuation. This particular alien is largely human-like, with the exception of her enormous CGI-enhanced eyes.

Orion

An Orion science officer.

Together with the Vulcans and the Romulans, the only other recurring alien race in the movie are the green-skinned Orions. Surprisingly, they appear to be regular Starfleet crewmembers. Gaila, Kirk’s fling, is in enrolled at the Academy, and a deleted scene (where the above image is taken from) features another Orion lieutenant in a sciences division uniform. We must assume that something happened to make this possible in the alternate 2250s. Either relations with the Orions are dramatically different in this universe, or, as Roberto Orci suggested, these may be Orion slave girls that found a way out. Or, keeping in mind the revelations in Enterprises’s “Bound”, the Orions may have actually succesfully infiltrated Starfleet.

Enterprise bridge officer

Enterprise bridge officer

On the Enterprise, we actually see very few aliens outside of the Vulcans. One of the aliens we do see is a bridge officer with a dark, almost metallic like skin. This alien is known as ‘Madeline’ in behind-the-scenes material, and in the Aliens featurette, the actress under the mask, Kimberly Arland, mentions her homeworld has four suns. She’s playing the character, so I suppose she would know these things!

Keenser

Keenser

Keenser, Scotty’s engineering buddy, is an “oyster-faced small alien” (description by Simon Pegg) with small, moving rods in place of eyes. He appeared to be in Starfleet service. We know very little about Keenser, apart from the fact that he apparently eats very little and has a tendency to sit on things.

.. and the rest.

Various aliens

The rest of the aliens are quite hard to identify in the final cut of the movie. Most of them appear in the background multiple times however. The above 12 I could pick up, although I now believe that #9 is the same as #6. I will come back to this once the Art of the Film book comes out, and maybe shines some more light on these. In conclusion, it appears that we can add around a dozen new candidates for the Federation to our lists. On the other hand, nearly all of these appear only in very minor background rolls, leading to a Starfleet that still seems to be almost entirely human (although a clear effort was made to include many different types of people). And although I admire the extremely intricate designs in the movie, I would like to see some ‘classic’ aliens return for the sequel. I still feel that the Andorians and Tellarites are underused, silly as their concepts may be.