Summary
Star Trek: Lower Deckshas given fans more information about Orions than any otherStar Trekseries. ThoughStar Trek: Discovery’sthird season featured the Emerald Chain, a 32nd century Orion crime syndicate, the show didn’t reveal much about Orion culture other than what fans have always known: they’re green, they’re pirates, and they really like to do crimes.
When the creative team behindLower Decksmade the bold, wonderful decision to include an Orion as a main cast member, they created the opportunity to exploreOrion culturein-depth. Though D’Vana Tendi went to extreme lengths to conceal details about her home planet and upbringing in the first three seasons of the show, Tendi returned to her home planet multiple times during the fourth season. These trips to Orion gave Trek fans their first comprehensive look at Orion’s social structures, customs, and rituals. At theend of the fourth season, a deal with her sister results in Tendi taking a leave of absence from Starfleet to return to the family business: piracy.
Spoliers ahead forStar Trek: Lower Decks season 5, episodes 1 and 2.In the first two episodes of the fifth season, which premiered on October 24th on Paramount+, Tendi’s crew runs into some adversaries on Orion whose faces are familiar to only the most dedicated Trek fans: Blue Orions. Who are these members of the traditionally green-skinned species, and what is their history in theStar Trekfranchise?
Orions in ‘Star Trek: The Animated Series’
Seven years afterStar Trek: The Original Series (TOS)was canceled, the first episode ofStar Trek: The Animated Series(TAS)aired. The wacky, weird version of theStar Trekuniverse only aired for two seasons, and there’s a lot of debate about its place inStar Trekcanon. The show was infamous for its plentiful contradictions to the Trek canon and its inconsistencies with previously established Trekverse norms.
One of those infamous inconsistencies was the Orions that appeared in the Season 2 episode “The Pirates of Orion.” Until that episode, every Orion in theStar Trekuniverse was green — varying shades of green, but always green. These Orions were light blue, essentially the same shade as anotherStar Trekspecies,the Andorians. What’s more, they pronounced the name of their species as “OR-ee-un” instead of “oh-RYE-on,” as it had always been pronounced before “The Pirates of Orion.”
The Blue Orions were also male, the first male Orions the crew of the Enterprise ever encountered. This led many fans to assume that all male Orions were blue, making their coloration not, in fact, inconsistent withStar Trekcanon, but an expansion of the canon. Decades later, however, this was debunked when theTOSprequel,Enterprise, showed male Orions who were definitely green.
As with many inconsistencies inStar Trekcanon, the existence of Blue Orions was never addressed again — until the fifth season ofLower Decks. When Tendi and her crew encounter the Blue Orions, she reveals that “the Blues” are a subset of Orions who are adversaries of the Green Orions.
Why Are There Blue and Green Orions?
As always, when the question of why something is the way it is in theStar Trekuniverse arises, there’s the in-universe answer and a behind-the-scenes answer.Lower Decksfinally provided the in-universe answer to this question:blue and green are natural variations in Orion skin-tones.The skin coloration has nothing to do with sex or gender assigned at birth, as many fans assumed.
Then there’s the behind-the-scenes reason, which isn’t as clear. Dorothy Fontana, one ofStar Trek’smost prolific writers, toldPhase II E-Magazinethat many of the color inconsistencies inTAShappened becausefrequent director Hal Sutherland was colorblind.He never noticed the color inconsistencies, because he saw every alien species as gray anyway.
However, inStar Trek: The Official Guide to the Animated Series,oneTAScharacter designer, Bob Kline, said that the color director, Irvin Kaplan, was responsible for many of the coloring inconsistencies inTAS:
“Irv was in charge of ink and paint, coloring the various characters and props […] He was also referred to by many people there as the purple and green guy. You’ll see it in a lot of scenes, purple and green used together […] It was all Irv Kaplan’s call. He wasn’t listening to anyone else when he picked colors or anything.”
Though Kline didn’t lay the blame on Kaplan for the Blue Orions, the fact that Kaplan was known as “the green and purple guy” hints that he may have been involved. The Blue Orions weardistinctive uniformsthat just happen to be bright green with purple accents, Kaplan’s signature.
Another fan theory, one that hasn’t been mentioned by anyone who worked onTAS, is that the character designers confused the Orions with Andorians because of theTOSepisode “Journey to Babel,” in which an Orion operative is disguised as an Andorian. They may have assumed that the Orion was also blue, and colored their animated Orions to match.
Like many of the little quirks throughoutStar Trekhistory, fans may never get a definitive answer about how the Orions ended up blue in one random episode ofTAS.But thanks toLower Decks, they do know that Blue Orions really do exist in Trek canon.
What’s With the Pronunciation of Orion?
Though fans may never definitively know how the Orions ended up blue, there is a consistent story behind the Blue Orions' strange pronunciation of their species name. In his podcastEnterprise Incidents with Scott & Steve, Trek expert Scott Mantz explained thatWilliam Shatner, who was known to mispronounce Trek words on the regular, pronounced Orion as “OR-ee-un” while recording for the episode, and the rest of the cast just followed his lead. This explanation also makes sense because scripts forTASdid not include pronunciation guides.
The in-universe reason why the Blue Orions pronounce their species name differently than the Green Orions isn’t revealed, even inLower Decks. Still, it does seem to be a known and accepted quirk of “The Blues” because Tendi and her crew make fun of their pronunciation.
Green vs. Blue in ‘Lower Decks’
Lower Decksdidn’t give a direct explanation of the conflict between the Green Orions and the Blue Orions in the first two episodes of the season, but observant viewers can glean a lot from the dialogue and the plot. The fact that both the factions are called in front of the Orion Pirate Queen indicates that they are part of the same societal structure, or at least, both members of the Syndicate, which is run by a Green Orion. But the Blue Orions clearly do not co-exist well with the Green Orions.
A one-off comment from one of Tendi’s crew members, calling the Blue Orions “patriarchal doofuses,” is revealing as well. PreviousStar Trekshows have confirmed thatOrion is a matriarchal society, with women in control of politics, commerce, and men’s lives in general. Knowing that, this comment suggests that the Blues are a patriarchy that split from the Green Orions at some point in the planet’s history.
With Tendi’s return to the U.S.S. Cerritos at the end of the second episode of season 5, fans may never see the Blue Orions again. But with a show as wacky asLower Decks, anything could happen.
Sources:Phase II E-Magazine,Star Trek: The Official Guide to the Animated Series,Enterprise Incidents with Scott & Steve
