Star Trek’s Most Controversial Show Is Secretly Connected To Its Best Movies
The fifth and final season of Star Trek: Discovery has been doing some fun callbacks to earlier franchise stories, and these callbacks include wild moments like seeing Captain Picard as well as the Enterprise from the evil Mirror Universe.
The recent episode “Labyrinths” had one of our favorite callbacks, but it is one that went over the heads of most fans. Hy’Rell, the perky archivist working at the Eternal Gallery and Archive, is an Efrosian, an alien race we haven’t seen onscreen since Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
Return Of The Efrosians
Long before this most recent season of Star Trek: Discovery, we saw our first Efrosian in the 1986 film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. In a real blink-and-you-miss-it moment, the helmsman on the USS Saratoga is one such alien. Incidentally, the very name of these aliens is a tribute to that film’s production manager, Mel Efros.
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
No Efrosians appeared in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, but these aliens came back in a big way in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. In that film, the Federation president is an Efrosian, memorably played by legendary Robocop villain Kurtwood Smith. Many fans thought we’d see more of these aliens after Captain Kirk heroically saved the president’s life, but they never appeared onscreen until the final season of Star Trek: Discovery.
Discovery Brought Back The Species
In the intervening years, the lack of onscreen appearances led to some major confusion regarding these exotic aliens. For example, their forehead ridges made many fans think these aliens were related to the Klingons in some way, and in the non-canonical book Star Trek: Federation-The First 150 Years, the aliens were former Klingon subjects who rebelled against the Empire.
Speaking of books, the novelization of The Undiscovered Country mistakenly identified the Federation president as a long-haired version of a Deltan, the same alien race as the very bald, very human-looking Ilia in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Discovery Solved A Mystery
Weirdly enough, even though these aliens were named Efrosians way back in publicity photos for Star Trek IV, Paramount never confirmed this as their official name until the most recent season of Star Trek: Discovery. Otherwise, authoritative texts like the Star Trek Encyclopedia refused to use the name, causing continued confusion among fans.
Fortunately, Discovery’s final season also clarified something that confused the fandom: whether or not all of these aliens are born blind.
Debate Started Back With Star Trek VI
As you may recall, the Federation president used special visual aids to help read some charts in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. The actor who played his assistant, Lena Banks, later confirmed that the present was supposed to be blind, something later corroborated by director Nicholas Meyer on the DVD commentary. Between this and the fact that the Efrosian helmsman in The Voyage Home had white eyes, it was reasonable to assume that the entire race was actually blind.
No Idea When We’ll See An Efrosian Again
However, the captivating Efrosian archivist we see in the Star Trek: Discovery episode “Labyrinths” doesn’t have white eyes and apparently needs no special visual aids to read (which would have admittedly been annoying for someone working in the galaxy’s biggest library).
It’s possible, of course, that she was born blind, and this was remedied by 32nd-century medical and technological advancements. We won’t know for sure until we see another Efrosian onscreen, and with any luck, fans won’t have to wait another 33 years for Paramount to make that happen again.
