Star Trek’s Drookmani: The Lower Decks Villains Explained
One of the best parts about watching Star Trek: Lower Decks is seeing just how much fun the show’s writers and animators can have with the classic aliens we have seen across decades of movies and television shows. However, there is one instance where the Paramount Plus show introduced a brand new alien race rather than using one of the ones that already populated the final frontier. That alien race is the Drookmani, and we’re here to explain everything we already know about these mysterious Star Trek: Lower Decks villains and what their frequent appearance might mean for other shows.
The Drookmani is a new alien race introduced in Star Trek: Lower Decks.
Visually, the Drookmani will probably make longtime fans look twice when they first show up onscreen. That’s because these aliens look more than a bit like the Klingons (or at least, the Klingons after they were redesigned in Star Trek: The Motion Picture) thanks to their prominent forehead ridges. Like many Klingons, these aliens seem to have facial hair: it always seems to be white hair, though we don’t know enough about these bad guys to know whether the white hair is a sign of age or not.
Despite having the Klingon aesthetic and warlike mentality down pat, the Drookmani we have seen so far survive by doing something actual Klingons would find very distasteful: salvaging.
Aside from the forehead ridges, the Drookmani have some other qualities in common with Klingons, including the fact that they tend to dress in warrior’s clothing. They also seem to be a warrior race that is always spoiling for a fight. We discover this in the Star Trek: Lower Decks episode “Terminal Provocations,” which specifies that it would be considered an instant act of war if a Starfleet vessel were to fire on a Drookmani vessel.
Despite having the Klingon aesthetic and warlike mentality down pat, the Drookmani we have seen so far survive by doing something actual Klingons would find very distasteful: salvaging. The Drookmani try to find potentially valuable sources of salvage, such as derelict or destroyed vessels, and they will aggressively defend their own salvage rights with extreme force if necessary.
That aggression over salvage rights is on full display in the Star Trek: Lower Decks ep “Terminal Provocations” after the Drookmani reported the discovery of a 23rd-century Starfleet vessel. Captain Freeman afforded to pay the aliens a kind of finder’s reward for their troubles (presumably using more of that money that Starfleet officers like Captain Picard claim to have outgrown) but insists that the aliens can’t just salvage Starfleet property like that. This results in a hilariously lopsided fight between the ships in which Freeman and the USS Cerritos do everything they can to fight back without directly firing on the Drookmani.
Because J.G. Hertzler has voiced the Drookmani captain for most appearances, fans can’t help but wonder if we’ll ever see these aliens in live-action.
While it can be frustrating watching our favorite Star Trek heroes have to take it on the chin from the Drookamani, these aliens have often brought a kind of karmic justice on themselves, thanks to their salvaging tendencies. For example, in the Lower Decks episode “A Mathematically Perfect Redemption,” some Drookmani (lured by the traitorous exocomp Peanut Hamper) begin scavenging from and then firing on Areore, a planet that appeared to be completely primitive. It turns out the denizens had simply rejected technology, and native warrior Rawda soon used one of his planet’s old ships to mop the floor with the invaders.
Most recently, the Drookmani popped up in the Star Trek: Lower Decks episode “A Few Badgeys More,” and we see the titular AI bad guy Badgey end up implanting himself on the aliens who come to salvage what they thought was ordinary Starfleet technology. Badgey’s “father” Rutherford, and his friends manage to save the day, freeing the Drookmani from going back to their violent ways.
Because J.G. Hertzler has voiced the Drookmani captain for most appearances, fans can’t help but wonder if we’ll ever see these aliens in live-action. Herzler played the Klingon Martok on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and we’re confident that he’d look good under all those alien prosthetics once more to play as a Drookmani. We’re far less confident these guys will ever show up in live-action, though, for the reason we already mentioned: they look too damned much like the Klingons, and fans really might think a Drookmani Hertzler was just Martok in disguise.
