#tholians

This is what the Tholian prop looked like:

With only a face to work with, Star Trek artists had different ideas on what the Tholians looked like.

In Star Fleet Medical Reference Manual (1977), Doug Drexler and Anthony Fredrickson dodge the issue by only drawing the head. However, "the Tholian soldier appears to have no appendages":

In The Worlds of the Federation (1989), Don Ivan Punchatz and Lora Johnson interpreted Tholians as limbless floating crystals:

In the TNG comic War and Madness (1995), artists Gordon Purcell, Terry Pallot, and Rick Taylor gave us hilariously humanoid Tholians:

The Roleplaying Game "Aliens" sourcebook (2003) described Tholians as having "eight limbs, spaced radially around the trapezohedral body":

The Tholians returned in ENT: In a Mirror, Darkly (2005), giving us the two arms and six legs look that we know today:

But that leaves one important question unanswered... Why do Tholians make silk if they don't wear clothes?

Love the new intro battle scene for Lower Decks Season 5! Still Frame under cut ⬇️

And Nog says he doesn't even know what a Tholian looks like.

Which is no doubt true. Most people on DS9 probably wouldn't. But I like to think Odo spends most of the day in his office doing "historical research" on Starfleet, which just means binging TOS, and he had just watched "The Tholian Web".

According to the Memory Alpha (fuck Fandom), DS9 writers liked referencing a Tholian ambassador on the station, though it looks like they never got that to air, besides there being Tholian silk one may have sold or given to people. Probably because they absolutely did not have the budget or technology to make a CG Tholian look good at that point.

Hell, when they finally did one on Enterprise, the design was fantastic but it still didn't look great.

Though I do like the idea that DS9 could do one and never show it, besides it always being on a screen in habitat-specific quarters. Like it keeps popping up to yell about things and has a whole personality, but we never see anything more than what TOS showed. That would have been fun.

But I guess that was too goofy for the serious supercool 90s.

Also here are photos of two uncredited cosplays of Tholians that I found. Doing either one of these on DS9 would have been AMAZING. But DS9 isn't Farscape or Dr. Who, so no cool puppets for me.

...Stupid American TV.