ST: TOS question regarding the organians

[Stofsk]

What the hell happened to the organians? Is there anything in any of the books about their disappearance? Because considering they intervened to stop the federation and klingons from going to war, its hard to understand their absence later on in the timeline (during the events of ST3 and ST6 in particular).

[Patrick Degan]

Organians are again mentioned in James Blish's sidewise-AU novel Spock Must Die (written between seasons two and three), in which the Klingons attempted to block Organian intervention by means of a planetwide energy screen which interfered with their psionic abilities and as a consequence of it and an experimental tachyonic transporter jury-rig, produced a duplicate Spock. They are also mentioned in Diane Duane and Peter Morwood's The Romulan Way, in the chapter of the harrowing journey of the Vulcan separatists to find their own world of how two of their ships ran afoul of a race of intellivores who drained those unfortunates of their mental energies which the rest of the colony fleet avoided. It was when this race figured out how to start moving their planet around the galaxy that the Federation asked the Organians to do something about them. No details are revealed as to just what the Organians did, except to say that the planet is now quiet and deserted, and that Federation archaeologists were sifting the ruined cities and desolated landmasses for what few traces of the Iruh may remain.

The Organian Treaty, of course, was part of the background of events involving any clash between the Enterprise crew and the Klingons ("Friday's Child", "A Private Little War", "The Trouble With Tribbles", "Day Of The Dove") in subsequent seasons. As to why they don't seem to appear in the movie era, it could be that the Organians decided that the only way the Federationists and the Klingons would ever find their pathway to peace and mutual cooperation would be if they left the two powers to their own devices and let them face the possible consequences of interstellar war without a referee around.

[Uraniun235]

While we're talking about books, there was an old comic book arc - back between Wrath of Khan and Search for Spock - where the Excalbians maneuvered the Federation and the Klingon Empire into a war, threw an energy field around Organia to keep everyone out, and personally suppressed the Organians. At the end, Kirk convinced the Excalbians that the best way to learn from the conflict between "good and evil" was to participate in it themselves, at which point the Excalbians released the Organians and provoked them into combat. The story ended with the implication that the two groups had destroyed each other.


I'm not sure what explanation I prefer best. The mutual destruction scenario above seems a bit hokey, but then the Organians themselves were as well.

[Anguirus]

I heard somewhere that the new D.C. Fontana IDW comics series addresses why the Organian Peace Treaty goes away by the movie era.

I should read those.

[tim31]

There is a line mentioning their mysterious disappearance in the novelisation of STVI, and IIRC there was suggestion that Chang's BoP had something to do with it. Don't ask me how, I don't even have my copy anymore.