Lit The "Dathomirian species": another treat of nonsense?

So, as you all know, The Clone Wars first introduced the Dathomirians, who are supposed to be a hybrid species. That wasn't a real bright idea, was it? What does that mean, a "hybrid species" anyway? Only individuals can be hybrids, not entire species! Are we supposed to understand that a bunch of people who all have a Human mother and a Zabrak father form a "species"? It doesn't work that way.

That retcon also gave rise to a lot of sorry inconsistencies. According to The Essential Readers' Companion, Gethzerion and the other Nightsisters are all Dathomirians, while the "good witches" of the Singing Mountain Clan led by Augwynne Djo are all Human. However, Gethzerion is one of Augwynne's daughters. Additionally, the Essential Atlas states that the planet Dathomir hosted about 5,200 inhabitants, 97% of which were Humans. Then how come that so many Dathomiri witches that were considered Human in the past (Gethzerion, Zalem and her clan from the Infinity's End comic story) are being retconned into Dathomirians, if they only represent less than 3 % of tha planet's population?

 

That one's fairly easy- Augwynne had a Zabrak (or possibly Dathomirian?) spouse.

The Essential Atlas was written before the "Dathomirian" retcon- thus, the 97% Human figure for the population, may be inaccurate now.

 

Why don't the writers just ignore it, like the mediclorians and Gorge Lucas inferior retread of Star Trek's "Balance of Terror" only on the romulans side. Call the clone wars what it was, A silly kids show and move on.

 

Unless you count that the Dathomirian were wiped out by Grievous during the aptly named "Massacre" episode of TCW... That would be an easy way to fix this as well.

I still can't see why they created the Datomirians in the first place. Having those Zabrak shipped to Dathomir by slavers and mating with Human witches is a very, very complicated and contrived way to link Darth Maul, the Nightsisters and Ventress...

 

Actually it does work that way. Hybrid speciation is actually reasonably common, though rare in vertebrates. There is absolutely no reason why a little meddling with the Force couldn't induce such an event for a Zabrak/Human cross.

 

Especially if Zabraks are a "Near-human" species who only separated from humans around the start of spaceflight.

 

Hybrid speciation, as the Wikipedia article says, leads to a new species, reproductively isolated from the parent species. This is obviously not the case with Dathomirians. Darth Maul is said to be a Dathomirian, and yet he has a Human mother and a Zabrak father, not two Dathomirian parents. Ergo, he is not a member of a hybrid species, he is just a hybrid.

Except that the Dathomirians only exist since a few decades prior to the start of the Clone Wars, according to "Everything You Always Wanted to Know about the Nightsisters but Were Afraid to Ask"—Star Wars Insider 122.

 

Ego, I wrote yesterday in another thread "I done goofed" is something some people just cant say. Some people also can't admit when others do a better job than they do.

Chris Claremont has had trouble realizing other writers id a far better job with wolverine turning him into marvels cash cow than he did. Gene Roddenberry would probably freak out over DS9's stepping away from a Big 3 approach, non-idyllic Federation, and seriously flaws human characters, and it's war arc.

George Lucas is the same way the EU especially the Books and Comics did a better job with the clone wars, with the Star Wars intellectual property than he did.

 

Sure- but Zabraks being near-human, would make the existence of "Dathomirians" without medical intervention, more feasible.

 

A pre-industrial crossbreeding subspecies? they should have a mass of birth defects, Don't zabrak have two hearts?

And while zabrak horns are likely kerotine and not bone, there is a large decent biological difference. In normal gffa society I would surmise these issues would be dealt with by prenatal gene therapy. On a pre-industrial planet massive birth defects.

 

Klingons, as I recall, also have two hearts. Yet human/Klingon hybrids are not portrayed as anything particularly "special" in Star Trek.

 

And? That doesn't make Dathomirians not a hybrid species, it is just that reproductive isolation has not been fully achieved. Dathomirians can interbreed with each other to produce more Dathomirians. If you want, you can consider the Dathomirians a fertile hybrid population that has not yet fully speciated and, if the Courtship of Princess Leia is any evidence, eventually fails to achieve full independence and goes extinct by merging back into a larger human base population.

None of that makes the genetics nonsense, or implies that hybrid species are impossible, which is what your original post asserted.

The biological aspects of the Dathomirians are highly implausible, but not impossible.

 

This. As far as we know, as of now Ventress and Talzin are the last of their species. Ventress was originally supposed to appear in the 6th season of TCW with hair grown, to show she was a Dathomirian or something, I don't know. But anyways, I guess you could say Gethzerion was a Dathomirian by virtue of Augwynne mating with a Dathomirian that one time, or something.

Also, I'd like to say that despite retconning the species on Dathomir, TCW did a wonderful job depicting their culture, right down to the females "choosing a mate." That was spot-on, although IIRC the males lives in the same village as the females in Courtship. The separated villages could've been a Nightsister thing, though.

 

That's the mechanics of star trek, Star Trek also doesn't have the force or Hyperspace. I farscape Humans and Subaceans as well as Sabaceans and Luxans can interbreed all willy-nilly. Thoes universe where created with that in mind.

Human alien hybridization is absent from 99.9% of star wars, human Near human hybridization is also just a rare not counting so-close-it-does-not-matter Hapans and Kiffar. Who's differences are force sensitivity and cultural.

 

I think it was The Essential Reader's Companion that was the first source to say Gethzerian was a "Dathomirian" - at least, that's what Wookieepedia says:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Gethzerion

For TCW, there's the Luquayne children.
There's plenty of mentions in other EU sources- Shug Ninx, Hissa, etc.

 

Okay, well we know Augwynne wasn't a Dathomirian, because her other daughter were human. Therefore she must've mated with a Dathomirian.

 

Indeed. She could have had both Zabrak/Dathomirian, and human partners.

 

My point exactly.

 

You keep ignoring the fact that was Lucas who is not the best at universe crafting, thats the .1% thats was mentioned. Wookiepedia is always being updated with retcons. Dathmorian was as much as a species as being a Georgian, or a Virginian, its a regional/national designation, maybe ethnic but not a biological one.

 

Lucas isn't the only SW writer who's had "alien-blooded humans" though.

 

I have never come across any alien blooded humans outside of Sith Purblood characters.

 

How about this: People, who were born and live on Dathomir, no matter if they are human or zabrak, are Dathomirians.

 

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hybrid

Notable hybrids:

Shug Ninx (Human/Theelin: Dark Empire)
Bey (Human/Nagai: Marvel Star Wars)
Bertroff Hissa (Human/unknown: The Glove of Darth Vader)

These are some of the early ones.

 

So 3 obscure references, for one shot characters. One of them being the Nagi created by marvel, who have been so absent in the EU the first Nagi I ever heard of was Darth Nihil.

While, Star Trek who's constructed its universe with Human Alien hybridization in mind has Spock (Its arguably most famous character), Alexander the son of Worf Major character in TNG and Alexander would reoccur many times through star trek, the quater Romulan fellow from Drumhead (a one shot but very good episode of TNG.

There Is Soleta from Star Trek New Frontier Vulcan/Romulan a main character, T'yriss Chen vulcan human major character in the TNG relaunch books. Just off the top of my head. And I know I am missing a lot more, Like Deanna Troi main Character in Star Trek TNG.

not 3 obscure references, but major characters who have had many stories about them, a Big difference. Why because Trek was created with Hybridization in mind, Star Wars clearly was not.

 

The former thing you mentioned sort of makes Dathomirians easy to explain. We're dealing with a species that's the presumed result of Zabrak's mating with Force using witches. Sort of makes this a non issue when you get down to it. Alchemy was the thing that aided in the breeding of the Exiles and Sith. I can't imagine there's anything too different going on here. This just results in a more clearly divergent subspecies.