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There may be those of you who will point to the similarities between this theme and that of Voyager, and then ask why this is so much higher than the latter? My answer? Fuck off. No, seriously. I find this, though it bears a certain resemblance to the theme to the other show, is more representative of this one. There's the sort of booming, military ambience you expect in a series that, from season three onwards, was concerned with a huge, galaxy-spanning war that pulled in all the major races in Star Trek, and there's a triumphant, victorious feel to it too. Whereas Voyager, as I have said, was generally a quiet, laidback, gentle theme, this one punches you in the face and demands your attention. Not as much as TNG does, but it's up there.

And that's why it's made it all the way to number

in our countdown.

I also like the way the music fits in with the opening sequence. As the music builds we see the station for the first time, then as it crescendos into the trumpeting fanfare a runabout flies away from Deep Space 9 until the end notes are swallowed by the wormhole as it opens and closes. Great stuff! Not my favourite Trek theme, obviously, otherwise it would be at number one, but earning a spot just outside the top three.

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Major Kira Nerys, played by Nana Visitor

When Commander Benjamin Sisko arrives to take command of Deep Space 9, he not only has to battle prejudices, Cardassians and general apathy as much of the population of the station prepare to leave, but has to deal also with the feisty and opinionated Major Kira Nerys. She is the military liaison to the Bajoran government, and she is not happy to see Sisko. She sees him, and the Federation, as just another occupying force, and having just got rid of the Cardassians after fifty years of oppression she is not eager to cede authority again. She is certainly not backward in coming forward, telling Sisko what she thinks of him and his Starfleet when they first meet, but she gradually comes to realise that he is more than just a soldier or a bureaucrat, and ends up trusting and even liking him. She has a deep relationship with Odo, the station’s changeling security officer, and is in fact in love with him, though it takes some time before she will admit this to herself.

She has also no time for Doctor Bashir, the young, bright, energetic prodigy who has come to take over as CMO, seeing him as a puppy-dog idealist, a boy on an adventure rather than anything serious. She mistrusts and pretty much loathes Quark, the Ferengi bar owner, though he is somewhat infatuated with her. She was in the Bajoran resistance and went on many raids against the Cardassians; she will of course never trust one of their race, and becomes both a thorn in the side of and also something of a fascination to Gul Dukat. She is deeply religious, as are all Bajorans, and even though Sisko has met the wormhole aliens and seen them to be such, she prefers to think of them as the gods of her people, The Prophets. She is secretly annoyed that they have chosen him, an outsider, as their emissary. She’s another strong female character, carrying herself with a military bearing at all times, almost as if she is trying to deny she is a woman, and is nothing more or less than a soldier.

As we learn in the penultimate TNG episode, “Pre-emptive strike”, Bajorans have their family or surname first, and are addressed by this formally, as in “Major Kira” but the last name when using personal address, as in “I love you, Nerys”. Kira has a romantic relationship with one of the vedeks, Bareil, who later dies, his death hitting her hard. She remains on DS9 as a liaison officer to the Dominion when they take over the station during the Dominion War, and is able to use her experience as a rebel on her home planet to create a resistance movement, funnelling information back to Starfleet and eventually allowing them to retake the station.

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Rene Auberjonois (Odo)

Then


Now



Armin Shimerman (Quark)
Then


Now



Cirroc Lofton (Jake Sisko)

Then


Now



Colm Meaney (O’Brien)

Then


Now

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And so we're down finally to the top three of

And coming in at number

it's one of the most popular and well-known and recognised of the themes, with a big, bouncy, exciting orchestral melody and thumping percussion in a militaristic beat that just tells you “adventure is on the way!” Yeah, it could only be, couldn't it?

Although to be fair, I reallly have to share this with

as much as I would like not to. I didn't like the movie (in case you didn't read my review of it) and if there was anything good about it I guess it was the theme, which later went on to be selected, almost note for note, as the theme for the new series. But I will always think of TNG when I hear this music, and for those who care, I prefer the slightly longer version, where they hold the note on the next-to-last bar, you know the one. But if nothing else, film aside, this was after all the music that heralded the return to the small screen of my childhood favourite TV show, and so it was a big thing and will always remain one of my favourites. One of the best things Jerry Goldsmith ever did.

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Name: Betazed
Alignment: Friendly, member of the Federation
Home to: Betazoid race
Capital City: Rixx
Orbital star: Beta Veldonna, yellow dwarf star

By all accounts a lush and beautiful world, Betazed is the only inhabitable (M-Class) planet in its solar system and is home to the race of telepaths known as the Betazoids. If you look up into the sky from the planet’s surface you will see a blue sky, like that of Earth, but with pink clouds. The weather is generally temperate and mild but can shift with alarming suddenness. There are beauty spots such as the Valley of Song, which is a popular place to spread the ashes of a loved one, Janaran Falls in the Jalara jungle and Lake Cataria. When the high mountain peaks of coloured crystal catch the rays of the morning sun, the patterns reflected back on the surface of the land are a most beautiful sight. One of the mountain ranges, the Loneel Mountains, is honeycombed with caves and has heavy deposits of a mineral which scrambles sensor signals, making this an ideal place for the resistance that sprung up on Betazed during its occupation by the Dominion.

Betazed is a matriarchal society, ruled by women, and has a long and proud dynasty of rulers. As they are telepaths, Betazoids frown usually on spoken communications, believing these to be beneath them, unless one of the parties is not of their race. They also have an odd custom which requires every guest at a wedding ceremony to be naked. The planet is somewhat unique, or at least similar to Earth, in that it hosts other races among its population, humans being among them. Even more similarities to Earth exist, as Betazed has an atmosphere breathable by humans and comparable gravity, has five continents and many hundreds of islands, and is more than seventy percent oceans.

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Romulans

Class: Humanoid, warlike
Home planet: Romulus
Values: Cunning, strategy, treachery, strength, military might
Feature in: TOS, TNG, DS9
Romulans of note: Commander Tomalak, Senator Pardek, Commander Sela

As earlier explained, Romulans share a common ancestry with Vulcans, but rejected Surak’s total-elimination-of-emotions and full-on logic to the point that they abandoned their home planet and set up on a new one. In temperament they are the reverse of Vulcans. Though they also espouse logic to a degree, they are more fiery, combative and indeed even more arrogant than their counterparts. They are also racist and supremacist. Again unlike the Vulcans they have set up an empire, and military conquest occupies their every waking thought. They are the creators of the “cloaking field” which allows vessels to remain undetected and invisible while in flight, however this drains so much power from the warp core that in order to be able to fire their weapons they must deactivate it and risk being detected. While Vulcans can be said to be based upon the Greek ideals of peace, reflection, literature and art, Romulans (as their name suggests) more closely resemble the Roman Empire of the late centuries BC and the early ones AD. They utilise a similar government structure, with titles like Praetor and Consul, and of course Emperor.

Romulans also resemble Cardassians in terms of being a police state. Their people are constantly monitored by the Romulan secret service, the Tal Shiar, and dissenting opinions are not only frowned upon but actively discouraged in line with the methods of the Obsidian Order. They are one of the few alien races in which women seem to have equal status, being able to serve on or even command starships, stand for office and own property. Although they look very similar to Vulcans there is a harder, more militaristic tint to their features, and they do not have, or have lost, the mind-melding talents their Vulcan cousins have. Their blood is, however, the same colour --- green --- being based on copper rather than iron. They are a proud, arrogant and manipulative people, having been known to have caused several conflicts and wars between other races, while staying back in the shadows, often unremarked, like puppet masters. They are known to be one of the most devious peoples in the galaxy, leading Picard to once remark to Lursa and B’etor, Klingon sisters of Duras, “You have manipulated the circumstances with the skill of a Romulan” (words that would normally anger any Klingon but which the two rebels took as a backhanded compliment), and also to describe the race as being all about “move and countermove”.

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Title: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Released: 1986
Writer(s): Harve Bennett/ Leonard Nimoy/Nicholas Meyer/Peter Krikes/Steve Meerson
Director: Leonard Nimoy
Starring: All the usual Star Trek crew plus: Christine Hicks as Gillian Taylor, Mark Lenard as Sarek, Jane Wyatt as Amanda Grayson, Robin Curtis as Saavik, Majel Barrett as Christine Chapel
Runtime: 122 minutes
Budget: USD 21 million
Boxoffice: USD 133 million
Critical acclaim: Extremely high
Fan acclaim: Cautiously high; many claimed there was too much emphasis on humour
Legacy: Final film in the trilogy begun with The Wrath of Khan
Enterprise: None

As a strange alien probe is detected on its way to Earth, the Klingons demand “justice” for the “murder” of Kruge’s crew and the theft of their Bird of Prey, (see previous movie) while also asserting that Kirk personally was testing a weapon of mass destruction, to be used against the Klingon people. Sarek, speaking for Kirk and his crew, refutes these wild allegations and places them in context. The council have though already made up their minds to charge Kirk with violation of several Starfleet regulations. Kirk and his crew meanwhile are still on Vulcan, but after three months spent there have decided to return to Earth and face the consequences of their actions. They have renamed the Bird of Prey as HMS Bounty. Spock is coming with them, to offer testimony in their expected trial. Meanwhile, the probe is emitting a signal as it nears Earth which is having a detrimenal effect on every ship it encounters, destroying some, knocking power out of others. As it gets to Earth, Starfleet Spacedock is completely shut down as they lose all power, and the alien device begins to probe the oceans, stirring up massive tidal waves.

As Earth sends out a general distress call, warning other craft not to approach lest they get caught up in the probe’s damaging signal, Kirk and his crew monitor this and wonder what the probe could want? Since it is now being directed at the seas, Spock surmises that it may be intended for some or one of the denizens of Earth’s oceans. When he has narrowed the sound down though, he is somewhat aghast to find that the probe’s transmissions most closely mirror the song of the humpback whale, which has been extinct for over two hundred years. Realising that if the probe does not get its answer it will eventually, unintentionally but certainly destroy Earth, Kirk and Spock decide the only thing they can do is go into the past, to bring humpback whales back to answer the signal. Using the method they tested in the series, that of building up to maximum warp speed and then slingshotting around the sun, they manage to go backwards in time to the twentieth century. Intending to seek for whales in the oceans (of course) they are surprised to find readings coming from the city, San Francisco.

But there is a further problem. The time-travel has taken everything the ship has and its dilithium crystals are dead. In order to be able to return, they need to re-energise them. Spock suggests using material from nuclear fission reactors, and you can already hear the sighs. With stunning lack of knowledge of the twentieth century and the relationship between the US and Russia, Kirk chooses Sulu, Uhura and --- wait for it --- Chekov to track down some nuclear subs from which to get the radioactive protons they need, while he and Spock go hunting the snark, sorry, whales. They discover that a nearby maritime institute has two humpback whales in captivity, and hightail it there. They meet the tour guide, Dr. Gillian Taylor, and learn that the two whales are to be released back into the oceans, as the institute cannot afford to keep them. Kirk and Spock team up with Taylor later, as Spock, who has gone swimming with the whales, explains that the female is pregnant. They try to convince Taylor that they can help her, but it’s hard to do that without giving away who they are and why they’re here.

Scotty, meanwhile, sets about showing a glass factory designer how to produce the thin flexible glass he needs the tank for the whales to be made of, while Chekov and Uhura have made it on to the carrier USS Enterprise (yeah) and are harvesting the protons, but chased by Navy security Chekov falls to a lower deck and is paralysed. Kirk comes clean about who he is, but Taylor of course does not believe him. She can see his passion though for the whales, and begins to wonder, especially when she drops him off in the park and he seems to just vanish. When she gets back to the institute the next mornignnhowever the whales are already gone. In desperation, she returns to the park in search of Kirk, not believing his story but at a loss for options. She happens to arrive as the parts for the tank are being loaded by helicopter flown by Sulu into what looks like empty space with a man’s top half (Scotty) leaning out and then she runs smack into the cloaked ship calling Kirk’s name. With no other choice Kirk has her beamed aboard the Bird of Prey.

She, Kirk and McCoy then have to go to save Chekov’s life. He is not expected to live, at least by the medical standards of the twentieth century, but of course McCoy can save him if he can get to him. After they do, it’s all speed ahead to the whales, where they just about manage to catch them before a whaling ship does. Returning them to the twenty-third century, they save the Earth just in time as the whales return the probe’s signal and give it the answers it was looking for, and it buggers off. Kirk and his crew are tried on their return, but all charges bar one are dropped, given the slightly mitigating factor of their having saved the world: that of disobeying a direct order from a superior officer is seen as the most important charge, and cannot be dismissed.

Kirk is reduced in rank to Captain, and as they head towards their new assignment, they are all delighted to see that the Enterprise has, after all, been refit and rebuilt, and they are to serve aboard her. Taylor is assigned to a scientific ship; being the only person now on Earth who has any experience with whales she will be a valuable resource and looks like she will do well. Spock decides to remain with the crew rather than return to Vulcan.

QUOTES
Klingon ambassador: “There shall be no peace between our peoples while Kirk lives!”

Kirk: “Mister Scott, how soon can we be underway?”
Scott: “Give me another day Admiral. Damage control is easy; reading Klingon --- that's hard!”

Kirk: “That’s a lot of work in a short time. I’m impressed, Mr. Chekov.”
Chekov: “We are in an enemy vessel, Sir. I do not wish to be shot down on the way to our own funeral!”

McCoy: “You really have gone where no man has gone before! Can’t you tell me what it was like?”
Spock: “It would be impossible to discuss, Doctor, without a common frame of reference.”
McCoy: “You mean I have to die to find out what happened to you?”
Spock: “Excuse me Doctor, I am receiving a number of distress calls.”
McCoy: “I don’t doubt it!”

Kirk (leaving the cloaked ship): “Everyone remember where we parked!”

Spock (as he and Kirk are thrown off a bus): “What does it mean, exact change?”

Chekov (to cop, in his best Russian accent): “Excuse me Sir, could you direct us to the Almeda Naval Base? It’s where they keep the nuclear vessels.”

Spock: “To hunt a species to extinction is not logical.”
Taylor: “Who ever said the human race was logical?”

Kirk: “It’s not always necessary to tell the truth.”
Spock: “I cannot lie.”
Kirk: “Not lie, no, but can’t you exaggerate? You did it before, don’t you remember?”
(This is a clever little link back to “The Wrath of Khan”, where Saavik accuses Spock of lying when he used the coded words to make it seem that the Enterprise was in worse shape than it was. “You lied”, she said, to which he replied, “I exaggerated.”)

Chekov: “Admiral, we have found the nuclear vessel. And Admiral, it is the Enterprise!”
(Nice touch, to make their target one of the ships that bore the same name as theirs, making a very tenuous argument against there being no Enterprise in this movie!)

Kirk: “There she is: the girl from the institute. If we play our cards right we may be able to find out when the whales are leaving.”
Spock: “How will playing cards help us?”

Taylor (to Spock): So, you were at Berkley?”
Spock: “I was not.”
Kirk: “Memory problems too.”
Spock: Are you sure it is not time for a colourful metaphor?”

Taylor: “Are you sure you won’t change your mind?”
Spock: “Is there something wrong with the one I have?”

Taylor: “Don’t tell me: you’re from outer space.”
Kirk: “No, I’m from Iowa. I only work in outer space.”

Navy interrogator: “Okay, let’s take it from the top.”
Chekov: “The top of what?”
Navy guy: “Name.”
Chekov: “My name?”
Navy guy: “No, my name!”
Chekov: “I do not know your name!”
Navy guy: “You play games with me, mister, and you’re through!”
Chekov: “I am? Can I go now?”

McCoy: “What’s wrong with you?”
Old lady: “I need dialysis.”
McCoy: “Dialysis? What is this: the Dark Ages? You swallow this, and if you have any problems, call me.”

Guard: “How’s the patient, doc?”
Kirk: “He’s gonna make it.”
Guard: “He? You came in with a she!”
Kirk: “One little mistake…”

Scott: “Admiral! There be whales here!”

Taylor: “The whales are trapped! They’ll drown!”
(How the fuck can whales drown???)

Starfleet Chairman: “Captain Spock, you do not stand accused.”
Spock: “Mister Chairman, I stand with my shipmates.”

Sarek: “As I recall, I opposed your enlisting in Starflet. it is possible that judgement was incorrect.”
(This is a huge admission for Sarek, who has always resented his son leaving behind, as he sees it, his heritage and destiny, and the decision has been a bone of contention and discord between father and son for decades. For Sarek to even admit the possibility that he might have made a mistake is a huge thing in itself, to admit it to his son is almost unheard of.)

Kirk: “My friends, we have come home.”

Most memorable scenes and effects

The Bird of Prey landing in Golden Gate Park, cloaked, while two binmen look on with a mixture of fear and horror is classic.

The scene on the bus, where Spock uses the Vulcan nerve pinch on an annoying punk who won’t turn down his music, and the resultant applause from the other passengers, is a great one too.

The scene where McCoy meets a woman waiting to go in for dialysis and gives her a pill, whereafter she is in her wheelchair telling everyone in delight “Doctor gave me a pill and I grew a new kidney!” as the doctors shake their heads in amazement, total class comedy with human drama added. In fact, in the hospital the whole reaction of McCoy to twentieth-century medicine is great: it’s like someone from our century going back to the thirteenth and railing on about leeches and entrails reading.

The looks on the faces of the whalers when their harpoon hits the side of the cloaked ship instead of whales, and when the ship then decloaks above them like something out of War of the Worlds is truly memorable!

Houston, we have a problem!
I feel that the sudden interest Taylor takes in Kirk and Spock as they walk down the road, having been ejected from the insititute --- by her --- is a little hard to believe. If you had just thrown out two jokers who had tried to compromise your job, would you be as willing to stop and give them a lift? I just feel that’s hard to justify.

When the navy guard is patrolling with his dog on the ship, it pulls him towards where Chekov and Uhura are hiding, but he ignores its growls and pulls it away. I know people do this with dogs --- dogs can be easily distracted --- but given that this is a guard dog, should he not be paying more attention to what it is trying to tell him?

Themes and motifs
There is of course one overriding theme in this movie, which is of conservation and ecological responsibility. The message may be hammered home with less finesse than Roddenberry reminded us of how bad the Nazis were in “Patterns of force” or even how racism is bad in “Let that be your last battlefield”, but it’s a valid one. If we wipe out certain species here forever, how are we to know what consequences that could have for us in the future? It’s certainly a bleeding heart, liberal view, but when you think about it, why do whales need to be slaughtered as they are being now, except to feed our insatiable greed and need for comforts?

There’s a rebirth motive of sorts, looking to the past for the solutions of the future, and of course many sidelong comments on our century (well, you know what I mean: our time, even though we’ve now moved out of that century) and at the end of course there’s another rebirth, as Admiral Kirk reverts to the Captain Kirk we knew in the series, and the Enterprise is given a new lease of life, which will carry it through two more movies.

Music
I know Leonard Nimoy wanted his friend Leonard Rosenstern to score the previous movie, and here he gets his wish obviously, but I don’t see it. The music is great, but there’s nothing Star Trek about it. Apart from a brief nod to the original theme, this could be the music for any adventure movie. It’s more classical in feel, and doesn't and wouldn’t make me think of Star Trek if I heard it out of context, not the way the themes for the second and third (and even, if I’m honest, the first) films do. I feel they missed a trick here, but I suppose it could tie in with the fact that this is a very different Trek movie: not set in the twenty-third century for the bulk of it, no Enterprise and a whole lot more concentration on non-science-fiction themes than the ones that have gone before, Still, so far, my least favourite of all four.

Does this movie deserve its reputation?
With far too much emphasis on being clever and humourous (this movie features more jokes and shots than the other three put together) and its “save the whales” message, much of what is quintessentially Star Trek is somewhat lost here, and many fans believed it was too light-hearted, especially as the conclusion of the arc begun in The Wrath of Khan. I would agree: too much time spent in the past makes this a movie that could almost be an Earth-based one, and overall I found it quite disappointing. The conclusion of the arc was good, yes, but I think that the writers took the easy way out by setting it somewhere other than the usual, making reliance on effects less and the story easier to write, and excuding any other alien races including a proper villian. They could even have had someone on Earth who was trying to prevent the whales being brought back, or someone who had come through time to prevent Kirk’s mission …. ah the possibilities were there. But I feel overall this was made too easy and while it’s not my least favourite Trek movie, it’s down there among them.

Critics do not agree with this assessment, seeing the film as the most lighthearted of the series (to that point) and more true to the spirit of the series itself. That may be true, but to be honest I don’t or didn’t go to a Star Trek movie to laugh at it. I expect the odd joke, humourous line or scene, sure, but generally I expect to be entertained by a science-fiction movie, not a conservation one. Fans and critics clash on this one, which makes it hard to give it a proper rating, but for my own personal opinion, I award it

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Well what else would we have at number

after all? To be fair, I considered and weighed up the last two when it came time to choose, and though one had the edge in terms of legacy and respect, I just felt there was one I liked better overall. This of course, is the first and original theme.

It always surprised me how this was chosen as the theme for the new show. We all know it to hear now and associate it with Star Trek, especially the spacey, synthy opening, but really, when you listen to it, it is nothing like you'd expect from a sci-fi series. The boppy, bossa-nova beat. The woman singing operatically one later seasons. The triumphant flourish at the end. None of these musical signatures speak to me of space, starships or aliens. And yet, now we would expect nothing else to be its theme. Somehow, it's got in on our collective consciousness, and like the theme to Match of the Day, it's the music we identify with the show.

It's so ingrained in Star Trek in fact that the followup series, to say nothing of several movies, all use at least its opening bars to introduce their own themes. It will always be iconic, it will always be familiar and it will, always and forever, be the music that announced to us as kids that Star Trek was on.

I wonder if Alexander Courage still receives royalties?

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Commander Beverly Crusher, M.D., played by Gates McFadden

A far cry from “Bones” on the original Enterprise, Crusher is the first, to date, female doctor to appear in the Trekverse, and another strong character. Having her own son on the ship with her makes her maternally protective of him, though she tries not to smother him (wish she had though!). She has previous history with Picard, the captain having been a friend of the family, and the man who brought home the body of her husband Jack, who had been killed in action. There is a certain frisson of sexual tension between Picard and Crusher, and you get the feeling that, had Jack not been in the picture, something might have happened. Now that he is out of the way, Picard is too much of a gentleman and too strictly formal to allow any such relationship to develop, although he does maintain a healthy friendship with Crusher, she being the only one on board who can call him by his first name.

She is Chief Medical Officer on the ship, and so the only one with the authority to remove Picard from duty should the criteria be fulfilled and he be unfit for the position. She has, as was mentioned in the entry on Deanna Troi, a strong friendship with the ship’s counsellor, and they are the two main strong female characters in the series. As a doctor, she has a strong sense of morals and ethics, and so is horrified when another doctor allows a paralysed Worf to undergo dangerous experimental surgery that does eventually lead to his walking again, but the ethical dilemma can’t be avoided and Crusher reports her, having her struck off for malpractice and reckless endangerment. She is one of the few female leads in the series who never has a proper onscreen relationship. She hooks up with a trill at one point but when the male host body dies and the symbiont is put into a female one, she can’t quite make the leap.

Her clinical thinking and refusal to buckle under pressure serves her well when she becomes entrapped in a bubble universe of her own in a rather silly episode, where she remarks to herself “If there’s nothing wrong with me, then maybe there’s something wrong with the universe!” Although it’s the right diagnosis, it’s not one anyone else would easily come to. On her original assignment to the Enterprise Picard offers her a transfer, believing it would be difficult for her to serve under the man who reminded her so much of her late husband (though in reality he is probably hoping to remove the temptation if she was not onboard) but she tells him that she requested the assignment. She is however reassigned for season two, due to internal problems with the actress and other commitments, and it is only through the intervention, even demands and threats of Patrick Stewart that she is reassigned for season three and remains onboard thereafter.

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Jem’Hadar

Class: Humanoid, warlike
Home planet: None
Values: Serving the Founders
Featured in: DS9
Jem’Hadar of note: None; they rarely even have names, only ranks like “First” and “Second”, and are allowed no personal identity by the Founders

The footsoldiers of the Dominion, the Jem’Hadar are bred from birth to be warriors and carry out the orders of the Founders. They do not --- can not --- question these orders, no matter how genocidal they may be. They are controlled by the genetically inbuilt need for a drug known as Ketracil White, which is produced on one of the worlds of the Dominion, and without it they will die. They are single-minded, almost Borglike in pursuit of their aims, which are always military and always to work in the service of the Founders. When not fighting they are training; there is room for nothing else in their lives. They literally live and die for the Founders. Genetic breeding has made every single one of them fearless and a great tactician, so that in theory one or two Jem’Hadar could hold off many hundreds or even thousands of its enemies. They will fight to the last man, to the last breath, will never surrender and will never disobey or turn against the Founders. They are, in a nutshell, the perfect soldiers.

Jem’Hadar are a one-gender race; they are hatched from eggs and so there is no requirement for sexual intercourse, making them all male. They can produce a kind of portable cloaking device which allows them to remain invisible until it is dropped, thus surprising their enemies. This is called “shrouding”. From birth, Jem’Hadar children age within three days to full maturity and experience chaotic and violent behaviour, increasing exponentially until they ingest the “white”.

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