@daystrominstitute@startrek.website What can we know (or at least guess) about Tellarite culture and behavior from Jankom Pog?
This is going to be pretty open-ended, but I’m curious: given that Jankom is the only Tellarite main cast member of any Star Trek series, what might his personality, behavior, relationships (etc.) tell us about Tellarites as a whole, or their relationships with other species within or outside the Federation? Obviously, it’s not easy to know much from Jankom in particular (given that he’s a kid and grew up among pre-Federation Tellarites), but thematically, I think it would be nice if one could draw some lines (even if it’s wild speculation) between his his role in the team, and the fact that the Tellarites we see in ENT not only help found the Federation, but never leave it, even after the Burn (IMO, one of the most fascinating bits of worldbuilding that’s ever been dropped in an off-screen monologue).
I haven’t revisited the series since the first airing, but it seems Tellarite culture had some sort of class system, with “runts” that were treated fairly poorly.
That probably didn’t survive into the Federation era, but there may be cultural remnants.
That officer on Janeway’s ship was very rude and prejudiced to Pog if I member correctly.
Been awhile since I’ve watched it too, but given that Tellarite culture revolves around things we see as rudeness, do we really know for sure that runts are seen as or treated as lesser?
I also like that he is the only main character in an ongoing series to be from the pre-Enterprise era (since the Tellarites we see there have normal warp engines and presumably would not still be using generation ships like his).
I think this is a challenging one sense ostensibly we learn that Tellarites had generation ships before achieving warp capabilities and that these generation ships went at least as far as the Delta Quadrant. I don’t know that we can so safely assume that Jankom Pog is representative of Tellarites in the Federation.
