If you enjoyed this video, check out a couple other videos I have on nonhumanoid species from other sci-fi franchises:

Metroids https://youtu.be/KCF44IkUBYU
Heptapods (Arrival) https://youtu.be/aDsrYPhlO30

I love the thought of Tholians perceiving time differently than humanoids. An individual Tholian could have the memories of its progenitors going back centuries - if they do have a benefactor in the Temporal Cold War, it might just be their future selves!

We need more Tholians and other obscure alien species in these new Star Trek shows.

This was grand. Your puns were rock-solid; got them all, crystal clear.

One thing that science fiction tends to get wrong about silicon-based life, theoretically, it need not even be crystalline. Very hot most likely but need not be any more crystalline than we carbon-based life forms need to be diamond-based. Silicon-based materials, like silicone in this video, are not all related to silicon-based crystals like glass and quartz.

I wish that Star Trek would use the Tholan more in the background. Ship comes to some planets and they see a tholan leaving but never really know what they doing or why.

Seem like with the radically different living habitats needed, yo would think the Tholians would get along with lots of other races. Negotiating to use the planets the humanoids avoid like the plague, the fit them very well, and letting humanoids use the more M class planets they don't care about.  Seems like it would be a good relationship on both sides.

I think it’s an interesting little detail in the episode where Archer and Co. Meet them; the Tholians don’t use excessive force to retrieve the time ship.

They, temporarily disable the Enterprise, use necessary force to retrieve the time ship and then leave with no further conflict.

They could have easily destroyed the enterprise after taking the time ship or caused serious damage to prevent enterprise from escaping but they didn’t.

You missed the Corals that also make use of Silicates. I have some in my legs, where the Fibula and Tibia of each leg suffered a burn that destroyed the bones.

The Silicates used in Corals are Calcium Silicate, which can be “cooked” at very high temperatures to convert it to Calcium Carbonate, which is what out bones are made out of.

The Coral splint is machined into the shape of the bone it is to replace, and it is then grafted into the bone with a bio-degradable epoxy resin. The coral-calcium-carbonate “bone” really just forms a scaffolding that our bones will grow into/over. This process even allows the marrow to re-grow into the section of bone replaced.

It is ironic that this process produces stronger bone than the original (although not surprising, now that I have studied enough Biology, where I have learned that Evolution doesn’t “optimize,” and thus pretty-much every part of our bodies can be EASILY improved upon, even if we cannot yet implement those improvements).

Theoretically it should be possible to replace 100% of our Skeletons with bone made in this fashion, producing a skeleton that is not just stronger, but augmented to allow greater ranges-of-motion, and muscle-attachment points either further or closer to the joints (depending upon requirements) to produce up to a 2.5× amplification of Strength without any modification of the Muscles themselves. Obviously Medical Ethics would prevent Elective Applications (people doing this by demanding a surgeon replace bones without a medical necessity) of the technologies.

But that is only a matter of time before the augmentations produced by such procedures are safe enough, and pronounced enough in the degree of augmentation that doctors will perform them on those willing to pay, or governments using such methods on soldiers to produce better “Weaponize Humans.”

The Para-Olympian Aimee Mullins has said that the Prosthetic Legs she uses in competitions can beat any human with natural legs, and that even those are not yet at the limits of the technology. Such legs could be created right now that allow a human to run at speeds over 100kph, and possibly higher, but they are not due to the rules of the Para-Olympics, and the ethics of creating such prostheses, given that the human choosing to use them would likely not be able to survive a fall if running at those speeds.

BUT… Bit of a Tangent… corals… Silicates…

Love the tholiens best aliens in trek in my opinion

This was very fascinating. Great video! I liked it a lot. I had no idea that the Tholians or the Breen for that matter would have bigger territory than the Romulans or the Cardassians. The Tholians and the Breen are so mysterious, so enigmatic, and so isolated, they seem like minor powers.

Great Job!!! I've been a Star Trek fan for 55 years now (I'm 59 years old, as you know the 1st Trek episode premiered on Sept 8, 1966, which was the day before my 4th birthday) In ALL these years I've been a fan, and though I knew some of what you said, I NEVER KNEW THIS MUCH about the Tholians!!! Keep up the good work!!! George B. from the Boston area!!!

I choose to believe that the Tholians signed the non aggression pact with the Dominion less out of fear and more out of a desire to just be left alone.

I wonder why they never expanded on the Tholians. They have potential to surpass the Borg as antagonists.

The Tholians are one of my favorite species from Star Trek.

I’d love to see the tholians in discovery or strange new worlds

The big difficulty in imagining silicon-based life is at most planetary temperatures, carbon dioxide is a gas, while silicon dioxide is... sand.

Great work. I wish I had more trekkie friends to share your channel with

Extra-Galactic Origin (Beta Canon): In the Star Fleet Universe (a collection of licensed board games and associated materials), the Tholians originated in the M81 galaxy, which is outside the Milky Way's Local Group.Refugee Status: They ruled a vast empire in their home galaxy known as the "Tholian Will," but were overthrown by a subject race called the insectoid Seltorians.Migration: Surviving Tholians fled to the Milky Way galaxy, arriving approximately 79 years after first contact between Earth and Vulcan.Homeworld: Upon arrival, they took over a class-Y (hellish) planet in the Alpha Quadrant and named it Tholia, forming the Tholian Assembly

In my opinion, the Tholian's method of time travel is transmissions through interphase. Tears in space through to interphase connect Tholians from any time to any other time or alternate timestream. I have a more expansive time travel hypothesis, but I won't explain here