Vorlons on Voyager?

Essay by Anthony Leong © Copyright 1997

USS Voyager Picture by Martin Hajek

With the end of the Shadow War, the Vorlons and the Shadows joined The First Ones and traveled beyond the Galactic Rim, never to be seen or heard from again... or did they?

The weak shall perish.

It seems that the Vorlons have reappeared, in the Delta Quadrant! The season finale of Voyager, "Scorpion", had Captain Janeway attempting to form an alliance with the Borg, who were under attack by a new powerful alien race who the Borg could not assimilate. It was a great episode, with Janeway confronted with the possibility of not being able to return home to the Alpha Quadrant and Janeway making the bold move to make a deal with the devil she knew to fight against the devil that she didn't know. But most interesting was the new alien race, designated 'Species 8472' by the Borg.

The one alien member seen was a CGI creation, reminiscent of the aliens seen in last year's "Independence Day". The ships were interesting for the fact that they seemed to be Vorlon in design. Note the similarities between the Vorlons and Species 8472:

  1. Both the Vorlons and Species 8472 are telepathic races.
  2. The 'flower-petal' design is shared between the ship morphologies of both races.
  3. An electromagnetic energy beam is emitted by the ships of both races from the center of the 'flower-petal'.
  4. The ships of both species use 'organic' technology-- the ships are 'grown' instead of built.
  5. The Vorlons and Species 8472 have the firepower to destroy entire planets.
  6. The ships of Species 8472 are able to create quantum singularities, allowing them to instantly go to any area of space, much like the Vorlon's jump-gate technology.

Coincidence? Or just laziness?

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