Talarians

The Talarians were first mentioned, but not shown in TNG: "Heart of Glory", where the freighter Batris had a Talarian registry. When they played a major role in TNG: "Suddenly Human", a couple of Talarians were seen, all of them with an almost human-like appearance with hair and sometimes facial hair, only with additional ridges on the heads. Another one purportedly appeared in DS9: "Improbable Cause". Garak pointed out a Talarian to Bashir, but the person standing in that direction was quite unlike the Talarians shown before. The facial ridges were similar, whereas this version of the Talarian race had a characteristic "ring" around the head and a completely different face, especially the nose.

The Star Trek Encyclopedia III mentions the obvious difference but doesn't come up with a proposal how to solve the problem. It is still possible but implausible that the two appearances represent two races (in the meaning of ethnic groups) of the same species. The one from TNG would seem to be much closer related to humans than to the one from DS9. Another possible explanation is that the DS9 Talarian who appeared only once is actually a hybrid with still another species, but how would it be possible to identify him as Talarian? A similar problem would occur with the theory that this Talarian was identified by Garak only because of his clothes, but would be actually a member of a different race kidnapped by Talarians just like Jeremiah Rossa in the TNG episode. Garak, as a tailor, may pay more attention to clothes than faces, but still he wouldn't call someone a Talarian who doesn't look like one. As a matter of fact, the alleged Talarian has a make-up identical to that of the Kobheerians (DS9: "Duet", "Second Skin"). Maybe there was a Talarian hiding somewhere behind the Kobheerian? Surprisingly, an alien with the very same make-up appears in the Delta Quadrant in VOY: "Survival Instinct". It is obvious that this one is neither supposed to be a Dopterian nor a Kobheerian, much less a Talarian.

Boslics
by Jörg Hillebrand and Bernd Schneider

Two entirely different make-ups exist for the Boslics. The first Boslic to appear on screen is a female captain in DS9: "The Homecoming". A purple-haired woman with a forked furrow on her forehead and significantly protruding bones above her eyes is quite obviously meant to be the "Boslic captain" mentioned in the dialogue. Her character appears two more times, in DS9: "The Abandoned" and DS9: "Broken Link", played by the same actress. Each time she is referenced to as "Boslic captain". The name Rionoj is given in the script of "Broken Link", but didn't make it to the screen.

Boslic captain DS9: "The Homecoming"

Boslic captain DS9: "The Abandoned"

Boslic captain DS9: "Broken Link"

Boslic captain DS9: "Sons of Mogh"

With Rionoj's look established as Boslic, it surprises that in DS9: "Sons of Mogh" a very different looking male freighter captain identified as a Boslic appears. His name is Tilikia. This guy has forehead bones not unlike the Klingons, a wrinkled nose and brownish hair. His look has absolutely nothing in common with Rionoj's, at least not more than the guises of any two separate humanoid species. The fact that Tilikia's subordinates have the same appearance corroborates the notion that this is what Boslics should look like in general, because how could it still be a Boslic freighter if it were completely operated by one other alien species?

Retroactively we can make out even two more male Boslics that had appeared in previous episodes but were not mentioned as such. The first is Jaheel in DS9: "Babel" and the second is Narik in TNG: "Gambit". Both evidently have the same make-up as Tilikia in "Sons of Mogh".

Jaheel DS9: "Babel"

Narik TNG: "Gambit"

Male Boslic(?) VOY: "Unity"

Male Boslic(?) ENT: "Borderland"

As a solution to the dilemma, we could have theorized that Boslic females might have a completely different look than Boslic males, as if they were a different species. But newer evidence clashes with this idea. In VOY: "Unity" a male ex-Borg can be seen with the female Boslic make-up, albeit without the purple hair. In ENT: "Borderland" we can identify another male member of Rionoj's species with dark hair. Maybe the female captain had dyed hair and was not really a member of the Boslic race but just operating a Boslic vessel like Kasidy Yates was working for the Petarians. This is not perfectly reasonable either as it would be much more practical to classify people by their look in a confusingly diverse universe.

Bahrat and his aide VOY: "Fair Trade"

Female Boslic make-up VOY: "Tsunkatse"

The male Boslic make-up reappears in VOY: "Fair Trade". While Bahrat, the station's administrator, sports a different wrinkle pattern, his two aides are definitely wearing the familiar Boslic prosthetics. They are likely all supposed to be the same species, but obviously the Art Department didn't create new masks for the extras. The female version, on the other hand, can be seen amongst countless other re-used make-ups (that equally don't belong there) in the Tsunkatse arena in VOY: "Tsunkatse".

Ktarians

The Ktarian woman Etana Jol who appears twice in TNG: "The Game" has pronounced cranial bones. She is the only one of her race seen in the episode. Naomi Wildman, who is the daughter of Ensign Samantha Wildman and a Ktarian named Greskrendtrek, looks very different with her spikes on the forehead. It is possible that Naomi has not inherited much from her Ktarian father. But it seems illogical that she would have characteristicss of what looks like still another species besides humans and Ktarians. The idea that her appearance will be closer to Etana Jol once she has grown up does not apply, since we know that she will still have her little spikes when she is in her twenties, as evidenced in VOY: "Shattered". During Voyager's run the only noticeable change to Naomi's make-up was adding a fourth spike to her forehead since her appearances in season four when the child was two years old (and far ahead of her development by human standards). Naomi's daughter Sabrina appears in VOY: "Endgame". There is no clue to which species her father belongs, but the make-up is the same as Naomi's. It is possible that, besides their fast growth, Ktarian-human half-breeds generally develop features that don't look like either of the two species.

Etana Jol TNG: "The Game"

Naomi, 3 spikes VOY: "Deadlock"

Naomi, still 3 spikes VOY: "Mortal Coil"

Naomi, 4 spikes VOY: "Once Upon a Time"

An alternative theory, based on cultural considerations and more observations from the show, is that the hostile Ktarians from TNG: "The Game" are a completely different race than the friendly Ktarians of Naomi's kind. A third Ktarian variety who shows up as a Borg drone in VOY: "Dark Frontier" adds to the confusion. This Ktarian doesn't look like either of the previous two versions.

Future Naomi, 4 spikes VOY: "Shattered"

Sabrina, Naomi's daughter VOY: "Endgame"

Alleged Ktarian drone VOY: "Dark Frontier"

Naomi and Katarus VOY: "Child's Play"

Besides Samantha's marriage the Ktarians have become one of the most often and most casually quoted species and show up in countless references such as Ktarian eggs ("Star Trek Generations"), Ktarian chocolate puff (TNG: "Liaisons", VOY: "Body and Soul"), Ktarian pudding (VOY: "Someone to Watch Over Me"), Ktarian Merlot (VOY, "Scientific Method"), Ktarian moonrise simulation (VOY: "Revulsion"), Ktarian glaciers (VOY: "Macrocosm"), Ktarian burial rituals (VOY: "Emanations"), or Ktarian music festival (VOY: "Non Sequitur"). There are also many Ktarians supposedly living on Earth (VOY: "Hope and Fear"). It may be doubted that Ktarians and their culture would be that popular if they, as a species on the whole, had made an attempt to gain control of the Federation. In VOY: "The Voyager Conspiracy" they are finally explicitly mentioned as Federation members or allies: "The Ktarians were officially with the Federation but they sympathized with the Maquis."

In VOY: "Child's Play" the home planet of Naomi's race is called "Katarus" and not "Ktaria VII" as stated in "The Game" and written in the Encyclopedia II. Even though it would be no big deal if there were two variants of the planet's name, this is a cue that the writers have decided to distinguish two different races (provided they remembered the TNG Ktarians at all):

(they move on to Naomi and a large globe)
Chakotay: "What have we got here?"
Naomi: "It's Katarus."
Torres: "Your father's planet."
Naomi: "I've been learning all about it."
Seven: "Naomi programmed the geophysical and atmospheric conditions."

A possible explanation for the cultural and political observations is that Etana Jol and her possible aides (we never saw any of them) were renegades, not acting on behalf of their government. But how could they expect their plan to succeed? Were they going to control the Federation all alone, without the support of a planet government or a large military? That would have been a ludicrous idea.

Perhaps the bad boys (and girls) from TNG: "The Game" are pronounced just like "Ktarians" but are actually a different race spelt "Caterians" or something like that. The possible confusion in such a case would be alleviated, since the other Ktarians would be much better known anyway. More evidence for the "two races" theory comes from VOY: "Fury". Here a past version of Tuvok has visions of Naomi before she is even born, and without knowing about Ensign Wildman's pregnancy. In his assessment the then unborn child is "half-Ktarian". It may be objected that he may have known of Samantha Wildman's marriage to a Ktarian and only speculated that Naomi is what a half-human and half-Ktarian child should look like without actually knowing. But would such a conclusion be logical, even if we concede that he was a bit confused all the time in the episode? The different looks, the different affiliations and the different names of the planet(s) could be easily explained away if they occurred alone, but all of them combined gives us the impression that "Ktarians" in fact stands for two different races. If members of a race identified as "Ktarians" had appeared in Enterprise, we would have expected them to look like Naomi Wildman and not at all like Etana Jol.

Miradorn Ah-Kel DS9: "Vortex"

Etana Jol, close-up TNG: "The Game"

Background alien VOY: "Fair Trade"

Possible Ktarian ENT: "Demons"

Surprisingly the Miradorn as seen in DS9: "Vortex" sport the same make-up as Etana Jol. Only the eyes are different. A closer look reveals that Etana Jol has yellow eyes with cat-like pupils, yet horizontally oriented. The other Ktarian variant as well as the Miradorn have human eyes. Maybe the eyes are a special feature of the female members of her race, or she is simply wearing contact lenses. Anyway, Etana Jol and the Miradorn look much more alike than Etana Jol and Naomi Wildman. We may ignore this as another case of two races looking the same. But perhaps the people who attempted to take over Starfleet in TNG: "The Game" are actually Miradorn of whom for some reason many are Ktarian nationals, which is commonly known in Starfleet and wouldn't raise suspicion?

The same make-up with the protruding cranial bones showed up in VOY: "Fair Trade", but was unquestionably neither intended to be Miradorn nor Ktarian in this episode. However, there is surprising evidence of the Miradorn/Ktarian look in ENT: "Demons", at the conference on Earth that would pave the way to the foundation of the Federation. It almost looks as if someone in the Art Department made up his mind and purposely re-used what he thought was the real Ktarian make-up on this occasion that necessitated familiar faces. Anyway, the race could as well have been the Miradorn.

The oddity of a third Ktarian make-up in the form of a Borg drone (Ktarians are "Species 6961") remains unexplained, however. We may make up an easy explanation that the drone belonged to any of the two Ktarian versions, but his forehead was flattened in the course of the assimilation. Actually no drone until "First Contact" had distinctive features of an alien race, they all looked more or less like assimilated humans. Still, it is unlikely that the Hansens would recognize a human-looking Ktarian drone among many human-looking drones, unless they had better bioscanners than would be available 20 years later.

Norcadians
by Bernd Schneider and Jörg Hillebrand

The Norcadians were first brought up in VOY: "Tsunkatse". Voyager visited the Norcadian homeworld and some of the crew attended the Tsunkatse games that allegedly took place on the planet. In reality, the Tsunkatse fighters were prisoners on Penk's ship from where the games were transmitted to a number of planets in the whole sector. It was not explicitly mentioned, but given the difficulties with the Norcadian authorities it seems plausible that Penk and his helpers with the pronounced forehead bones were supposed to be Norcadians. While there were at most two members of each race in the audience, Penk and his aides were all of the same race, as were several of the spectators. The Fact Files even explicitly state that the Norcadians developed Tsunkatse.

The dilemma is that the Borg girl Mezoti is definitely Norcadian, although with her human forehead and pronounced nose she looks quite different than Penk. This is the transcript of Janeway's first encounter with her in VOY: "Collective" (one week after the Tsunkatse incident):

Janeway: "I recognize your species. You're Brunali [to Icheb], and you're Norcadian. Do you remember your world?"
Mezoti: "A theta-class planetoid. Population two hundred and sixty million. Binary suns."
Janeway: "And what did it look like when those suns set each night? Can you remember that?"

Curiously Janeway of all crew members would least likely recognize a Norcadian because she was on an away mission with the Delta Flyer for most of the time during the Tsunkatse incident! But then again, she would most likely not know the Brunali either. She may have found both in a database about the current region of space. Anyway, in VOY: "Ashes to Ashes" Mezoti identifies herself as Norcadian (Species 689) too.

To make the matter even more confusing, there is one blatant inconsistency about Mezoti's home planet: The binary suns mentioned by Mezoti are in line with Neelix' sunburn while he is on the Norcadian homeworld. But the planet from "Tsunkatse" is obviously a quite big Class-M world and not a "theta-class planetoid" as Mezoti described it with Borg terminology. Moreover, 260 million inhabitants, less than the USA, seems very low for a whole planet. The inconsistencies with the race's appearance as well as with the look of the planet are either the result of a failed attempt to create inter-episode continuity, or the dialogues from "Collective" and consequently from "Ashes to Ashes" were retained from a draft that didn't yet take into account the events of "Tsunkatse". 

There is a possibility to be considered that Mezoti may have referred to the world where she was born, a small planetoid colonized by the Norcadians. But what she said about that place was obviously not the memory that Janeway may have expected to hear, but an excerpt from the Borg database. When Janeway mentioned "Norcadian", Mezoti would most likely not describe an irrelevant small planetoid, but the Norcadian homeworld.

Side note I previously thought that it was mentioned in VOY: "Imperfection" that Mezoti was suddenly supposed to come from a planet called Wysanti. But listening the dialogue again, I am now sure that this is supposed to be the planet she is going to, the homeworld of the twins Rebi and Azan. Here is the transcript:
Mezoti (to Seven): "I've been studying all available data relevant to this species, as you recommended."
Seven: "Familiarizing yourself with their culture will help you adapt."
Mezoti: "On Wysanti, it is not customary to say good-bye, but I think I prefer the human way." (she hugs Seven)
While talking about Mezoti familiarizing herself with the new culture, she would rather not refer to the customs on her home planet.

Since the statements of Janeway and Mezoti herself that the girl is Norcadian are unambiguous, I tend to believe that Penk actually isn't Norcadian, but his activities were only backed by the Norcadian government. The fact that it was never attempted to return Mezoti to her home planet and her own kind but rather to Wysanti could be explained with the trouble Voyager had with the Norcadians. But while the Borg may have strange ideas of a "planetoid", it remains unexplained why the home planet(oid) of an advanced and possibly quite powerful civilization has no more than 260 million inhabitants.

I am grateful to Christian for providing several facts concerning the Ktarians. Special thanks go to Jörg Hillebrand for screen caps and additional observations about the Ktarians. Thanks to Rickert Vlaanderen for objections concerning the Ktarians, to AJHalliwell for spotting the Ktarian make-up of the Miradorn and the latest Boslics and to Kelso, Reverend and Harry for more supplements.