I'd always taken it as the El Aurians are on the slow path to a Q like status. After all Guinen raised hands like she was somehow going to actually DO something to Q or to block what he was going to do.

I always remember no matter what time of day or whether the bar was open, Guinan always would just appear from under the bar like she was sleeping on the floor or something. They never really explained this in the series and I always thought it was weird that no one ever asked her why she was always there.

I don't know if this is species wide, but the Guinan and Q relation ship might have been worth a mention.

With all the time travel and dimension-hopping going on in the movies and newer shows, I imagine these guys are pretty much waking up with pounding headaches every day at this point.

I can imagine the contented smile every "El Aurian" makes when another species calls them that name...never bothering to correct them...

They remind me quite a bit of Time Lords, just more space-faring and less stuffy

I read a TNG novel back in the 90's that got pretty deep into Guinan's backstory. It tied in with rhe TOS as well in regards to the Doomsday planet killer. In the story, Guinan explained that it was a weapon they had built to fight the Borg. She explained rhat the one seen in TOS was an unmanned prototype and that more were built which were crewed by the souls of her people that were lost when the Borg destroyed her home planet. In the book, they were very effective fighting the Borg, with one desrtoyimg 3 Borg cubes. U dont know if any of it was ever added to canon, but it was an interesting read

Another thing, it never goes into how they are a threat to Q, when you first see Q with Guinan they both take up a defensive stance, what could make the Q go on defense?

My Headcanon is that the Q and the El Aurians were once the same species. That the Q willing ascended, but the El Aurians rejected that opportunity to rather experience life and the universe as mortals, albeit very LONG LIVED ones. Also, that would explain some of the Antipathy that Q has for Guinan and vice versa. He sees her as what the Q were before, and she sees him as someone who didn't EARN his abilities and lacks the wisdom to use them properly. He mocks her for her Planet and People being largely destroyed which could have been completely avoided if they had ascended, she's disgusted and disappointed with him for the Stagnation of the Continuum. It would also explain why Q can't seem to harm Guinan despite their antagonistic relationship, that there's something hard-wired in Q that prevents him from using his abilities on El Aurians...Like a Genetic/Mental Block.

YES! I have been waiting for this for months! Thank you so very much. Your presentation was superb, as always.

They sort of parallel the Borg only opposite. Assimilating into other cultures and acquiring cultural uniqueness.

this just made me think of something, now that its established el aurians can control their own aging, couldnt guinan have just aged herself back up to "adulthood" on her own in Rascles, instead of having to go through the transporter prosedure

Man I’m glad to see that spelled out. Always assumed it was Illorian

Speaking of species I'd like to see covered. Basically every single species from Babylon 5.

Could you imagine an El Aurian/ Betazoid (or a Vulcan) hybrid? Their psychic and universal awareness potential would be scary.

My guess would be that they either have a secret place where they can meet, or a relay/library system where they can store data. The latter would be more like them. Have a bunch of points that communicate with a few central hubs and allow them to continue storing and sharing the knowledge they get from other cultures. This diffuse nature would make it less easy to destroy.

The El Aurians will establish multiple worlds to call home. Their first real colonies. 13 of them to be exact...

Loved the video, but on e aspect of the El Aurians I'm surprised you didn't cover is the apparent antagonism that exists between them and the Q Continuum.

It seems that maybe the El-Aurians actually have abilities equivalent to the Q collective, but to a lesser extent, and more oriented to sound as opposed to the way the Q's work. This is my conjecture based on guinan's attempt at and method of explaining how they summon the Q. There's also the fact that the Q had to concede to a treaty with the El-Aurians, which in itself would be strange if it weren't feared that the two could possibly destroy each other. I would say this is further attested to by the way that guinan and Q seemed to be prepared for some type of combat with each other.

Another cool video and would love to see some Babylon 5 races

I always love revisiting this video. So well put together.❤

another fine one, Rick! One subject I'd like to hear you dish on: things made out of 'solid' neutronium! The Iconians apparently built with it, so they did they build the doomsday machine? and how the hell does anyone stabilize or shape neutronium when it's nuclear mass should always crush it into a sphere, or plunge a neutronium structure toward the center of any planet it's built on? how would one deal with the tidal forces from the gravity that large amounts of neutronium would generate? are these structures actually paper thin? so many questions! regards, rR

There's a possible reason for the El-Aurians not colonizing or finding a new planet. They're sensitive to time and are natural listeners that border on empathy. When you take that in terms of their homeworld, they may have been incredibly connected to the world they developed on. Which makes the loss of their world even more tragic.

I think you've missed an important beat with this one. As others have said they seem to be on a Q-like path and they seem to have a more fundamental 'grasp' of the universe than humans do, and it's not just to do with time travel. It was implied that Guinen might be able to *do* something to Q and Q seemed threatened by it, and clearly her species are familiar with the Q at a level much much deeper than humans are. They also seem to possess a knowledge about the very workings of the universe itself in a way that is hard for humans to comprehend. This tells us that there is clearly something much more complex going on with them than we have seen or maybe even than we are able to understand

I have been waiting a long time for this information. The El Aurians are an amazing species. Long life span similar to the Vulcans!!!

El-Aurian’s remind me of the people who made the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I can imagine Guinan purchasing the book and spending time throughout the galaxy, than hitching a ride to earth 🌎 where she stayed for a century, before hitching a ride back home.

Thank Ric for another well informative Cultural Index

It's always interesting with how we tend to equate a lone individual of a species as the norm, and any ability they exhibit must be nigh universal. Obviously necessary for these types of videos and fun over all. But it would be fun to have a character of a new species shown to be really different or have a near unique ability when others are introduced.

Pretty unique ability to sense the "alteration of time".

The El-Aurians are a truly tragic race. They were once an extremely powerful race very similar to the time lords in Dr who, (they actually built the Guardian of forever from the original series) but when they looked into the future and saw that one of their scientists would be assimilated by the borg, who’s knowledge would make the Borg truly unstoppable and result in the entire universe being assimilated, they decided to make the sacrifice of mind wiping all El-Aurians that possessed their highest knowledge, destroyed all their records and tech, and slowly over the course of centuries reduced their species technology, knowledge and genetic structure to a level that wouldn’t benefit the borg. Once however, they were powerful enough to stand toe to toe with the Q-continuum.

Thanks, Ric. Great stuff as always. Cheers 🍻

This is all very fascinating to me, while I am a screenwriter for my own career up here in Canada but as an indigenous independent artist. I am very interested in Star Trek and have been a life long fan. With the collated knowledge you’ve assembled and a concept I’ve developed out of fun I think a cool story is forming in my own head. You should pitch something to the execs at Paramount that would tell a story of Guianan returning to a new home with other El Aurians to affirm a new peaceful planet & conclude her arc (if not established in Picard s3) I think that would be amazing… your clearly able / competent enough to decipher & research enough to create this wonderful content! I would watch the F out of this. I also envisioned a story where Riker & Troi have a small arc outside spacefaring adventure but dramatic prose of Star crossed lovers who’ve lost & triumphed out on the final frontier. I haven’t formally pitched anything & wouldn’t know where to begin but if I can sneak into Pinewood on a lark and walk on the Enterprise I’m confident in my ability to get the right eyes on a proposal lol keep up the great work anyhow I’m sure I speak for a lot of us when I say this is top tier trek content!

Excellent video!

Kind of weird that you mentioned nothing about their interactions with the Q. And how they're actually able to resist, or counter the Q's abilities.

Here's a Cultural Index request, assuming it hasn't been done already: the Cylons of Battlestar Galactica, both original series and reboot (including Caprica, etc.), please! Come to think of it, CIs of the three races of StarCraft--Terrans, Zerg, and Protoss--would also be cool IMHO!

Very well done sir!!

Don't forget the L'Oréals. They had the smoothest skin in the quadrant. 🤣😂🤣😅

I would love to know more about Delta and the Delta people but sadly it seems we don't have much Alpha or Beta Canon more than TMP and that what we know about V'Ger from the games.

Could you do Medusans? Before Star Trek Prodigy, they were my favourite obscure, one-off species.

We still never really found out why Q found them and guinan especially so intimidating. She makes a hand gesture as if some form of defence or attack towards him and he seems unable or unwilling to challenge her

If you ever considered venturing outside the realms of Sci-fi Guild Wars has some really interesting cultures to talk about. The Asura specifically might peak your interest as they're more scientific than the other races.

To me, El-Aurians are Star Trek's answer to The Watchers from Marvel. Both are long lived, would rather observe than be involved in the action and are powerful allies.

Personally, i suspect Q had something to do with the Borg attacking El Auria. After all, Guinan has had a history with Q. As for how many there are now, i guess that depends on how many escaped assimilation, we don't even know their species designation. We also don't know when they made contact with the Federation. Their home must be somwhere in the delta quadrant, otherwise there's a random patch of Borg space in the alpha/beta quadrants (apart from the deactivated transwarp hub in thollian space), that i'm pretty damn sure neither the feds, nor the klingons would tolerate if they knew it was there. Have you covered the Wraith from Stargate Atlantis yet? They seem to have two conflicting origins, depending on which material you go by, the show (that says they evolved over time) or the books that followed it (that claim they were deliberately created by the Ancients in a failed attempt to gain immortality).

Based on Picard the El-Aurian are apparently strong enough to go to war with the Q and end up with a draw ?

Reminds me of the Asari from mass effect with their long storied longevity.

Great video. I'd love to see you tackle Cybertronians/Transformers (off franchise, I know) if you're interested.

Suggestioons: 1. *I still suggest the Benzites! 2. Tenctonese (Alien Nation) 3. Civs from Babylon 5 universe 4. Civs from Earth: Final Conflict (Taelons, etc.) 5. Kromags (Sliders) 6. Prawns (District 9) 7. E.T.'s People (E.T. movie genre) 8. Kanamit (Twilight Zone) 9. Stargate genre cultures 10. Farscape genre cultures 11. Andromeda genre cultures 12. Cultures of Dune genre 13. Aliens from Arrival 14. Aliens from Another LIfe genre 15. Ethnic groups of the 12 Colonies of Kobol from BSG (2005) 16. Aliens of Defiance genre 17. ID4 Harvester aliens (Independence Day) 18. Aliens from The Orville 19. Eloy and Morlocks of "The Time Machine" 20. "Jiggs" from Space: Above and Beyond

I wonder if you will ever make a video about the Moties. On one hand they are physically and culturally so alien. On the other hand not many people have read The Mote in God's eyes. But in the gripping hand, they would make for a great video.

I’ve always loved the El-Aurians. Also it totally makes sense that they can change their outward appearance of age, otherwise people would’ve gotten suspicious when Guinan still looked young 50 years after Mark Twain’s party. Even if they travel a lot on one planet someone would notice. So I think it makes sense to “age” and then later masquerade as their own daughter or cousin or something.

The Crystal Entity would be nice to cover.

Due to their abilities, they're also able to tell when any Q are around too.

So El-Aurian's are the Galaxy's Meyers-Briggs INFPs. Yup, I have zero drive for domination, I'm just going to drift and wonder as long as I can and wonder at the journey. Please tell me your stories, they are enriching more than anything else. Now, time to get that Bar Tender license.

My impression of them was they were god level tech. But the Borg attack was thorough. Most survivors were off world researching…. And their tech centers ended up lost. Almost on par with Q… but apparently not enough to deal with the Borg

I would like to see one on the Arkanians from Star Wars.

When Guinan met Q they appeared hostile to each other and clearly have a past. No mention of this in the video. Any comments?

You did a video on the Skeksis a while back. Is one on the urRu in the works?

I had the impression that Guinan's ability to sense temporal disturbances was because of her stay in the Nexus...

thanks for all the great content. have you done an episode on programable matter yet?

A lot of comments about El-Aurian and the Q. Its impotent to note that what has become one of the greatest mysterious of Star Trek was only from a few interactions between Guinen and Q. As such Q's reaction may be unique only to Guinen and not representative of the El-Aurian as a spices. That is if Guinen is even really El-Aurian to begin with. She could be a entity similar to the Q as we saw many such entities in the original series, who is posing as El-Aurian. In fact in the scene that sparked this mystery Q even says that Guinen is not what she claims to be.

I asked this before, but I would love a Cultural index of the Jaffa of Star Gate SG1.

My guess is that the El Aurian's have already picked a new homeworld or place to gather from time to time: planet Earth. Considering that among all the Star Trek aliens, only they and the Betazed are so physically similar to humans as to be able to blend right in with each other ( no idea though if a bioscan would detect differences in their anatomy). The El Aurian's couldn't settle on Betazed as the telepathic natives would have detected them. So they probably chose Earth or one of their colonies as they could easily blend in with the population, though they would have to move around at times to avoid questions into how they don't age like we do. They also know that Earth and the Federation had the best chance of dealing with the Borg long term. All that "listening" they do would have told them that Earth and humans would be their best defense against their mortal enemies. Though why they didn't warn Starfleet back when they were rescued by the Enterprise B is unknown, unless Section 31 classified the info? Now that thing with Guinan and Q - wild theory here, but since her people were so "in tune" with the universe and the "correct" timeline, maybe they had a connection to the Q Continuum and would "report" anything that Q (singular) did to upset that timeline? Q(singular) wasn't afraid of her, he was afraid of getting caught messing with the universe by his own people. Just a wild guess on my part.

5:33 Well, since PIC season 2 episode 8 we can clearly put the assumption of "maybe mildly empathic" aside and replace it with hard canonical "empathic like betazoids", to the point where they're able to telepathically communicate with non-telepaths.

Staying with Star Trek, maybe the Augments. Or the Jaffa from Stargate

Good treatise with one criticism. How do they know the Q and why such antagonism.

Of course you make this then less then a week later we get a major bit of info in the form of the Q- El-aurian War

Silly geek question here: what would happen if the El-Aurians of Star Trek met the Watchers of the Marvel Universe?

I sometimes think how would Kes "evolution" scene go with an El-Aurian in Voyager....

Guinan was a way better counsellor than Troi :P Maybe the Q species were once El-Aurians and they despised their physical form. Similar to the Ancients from Stargate, who had once a humanoid form (the difference here is, the Ancients didn't despise that form)

Where do I find the map that was used to show where el-auria might have been?

Could you do an index on the star trek xyrillians?

Still need a Cultural Index on the Silurian from Doctor Who who are rather influential in possibly inspiring the Voth and they have inspired the Silurian Hypothesis thought experiment. Their cousins the Sea Devils are going to be featured in the next Doctor Who episode. Also who doesn't love Madame Vastra? ;)

Any army must always fear, those who listen, who truly HEAR.

I have a theory. That episode of The Next Generation, 'Starship Mine', there were some mercenaries attempting to steal some Trilithium from the Enterprise. I theorize that the Trilithium they were contracted to steal was originally meant to end up in the hands of Dr. Tolian Soran. But because that mission was botched it delayed Soran's plans and he ended up getting the Trilithium from that other station(in the movie) instead, a couple years later.

I wonder if the name El-Aurian is an earth invention, derived from our own culture, much like "Vulcan." Auris means "ear" in Latin and that can't be a coincidence.

Do an cultural index on the glukkons from oddworld

I love your Star Trek show!

Andrew I have a similar thought as you, perhaps the El aurians and the Q are similar ancient species that chose to take different paths at the height of their evolution, the long lived El Aurians seen the end of there need for the flesh and procreation to the Devine, time and sharing of it is the true meaning of life, and progress, by this time the species had no requirement or ability to form or create a unique life , they required new knowledge and experiences to conceive a new being in time for there future, they would embark on singular journeys into developing worlds and species and allow them to see them as they wished ,subtle and peaceful, listening and living, if needed, a suggestion or nudge to make your own path, the Q chose to collate as a Devine hive , equally diverse in personality but to push and judge species into decision, I think that’s why the 2 of them enjoy the same way lol

Right off the bat, nice red outfit.

The Borg queen can detect or is sensitive to changes in the time line, could this be because the assimilation of this species?

They love the color purple by the way

aff-kelt reminds me of off-kilter probably intentional

I think there's a lot of assumptions in this video, basically here's what's up they most likely exist in some astral form and also physical form we're kind of assuming that they aren't developed because they don't have ships but I think when we're talking about Star Trek that's a really bad assumption to make. I figure that they're probably developed in a spiritual way, they might have spiritual highways so to speak of knowledge and stuff like that. They probably still require a body until they get really old and decide to leave it but it appears that they are kind of a race that is both of an ethereal nature and a physical nature. This is why they were so easily conquered by the work, they had spent most of their history developing themselves in a mental and spiritual way so when they were attacked they really didn't have any defense against a species that is literally soulless. You have to understand that if you're talking about a species that is essentially developed for negotiations and has this capacity to connect with people in such a deep level and that has probably been its main ability to survive for tens of thousands years and then suddenly you have a species that has no soul it would be like that species kryptonite. They wouldn't have any way to deal with that so I think that's why they were dominated so easily. They are an incredibly developed species in a very unique way but not the kind of way that allows them to fight technological force. As for the guy who was in Star Trek generations, he was like a drug addict basically he was addicted to that blissful experience of going into the rift, he had lost his way He's not a good example neither is the person from DS9 they are probably both younger members who did not fully get to develop themselves in their society so they have some of the abilities but not the maturity

Very interesting video. In the new season of Picard we see Guinen wanting to leave the Earth, and yet in this video they seem to not own ships or even make them so it is curious how she would leave the planet in the 21 century.

Would they be allowed to be ship Counsellors , Ambassadors or spies?

Have you done one on the Ancients of Stargate?

I always thought Guinin could "feel time" because part of here was in the nexus. I didn't know it was a race trait. I like mine better lol

Need to reupdate this. Based on their conflict with the Q

Y'all ever read A Fire Upon the Deep? That was a good book...

Why didnt she recognize picard? Im still confused she didnt remember him

And what is your take on Q being afraid of one of them (Gainan)?

Is it a race like Iconian?

Do one on the Q and similar species to them

Time is the fire in which we burn. It is very time... in space.

The two races are splits in evolution. Guinan's race decided to become the sustainability force in the universe and the Qs went on be the active force infinite force. But before doing so, Guinan's race created negative feedback loops within their being to combat and balance the equilibrium of forces in the universe. They had to remain humanoid to do this. Their "listening" serves a purpose, as does their ability to sense when the alteration of time has occurred. The act of listening and mingling with other life forms sustains time. Q knows this because they can go back in time but the El-Orian forgot after a while. This is why her mean presence scares Q, he knows she has in her what can suppress him. Guinan on the other hand doesn't necessarily know why she's so up in arms and will do that thing with her fingures when he's around, it's sort of like how a cat will hiss and their back will raise up when they see a cucumber even though they never saw a snake before; like an evolutionary response.

They are a many species in oddworld

perfect Borg food, really.

Maybe they didnt need ships because they cracked transwarp beaming but when the Borg came they had no defense

Why didn't Picard bring up the event's of time's Arrow ñ. I thought Whoopi was going to reprise her role as Guynnain

The Glukkons from oddworld

Why do she and the Q have such an animosity? What's the history there?