100 Years Young - The Drayan Civilization

100 Years Young:
Part I: Musings About the Drayan Life-Cycle
Part II: Is Aging an Inevitable Biological Fact?
Part III: Can an Organism 'Grow' Smaller and Younger?
Part IV: The Drayan Civilization

Coming to terms with reverse aging is one thing. Accounting for the Drayan's death customs is another. While the episode reveals very few specifics regarding their aging process or their history, what little information we are given strongly suggests an outline of their history as a civilization.

A Powerful Instinct—An Ancient Belief

The Drayan moon is a holy place for them. They hold it to be the place where the first spark of life came from, and the Drayan leader explains that a powerful instinct draws them back to this place as death approaches. This instinct is evidently woven into the their DNA as strongly as a salmon's instinct to return to its spawning ground or a Vulcan's to return home for the Pon Farr. And as a civilization, the Drayan have ancient beliefs and customs that revolve around this instinct.

The Past is the Future, the Future is the Past

Science fiction writers seem to be preoccupied with portraying advanced civilizations that have retained their ancient origins and beliefs. Quasi-religious or mystical notions are perpetuated into the distant future where they are explained in pseudo-scientific terms. These stories tap into the same part of our imaginations as conspiracy theories about alien involvement in building the Pyramids. Why are we drawn to these stories? Why is it such a popular motif?

To borrow some reasoning from Data and Doctor Soong ("Brothers", TNG), we may be drawn to the sense of continuity such stories create. We have an inherent uneasiness about our own mortality. Also, there are parts of our brain that are hard-wired to resist change. Yet we live in a world that constantly changes, that bombards us with more information then we can keep up with, and that insists that what is old or traditional is embarrassingly out of touch with reality.

And for the most part we can agree that progress is progress—we wouldn't really want to turn the clock back 10, 50 or 100 years, at least not in every respect. But we still have this nagging sense that we wish there were things that were stable, eternal, immortal. Perhaps science fiction stories that tie together the distant past with the distant future provide us with the sense of permanence and continuity that we crave.

Whatever it is that makes these stories appealing to so many people, they must be handled carefully or they don't hold up very well to any kind of scrutiny. The difficulty lies in explaining how ancient beliefs and instincts could possibly anticipate unknown, future realities and technology. For example, how could the Drayan have an instinct to go, not just the moon, but to a specific cave on their moon?

To put in Earth terms - many ancient cultures worshiped the moon, moths navigate by moon-light. But which ancient culture developed customs revolving around the Sea of Tranquility? What species of moth has instincts revolving around a specific location on the moon? Seeing the moon at a distance is one thing, but details about it would be completely outside of their experience. Short of alien or divine intervention, such customs and especially such instincts could never have existed. It would be like saying a salmon had an instinct to return to a certain field in the middle of Nebraska. It's just not possible.

So what about the Drayan? Well, as we did with their biology, let's give their history a second chance.

A Speculative History of the Drayan

Just as we assume that all species age the way we do, we tend to assume that all civilizations develop essentially the same way our has. We think of the moon as something up there, that someday we may get to travel to. But, of course, that doesn't have to be the way it works, especially when you're talking about an M-Class moon.

The Drayan moon has an eco-system. It's full of life - at least plant life. That means the first spark of Drayan life really could have originated on that moon. If that's where the species began, it goes a long way to explaining why not only their culture but also their genetic instincts are bound up with their moon.

Think of how different history would be if the Moon was habitable and humans originated there. What would we have thought looking up at the Earth?

Steven L. Gillet comments on a variation of this scenario in the book World Building: "Of course a large satellite—much less a full companion world—is likely to have profound social effects on a species that reaches the level where 'culture' is relevant. The plurality of worlds would be demonstrated very early; Earth's Moon, by contrast, is just far enough away that it's not obviously another world to the naked eye. Perhaps it would goad the early development of space flight."

I would argue that this essentially a description of Drayan history. Their species and civilization developed on their moon. Overhead were two other moons and also another blue-green world, even bigger than their own. They would have been fascinated with it. They longed to reach it. They developed space flight. To get off of their moon they had to learn how to overcome the conditions that made piloting Voyager's shuttles so problematic.

Once they were able to leave their moon, they started colonizing the planet. In the meantime, what began as a sacred cave became a sacred area. That area grew larger and larger until the whole civilization moved to the planet. The moon itself was reserved as a holy place where only the innocent elder-children and their attendants could step foot. It was not to be used for anything mundane - they had an entire planet for that. This moon was, in effect, their mother. They were born from her, they held her in the highest regard, and as their lives drew to a close, their spark of life returned to her.

New Life, New Civilizations

The Drayan species is a remarkable contribution to the Star Trek universe. This truly is a 'new civilization' living on a 'strange new world.' What little we are directly told about them challenges some of our most deeply ingrained assumptions about life, so much so that our instinct is to reject them completely, and yet with some consideration they can open our eyes to new possibilities. To me, this alone makes them a valuable contribution to science fiction in general, and a welcome addition to Star Trek lore.

100 Years Young:
Part I: Musings About the Drayan Life-Cycle
Part II: Is Aging an Inevitable Biological Fact?
Part III: Can an Organism 'Grow' Smaller and Younger?
Part IV: The Drayan Civilization