In this exclusive Dispatch from Andromeda, learn about the insectoid race Than-Thre-Kull, group sex and why Hallmark will make bazillions on Than Parent's Day.

Don Lipper speaks with Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda co-executive producer and head writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe about giant intelligent ants and uncles.

Background

The Andromeda web site says the Than "are highly intelligent insectoids [that are] slightly smaller than Humans, with compound eyes and brightly colored iridescent carapaces."

They are so intelligent that they created "slipstream technology" (faster than light travel) by themselves, colonizing about 100 worlds before gettingadmitted into the Commonwealth.

Than castes range from the Amber workers and Emerald warriors to the Sapphire scholars and Diamond leaders and priests. The supreme leader is the Overdiamond Than.

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SPACE.com: It sounds like the Than are of a hive. Are they a hive society, a hive mind or individuals?

Robert Hewitt Wolfe: They are an insectoid race but they are not a hive-mind race. They are individualistic insects.

SPACE.com: So when you're dealing with insects, they aren't generally seen as being very expressive?

RHW: They're not. Voice-wise they're very expressive. They're a little more expressive than C-3PO voices, I mean, facially. They have things on their face that move, unlike C-3PO.

SPACE.com: From a production point of view, is Anthony Daniels in there or does he loop all the dialogue later?

RHW: Yeah.

SPACE.com: So the same person who's inside the costume is looping?

RHW: Yes.

SPACE.com: Okay. What about their psychology do you find interesting?

RHW: They have a very fascinating culture. Basically, though they are not hive creatures, they do have a very rigid caste system in that it is genetically engineered into them. You have a function that your particular family does.

It's fairly broad -- there are a few more castes than the usual caste system -- but it's the same philosophy. And they're instantly recognizable because the castes are color-coded. So an Emerald Than and a Ruby Than have different things that they do.

They also have large breeding groups. It's not like a queen and a bunch of drones. What happens is all the Than dig a huge pit, and they put their genetic material into the pit, like a hundred Than get together and do this, and it all mixes together and the result is usually a couple hundred grubs. The grubs are very fragile. They are fed and taken care of for a year or so, and then they go into a metamorphosis period and then they emerge as little young Than. Usually about a hundred of them survive from the typical breeding pool.

SPACE.com: Right.

RHW: What that means is if you are a Than, you consider every adult that contributed to the pool your parents, and everyone that came out of that pool is your brother and sister. So Than have humongous families. A typical Than has a hundred parents and 99 siblings, and they're very tight, as tight as a human family. So that the entire Than society is held together by this huge web of interrelations. Cousins, uncles and the whole nine yards.

SPACE.com: What kind of conflict would a human have with a Than as far as their outlook?

RHW: What kind of conflict would any two species that use the same resources and like the same kind of planets? As far as conflict between the species, as far as conflict regarding their individual outlooks, Than think that humans are very lonely, sad people, because they only have two parents and one or two siblings. They think humans are basically very sad and very kind of depressed people. That they don't have a lot of support in their lives, and that that explains the constant human hunger to try to find love.

Thans know that they're loved, they have plenty of people who love them. When they reproduce, they know that they will find many ready people who would love to participate in that. So, they sort of have a lot more . . . innate sense of that.

They are not as flexible as humans. They have very narrow career paths based on their origin, based on their past essentially. A Than is much more willing to sacrifice itself than a human is for the greater good. Not because they're a hive creature but because they know that they've got 99 kids at home already, and if they die 99 other co-parents will take care of those kids. So they have a much less direct version of taking care of their children -- although they're devoted to their children, they just have a big, huge support system.

There's a Than saying, "my life, my soul, for the hive, for the hive."