In the fictional Star Trek universe, the Talosians were a race of humanoids who inhabited the planet Talos IV (In the original pilot script it was Sirius IV and the Captain was Robert April. The aliens who kidnapped Pike were originally crab-like.) They were very highly evolved and had incredibly large crania due to the extreme level to which their brains had been developed. They were telepathic and had no need to speak in order to communicate; however, their advancement had led them to become utterly unfeeling and they developed a menagerie of more primitive species in order to be able to observe the phenomenon of emotional interaction. Additionally, they were apparently something of an evolutionary dead end; they were no longer capable of living on their planet's surface and were apparently in need of the outside help of another species in order to reproduce sufficiently to survive in the long term.

In the two-part episode The Menagerie, a reworking of the original, unaired pilot The Cage, we learn of an earlier visit of the Enterprise to the planet, during which the Talosians capture Captain Christopher Pike for display in their menagerie and assistance in their breeding program. The Talosians' telepathic abilities are such that they can cause those subject to them to perceive things, persons, and phenomena which do not actually exist, or are unlike or even opposite to their appearance to the observer. Due to the potentially disastrous nature of this threat, General Order #7 made any attempt by Starfleet personnel to visit Talos IV for any reason a capital offense. This was the only such offense remaining under the laws of the United Federation of Planets at the time of the original Star Trek series, but in The Next Generation episode "Justice" Captain Picard reveals that the Federation no longer carries out capital punishment, implying that the punishment for General Order #7 had been changed.

Spin-off appearances

The Talosians' storyline is continued in the Telepathy War story arc in Marvel Comics' Star Trek comic book run in the late 1990s. The story involves a virus created by the Dominion which infects all telepathic species. The Talosians became infected as well, before the crews of the Enterprise-E, Deep Space Nine, and the Starfleet Academy cadets (the cast members of three of Marvel's Star Trek comic series at the time) found a cure. The story culminates with the Talosians taking a large group of Jem'Hadar to be slaves. It is implied that the entire conflict was engineered by the Talosians to this end; they still needed a race to do work for them, as they did in The Cage.

Burning Dreams, a Pocket Books novel by Margaret Wander Bonanno, deals with the life of Christopher Pike and his visit to Talos IV and its aftermath.

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