Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About The Orions

We've come to know more and more about the planet Orion's flora and fauna, particularly through visits there in season five of Star Trek: Lower Decks. The Orion wing-slug, for example, was eaten as a slumber party snack in Shades of Green, having first been mentioned as rather unappetising by Lwaxana Troi in Ménage à Troi.

Also, and in case you were still wondering, Raffaela 'Raffi' Musiker's 'vape pen' from The End is the Beginning was actually a "traditional Orion 'flashpipe' known as a horgl," according to Star Trek: Picard season one showrunner Michael Chabon on Instagram in 2020. Chabon also noted that the pipe had been used on Orion "for centuries […] to sublimate the fleshy tendrils of an intoxicant plant known as horx or, popularly, 'snakeleaf'". Raffi struggled with addiction to the drug which could cause paranoia.

On a decidedly lighter note, and back to the fauna, one of the funniest things to have graced our screens in recent Trek years was Orion-native creature, and would-be Pokémon, the Blazzard. No new booty meant the poor things nearly went hungry in 2382, much to the rightful dismay of Sabor (the Orion Pirate Queen)'s pet of the species. During a Q&A at the Newport Beach Film Festival in October 2024 (via Jessie Earl on Twitter), Mike McMahan revealed that he was, in fact, the man behind the Blazzard's screech in Shades of Green. It was his placeholder sound that stayed in.