Kaylar

From Memory Alpha, the free Star Trek reference.

A male Kaylar (2254)

The Kaylar were an intelligent humanoid civilization inhabiting the planet Rigel VII. They were somewhat larger than Humans.

By 2254, they had attained a technological level commensurate with early medieval Europe. In that year Captain Christopher Pike of the USS Enterprise had a violent encounter with a Kaylar on Rigel VII, three people, including his yeoman, were killed in the encounter, and seven others were injured. A short time after the Talosians recreated this encounter in an illusion, in this instance adding Vina as a damsel in distress for Pike to defend. (TOS: "The Cage")

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[edit] Background

The Kaylar warrior was played by Mike Dugan.

The name and its spelling come from the Star Trek Encyclopedia. However, Vina's enunciation of the name is somewhat unclear, and the closed captioning on the 2005 DVD set indicates that she's saying "killer" rather than "Kaylar." James Blish, in his adaptation of "The Menagerie, Part I" and "The Menagerie, Part II" as "The Menagerie" in the book Star Trek 4, noted that the alien species was the "Kalar." Blish worked from the actual scripts used in filming, noting that they were "heavily revised in various handwritings (and in which Pike confusingly appears from time to time as 'Captain Spring' and 'Captain Winter')."

[edit] Apocrypha

The Star Trek: Early Voyages comic "Our Dearest Blood" greatly expands on Pike's original encounter with the Kaylar, and Kaylar culture in general. In the comic the Kaylar are shown to be a warrior caste in a humanoid Rigelian species. As Rigel VII aims to join the Federation the Kaylar are threatened with being disbanded and conduct a coup. The attacks made by the Kaylar in the coup are those which lead to the casualties and fatalities described in "The Cage".

The novel Burning Dreams expands on Vina's point of view of the Talosian's illusionary Kaylar encounter, it describes her playing up to her role as damsel-in-distress to assist in the Talosians plan to have Pike fall in love with her and stay on Talos. From her viewpoint she screams melodramatic and purposefully knocks things over to attract the attention of the Kaylar, to try and draw Pike into the illusion by being too distracted defending her to rationalize it not being real.

The TNG comic Intelligence Gathering: "A Matter of Dates" depicts a group of Kaylar co-founding a new Federation colony with the Rigelians in 2360s. In the comic the Kaylar work as laborers, building and servicing the infrastructure of the colony. Unfortunately the cooperative venture is soured when the Rigelians try to renegotiate their contract with the Kaylar workers, to give the Kaylar less compensation for their work. This act provokes the Kaylar into repossessing the dam they had built, which provided power to the colony, which in turn leads Starfleet to send in the USS Enterprise-D to mediate the dispute.

The reference books The Worlds of the Federation and the Star Trek: Star Charts, which used the "Kalar" spelling, describe the Kalar as pre-industrial. The Worlds of the Federation describes them as rated D-plus on the Richter Scale of Culture, while Star Charts describes Pike's encounter as the first contact with the species and the world being quarantined pending development of warp drive.