Kzinti in Licensed Trek

The following is a list of Kzinti appearences in all Star Trek related material which was published with a licence from Paramount pictures.

Novels and Reference Manuals

The Wristwatch Plantation

The 1 March 1982 to 17 July 1982 comic strip series “The Wristwatch Plantation” by Sharman DiVono and Larry Niven [MA] with art by Ron Harris featured 2270s Kzinti. The authors considered to publish the story as a novel or comic book, but this did not happen.⁴

Famous book “Star Trek Maps” [MA] by Geoffrey Mandel [MA] depics an image of a “Kznti Marker Buoy” (sic!) and gives a summary of the Treaty of Sirius:

• The Kzinti Patriarchy is restricted to a spherical volume of 50 light years in diameter, marker buoys are located at the perimeter broadcasting warning messages in the Hero’s Tongue.

Geoffrey Mandel’s Starfleet Handbook Volume 11 published in 1977, focuses on the Kzinti too, the basic history plot from Known Space is transferred into the Star Trek Universe.

Further hints to the Kzinti can be found in “Star Trek Star Charts” [MA] by Geoffrey Mandel: One of the empires is labelled “The Patriarchy” on request of Paramount authorites.⁵

Star Trek Log 5 [MA] by Alan Dean Foster [MA] begins with a flashback scene of M’Ress’ [MA] career in Starfleet. Among one of the events is her time as a junior communications officer aboard the Hood: The starship was attacked by a Kzinti cruiser killing all of the bridge crew including the chief engineer and crippling several systems including engines and communications. M’Ress who speaks little Kzinti volunteers to beam over to the cruiser which was disabled in the counter attack. The Kzinti are sending a distress call to their homebase which needs to be cut off and M’Ress’ further plan is to recode it to send an own distress to a Federation starbase. Her actions resulted in a promotion to lieutenant after just two years of service and the transfer to the Enterprise. The battle was establishen in M’ress’ biography by Lincoln Enterprises [MA]⁶ where it is stated she entered Starfleet just three years ago, placing the event in 2266.

The novelisation of “The Terratin Incident” [MA] (in Star Trek Log 4 [MA]), too mentiones Kzinti, when Kirk ponders about the Edosians’ ongoing neutrality despite the warlike Klingons, Romulans and Kzinti.

In “The Worlds of the Federation” [MA] by Shane Johnson [MA], Kzinti are mentioned in the Caitian [MA] entry: It is speculated that Caitians are the decendents of an old Kzinti colony. Caitians are described as peaceful in nature contrary to their assumed cousins. These data points reflect the information first published in M’ress’ biography by Lincoln Enterprises.⁶

The Pocket TNG novel “The Captains’ Honor” [MA] by David [MA] and Daniel Dvorkin [MA] features carnivourous felinoids called M’Dok. An early publication notice called the race Kzinti and within the novel are references to M’Dok having fought several wars with Earth and once ruled a vast empire.

The Pocket TOS novel “Ishmael” [MA] by Barbara Hambly [MA] contains a throw away line to the Kzinti: The Starbase’s commanding officer, Maria Kellogg, served as chief engineer of the Republic before in her career. She was one of six Human crewmembers, the rest were Orions, Kzinti and Trisk. (Revealed in Chapter 7.) Later Kellogg and Kirk pass two Kzinti in the corridors of the station. Kellogg greats them in their native tounge. (Revealed in Chapter 13.)

Dating of the novel is complicated, Spock’s uniform is described as being blue, Sulu and Uhura are addressed as lieutenants indicating setting during FYM; however there are references to Starfleet crew wearing belts and one of the boxes containing top-secret material is labelled with a warning of containing live Ceti eels. Side note: Species created by Man-Kzin War author Poul Anderson, the Hoka, are also mentioned.

The Pocket TOS novel “Battlestations!” [MA] by Diane Carey [MA] also mentiones Kzinti as one of the hostile races that might want to buy the stolen transwarp technology.⁷

Magazines

Jimmy Diggs [MA] wrote an article for issue #149 of the Star Trek Communicator [MA] in which he describes seven Star Trek villains. As number 7 lust he proposes Kzinti could fulfil that role. The article is illustrated with one of the images created by Court Jones.

A timeline by Geoffrey Mandel published in the article “A History of the Federation” from the Star Trek Giant Poster Book #14 (October 1977) includes two dates regarding the Kzinti:

• 2050: Kzinti, a race of cat-like warriors, discover Earth and immediately begin the first of five Man-Kzin wars.
• 2051: Zefram Cochrane discovers warp drive, enabling Earth vessels to defeat the Kzinti.

Games

Wars fought by the Kzinti Hegemony in the Star Fleet Universe

Kzinti are part of the Star Fleet Universe [MA] aka. Star Fleet Battles [MA]. In the SFU, the Kzin singular/Kzinti plural becomes Kzinti/Kzintis, the species has sentient females, cat ears and no tails. Their empire, the Kzinti Hegemony, fought several wars.

• the Kzinti develop warp drive in Y11 (≈2121)
• the First Klingo-Kzinti War from Y50 to Y82 (≈2160 - 2192)
• the Kzinti started the First Federation-Kzinti War lasting from Y88 to Y92 (≈2198 - 2202); several Starfleet vessels had Klingon military advisors aboard (Klingons were contacted three years before the start of war)
• the Second Klingo-Kzinti War from Y103 to Y106 (≈2213 - 2216)
• the Second Lyran-Kzinti War from Y109 to Y114 (≈2219 - 2224)
• a Civil War in Y116 (≈2226)
• the Third Klingo-Kzinti War from Y123 to Y131 (≈2233 - 2241)
• the Third Lyran-Kzinti War from Y125 to Y131 (≈2235 - 2241)
• the Second Federation-Kzinti War from Y136 to Y142 (≈2246 - 2252)
• allied with the Federation in Y166 (≈2276) and fought during the General War (Y168 - 185 [≈2278 - 2295], originally started as Fourth Lyran-Kzinti War) against the Klingons and Lyrans.

Reference date for Y0 was 2110, to align the Five-year mission set Y155-160 with 2265-70; Y154 corresponds with “Balance of Terror” [MA] (2266), Y156 with “Errand of Mercy” [MA] (2267), Y157 with “Arena” [MA] (2267), and Y159 with “The Enterprise Incident” [MA] (2268); for more information see Star Fleet Universe timeline at Wikipedia, where 2108 is used as reference date

In the Starfleet Command [MA] computer games the Kzinti are renamed Mirak, and are based on the alternate take of the species seen in the SFU. See the race description [wbm] at the game developer’s site [wbm]. Compared to Kzinti from Star Trek and even Star Fleet Universe, they don’t look much Kzinti: Mirak portrait

In both the Star Fleet Universe and its computer game version, the Kzinti share a border with the Federation to the east, the Klingons to the south and the Lyrans to the west. They don’t share a common border with their allies the Hydrans.

The Dragon Magazine published two different approaches for Kzinti to be used with FASA [MA] RPG specifications. One published in 1981 was for Dungeons & Dragons set in the medieval times. The second was The Kzinti have landed! by Jon Slobins published in edition #104 (December 1985). It recited the background information given in The Slaver Weapon and furthermore adds character values for male Kzin, Kzin captain, Kzin warrior, Kzin telepath, and Kzin females, with an additional combat table for a Kzinti Police Ship.

RPG system Memory: ICON published the LUG Trek Netbook (PDF, 4.2 MB) at their website which supports players with Kzinti specifications and background information for the TNG era who were playing with the Last Unicorn Games [MA] role-play books. The most basic informations are also given in HTML format; A Hungry Season, one of their adventures, has Kzinti as the main theme.

Footnotes

1. ↑ See pages 507 to 510 of Playgrounds of the Mind or Star Trek: The Lost Books at Complete Starfleet Library
2. ↑ Interview at TrekWeb.com: Reading this new book felt like going back to “The Star Trek Maps” and “The Star Fleet Medical Reference,” made in a time when TREK books were much less controlled by Paramount than they are now?
   Geoffrey Mandel: I had very little in the way of interference from Paramount. Dave Rossi gave me some very sensible notes-maybe a couple of dozen changes altogether, which I was happy to make. Andre Bormanis gave me some technical corrections, and Margaret [Clark] found a few mistakes and inconsistencies—other than that, the book is pretty much the way I wanted it to be. However, on this book, just like on the maps back in 1980, they wouldn’t let me mention the Kzinti from the animated episode “The Slaver Weapon.” I guess Larry Niven still owns the rights to the Kziniti.
3. ↑ ^{6.0 6.1} See Lieutenant M’Ress Biography at Kail Tescar’s Star Trek Animated site
4. ↑ “Battlestations!” by Diane Carey
   If the Klingons, the Romulans, the Orions, the Tholians, the K’zinti, or any of a handful of hungry governments thought they could get this new high science... truly a feeding frenzy. And the Federation would participate just to keep the science out of hostile hands.
   (Thanks to Starscape – TrekBBS username – for finding the section in the novel.)

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