Sheliak (Star Trek)

"Conversation is neither required nor desired."

- Sheliak representative

The Sheliak are a sapient, non-humanoid race which views Humans and other Federation species as inferior lifeforms. Their government, called the Sheliak Corporate, operates from their homeworld in the Shelia System.

Biology
Sheliak are described as an intelligent non-humanoid species, classification R3. They're known to colonize H class planets filled with hyperonic radiation, which is normally lethal for humanoids.

However, while they're able to thrive under this kind of radiation, they may not require it, since Humans and Betazoids have been shown to safely visit Sheliak spaceships without problems.

Unlike Humans, the Sheliak prefer to live in environments with the same temperature as that of their bodies.

Culture and society
When interacting with other races, the Sheliak can easily come across as arrogant due to their tendency to abruptly cut out communications which they consider pointless, going as far as to transport the speaker away and back to his own ship in the middle of a sentence.

According to Deanna Troi, the difficulty to deal with the Sheliak stems at least in part from how different their thoughts and conceptualizations are, which provides no mutual points of reference to facilitate communications. Even telepaths have failed to understand them.

However, despite dismissing other species as inferior and irrational, the Sheliak are not above diplomacy. In fact, because they find it extremely difficult to communicate and negotiate with other beings, the Sheliak tend to put immense value on written treaties. For instance, while the Sheliak normally would have no qualms about exterminating Humans who enter their territory, they will not do so before asking for said Humans to be relocated, as dictated by the Treaty of Armens. If the relocation doesn't take place in time, however, then the Sheliak will once again have no qualms about using lethal force.

As they cannot properly understand Human behavior, the Sheliak demand that the terms of treaties be written in the most thorough and precise way to avoid misunderstandings, which has resulted in the Treaty of Armens being over five hundred thousand words long.

Appearances

 * Star Trek: The Next Generation
 * s03e02, "The Ensigns of Command" (1989)
 * s06e18, "Starship Mine" (1993)