PAKLED: Cultural Index 

"Wait, the Borg assimilated a Pakled vessel?" ...and yet the Borg won't touch the Kazon. Says a lot.

That's how Canada was named. Seriously. "What is the name of this place?" _"Canada."_ "This place is Canada?" _"Yes."_ Canada means "the village." The First Nations natives had told the Europeans the thing they were pointing at was their village.

“We look for things. Things to make us go” Worf: “Prune juice, chilled”

I like Rick. He is smart, his videos make me know things.

THe Borg have assimilated a number of Pak'leds... This is why they progressively get dumber and become less of a threat during Voyager.

Alien: "So, what planet are you from?" Me: "Hummus"

I feel like a crew comprised of Pakled and Ferrengi would actually be pretty functional and worrying to deal with.

Vegeta is in danger! The planet, the prince, or me? Yes.

I've always seen the Pakled as being "mental elephants" - minds that have a lot of power but not a lot of speed most of the time. Mix this with an emotional imperative that pushes them towards instant gratification, as stated in their introductory episode, and you get a people that just don't usually take the time to do in-depth learning despite having the capability to do so. The ones that subvert this are either more mentally spry, or else just more patient. That's my read on them, anyway.

I always felt that the Pakleds were kinda like the Vorcha from Mass Effect. They are not stupid but verbal communication is not exactly natural to them so when they try to speak they come across as rather dumb

The other thing to factor in here, is that in addition to different degrees of intelligence, different forms of intelligence also exist. The Pakleds might very well be intrinsically tech-savvy, but socially inept, and prone to laziness. There are neuro-divergent people in real life who have an incredible aptitude for computer programming and mechanical engineering, but who would struggle to hold even a brief conversation with another person.

Perhaps the smarter Pakleds stay at home and send the less intelligent ones out to space as a form of cannon fodder.

My best guess is Pakled don't naturally communicate like us, with vocal words. So it takes them time to figure out what we are saying, to say something back and it's very simple to make it easy.

Lower Decks confirmed that their world is actually called "Pakled Planet." We also find out Pakleds can survive in the vacuum of space in the off chance they stumble into an airlock thinking it's a bathroom and spacing themselves by accident.

Their ships kinda remind me of Warhammer 40,000 Orks just cobbling together ships from other species.

Here's some omega canon for you: In 2370, the Federation signed various trade contracts with the the Pakled government in order to improve diplomatic relations. One of them included the construction of 20 light scout ships, a class largely superseded by the Danube-class runabout but still in use by civilian researchers and couriers. Deadlines sailed by without any communication from the shipyard or government officials, until the Federation finally demanded an explanation. What they got back was surprising: Apparently the Pakled engineers were unable to "make big chairs". An inspection of the shipyard revealed 20 finished, but comically oversized rear sections and one massive, partially constructed cockpit. Someone had messed up the conversion of centimeters into "shlurp", by a factor of 17. Starfleet was tasked with using these somehow in order not to endanger the diplomatic progress made, resulting in what we know as the Yeager-type star ship. The cockpit now resides at Utopia Planitia as a reminder to measure twice, build once.

I may not know Java, but I know the general concept. It's enough for me to scavenge Github for snippits of things to piece together. In a way, I'm a programmer Pakled.

I do love how lower decks made them intimidating and a threat

In response to the intro joke: The Kazon have a number too! But they’re marked “do not assimilate”. Guess the Pakled are similar.

"It irritates me when the race is the same as the planet." This is where South Park got the Mark'lars isn't it? "Welcome to Mark'lar. I am Mark'lar."

"MAKE SHIP GO FAST". Shoots geordie few time in the abdomen on stun with his phaser.

My take: Pakleds are like idiot savants. They are actually incredibly intelligent in many ways but are somewhat impaired socially. The fact that they do not develop their own technology is merely the result of not having gotten to that point culturally before being introduced to advanced tech. They don't bother learning how to it works in depth because its simply not a part of their culture to do so. However, it is likely that they do bring things back for study to their homeworld.

They dumped all their attribute points into Technical Ability instead of Intelligence and Cool

I remember when I saw that episode the first time I immediately said "I wouldn't trust those fuckers as far as I could throw one of them" and my wife was like "Why, they seem so harmless?". After it ended my wife asked "How did you know?" I answered "If they're that dumb, how did they get off their planet? They had to have captured and enslaved the first offworlder to visit them the same as they tried to do to Geordie, stole their ship and went looking for more." Sometimes I hate being right.

You just don't understand how much help we had to give these guys. They keep duct taping each other to walls and conduits. Complete madness at times.

The Pakled face, if that doesn't scream "I need help!" then I don't know what does.

To be fair, that Pakleds have been shown to be able to at least *survive* the vaccum of space for a good chunk of time (Lower Decks: s02e06), which most other species can't really claim to do and would make them at least interesting to the Borg. Also, there is something kind of interesting about being the stupidest species in the universe.

There may be some brains among them but you've got to consider the number of modern humans who own a car but couldn't explain how it works, even more so with mobile phones. When it comes to technology you can have species-wide distribution while having a limited core of understanding, it may be for some species in Star Trek that this is the case for warp drive and space technology. One person came up with it and then sat a bunch of Pakled in a room with a bunch of simple diagrams.

Here's a thought: We've only ever seen males of the species, as far as I know. Where are the females? Could they be the smart ones, staying out of the public eye, learning about their salvage and passing it on?

I hope to see the Pakled become a main antagonist species in Lower Decks next season, an overlooks and dangerous alien species seems perfect for them. Pakled show why the prime directive should be a thing and the next they should show up it's because they where messing with advanced unknown technology and something went wrong.

I imagine this species had been able to reach the Machine Age or Atomic Age when they were approached by an unknown species that gave them essentially; everything they needed to reach the Space Age. But, it came at the cost of the Pakled's becoming entirely or mostly dependent on automatic functions onboard their vessels. As put, they seem to know how to run things and force systems to couple together - but they don't understand how to create these things from scratch themselves. You can easily create something new if you hodgepodge enough ideas from other people together.

"Wait, the Borg assimilated a Pakled vessel?" Well, given the Pakleds' propensity for, essentially, gluing other technologies onto their ships, the Borg probably see this as an easy assimilation.

I think you said it yourself. They’re a species/culture that wants instant gratification with minimal effort on their part. Piracy and salvage makes perfect sense.

The Borg don't need to have assimilated a species to give it a designation.

I am a Terran! I am from Terra. Also, I just realized that you’re right. That’s a genius tie in that they would have leapfrogged during the slag-heavy era of the Dominion war.

They ARE a treat!Don't forget about the crimson force field guys!

I mean... "EARTHLINGS" but ok.

I’m guessing the borg assimilate at least one vessel of each new encounters species. But after they assimilated the Pakled they just went collectively “NOPE”

Honestly they are one of my favorite Trek aliens. I really like their premise and find them a very original.

I think the Pakleds are the ones writing the scripts for Star Trek Discovery and Star Trek Picard, it would explain a lot just sayin'

*Alien:* So you're *Terrans* from the Planet *Terra* ? Like in _Terror?_ … sounds ominous. [If it's the Terran Empire then it is very ominous]. *Human…/ Terran:* No _Terra_ as in _Terra firma,_ it means solid land. *Alien:* You named your planet _Rock_ and your species _From Rock?_ [muttering under breath] (we've got another Pakled situation here).

The Pakled are imitative not innovative when it comes to their technology. They're smart enough to figure out how to use a piece of technology and how to mix it with other bits of radically different technology, but because they're not innovators in the way humans and most other species are they cannot recreate or repair it when it inevitably breaks down on them. I suspect that the Pakled's have become a spacefaring race long before they were intellectually evolved enough possibly a vessel crashed on their homeworld and they salvaged it jumping into space before they were truly ready for it. Also the next index should be the Geth as they're far more interesting than the Tusken Raiders.

I actually think a good story between the Ferengi , and the Pakled would go a long way. Both species do not develop new technology , both species bargain for acquisition , both take when at an advantage. Both are known for taking people that they consider valuable. I can actually imagine a Ferengi being taken captive by Pakled , and bargaining his way out with a warp drive. Thus the first Ferengi with warp drive comes home to Ferenginar

I recently started re watching DS9 and I noticed a few Pacled in the background coming thru an airlock in one of the season 3 episodes

Ha, love the one word answer conversation at 1:23, that's litteraly how I speak when I get to work on a Monday morning! "had a good weekend Dan, get your car fixed, did you do your shopping?" - "Yes" 😂

I think the entire Pakled species might be some form of Savants. They have an extreme level of mental specialisation meaning that they're skilled in one or two areas while simultaneously nearly totally inept at most others. This expains the dichotomy of their seeming bumbling stupidity and Macguyver level skill at integrating multiple borderling incompatable systems together and have the resultant frankenstein ship actually function.

I always assumed that Pakled were extremely long lived. They have sufficient reflexes to survive in real time, but it can take them a while to process things. Imagine an immortal Einstein who processes everything on an intellectual level at 1/100000th normal speed. In real time he's an idiot, but over the long haul he eventually gets the right answer, but since he's got an infinite lifespan, what's a decade or two among friends?

i really like how lower decks did the pakleds, they’re dangerous enough to be a threat but goofy enough to fit the comedic nature of the show. plus, revisiting minor species isn’t something star trek does often, it was neat to see how they developed since tng.

These guys really are Patrick Star: The Species

I'm just impressed anyone could make a over 15 minute video about pakleds. Cheers

Most species evolved into apex predators, so just imagine the ecosystem of the Pakled homeworld. The Pakleds: great and mighty hunters of... mushrooms. Think of the ancient heroic epics they retell.

The name Derf made me laugh. It's really great.

It makes sense for the human-centric Federation to refer to those from Vulcan as "Vulcans", since they are the only sentient race from that planet that they know of, and if aliens came down from Mars today we would definitely call them Martians. What doesn't make so much sense is them referring to themselves the same way we refer to them, but that can be chalked down to the universal translator. In Star Wars I think they refer to "The Naboo" meaning the humans on Naboo, and the Gungans, probably because contact was established with the humans on the surface first and the name had stuck by then.

Considering the fact that they kidnapped Geordi, I'd imagine they might have also kidnapped other engineers at times to help them put things together. And the smartest of them might be Star Fleet engineering cadet-level technicians... Enough to make things go _fast_

I unironically like the Pakleds... they are Jar Jar like species incarnate...

The warp field carrying debris makes sense since it allows them to scoop up tech that they can go through later in case their holds are full

If you take Gardner's Multiple Intelligence Theory into account the Pakled may very well be quite sophisticated in mathematics and engineering while still exhibit difficulty and challenges with interpersonal, intrapersonal and verbal linguistic skills.

We are pakled. Our ship is broken It won’t go We are pakled

"Earth" is the name of our planet, so we are referred to as "Earthlings." Our planet also has the name "Terra" and so other times, we are called "Terrans."

I'm impressed as to how much Lower Decks actually seems to care about cannon and detail...

"is driven by a desire for instant gratification and the need to accumulate powerful better gear" OMG! Suddenly it all makes sense! Pakled's are MMO Players! "This is the Mondor we seek D.O.M.I.N.O.!"

A Cultural Index on Voyager's Vidians would be fascinating!

1:17 - *blasts Pakled* Friggin' smartass

"Slow Borg".....best description ever. If there is any ST/SW crossover that needs to happen, it should be a crew of Pakled discovering a World Devastator or Star Forge.....

My theory is that they're like 40k's Orks they have an inbuilt instinctive understanding of technology on a subconcious level. Someone (probably the Romulans) genetically engineered them to be a nuisance to their enemies.

I really appreciate that you’ve chosen to cover the Pakleds at this point, Rick. This is mainly because we’re currently waiting on the second season of Lower Decks, and now that I’ve watched this video you’ve got me pondering a little theory about what’s to come, in season 2 of the animated show. Season 1 could have ended in a battle with any enemy, really. The Federation at that time still isn’t too short of enemies. But the writers chose Pakleds, mainly because they make good comic relief. And we can’t really blame them! BUT, I think the very make-up of Pakled culture in canon is precisely what could make them such a brilliant menace, to the main characters of Lower Decks - and so we come to a short essay outlining my expectations, or hopes at least, for a bigger arcing plot in season 2. Now, I’m not saying season 2 won’t have stand-alone episodes, or shouldn’t - they’ve definitely worked well enough so far. But given that what’s helped make Lower Decks successful in its first season has also been its mimicking of the Rick & Morty formula, I would also say that the writers should and hopefully *will* mimick that again, with a frequently visited arc of the Pakleds and their threat to Starfleet, as well as its allies. This is where I elaborate on details of what I’d like to, and hope to, see in such an arc: As we saw in “No Small Parts”, a single Pakled vessel destroyed one California-class starship, and disabled another before being destroyed. Two more equally powerful vessels from its fleet arrived to finish off the USS Cerritos, but they were swiftly taken down by the USS Titan. When Starfleet strategically analyses this whole incident, what is likely to be their conclusion? Don’t imagine I’m overthinking this! The answer fits in well, with the whole ethos of this comedy series. Starfleet would conclude that whilst Pakled scavenging makes them dangerous, they still assume that the species is nothing more than a bunch of playground bullies, and that it’s better to just avoid them. You could have a slow burn at the beginning of this arc; spend about half of an episode with the Cerritos or Titan testing some new sensor tech, which can easily detect an approaching Pakled vessel. Whether the Pakleds circumvent this new tech or not, the hubris of Starfleet is still very much on display - they imagine that this passive approach to the “silly dumb Pakleds” is enough. Then comes the opening to character development - Captain Freeman will stumble upon something which only allows her to *suspect* that the Pakleds are a bigger threat than they seem, and that they could be preparing for a large-scale raid on Federation space, or even war. But she just doesn’t have enough evidence to back it up, and Starfleet admirals are being typically obstinate, and dismissing any of her concerns - because this is TNG-era Trek, and that’s what admirals always do! So, as we saw Freeman agree with Mariner at the end of season 1, Mariner gets assigned a mission, or number thereof, to trample over Starfleet orders and regulations, and solve this problem through sheer guts and guile! It would be pretty cliche, to have it so a task force, or maybe a civilian fleet that’s simply escorted by Starfleet ships, gets attacked and entirely ripped apart by the Pakleds, simply because the fleet’s commander didn’t listen to Mariner’s warnings - it’s the sort of thing that’s been in dozens of Hollywood disaster movies, even if it would be relatively fresh for Trek. *But* you would then get the opening for the Cerritos crew to save the day, in whatever fashion, by following Mariner’s lead, and doing basically none of what they were told by the brass. What’s also just come to mind - and I’ve gotta say this *would* be cliche, considering it made up the whole opening of Discovery season 1 - is that Starfleet command could then somehow wind up blaming Mariner for starting a war, with the now noticeably threatening Pakleds. This would then serve as a good cliffhanger on which to end the season, with audiences hopefully wanting to see more battles against a seemingly unstoppable, stupidly unpredictable, and unpredictably stupid enemy. But of course in Mariner’s case, everything that she assumes about this enemy is believably correct, and she’s not staging a mutiny or disobeying her captain. So it isn’t the same as with Michael Burnham. She’s just wound up being the patsy she was expected to be, but also rendered fully accountable for her actions, because Starfleet command has no-one else to blame - except for her mother, who she most likely protected from any consequences, by lying. I feel like I’ve typed a lot here, only to say very little. And of course, most of my points relate to the serious side of such a plot, rather than the comedy. But I expect you could derive most of the comedy from this, of simply Starfleet brass being the *real* dumbasses in this situation, not taking the Pakleds seriously at all, and meanwhile the Pakleds become a progressively bigger threat whilst it really is hard to take their menace and raw power seriously, because they speak stupid dialogue, they cobble together stupid ships, and they keep referring to every Starfleet ship as an “Enterprise”! I’d mainly go with writers, if they follow through with such an idea, deriving comedy from the fact that the Cerritos crew is forced to view the Pakleds as a threat akin to the Dominion, in the previous decade. But the way everyone else in Starfleet responds to it, is much like the Citadel Council and Systems Alliance in Mass Effect responding to every warning from Shepherd about the “Reapers”. The intrigue and tension is a potential goldmine for comedy!

Don't know y but idea of them as Hodor Orks just popped into my head. MOAR HODOR!!!!

Thanks for this video. This is how we must seem to Vulcans

"Pakled." "Is that the name of your people, your culture, or your planet." "Yes" I died laughing at that part.

Imagine how powerful the Pakleds would be in the aftermath of the Iconian War.

My speculation is that the Pakleds were a pre-warp civilization that had first contact with a warp civilization that didn't have a Prime Directive, and they've been coasting on that mistake ever since

So is it cunningly stupid or stupidly cunning? Next : The atrificial tuskin geth from tatooine

I'm guessing the Borg assimilated them sometime between Battle of Wolf359 and when Voyager encounters them...it WOULD explain a few things...

Somewhere in there, they interacted with Data's brother Lore.

I thought the Pakleds are much funnier then the Ferengis. They should have more then one appearance!!!

I like to think of the Pakleds as the blue collar species of the galaxy: not as intelligent as Vulcans, or even as humans, but functionally of average human intelligence. They would not be capable of theoretical concepts as a whole, but would certainly be capable of understanding general concepts at a practiced level.

So they're basically Orks from Warhammer 40k minus the WAAAAGH! field keeping their tech working.

I wish there was more lore surrounding the Wadi. It would be awesome if STO did a special event where we meet them again and have to play their games for some rare rewards.

One of my favorite exchanges: 1: I am hungry. 2: You should eat. 1: You are _smart!_

I recommend the Votan Races from Defiance. Castithans, Irathients, Indogene, Vensoth, Liberata, Gulanee, Volge, and Omec.

I would like to see a Cultural Index video on the Goa'uld or the Asgard or basically any other race from Stargate.

Sometimes I picture a bunch of Pakleds downloading a ton of NPM modules to put together a website. They have no idea how the things work, but they know how to hook them together and know how to poke at it and try stuff to resolve error messages. A "real" developer might be more akin to Geordi.

I suspect that the Pakleds have a similiar thing going on like the florans from starbound, behind in tech on almost all levels but give them any tech and they will figure it out relativly fast just that the florans are actual master reverse engineers and are also able to replicate other species tech and adapt it to their needs, although their hunter/gatherer tribal society makes it more appealing to them to simply take it from others, you can see it in their ship designs, they are mostly their own design but have the occassional part incorporated from other species, havent seen any glitch tech in their ships yet, might be because they are actually friendly with them, even if its just for the fact that glitch are robots and therefore not edible for florans...

As far as I had known it wasn't that they were stupid, it was that their language was so vastly different that communicating with them is hard because of translation issues

The Pakled are the equivalent of giving a 6 year old a phaser

I think its mainly their language ability. Or maybe how the UT translates them. A culture with only a simplified form of language might struggle with documentation but be able to learn on the fly bodging things.

The Borg gives species designations when they're encountered, not when they are assimilated. Species 8472 had that number and the Borg were failing to assimilate them.

I always understand "Bat'leth" when it comes to the Pakled in Star Trek ...

I like to subscribe to SF Debris's joke theory that Pakleds are the descendants of the aliens who inherited the planet where Archer refused to help the main sentients cure a plague or something. And that those other guys became the Breen, and that's why the Breen hate humans/Starfleet so much

It's somewhat off-topic, but for some reason this index reminded me of a thought process I think people get wrong about the Predator species. Everyone assumes their entire race is based on hunting, yet even within the franchise it is state that the ones they meet are similar to big game hunters. I always assumed that the Predators who do the hunting are akin to the people who go on safari. They don't represent the entirety of their culture, just that part of it. I would like to think a similar situation could be applied to the Pakled, however Star Trek is very consistent with having all members (or the majority) of a species being homogeneous to every member of the species (unless that individual is from one of the major species, like humans). So, in Star Trek if you meet one Pakled, you have essentially met all Pakled. I guess it makes story-telling easier, but I find it a bit irritating.

Great video! My vote for the next CI would be the Tusken Raiders. I know less about them than the Geth, although I'd love to see a Geth CI in the future too. :D

This video smart. me like video. Me happy now.

We need a new video on the PAKLED A.S.A.P Rick, Do to the show season 2 end on Paramount Plus of Star Trek Lower Decks. Please and Thank you a lot for your hard! It's brilliant I wish would do a show every day on RU-vid? Keep up the wonderful job you do for all the people online!

tusken raiders sounds like fun, would be nice to see them next

Do the Vidiians, they appeared a lot in the first season of Voyager. It would be nice to know what happened to them after they were cured from the phage.

I'm a little sad you did not do the whole video speaking as a Pakled.

Thanks Ric, for sharing your research on this interesting race of Star Trek.

I think I'm okay with species having similar names to their homeworld (like Vulcans from Vulcan). It's like Californians from California, or Kansans from Kansas. "Terrans" from Terra / Earth. Just... eh.

8:23 : Holy crap! All these years, and I never caught on to that ^_^

In D&D terms, I feel like the Pakleds are likely high (or at least decent) INT but VERY low WIS