If one counts a design that was made but we never saw clearly “in story”, then as early as 1979’s “Star Trek: the Motion Picture”, we had Andorians with visibly human ears in addition to their antennae. The antennae themselves were radically changed, being relocated from the back third of the skull to the forehead, and tapered into thin “feelers”, losing the “lobe”-like structure they had the three times they were depicted in the classic series. You can see the design on the linked page.
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/File:Andorian_female_2270s.jpg
But since no close-up footage appears in any of the distributed cuts of the film, some fans opted to discount that design. Alas, with the release of the fourth movie, “The Voyage Home”, we were shown a bald Andorian who, though having antennae closely matching Fred Phillips’ sculpt debuted in “Journey to Babel”, also had clearly visible human ears, thus negating the long standing fanon notion the antennae were auditory receptors.
Next Generation briefly depicted a holodeck image of an Andorian nearly everyone wants to discount…
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/File:Lal_as_Andorian.jpg
...and finally with Enterprise we meet Shran and the design appears to be a blending of the “...Babel” motif and the “unseen” design from ST:tMP. The antennae sprout from the upper forehead but they retain a lobe-like structure, just somewhat smaller.
I’m definitely “old school” and grew up the notion the antennae were their “ears”. But to avoid any controversy, I just make sure any Andorians I depict have hair that cover the sides of their heads. Thus I leave it the viewer to decide if they have human ears or not.
Sincerely,
Bill
I pretty much agree, Bill. I would’ve preferred the Andorians just had antennae, but perhaps I’m a little more open to the idea from the years I played with the FASA Trek RPG back in the ‘80s & ‘90s.
Despite the obvious, and sometimes unfortunate, laziness/cost-cutting results of the makeup departments on the various shows and films, we should remember that nothing in canon actually dictates that Andorians can’t have both types of auditory organs—a lower frequency “ear” & a higher frequency range “antenna”. If I recall, the article about the Andorians from FASA had said as much.
While it might be pushing Trek-science to suggest that a species could truely evolve two distinct hearing organs, there is prescedence in nature: Pit-vipers have both eyes that can see normal light & heat-sensing pits on their faces—the shape of the dimples helps the snakes determine the direction and distance of warm-blooded prey—which essentially gives them a rudementary infrared “vision”. Perhaps if the snakes are given a evolutionary reason to enhance those organs, in a hundred million years or so, we may even find a few that develop true infrared eyes.
BTW, that FASA article did, after all, describe Andorians having four “sexes”—decades before “Enterprise” made it canon.
