Breen
From Hidden Frontier
The Breen are a powerful humanoid civilization originating from the planet Breen in the Alpha Quadrant. Much of Breen is known to be a frozen wasteland.
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History and Politics
Dominion Alliance
In 2375, the Breen moved from a policy of low-level hostility toward the other major powers to one of open warfare when they allied themselves to the Dominion. In addition to their conventional forces, they brought to the alliance a unique weapon: an energy-dampening system that could completely drain all the main power systems of a starship. The weapon proved decisive in the Second Battle of Chin'toka, allowing the Dominion to retake the system after inflicting huge losses on the Allies. Fortunately the Allies were subsequently able to capture an example of the Breen weapon along with the technicians who installed it, allowing them to develop countermeasures. The Breen continued to fight with the Dominion until the end. In some respects this actually worked to the benefit of the Allies; the Dominion's increasing reliance on the Breen made the Cardassians feel more and more isolated and abandoned -- a contributing factor to their eventual split from the Dominion's Founders.
Tholian Alliance
In 2381, Tholian Ambassador Siroc and his underling, the Orion, Vorina, negotiated an alliance with the Breen in order to counter Federation hegemony in the Briar Patch ("Entanglement, Part 2"), and to discover and exploit tetrahedron technology, challenging the powerful Grey Confederacy. ("The Battle is Joined")
Ba'ku and the Briar Patch
The Breen have taken a dangerous interest in Ba'ku, attracted no doubt by the healing powers of the planet's rings. They have taken hostages to negotiate establishing a colony on Ba'ku. ("To The Stars") Presumably, one of their objectives in allying with the Tholians is to gain access to Baku.
Physiology
Since the Breen home world has an extremely low average temperature, the Breen have evolved with a unique physiology in order to cope with this ultra-cold environment; although they breathe a fairly standard oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere at close to normal pressure, the Breen have no blood or other liquid circulatory system. Weyoun, however, had heard rumors that the Breen homeworld was not that cold and their reason for wearing environment suits is somewhat more mysterious. The Breen reproductive cycle is also unusual, in that they commonly produce offspring at a very early age. Some empathic species, most notably Betazoids, are unable to detect the thoughts or emotions of the Breen.
Science and Technology
Given that most known major space faring species live on class M planets with an average temperature far above that of Breen, the Breen have had to develop environmental suits in order to co-exist with others. The Breen have developed organic technology to the point where they routinely use biological spacecraft. Some of these are fitted with cloaking devices,and they use disruptor weaponry rather than the phaser technology used by the Federation. Furthermore, Breen are known to use type-3 disruptors just like the Romulans and Klingons ("Star Trek: Generations", ST:TNG). The Breen are also rumored to have been developing subspace weapons, an outlawed and highly destructive technology.
First Appearance
- Indiscretion (DS9)
- To The Stars (HF)
See Also
This article incorporates material from Memory Alpha, the free Star Trek reference.
