Weasyl: https://www.weasyl.com/~unownace/su.....ray-the-ferren

Those of you who used to follow me on deviantART before the Apoc-Eclipse may remember I had an "original species" concept called "Ferrens," who are a rac e or semi-anthropromorphi9c rodent-like creatures from an alien world called "Ferina." I've written an incomplete story about them (which you can find here: https://www.weasyl.com/submissions/.....folderid=93997 ) though like with many of my older literary works, I'm not satisfied with the direction I took it so it's very likely going to be retconed to the edge of the observable universe and back.

To summarize, the Ferrens were just developing radio astronomy and various other technologies comparable to what humans had in the early to mid 20th century (much more advanced in some fields, much less in others) when an at-the-time crackpot astronomer, Anthony Gray (this character's grand-uncle) picked up a mysterious signal from space. That signal happened to be an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series.

The discovery of intelligent life on another world shook the world of Ferina (the Ferren home-world) and before long attempts to send return-signals and much more advanced observations were made, which in turn lead to a zeitgeist of human technology and pop-culture being integrated into Ferren society (though most Ferren nations outlawed certain technologies like nuclear weapons.) This is both why many Ferrens now wear human clothes (they used to only wear things that were functional for their careers like pouches or safety equipment; being covered in fur means wearing clothes for fashion-sake is more of a novelty than a necessity,) and why many younger generations of Ferrens began learning human languages and adopting human names (the Ferren native tongues are unpronounceable by humans so for the sake of simplicity, all my Ferren OCs names are translated into English names or at least into made-up words that are comprised of vowels and consonants; actual Ferren language sounds more like whistling, chirping and purring noises.)

Doctor David Gray here is one of the lead scientists at the Ferren space program studying human culture from afar in hopes of making contact. He's also a bit of an introvert and while he speaks many human languages fluently, he stutters and murmurs like Jeff Goldblum in all of them.