Me??Shinigami wrote:1. IIRC, there were three races: Antarians, shapeshifters, and the Skins.
2. The pentagon device was some sort of weapon that releases a shcckwave with two effects: Disabling Antarian powers, and a physical shockwave that only affects those with Antarian DNA.
Well, I'm not sure how much help I'll be, but I think on both of those subjects (races on Antar and the pentagon devices,) canon is sufficiently muddled that you can get away with a lot on your own. A few notes.
- Regardless of how many races there were on Antar, 'skins' are not properly one of them. It seems pretty clear that 'skins' is a reference to individuals who are using a husk to function in a hostile environment, such as Earth's atmosphere. There is some evidence that all the Skins we have seen on Earth happen to be from another race, not the same Antarian species as the royal four used to be. Maybe the 'Antarians' can't even use husks. But it isn't appropriate to describe Courtney and Nicholas' species as the skins, because their family back home may have never used husks. (What the heck you do call them I don't know, LOL.)
- It isn't clear how many settings there are on the pentagon devices, except based on the design it seems possible and elegant for there to be five different states that they can be set to. (One for each side of the pentagon, for each alien character or symbol.) As well as the shockwave and the power drain, I usually postulate a totally passive 'off' setting and a 'tracking' function, (as seen at the end of 'destiny.') What the fifth state is would be less obvious.
Hope that this helps!