I like that Star Trek uses bumpy headed aliens.

[Jayson1]

I know that people sometimes complain that Trek aliens don't always look alien enough but to me I think they kind of miss the point of what aliens represent in Trek. Aliens in Trek tend to represent different aspects of humanity or they represent a different culture or country. They are supose to be human, but humans with a different perspective from earth/starfleet's perspective.

Granted we sometimes do get a truly unique alien species and that is okay but to me I like how Trek exsit's in a universe were you have all these different culture's who have differences but also have things in common with each other as well.

Jason

 

[Albertese]

You've hit that nail right on the head. I had this realization recently also.

In fact, I would go as far as to say that Star Trek barely even qualifies as science fiction in the hard "exploring the implications of science" sense, but is, rather, a commentary on the human condition with aliens filling in as aspects of humanity.

An interesting discussion may well ensue from here...

--Alex

 

[at Quark's]

Perhaps we should have had an episode centering around a depressed captain:

Why even bother exploring if we only keep meeting those aliens that look like humans with funny foreheads and monolithic cultures that seem to focus around an aspect we have in our own culture too to a ridiculous degree? I mean, what's the point?

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Apart from the Horta, the Medusans and the Velarans, weren't most non-humanoid aliens in any era of Trek mostly depicted as antagonists? The Horta and Velarans only turned out to be fundamentally harmless thanks to Spock and Data respectively. Perhaps that's sufficient didacticism to hammer home the lesson not to equate non-aesthetic appearance with threat.

 

[Space Coast]

Perhaps we should have had an episode centering around a depressed captain:

Why even bother exploring if we only keep meeting those aliens that look like humans with funny foreheads and monolithic cultures that seem to focus around an aspect we have in our own culture too to a ridiculous degree? I mean, what's the point?

I feel that lampshade has been hung before in Trek, but I don't remember where.

 

[Shawnster]

Species 8472 turned out to be not antagonists. Exocomps weren't antagonists but fall in line with the Horta or Valerans.

There just aren't that many non-humanoid life forms in Trek.

Lights of Zetar? Flying Puke? Giant Amoeba? Crystalline Entity? Nomad? V'Ger?

 

[Vger23]

There just aren't that many non-humanoid life forms in Trek.

Lights of Zetar? Flying Puke? Giant Amoeba? Crystalline Entity? Nomad? V'Ger?

Horta
Zetar Lights
Flying Puke
Nomad
Thesians
Organians
Metrons
Trelene and his parents
Tholians
Guardian of Forever
Medusans
Korab and Sylvia
The Companion
Apollo
Redjac
Tribbles
Dikronium Vampire Cloud
Kelvans (had taken human form)
Providers
Melkot
Gorgon
Excalbians
Day of the Dove entity
V'Ger
Sha Ka Rhee "God"
Q
Farpoint entities
Lonely Among Us whatevers
Crystal Entity
Shelliak
Sillicon-based lifeforms in Home Soil
Conspiracy aliens
Nagilum
Tin Man
Paxans
Devidians

I think the sad fact is that as the post "Encounter at Farpoint" era moved along...there were less and less creative alien ideas, giving way to more and more "biped alien with accent and forehead appliance of the week" aliens. Star Trek TOS was quite very creative and interesting when it came to actually encountering new forms of life, when you compare to the rest of the series.

 

[The Grim Ghost]

TC makes some good points, but I'd still prefer a bit more of a mix between the bumpy heads and the more alien looking types.

 

[Prax]

I totally agree! Would you say the same for the fact that they all speak English?

 

[Galileo7]

TAS could create aliens without budget limitations including 1701 bridge officers M'Ress and Arex.

 

[Jayson1]

I totally agree! Would you say the same for the fact that they all speak English?

I have never minded them speaking English for a couple of reasons. I don't like reading to many subtitiles and the universal translator is a good enough excuse to help sell the idea. I do like it though when they mix in alien words, when they are speaking. I also like when we do see the difference's they have from humans. To me those are the real world equilvent to things like how British cops don't use guns like American cops or even the different types of food that comes from different cultures. The fun is seeing how people can be different but still have a set of core value's and traits that we all believe in.

Jason

 

[RandyS]

Well, putting aside the obvious fact that they have to use human actors to play aliens, three episodes of Star Trek gave us a built in explanation for why all the galaxy's aliens look like humans: They don't. TOS' "Paradise Syndrome" gave us the concept of the Preservers, aliens who seeded the various worlds of the galaxy. "Return to Tommorrow" also alluded to this. And TNG's "The Chase actually showed up the Preservers. Okay they didn't call them that, but that's how I choose to interpret it.

So you see, every race in the galaxy aren't humanoids. Not even the humans. They're all Preservernoids.

This explanation satisfies me. I've never understood why some fans have a problem with it.

 

[Space Coast]

Well, putting aside the obvious fact that they have to use human actors to play aliens, three episodes of Star Trek gave us a built in explanation for why all the galaxy's aliens look like humans: They don't. TOS' "Paradise Syndrome" gave us the concept of the Preservers, aliens who seeded the various worlds of the galaxy. "Return to Tommorrow" also alluded to this. And TNG's "The Chase actually showed up the Preservers. Okay they didn't call them that, but that's how I choose to interpret it.

So you see, every race in the galaxy aren't humanoids. Not even the humans. They're all Preservernoids.

This explanation satisfies me. I've never understood why some fans have a problem with it.

Because those fans probably came from other major science-fiction fandoms that do have distinctly non-humanoid alien species as the majority, which is a lot of science fiction fandoms.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Dealing with aliens was more interesting though the more alien the aliens were. You can deal with different aspects of human culture by just having them be human colonies. Diplomacy with aliens should involve actual cultural differences that are difficult to reconcile.

And you could still have aliens represent different aspects of humanity and make them look more interestingly alien.

 

[Jayson1]

Dealing with aliens was more interesting though the more alien the aliens were. You can deal with different aspects of human culture by just having them be human colonies. Diplomacy with aliens should involve actual cultural differences that are difficult to reconcile.

And you could still have aliens represent different aspects of humanity and make them look more interestingly alien.

My biggest concern though when making really unique alien looks is how does the makeup effect the actor's ability to act. The Jem Haddar for example look really cool but I had problems telling most of them apart. I don't think we ever got Jem Haddar character that matched up what we got from characters like Dukat,Weyoum etc. Granted we have seen character's work with extensive makeup like Odo,Tosk etc but they tend to exceptions to the rule more than something you should count on.

Jason

 

[Nerys Myk]

And TNG's "The Chase actually showed up the Preservers. Okay they didn't call them that, but that's how I choose to interpret it.

Nope, two entirely different races separated by millenea with very different MOs. The Preservers were operating as recently as Pre-Columbian times, the Chase aliens operated billions of years in the past.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I know that people sometimes complain that Trek aliens don't always look alien enough but to me I think they kind of miss the point of what aliens represent in Trek. Aliens in Trek tend to represent different aspects of humanity or they represent a different culture or country. They are supose to be human, but humans with a different perspective from earth/starfleet's perspective...

Then why not just make them HUMANS with a different perspective from Earth/Starfleet's perspective? Instead of reducing an entire civilization to a laughable Planet of Funny Hats and perpetuating the underlying notion that it is possible for an entire civilization of millions if not BILLIONS of people to all be defined by a single unique characteristic (e.g. "Everyone on this planet loves to wear funny hats."), why not just project that differing perspective as the defining trait OF THAT CHARACTER?

Or, if you absolutely MUST use aliens -- or worse, forehead aliens -- assign the characteristics at random and use his alienness to get away with some world building:
Option A: "Drax is a Klingon. Drax thinks that war is glorious and is excited about the prospect of combat and violence and he thinks you should be too. When Drax realizes that you DON'T glorify violence and war, he thinks you're a weakling and sneers at you. Drax and his crew want to start a war with the Federation because Drax is a Klingon and Klingons love war. Don't be like Drax."

Option B: "Drax is a Klingon. Drax grew up in the vermin-infested slums of the First City, where garbage trucks make deliveries instead of pickups and raw sewage runs in the streets because the main city -- the REAL city -- is built higher up to avoid the storm drain runoff and the Empire didn't bother to upgrade the drainage system. Drax wants to start a war with the Federation because the Army recruits more heavily in time of war and he has sworn an oath of honor to his clan/family to find a way to bring wealth, relief, or at the very least, a way for the younger ones to get jobs (with the Army, let's say) so the family can survive. Drax is an opportunist with suicidal ideation and a surprisingly keen understanding of how the Klingon Economy works. Don't be like Drax."

Klingon "Warrior Race" ethos can be a background for a character, it can add color and flavor and dimension and background. But once it becomes ALL THEY ARE, Star Trek is accomplishing nothing at all except to train its viewers to project stereotypes as far as they possibly can.

I like how Trek exsit's in a universe were you have all these different culture's who have differences but also have things in common with each other as well.

I like how WE exist in a universe where we have all these different cultures that, every one of them, each produce the same kinds of people over and over again in roughly the same proportions.

And I like a fictional world that reflects this: that there are twenty to thirty different archetypes of people you meet and they're the same people no matter where you meet them or where they're from. Whether you're a kid from Brooklyn or the 84 year old wife of a Pashtun brickmaker, you've probably met at least three of these people:
- The Hero: Moral paragon who wants to save everyone
- The Antihero: Kind of an asshole, but still saves everyone
- The Villain: Complete asshole who wants to screw everyone
- The Jester: Clownish goofball who never takes everything seriously and alternates between amusing and irritating
- The Sidekick: Never has any ideas of his own, just sort of tags along and helps out with stuff
- The Girlfriend: She's only here because she's horny and/or lonely
- The Chicken Hawk: Makes a big noise when thinks are quiet, but hides in a crack in the wall when things get noisy
- The Omnicidal Maniac: Total asshole who wants to destroy everyone and everything (aka "The Anarchist")
- The Fight Guy: Violent temper, loves to fight, thinks you love to fight too, confused when you don't fight him. Wanna fight?
- The Slut: Makes everything about sex
- The Preacher: Makes everything about God
- The Demislut: Wants to have sex with God
- The Alter Girl: Wants to have sex with the Preacher
- The Gangster: Always looking an angle, always manipulating people, never trustworthy
- The Chump: Never manages to find an angle, always being manipulated, always trustworthy
- The Mother Hen: Worries about all the poor defenseless orphans/children/friends/townspeople/neighbors/etc that can't look after themselves and have to be protected.
- The Wolf: Is the reason the Mother Hen worries
- The Raven: "Poor. Impulse. Control." Unpredictable as hell, stopped giving a fuck in third grade.
- The Roddenberry: The guy who has convinced himself that he's really good at his job -- or even is absolutely essential to getting the job done -- and fails to realize that he owes most of his success to the incredible team of people around him (also known as "The George Lucas," or "The Kitchen Nightmare.")

All of these and more should be equally represented in every culture in the galaxy. Their individual backgrounds, evolutionary quirks and cultural traits should give them each a unique flavor, plus the individuality of each character. Otherwise, you're just painting entire societies with the broadest possible brush strokes to the point that it's hard to imagine how those societies could even really EXIST with so little diversity of thought.

 

[Jayson1]

Then why not just make them HUMANS with a different perspective from Earth/Starfleet's perspective? Instead of reducing an entire civilization to a laughable Planet of Funny Hats and perpetuating the underlying notion that it is possible for an entire civilization of millions if not BILLIONS of people to all be defined by a single unique characteristic (e.g. "Everyone on this planet loves to wear funny hats."), why not just project that differing perspective as the defining trait OF THAT CHARACTER?

Or, if you absolutely MUST use aliens -- or worse, forehead aliens -- assign the characteristics at random and use his alienness to get away with some world building:
Option A: "Drax is a Klingon. Drax thinks that war is glorious and is excited about the prospect of combat and violence and he thinks you should be too. When Drax realizes that you DON'T glorify violence and war, he thinks you're a weakling and sneers at you. Drax and his crew want to start a war with the Federation because Drax is a Klingon and Klingons love war. Don't be like Drax."

Option B: "Drax is a Klingon. Drax grew up in the vermin-infested slums of the First City, where garbage trucks make deliveries instead of pickups and raw sewage runs in the streets because the main city -- the REAL city -- is built higher up to avoid the storm drain runoff and the Empire didn't bother to upgrade the drainage system. Drax wants to start a war with the Federation because the Army recruits more heavily in time of war and he has sworn an oath of honor to his clan/family to find a way to bring wealth, relief, or at the very least, a way for the younger ones to get jobs (with the Army, let's say) so the family can survive. Drax is an opportunist with suicidal ideation and a surprisingly keen understanding of how the Klingon Economy works. Don't be like Drax."

Klingon "Warrior Race" ethos can be a background for a character, it can add color and flavor and dimension and background. But once it becomes ALL THEY ARE, Star Trek is accomplishing nothing at all except to train its viewers to project stereotypes as far as they possibly can.


I like how WE exist in a universe where we have all these different cultures that, every one of them, each produce the same kinds of people over and over again in roughly the same proportions.

And I like a fictional world that reflects this: that there are twenty to thirty different archetypes of people you meet and they're the same people no matter where you meet them or where they're from. Whether you're a kid from Brooklyn or the 84 year old wife of a Pashtun brickmaker, you've probably met at least three of these people:
- The Hero: Moral paragon who wants to save everyone
- The Antihero: Kind of an asshole, but still saves everyone
- The Villain: Complete asshole who wants to screw everyone
- The Jester: Clownish goofball who never takes everything seriously and alternates between amusing and irritating
- The Sidekick: Never has any ideas of his own, just sort of tags along and helps out with stuff
- The Girlfriend: She's only here because she's horny and/or lonely
- The Chicken Hawk: Makes a big noise when thinks are quiet, but hides in a crack in the wall when things get noisy
- The Omnicidal Maniac: Total asshole who wants to destroy everyone and everything (aka "The Anarchist")
- The Fight Guy: Violent temper, loves to fight, thinks you love to fight too, confused when you don't fight him. Wanna fight?
- The Slut: Makes everything about sex
- The Preacher: Makes everything about God
- The Demislut: Wants to have sex with God
- The Alter Girl: Wants to have sex with the Preacher
- The Gangster: Always looking an angle, always manipulating people, never trustworthy
- The Chump: Never manages to find an angle, always being manipulated, always trustworthy
- The Mother Hen: Worries about all the poor defenseless orphans/children/friends/townspeople/neighbors/etc that can't look after themselves and have to be protected.
- The Wolf: Is the reason the Mother Hen worries
- The Raven: "Poor. Impulse. Control." Unpredictable as hell, stopped giving a fuck in third grade.
- The Roddenberry: The guy who has convinced himself that he's really good at his job -- or even is absolutely essential to getting the job done -- and fails to realize that he owes most of his success to the incredible team of people around him (also known as "The George Lucas," or "The Kitchen Nightmare.")

All of these and more should be equally represented in every culture in the galaxy. Their individual backgrounds, evolutionary quirks and cultural traits should give them each a unique flavor, plus the individuality of each character. Otherwise, you're just painting entire societies with the broadest possible brush strokes to the point that it's hard to imagine how those societies could even really EXIST with so little diversity of thought.

I agree that we should see more diversity even within the alien species. I actually thought DS9 did a pretty good job at it and it's sometime that can only get better if the writer's are intrested in it. The main reason though I think for giving aliens a dominate character trait is mostly for time. You only have so much time in a episode to explore a species so it makes sense that you might focus on something that can instantly tell you something about them without having to dedicate the entire episode about it. Also it helps to establish a species cliche so you can eventually turn it upside down in the future by having aliens of that species doing things that don't live up to the cliche. Things lie Nog joining starfleet or having Spock express emotions.

Unique aliens do serve a purpose but they tend to be more about creating a sense of wonder or creating fear for the hero's. Every trek episode shoudn't be about that IMO. Some episode's should just be about the character's interactions with each other or exploring some social issue or some other aspect of human nature.

Jason

 

[Crazy Eddie]

You only have so much time in a episode to explore a species so it makes sense that you might focus on something that can instantly tell you something about them without having to dedicate the entire episode about it.

And that's MY problem: the idea that there is something you can instantly tell about a person just because you know where they're from. The bumpy forehead in that case is just a proxy for any random racial/cultural sigil that identifies you as whatever-it-is-you-are, and then you are expected to look, talk, act and think a certain way or else you're not a "true Klingon" or "true Ferengi" because you don't fit the stereotype.

In fact, if you replace the species names in any of the dialog in TNG or DS9 with real ethnicities, the problem becomes pretty apparent:

QUARK: Listen, do you hear that?
BASHIR: I don't hear a thing.
QUARK: Exactly. The ambient noise level in this room is less than thirty decibels. On an average day it's sixty five. When there're Mexicans in the room, it can go as high as eighty-five.
O'BRIEN: So what you're saying is, it's quiet in here.
QUARK: Too quiet. Something is terribly wrong.
BASHIR: Like what?
QUARK: I don't know. But have you ever met a quiet Mexican before? Look how they're watching the room. It's like they're picking out targets. Where are you going?
O'BRIEN: I thought I'd ask the Mexicans what they're up to.
QUARK: Don't do that.
O'BRIEN: Why not?
QUARK: I don't want them to know we're on to them.​

Or when Worf DIRECTLY calls out Martok's wife for being the racist old hag that she clearly is:

WORF: You never told me that your wife was opposed to this marriage.
MARTOK: Sirella is a woman of strong convictions. She believes that by bringing aliens into our families we risk losing our identity as Klingons.
WORF: That is a prejudiced, xenophobic view.
MARTOK: We are Klingons, Worf. We don't embrace other cultures, we conquer them.​

IOW Martok's answer is: "So what?"

Star Trek too often hangs a lampshade on that kind of issue without actually dealing with it, so the Klingons -- more than almost anyone else -- come off as caricatures rather than fleshed-out characters. Martok and Worf are the only two who break the mold, and they only ever manage to do this by expanding OUTSIDE the parameters of "Warrior guys who love to fight."

All that really means is "Warrior guys who love to fight" doesn't actually tell you anything useful about anyone, so it's useless as a defining characteristic of the Klingons. It doesn't tell you how their economy works, how their language evolved, or anything about their music or culture. It doesn't tell you anything about their responses to pain or pleasure and, in the end, any attempt to extrapolate those things from that single characteristic wind up being silly and one-dimensional, and trying to keep that one-dimensional concept in frame is just an exercise in racist thought.

Hence my point: the defining characteristic of a Klingon Warrior is the Warrior part, not the Klingon. Since just about anybody can be a warrior, trying to reduce the Klingons AS A SPECIES to that is an artistic self-immolation Star Trek is better off avoiding in the future.

Also it helps to establish a species cliche so you can eventually turn it upside down in the future by having aliens of that species doing things that don't live up to the cliche. Things lie Nog joining starfleet or having Spock express emotions.

Or a black person who doesn't listen to rap, or a Mexican who isn't lazy...

Unique aliens do serve a purpose but they tend to be more about creating a sense of wonder or creating fear for the hero's.

Which is a BAD thing.

Because strictly speaking, any individual person is unique in some ways and typical in others. It's the combination of expected and unexpected traits that gives you a fully fleshed-out character. If the only time you add variation is for some kind of plot twist, you're pretty much undoing any world-building that MIGHT have resulted from that variation: Klingons who don't want to shoot everything are just anomalies and freaks, everyone knows True Klingons are just grumpy bikers who drink alot.

Every trek episode shoudn't be about that IMO. Some episode's should just be about the character's interactions with each other or exploring some social issue or some other aspect of human nature.

The most important thing about human nature is that humans are DYNAMIC. No two people think exactly alike, make the same choices, come from the same place or meet the same end. No two people have exactly the same perspective on what is right or wrong, and that is the source of most of our conflicts in life. How two different people struggle to make sense of the exact same event is a major characteristic of the human condition, and the choice to either seek common ground or force one viewpoint to submit unilaterally.

But the moment you start using species/race as a proxy for those viewpoints, you're already on a path to completely miss the point. Mainly because of the opportunity for common ground: you miss out on the opportunity to tell a story about the Klingon dancer who ran way from home because the local shaman (who, with 20 villagers, is chasing her across the galaxy with a bird of prey) think she's a reincarnated goddess (which, in fairness, she actually IS) and want to put her in charge of the entire county. You miss out on that story about the Ferengi mathematician who offers the theory that the only reason the Ferengi as a species are so obsessed with profit is because they're really just obsessed with MATH and they like to count things (might as well be money) and he spends the entire episode proving that you can describe just about anything, no matter how complex, if you have enough numbers. You miss out on the opportunity to show a Borg ship wander aimlessly right through the Bajor system, scan DS9, scan Bajor, scare the hell out of literally everyone, and then as it turns to leave the system, turn suddenly and attack/assimilate a shuttlecraft flown by a war criminal and then leave (turns out this particular cube had been sent here specifically because the Collective wanted to understand the concept of "Remorse").

You can't tell stories about races of people. You can only tell stories about individuals. The species your character belongs to can help you frame the background, but when you try to flatten the topography of the world you're building, that background becomes a lot less useful to successive characters.

 

[Shawnster]

My biggest concern though when making really unique alien looks is how does the makeup effect the actor's ability to act. The Jem Haddar for example look really cool but I had problems telling most of them apart. I don't think we ever got Jem Haddar character that matched up what we got from characters like Dukat,Weyoum etc. Granted we have seen character's work with extensive makeup like Odo,Tosk etc but they tend to exceptions to the rule more than something you should count on.

Jason

I can't remember where I read this (Starlog?) or even saw it on a documentary/behind the scenes but the statement was made that, starting in TNG's early days, they were taking care to make sure the alien prosthetics did not conceal too much of the actor's faces. They were shying away from complete rubber masks so that the actor could act and show facial expressions.

Another article pointed out how some of the alien looks were modeled after what some earth animals look like with their outer fur skin removed.

Then why not just make them HUMANS with a different perspective from Earth/Starfleet's perspective? Instead of reducing an entire civilization to a laughable Planet of Funny Hats and perpetuating the underlying notion that it is possible for an entire civilization of millions if not BILLIONS of people to all be defined by a single unique characteristic (e.g. "Everyone on this planet loves to wear funny hats."), why not just project that differing perspective as the defining trait OF THAT CHARACTER?

Or, if you absolutely MUST use aliens -- or worse, forehead aliens -- assign the characteristics at random and use his alienness to get away with some world building:

Recently (since I've been a member here) I've begun wishing that Star Trek would have not had so many different alien species. Instead of having an alien of the week, they might have been better off story wise to have a smaller number of alien species to draw from. This would have resulted in developing the known species and Federation members (or allies or non-aligned civilizations) better than the superficial treatment we received. Like you said, why not make some of them humans? Not all humans needed to come from Earth or the Sol system. Timicin, from TNG's "Half a Life" did not need to be a new 1 shot alien species. He could have been one of the already established species. Hell, paint him green and make him an Orion.

I know budget constraints affected the number of exotic species we saw, but that excuse only goes so far. The more backlog of ears or noses they make, the cheaper those species should become in terms of costuming. Instead of hundreds of aliens of the week, give us tens of them and flesh their cultures out more.

In my head canon Argelius and Stratos are human settlements and both are Federation members.