Star Trek is full of extremist one trick pony races

I've been watching ST:Voyager on netflix lately. First time I've seen these episodes since they aired.

as usual, I have comments on and observations as if TV was real life.

Bear in mind, I like Star Trek. I think it is mucho better than Star Wars. The Enterprise can defeat the Death Star because Star Trek is better than Star Wars.

I realize, there might be some people who disagree that Star Wars is better than Star Trek, but this thread is about Star Trek.


I'm up to season five of Voyager and such rapid viewing makes certain patterns more obvious than when watching it 1 show per week.

The writers portray alien races as single job function extremists. It's no wonder that Humans are better than any other race, when every other race seems to glom into a single extreme political stance or social function.

Hozari: a race of bounty hunters. Gee, T'mee, what do you want to be when you grow up? A bounty hunter, duh!

Malon: a race of garbage dumpers. Even the guy who disputes, "we're not just garbage haulers, I'm an Artist!" has the corellary, "but I haul trash to pay the bills"

I imagine that on ST:TOS, this writing style was a novel means to illustrate the problem with extreme view points like hating somebody because the color of their skin was the opposite of yours.

Used occasionally, it's a useful tool. But packed into episode after episode, season after season and then watched serially in rapid succession on Netflix, it becomes blatant and old.

If they were writing ST today, I would expect to see an episode where one of the current political parties ideals was shipped to an alternate Earth where only they ruled, and then the crew would travel there and see what was wrong with that world.

If ST hadn't bludgeoned the heck out of that tool, it might have been a decent episode and a subtle illuminating tool. Now it would be seen as a political attack and bias by the opposing party viewpoint.

PS. I also hate the dumb as heck way that the 24th century has to manually distribute DataPadds with information on it. This show was airing in the Windows95 era. You've Got Mail has been in the theatres and America is familiar with the concept of e-mail. we can give the Okuda's credit for inventing the iThing, but apparently they all missed the point that data is TRANSMITTED OVER NETWORK, and not passed around manually. We might as well have ensigns in miniskirts walking around with clipboards to be signed.

Here's how tech was supposed to work: Each crewman is issued a DataPadd that is keyed to them, maybe it's DNA secured. It has wireless access to the ship's server and thus can show them messages, task lists, act as a remote screen into the system, etc. Neelix does not need to fracking walk around the ship handing out messages from home.

Anyway, that just about covers my view on what's wrong with Star Trek, despite the fact that I like Star Trek.

Janx said:

The writers portray alien races as single job function extremists. It's no wonder that Humans are better than any other race, when every other race seems to glom into a single extreme political stance or social function.

Click to expand...

Yep. But the reason for that is simple - Star Trek is not a simulation of a real, working universe. Trek, in all it's forms, is basically a series of morality plays. Morality plays use simplifications to get to the point.

Umbran said:

Yep. But the reason for that is simple - Star Trek is not a simulation of a real, working universe. Trek, in all it's forms, is basically a series of morality plays. Morality plays use simplifications to get to the point.

Click to expand...

that is a good summary of what I'm observing.

I guess the next question would be, "to what end?"

Considering Trek's target market is people who agree with Trek, while the writers might feel like they're addressing some huge social issue, the audience already agrees with them, so they are preaching to the choir.

I doubt there were any racists who saw the half-white/black people ST:TOS episode and decided, "OMG, racism is wrong, I should totally rethink my outlook on life."

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlanetOfHats

While the audience may agree with the points made by the simplification, part of the reason for morality plays is to spur action, not just agreement.

Yeah if our RPG sessions would have episodes like Voyager, my players would groan.

I thought Neelix was doing the mailman service just as part of his morale officer job, not because he had to.

Yeah if our RPG sessions would have episodes like Voyager, my players would groan.

Click to expand...

Yeah...otherwise we'd have good, light-skinned elves living in nice forests and evil dark-skinned elves living underground, orcs would all be barbaric monsters and...








Oh waitaminiit.....

Janx said:

I guess the next question would be, "to what end?"

Considering Trek's target market is people who agree with Trek, while the writers might feel like they're addressing some huge social issue, the audience already agrees with them, so they are preaching to the choir.

I doubt there were any racists who saw the half-white/black people ST:TOS episode and decided, "OMG, racism is wrong, I should totally rethink my outlook on life."

Click to expand...

Well, my understanding is that Trek has always had a solid set of younger viewers. They may "agree" with Trek in a general sense, but many of the individual topics may not have crossed their minds in the past. Or, the ideas are muddled in with the rest of life, and Trek's treatment, while oversimplified, may give clarity. And reinforcement of an idea, helping to build that idea into a culture, requires repetition even to the nominally agreeable.

Also, "we have agreement with our viewers" does not mean one isn't breaking important ground - The Kirk/Uhura Kiss being a classic example there.

"Half a Life" and "The Outcast" didn't say things your average Trek fan would have huge problems with, true. But they were still worth saying.

Janx said:

I guess the next question would be, "to what end?"

Click to expand...

Popular entertainment.

Considering Trek's target market is people who agree with Trek, while the writers might feel like they're addressing some huge social issue, the audience already agrees with them, so they are preaching to the choir.

Click to expand...

Note that most real preachers preach, if not directly at the choir, then in the choir's general vicinity.

The other reason Star Trek used one-trick pony aliens is a matter of simple efficiency. The show's format meant a lot of alien species being introduced in a short period of time. These races need to be simultaneously distinct, easy to grasp, and (hopefully) somewhat memorable.

There simply wasn't enough time for subtlety and nuanced depiction <insert Sten's wisecrack about summing up entire races from DA1 here>. So the writers gave each species a limp --as in the old writing adage "Give the character a limp". Serious speculation re: alien life gets pushed aside in favor of quick and (again, hopefully) vivid characterization.

So you get races of bounty hunters. Or honorable warriors. Or logicians. Or cowards... and so on. Larry Niven did the same in print, and his deliberate shallowness yielded some of SF's best races; the Kzinti, Pierson's Puppeteers, etc.

Yeah I remember when I got into gaming after reading Drizzt and (of course) wanting to play a drow ranger. My DM was like drow are killed on sight on the surface, oh and they're all evil. Every single one of them. Just like orcs, or goblins, or kobolds, or 95% of the monster manual....... so my paladin just detected evil on everyone/thing and then smited it. Apparently he was a racist, psychopathic mass-murderer looking back..... never once did we try to speak with the orcs, it was kill'em all.

Wow..... I totally just went off on a tangent there, sorry

Dannyalcatraz said:

Yeah...otherwise we'd have good, light-skinned elves living in nice forests and evil dark-skinned elves living underground, orcs would all be barbaric monsters and...








Oh waitaminiit.....

Click to expand...

LOL Well I don't allow those stereotypes in my games at all, with the exception if the setting demands that some races were created by evil gods (but even then they can change).