Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6526053" data-attributes="member: 4937">Possibly, but each is a bad example for a different reason.Spock is a science fiction elf, and the culture attributed to him is within the range of values attributed to elves.  (By contrast, Romulans are 'dark elves').  But Spock as it turns out is a 'half-elf', and so not actually representative of the type (this is a common problem with invented species, where the most deeply explored member of the species is the one least like the norm).  So when Spock fails to be alien - and he fails in this regard all the time - there is no way of knowing whether he does so because of bad writing or because Spock is half-human and so seems equally alien to a true Vulcan.  Worse, the actual designers of the Vulcan type in my opinion have poor understanding of what emotion actually is that is based on a lot of vague and fuzzy thinking typical of the period regarding what intelligence actually is (namely, that intelligence is a single emergent spontaneous property of complexity that manifests itself alike in everything that is 'intelligent' - see most artificial intelligence search of the period, and in particular see the treatment of AI in the original Star Trek).  So when we see actual Vulcans they don't act to the described type of wholly rational and unemotional creatures (again, as to the usual trope, the time we get to spend with them the most is when they are least acting like themselves - the 'pon far').  Even so, I would argue that Spock is by far the best of the three 'aliens' you cited, even if the particular way in which he is alien is a bit inexplicable and inconsistent.  Worf is far worse.  At some level he's a science fiction orc, but not even a particularly well realized one.  Raised by humans - again with the representative member of the race being a non-representative member of the race - he is presented as basically a human that occasionally growls and ritually boasts, and in contrast to Spock is presented as having no inexplicable or alien values at all.   Where Spock in every episode is held up as the strange but loyal alien friend, Worf is in every episode presented as the alien that deep down has all the same problems and feelings we have ourselves.  Culturally, Klingons in TNG and on are presented in terms that are entirely within the range of human cultural values (as is typical recently, variations on stereotypical Japanese), except that they are time and again inexplicably less adaptable than humans (once again, humans are 'The Mario', and everyone else is riding the short bus).  TNG is Political Correctness as the assumed universal cultural and biological value.  At least the original series was able to dabble from time to time into 'It's life Jim, but not as we know it', where that life however alien often proved at some level sympathetic (the Horta, for example).  TNG rarely was so daring, with the race that could only communicate in metaphors (Darmok and Jhelad) being one of the few notable exceptions.  Thorin is not presented in sufficient detail to know whether he is alien.  I would argue that Thorin is not alien, that his dwarfness plays very little role in his story (except for the unspoken and unreflected upon fact that unlike his human king counterpart, regaining his kingdom involves getting married to his gold rather than a girl), and that fundamentally the story remains the same if Thorin and company were all 'big jobs'.</blockquote>

Verification