In TOS we came to know the Vulcan culture through Spock, while the Klingons were just brutal savages who lived for warfare and conquest. Then in TNG with Worf as on-board, the rich and ritually complex honor-bound aspects of Klingon values became known to us. The Trek universe is teeming with awesome alien cultures who've yet to be explored in detail, my question to you is, if or when (hopefully the latter) there is a new trek series which species do you hope the alien cast members would belong to? Personally I would love to see a catian crew member, at first the concept of cat people on Trek irked me it seemed somewhat cartoonish which makes sense seeing as they came from TAS, but of course maybe that could just be nick-name ascribed to the race by humans do to the people's feline like features. Wouldn't it be weird if they had a social structure like lions. I also think Deltans are under used. How about you what do you think?
Oh yeah avatar. Well it's not like it matters, think of how many flavors of vampire there are in fiction. The same thing can get reinvented over and over, that's not really the point of this thread. If not cat people then what races would you like to see in a new trek series?
The problem is that most Trek aliens really don't look and act all that different from humans. I remember the advertising for ENT, where it was stated that Phlox was going to be an "exotic alien doctor." Well, he turned out to be just another guy with bumps on his head that wasn't "exotic" at all (not to knock John Billingsly personally, whom I actually liked).
It must be very difficult to imagine a strange psychology. The Borg would be an example that worked in Trek. This was implied with the giant bugs in Starship Troopers.
Oh hell yeah! His name would be Lt. Commander Smirggles (cause I say so) and he would be chief of security a tactical expert and pro certified pilot. In battle if you lost your officer that was at the helm you patch the controls over to tactical and he's in business with all those arms of his, handling both tactical and flight control, and the uss whatever-it's-called can continue kicking ass and taking names! On his down time he'd like to go over to the holo-deck smoke a hookah sit on a mushroom stump and swap nursery rhymes with Alice...Wait what?
Ones that spring to my mind first are: Andorian, Benzite, Bolian, Deltan, Efrosian, J'naii, Kobliad, any of the Rigelians, Saurian. Though there are undoubtedly others--I love alien characters, often they are far more interesting than some of the bland humans we've seen over the years.
I would rather have a completely Human looking alien character with a noticibly different mind set - world view, than the other way around. Dr. Phlox did have a "exotic" philosophical way of looking at some things, his advocacy of letting an entire species simply die (when he apparently could have saved them) in Dear Doctor shows that. While I don't agree with Phlox's viewpoint there, perhaps it would be good to have crew members who we don't agree with, and who don't agree with each other. Instead of having the entire crew basically be the same person in different bodies.
I'd be keen see Andorian and Tellarite characters in a series set after TNG. These are founder worlds of the Federation but they were rarely shown in the TNG/DS9/VOY era.
Meet Mr. Mind from the planet Venus. Of course he's mad genius bent on world domination. So probably not Starfleet material.
It would be great to see how the andorians or any of the other ENT species evolved socially since ENT. If there is another series set after voy I hope that would be explored in some way.