Existing species vs. "aliens of the week"

[Shawnster]

"I can tell you're an alien by the bumps on your nose...."

I get it. Star Trek is about new life forms and new civilizations. Giving the audience something no one has seen before. Still, it seems that Star Trek is replete with one hit wonders - alien species we see once an then never again. As a result we've got many species with little to no development. Even the big, prominent species like Andorians (Until ENT), Tellarites, Deltans, etc... all have had limited screen time.

Of the episodes already produced, which ones would not change at all if they had used an established civilization instead of creating a new "alien of the week?"

For example the TNG episode "Half a Life" would not have changed if Timicin had been Andorian or Deltan except in the fact that the age for euthanasia would not have been a surprise. Or should not have been a surprise. Vulcans were Federation members for centuries yet we were still finding new things about their species like inner eyelids, Katras, etc... It can be forgiven that the individual such as Luxwana or our Enterprise heroes would not off the top of their head know the ins-and-outs of every species. But some data should be in the computer... Some Andorian or Deltan colony or even a human colony for that matter could have the euthanasia policy. That doesn't mean the entire species is like that.

But I digress. Back to the point! What episodes did we see that would have remained the same story wise but could have been told about an existing species? By doing this the individual episode remains the same but Star Trek could further develop the richness and depth of existing species.

 

[Tenacity]

It would be nice to see new species used two or three times, flesh them out a bit, although single appearances occasionally made sense. Once their single story was done, there would be nothing else to say.

But the show too often went too far the other direction with species like the Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians. A small number of species were endlessly shoved down the audience's throats. Personally I got sick to death with the non-stop presence of the Cardassians in DS9, cutting the Cardassians back to less that half (better still a third) of their story arc/screen appearances woud have suite me fine.

DIS (* spoiler *) would have been much better served imho if the argressive species the Federation was at war with weren't named Klingons. Keep the story-line majority the same, just rename them, change a very few words of dialog and a few symbols.

Look at what TNG and DS9 did with the Vulcans, we saw them, there were good stories, but they were never the go to aliens. They weren't over used.

Did Nero and his home world have to be Romulan/Romulas? If he had been a newly created alien species the plot/story could have been largely the same.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Known aliens have that "lore" factor. They'll be back, so what happens to them matters. Aliens of the Week won't matter after their 42 minutes are up.

 

[Greg Cox]

I'm sometime reluctant to invent a "new" alien species if there's already one that fits the bill. Unless you're doing some sort of first-contact scenario, why invent a new species of telepaths or shape-shifters or ruthless conquerors or whatever when the Star Trek universe already has one or more in place?

 

[Gul Sengosts]

But the show too often went too far the other direction with species like the Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians. A small number of species were endlessly shoved down the audience's throats. Personally I got sick to death with the non-stop presence of the Cardassians in DS9, cutting the Cardassians back to less that half (better still a third) of their story arc/screen appearances woud have suite me fine.

I disagree. The Klingons were ok, but a little too cartoonish to justify that much presence, the Romulans had potential but were never fully utilised, but the Cardassians? I think they worked really well, they were unusually believable and fleshed out, a great adversary. They were like some power you always had to deal with, with relations ranging from cautious to all-out war, in a complex political situation involving Bajorans, Maquis, and more. I wouldn't have it another way, I think this was Trek at its best. You somehow had to live with them, and that gave rise to all sorts of complex issues.

I don't like the other extreme at all, those throwaway one-episode alien jerks (VOY is particularly guilty of this).

The Borg must be mentioned here. I think they'd have been great if used sparingly as a terrifying menace. Again, it was VOY that trivialised them by overexposure and being too weak.

 

[BillJ]

I think any Star Trek needs a healthy mixture of both.

 

[The Wormhole]

Ideally, yes a good mixture of both is best. It gets a bit silly with the Forehead Aliens of the Week, there's like a dozen of them spread throughout the entire galaxy, and they all use the same ship designs and wear the same outfits. There comes a point where they could have just made their own recurring race, but I digress.

Another pet peeve of mine is why do they bother introducing new "aliens" which are either identical to humans or just humans with funny bumps on their foreheads? Why not just make them humans who have started up their own colonies? If it's a plot point that they are not Federation members, establish they seceded from the Federation or something. I mean, I get it, sometime budget limitations mean the alien make-up needs to be simplistic or even they need to go without alien prosthetics, but that doesn't mean they still got to be written as aliens. Or is this too "out of the box" an idea?

 

[Mojochi]

I'm sometime reluctant to invent a "new" alien species if there's already one that fits the bill. Unless you're doing some sort of first-contact scenario, why invent a new species of telepaths or shape-shifters or ruthless conquerors or whatever when the Star Trek universe already has one or more in place?

Because the more you develop the existing cultures, add to their traits, & dynamics, etc... the more penned in & beholden you are to those traits, in the future, when someone's sure to write about them again. For a fanbase that does more complaining about canon than just about any other in existence, it might be in the writers' best interest to keep things less complicated, so they don't have to go through the entire franchise to make sure they didn't make some stupid mistake

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying they should never do it. I've written fanfic myself, and love to write up new things about the races we know, Bolians, Benzites, Saurians, Yridians, etc. We know barely anything about them, & little things being added to their cultures or physiology can make a story really interesting to long time fans.

Just know it's a fine line to walk, & moderation is a virtue. It's potentially as much a burden as it is a treasure, like the redundant Klingon internal organs things from TNG's Ethics. I'm sure that even though such an addition was pretty cool, they regretted it, or tried to make us forget it almost immediately afterward lol.

Another pet peeve of mine is why do they bother introducing new "aliens" which are either identical to humans or just humans with funny bumps on their foreheads? Why not just make them humans who have started up their own colonies?

For a long time it was considered counterproductive to portray humans as still being as flawed as a lot of those races are. They wanted to present us as having evolved beyond a lot of the weekly issues on alien worlds

 

[The Wormhole]

For a long time it was considered counterproductive to portray humans as still being as flawed as a lot of those races are. They wanted to present us as having evolved beyond a lot of the weekly issues on alien worlds

And yet TNG, the poster child for this evolved humanity nonsense, did show a human colony which separated from the Federation and degraded into total anarchy where rape gangs are a way of life. And this was in the first season.

So in light of that, why couldn't third season episodes like The Vengeance Factor, The High Ground or The Hunted have just been human colonies instead of "alien" worlds? Flawed and troubled as those planets might be, they're downright paradises compared to Turkana IV.

 

[BillJ]

And yet TNG, the poster child for this evolved humanity nonsense, did show a human colony which separated from the Federation and degraded into total anarchy where rape gangs are a way of life. And this was in the first season.

Turkana IV was such a let down when we finally saw it in season four's "Legacy".

 

[The Wormhole]

Well, at that point the show had been sanitized into Piller's "earn your paycheck by being bland. Being interesting is lazy" interpretation of Gene's Vision.

 

[Mojochi]

And yet TNG, the poster child for this evolved humanity nonsense, did show a human colony which separated from the Federation and degraded into total anarchy where rape gangs are a way of life. And this was in the first season..

I'm not saying it was right or preferable, but the one example you cite was literally abandoned so fast it took the character from there along with it lol

 

[Shawnster]

So in light of that, why couldn't third season episodes like The Vengeance Factor, The High Ground or The Hunted have just been human colonies instead of "alien" worlds? Flawed and troubled as those planets might be, they're downright paradises compared to Turkana IV.

Those are perfect examples. I was trying to work the Edo from "Justice" into this mix but I don't think a human space colony would have enough time to develop a worship of an inter dimensional space station.

 

[Mojochi]

The Vengeance Factor had some kind of weird clan chromosome thing that they wanted to use, which made it seem not human. The Hunted was about genetic engineering. I think we've sufficiently explored the human foray into that subject, & the High Ground is about factions on an alien world, wherein the prime directive applies, such as it is. Prime Directive stuff gets too murky when the culture is just humans.

I'm not saying I agree with all of that. I'm just playing Devil's advocate. It's probably how they thought, when they made these aliens of the week

 

[The Wormhole]

The Vengeance Factor had some kind of weird clan chromosome thing that they wanted to use, which made it seem not human.

I'm sure that could have been easily worked around.

The Hunted was about genetic engineering. I think we've sufficiently explored the human foray into that subject,

Not really. Hell, in just TNG's second season we see genetic engineering is being conducted officially within the Federation (with admittedly disastrous results). No reason why we can't see independent humans engaging in genetic engineering. Hell, TNG eventually went and did just that in The Masterpiece Society in the fifth season.

the High Ground is about factions on an alien world, wherein the prime directive applies,

Quite the contrary, the Prime Directive is not mentioned at all in The High Ground.

 

[Mojochi]

lol, well there goes those theories.

Like I said, I'm just playing devil's advocate. Trying to defend the show a bit, because ultimately the concept of the show is to seek out new life & new civilizations, having to do it cheaply with people who look human, not withstanding. While there's nothing wrong with a little human stuff coming up. Mostly they always steer toward aliens as a default, because that's Star Trek

 

[JirinPanthosa]

If the ship is out on their own exploring the unknown there should be different aliens every week.

Just they should perhaps have more elaborate makeup.

 

[The Wormhole]

If the ship is out on their own exploring the unknown there should be different aliens every week.

Which, contrary to popular belief is not what Star Trek is actually about. There were plenty of times in TOS and TNG when they were on assignment in Federation territory, or even regions which were not off the beaten path.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Which, contrary to popular belief is not what Star Trek is actually about. There were plenty of times in TOS and TNG when they were on assignment in Federation territory, or even regions which were not off the beaten path.

But a majority of the episodes do have them charting new space, especially early in the series.

 

[Mojochi]

Which, contrary to popular belief is not what Star Trek is actually about..

Dude, it's in the mission statement of the title sequence of the 1st two shows. I could see a show based on that opening speech, that doesn't include anything at all about internal politics. I'm glad that they did include that stuff, but it is easily not what they had envisioned as the primary goal.