I officially began my journey through all Star Trek on October 9th...

[UnknownSample]

Here's the problem. That's fine in theory, but in practice it only works in books. It only works in a medium where you can actually get into the Aliens head and see the thought process. At least it only works long term. The problem is the ability to emote is tied into human visual storytelling. It's the only way the viewer has of getting into the characters head and establishing empathy with them. In the cases where they do not do this they are either portraying monsters for which deep empathy is not required, or they typically flop horribly as the audience is at best disinterested. Scientific concepts are interesting in the abstract. But at the end of the day they must still be told in a common and all too human visual language. This is why Yoda has Einsteins eyes. Why even Jabba the Hutt has such expressive eyes. It's also why some Alien interpretations fail to click with audiences. The classic example is the Alien hybrid from Alien Ressurection (or the similar bland beasts in Prometheus. About the only recent SF movie to work around these limitations well was Arrival. Which essentially was amovie about those limitations.

Yes SciFi demands more Alien aliens. Unfortunately drama and storytelling demands emotive and empathetic aliens. So not very Alien aliens. In a visual medium drama and storytelling wins.

Yes. The point is, you must actually try, and try hard, to take risks in this area, even if the audience will not let you go as far as you'd like. It's the "settling" that gets me. Makers of SF shows must make compromises, but they should not be okay with the compromises, and they should be trying to get the audience out of its comfort zone, judging of course how often and how much it's safe to do so.
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What I don't like is when the makers of new stuff labeled "Star Trek" in a sense conspire with the non-SF-minded (but more sci-fi minded, in other words, SF Lite) majority of the audience, so that the compromises become what "Star Trek" is thought to be all about, and we're in Funny Forehead Land forever.

 

[Griffeytrek]

Much of what you are asking for though, isn't "compromise". It's not that the tech doesn't exist to make truly believable "Alien" aliens. It's that the human brain doesn't like things that are truly alien, and rejects them for storytelling purposes. They cannot be made to readily fit the visual language needed for live action visual storytelling. It takes some really clever tricks to make them sufficiently empathetic to the audience to use as anything other than a monster. And those tricks, such as using a humanlike empath to directly convey empathy in "Tin Man", have limited utility and reusability.

 

[Idran]

It's that the human brain doesn't like things that are truly alien, and rejects them for storytelling purposes.

I think you're confusing something about the uncanny valley here. The uncanny valley applies when you're making something near human, but not near enough. If you go extremely far away from human, the uncanny valley doesn't apply at all, and humans are perfectly capable of empathizing with things that are very non-human. We do it all the time in practice: pets, plants, vehicles, tools, devices, buildings, abstract concepts; people empathize with so many non-human things in real life as it is.

 

[Griffeytrek]

I think you're confusing something about the uncanny valley here. The uncanny valley applies when you're making something near human, but not near enough. If you go extremely far away from human, the uncanny valley doesn't apply at all, and humans are perfectly capable of empathizing with things that are very non-human. We do it all the time in practice: pets, plants, vehicles, tools, devices, buildings, abstract concepts; people empathize with so many non-human things in real life as it is.

No I'm describing a similar but not quite the same phenomenon. This is why we Anthropomorphize things. Why we make Happy Animal Cartoon characters with human characteristics. Why we favor Mammals and tend to avoid Spiders. We require a certain degree of Anthropomorphication in order to empathize with the character for story purposes. We must be able to empathize with the character being presented. The character must be able to present a certain degree of human-centric body language. Otherwise we don't like it. It's fairly hard wired into us.

 

[Idran]

No I'm describing a similar but not quite the same phenomenon. This is why we Anthropomorphize things. Why we make Happy Animal Cartoon characters with human characteristics. Why we favor Mammals and tend to avoid Spiders. We require a certain degree of Anthropomorphication in order to empathize with the character for story purposes. We must be able to empathize with the character being presented. The character must be able to present a certain degree of human-centric body language. Otherwise we don't like it. It's fairly hard wired into us.

Oh, I see what you're saying. I agree to a point? But you're also making some pretty broad generalizations here, and I think some of what I said still aplies. I've got a couple friends with a variety of pet arachnids who are constantly talking about how adorable they are, for a counter-example to your comment about favoring. (And I honestly agree somewhat, some spiders are just cute. )

There's plenty of online communities about adorable building facades, car grills, devices. People will get attached to all sorts of things, even inanimate objects with no body language at all. If there's one thing humans are great at, it's anthropomorphizing literally anything.

 

[Kor]

The horta was a brilliant alien concept. Of course, we needed Spock's mind meld to understand its motivations and realize it wasn't a monster.

Kor

 

[Griffeytrek]

The horta was a brilliant alien concept. Of course, we needed Spock's mind meld to understand its motivations and realize it wasn't a monster.

Kor

The Horta was one of the best examples of working through the problem by using Spock as an intermediary. They similarly used the same base solution in Tin Man.

 

[Tracy Trek]

Jeffrey Combs really seems to be the go-to guy for playing aliens.

 

[Forbin]

Never thought I'd see the Ferengi on ENT. Ethan Phillips and Jeffrey Combs made it a pretty funny episode though.

It's one of the shows big failings - they play up the prequel angle, then are too unimaginative to keep from introducing TNG-era things, excusing it with "the [aliens name] never said who they were." :/

 

[NOVE9]

And yet people lose their shit when they introduce thing that never showed up before enterprise. Go figure.

 

[1001001]

Jeffrey Combs really seems to be the go-to guy for playing aliens.

Shran is my favorite. He's a great character.

 

[MacLeod]

And yet people lose their shit when they introduce thing that never showed up before enterprise. Go figure.

That's one of the perils of a prequel, showing major events (i.e the Xindi attack on Earth) that we have never about. As for using TNG era aliens such as the Ferengi and Borg can't the show stand on it's own without having to rely on the familiar. It's a delicate balancing act between indrocung new elements that we might not have heard about and relying on the familiar. Now some of these might ne down to the writers and/or the studio I beleive the The Temporal Cold War came from the studio and the writers were opposed to it.

 

[Griffeytrek]

Jeffrey Combs really seems to be the go-to guy for playing aliens.

Yeah. In the world of TV production finding an actor who is both physically tolerant of the heavy 3d effects makeup, has the patience to both do the head castings necessary to create it and the daily drudgery of the application, and has the ability to act and emote through it, is a rare and precious gem. Jeffrey Combs was a special gift to Star Trek as was Armin Shimerman and Marc Alaimo who have also played multiple makeup heavy aliens over the years. That ability to act through the makeup is an especially rare thing. Ron Perlman largely made a career for himself being the best at doing such. Contrast that with some other recent examples of truly fine actors getting lost within their makeup. Idris Alba in Star Trek Beyond is a good example. As is Christopher Ecclesten in Thor the Dark world. Both top end A list actors. Some of the best out there. But they did not do well through the heavy prosthetics. It's its own special skill.

There is another reason why you see certain actors repeated alot in makeup. Once the makeup effects department makes the master head cast of them, which is a brutal and expensive thing to do, it is faster, cheaper and easier to reuse those actors for other makeup roles, as they use the same already existing master head cast to start from. To create a new set of say Klingon Make up and prosthetics for Jeffrey Combs would take the makeup department a day or so. Maybe overnight for thick prosthetics that needed to be oven cured longer. To do the same for a new actor would take 3 days.

 

[Forbin]

Yup. Hang in, tho -
Season 3 will be their first ever season-long arc, so there's that. I hated the story, but you may not.
Season 4 was the huge milestone of B&B allowing someone else with different ideas to run the show. Some say it got overly fanboyish in terms of references to TOS; some say that was exactly the right thing to do.

 

[wayoung]

A lot of these episodes are utterly meaningless. Like, why am I still watching?

.

Yup, that's Enterprise.

 

[Griffeytrek]

A lot of these episodes are utterly meaningless. Like, why am I still watching?

I'll keep watching, but I can see why some tuned out so early. It's just the same old shit.

It does get better. The back half of season one is fairly awful. Season 2 is a bit better. Season 3 tries finally to do something completely different. It doesn't fully succeed, but at least it tries. Season 4 is probably mostly the show you were hoping for when they first announced a ST prequel.

 

[Griffeytrek]

Enter... Doug Jones.

Yeah the other side of that can be horrifying. I remember a few days after it hit the news that Virginia Hey had to leave Farscape because of what the makeup was doing to her, I saw her at Dragoncon. Dear lord she looked like an end stage cancer patient. And it was from her bodies reaction to the makeup. A year later she was back to full health, a fully radiant beautiful actress. It was shocking to see the physical impact the makeup had on her.

 

[wayoung]

Season 2. And Nemesis.

 

[Forbin]

For an old TOS Trekkie like me, all the time traveling and cloaking going on put me off. If they were so damn common in Archer's era, why did Kirk and Spock act so surprised the first time they encountered them? Or are they just something else Archer failed to mention in his logs? It's like the writers kept forgetting this was all supposed to be taking place BEFORE TOS, TNG, DS9 and V'ger. Or didn't care. Or (my theory) weren't talented enough to be able to alter their thinking to prequel mode.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

As far as I remember Spock knew that invisibility and time travel was theoretically possible.
Just that the Federation and other space powers were not currently known to possess the means for actual application.
He just neglected to mention that the Suliban actually used to possess that technology.
Unlike T'Pol who initially declared time travel impossible until convinced by actually time traveling for example.

Also since the temporal Cold War changed timelines on a regular basis , those instances might have been erased from TOS history books anyway.