There's a strong tendency for aliens to have one of, well, everything: One religion, one culture, one language.
One tailor, one hairdresser.
They're often treated as a rigorously monolithic nationality; whose capital city or whatever small corner of the planet our heroes actually visit is perfectly representative of the entire rest of the world.
It always bugs me that almost all the human characters in Trek are from Earth, all the Vulcan characters from Vulcan, all the Klingon characters from Qo'noS, etc. There are occasional exceptions, but not enough. These are supposed to be interstellar powers that have colonized whole bunches of worlds.
Not to mention all the alien "empires" that are all one species from one planet. Here on Earth, an empire is a multicultural state where one dominant culture regulates and exploits the resources and labor of the others. One of the reasons I like
Nemesis is because it's the first time we saw the Romulans actually behaving like an empire, ruling over another species which they used as cannon fodder.
It's a little less excusable for alien races that are staples of a franchise for years if not decades - as Star Trek has - but in that case the singular culture has come to define the alien. What makes a Klingon a Klingon or a Ferengi a Ferengi? It's not about the biological differences - which are mostly cosmetic; anything more significant merely being a plot twist for a given episode - but their cultural distinctiveness... which, er, really isn't all that 'alien' at all.
On the other hand, ST has occasionally gone deeper. DS9 explored a cultural change in Ferengi society, although it was a bit too much "misguided aliens embracing our superior Federation values." Bajor may have only had one global religious tradition, but there were variations in its interpretation, there were disbelievers, and there were fringe sects worshipping different entities. ENT did a particularly good job with this, showing the Vulcans as a culture in transition and touching on the existence of Klingon castes besides the warrior caste, acknowledging that the warriors hadn't always dominated the society.
And no, I've never heard "pet hate" as an expression. To my American eyes, the title broke down as "[Science fiction pet] [hate]."
Gotta go with Wing Commander myself. Besides the example about shushing the crew to remain hidden, the other moment I remember from the film that makes me cringe is the scene where the female pilot crash lands on the deck of the space carrier. Not only do they not send someone to the wreckage to verify she might be alive with just a broken radio, but they push the wreckage off the ship and it falls.... in space!!! There are other parts of that movie, but thankfully, I have blocked them from memory.
Actually I don't have a problem with that. On the contrary, one of my "pet hates" is the tendency of SF shows and movies to assume that a ship's artificial gravity is not felt outside the hull. That's nonsense. Matter is not opaque to gravity. If a ship were generating an artificial gravity field, you definitely should be able to feel its pull from outside. Anything on top of the ship or just off to the side, like a wrecked fighter being pushed off the edge, should definitely be subject to the pull of its gravity field. Although once it went off the edge it would be pulled diagonally inward toward the source of the gravity.
. Fortunately, I didn't spend much to see it. Tickets cheap in my hometown.
