State of the art CGI in future Trek

[Delta Vega]

Inspired by ChallengerHK's thread "TOS - Should we ?"

When future Star Trek comes to our screens should state of the art CGI be used to offer visions of more elaborate alien life ?
After 50 plus years of almost predominately bipedal aliens in Trek, surely TV Companies have the ability to offer a more diverse range of aliens ?
Nose ridge of the week doesn't cut it anymore for me.
I think it would be more interesting to see life forms that defy expectation and belief, and it would make them more menacing, maybe they could be exempt from the Universal Translator as well.
What's the forum intelligentsia's thoughts on this ?

 

[Mudd]

They have trouble making Klingons dramatically interesting. What are they going to do with fifth dimensional butterfly creatures?

 

[Lord Garth]

I think it would be more interesting to see life forms that defy expectation and belief, and it would make them more menacing, maybe they could be exempt from the Universal Translator as well.

I don't know if they need to be menacing but more "out there" would be nice.

The Universal Translator should still work, since it's been used to communicate with Zephram Cochrane's Caretaker, the Tholians, and Species 8472. The physique or lack of one shouldn't make a difference. It's the language patterns that Translator decodes.

 

[Tosk]

Sometimes yes, CG will be used for crazy new aliens. But generally in Trek the point remains to be able to share scenes, imparting emotion. Drama, humor, all that good stuff. The best way to do that is still to glue crap to an actors face.

 

[C.E. Evans]

While some may say that aliens in Trek should be more diverse, with perhaps most of them being of the non-humanoid type, I think there exists a necessity for dramatic TV/movies for most of them to be humanoid. In the Trek universe, there may be an argument that the majority of sentient life-forms share a basic commonality (at least in this galaxy). That doesn't mean that there should never be non-humanoid aliens that can only be possible with CGI, but maybe those should be special whenever they occur, IMO...

 

[rahullak]

Yaphit had emotion, drama and humor.

 

[Tosk]

I said the best way, not the only way.

 

[Delta Vega]

I don't know if they need to be menacing but more "out there" would be nice.

The Universal Translator should still work, since it's been used to communicate with Zephram Cochrane's Caretaker, the Tholians, and Species 8472. The physique or lack of one shouldn't make a difference. It's the language patterns that Translator decodes.

I think mysterious would cover it more than menacing, maybe a bad choice of word.
The Caretaker, Tholians and Species 8472 would look way more convincing these days with enhanced CGI
Even my old pal, the Gaseous Cloud from "Obsession"
I see where you're coming from re the UT but surely there has to be a time when an alien race must be so "alien", so "out there" that language would have to be a real barrier to communication.
You've probably guessed that I've never been convinced with the UT, I know that its a necessity for the sake of drama, but the whole concept, for me, just doesn't work.

 

[The Wormhole]

Honestly, truly "alien" aliens bore me.

 

[mos6507]

Yaphit had emotion, drama and humor.

It helps to have someone as distinctive as Norm MacDonald doing the voice.

 

[F. King Daniel]

To be honest, Star Trek is bumpy headed human aliens to me at this point, and it'd be weird to have all-out alien aliens.

 

[Cake]

They could also use puppets like Farscape did a lot or Stargate to a lesser degree. I am still rooting for a Horta Starfleet officer.

 

[Qonundrum]

^^only if the Horta was in telepathic communication. It would just melt the consoles on the ship via its touch.

That, and the poor actor having to crawl on hands and knees, assuming they don't use CGI to ensure the episode count is reduced by 67%...

 

[Qonundrum]

It helps to have someone as distinctive as Norm MacDonald doing the voice.

Yup. The CGI is stellar, but voice acting is key. Norm makes Yaphit work. Any old inflection, or lack of it, just wouldn't work. Imagine Yaphit with Data's voice. It might be funny but not in the intended way.

 

[Cake]

^^only if the Horta was in telepathic communication. It would just melt the consoles on the ship via its touch.

That, and the poor actor having to crawl on hands and knees, assuming they don't use CGI to ensure the episode count is reduced by 67%...

If they use a costume, they could use a few people of the same size for it. It is not like you can see any part of the human body with it. So the crawling would be distributed among a bunch of people. You just need one voice actor. I would simply let the Horta wear a translator.

 

[saladdays]

I see where you're coming from re the UT but surely there has to be a time when an alien race must be so "alien", so "out there" that language would have to be a real barrier to communication.

They already did that in the TNG episode "Darmok," although granted the language wasn't so "out there," just that the Tamarian's communicated by allegory.

You've probably guessed that I've never been convinced with the UT, I know that its a necessity for the sake of drama, but the whole concept, for me, just doesn't work.

I don't have a problem with the translator in theory, but I think sometimes it works far too quick. Like it is able to translate whole languages from nearly the beginning of first hearing the language spoken. But yes, it's done this way I'm sure for dramatic effect.

 

[eschaton]

Fundamentally there are two different things here: Whether aliens are non-humanoid, and whether they are non-human in terms of their psychology.

The first is easy enough. The Star Wars universe has always had more diversity in terms of alien appearance, right from the Cantina on. However, the looks of the aliens are just meant to be bizarre flavor. Unless you dip into the extended universe, there's really nothing at about non-"human" culture at all. It's basically taken for granted that despite the funny looks and often talking in jabber with subtitles, they are just people like anyone else.

Star Trek - despite the widespread use of forehead-bump aliens (and even totally human - most notably in TOS, but also in TNG and VOY to some extent) at least tended to make the effort to define particular alien cultures. Although all too often, the impression was that everyone on a planet shared one culture, and that that culture was exactly like bland Californians except for one weird trick. The exceptions to the latter were races like the Vulcans, Klingons, Ferengi, and Cardassians, which were allowed to develop over the course of many seasons.

Fundamentally though, there's only two ways you can treat an alien. You can treat them as a character, or as a plot device. If you treat them as a character, the viewer is going to make assumptions that they have some psychological commonalities with humans they are used to. If they do not in some respect, than a major element of the story will have to explain to the viewer how their worldview differs. If you make them too alien in their psychology the story essentially becomes one of (likely first) contact and the effort to bridge the gap. This would be fine if it was one and done, but if we saw our crew do this repeatedly it would get old pretty quickly, even if it would be much more realistic.

 

[DaveyNY]

Species 8472

 

[valkyrie013]

For movies, a total CGI works because you have the buget and time, TV though..
Take a look at The Flash, last season they had a King Shark Vs Gorilla Grodd episode, the cgi was quite good.. for tv, and it was on screen for.. 2 minutes max of the show?
Now say, a gas cloud or, a part cgi like say, remove legs for spider legs.. etc. would be easier than a whole cgi character..

On the Titan book series, the Chief doctor is basically a Velociraptor! would love to get a CGI version of him on a show

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

They could also use puppets like Farscape did a lot or Stargate to a lesser degree. I am still rooting for a Horta Starfleet officer.

Or a dolphin or two working in Cetacean Ops (from at least 1 novel and maybe mentioned in the background during a couple episodes).

^^only if the Horta was in telepathic communication. It would just melt the consoles on the ship via its touch.

That, and the poor actor having to crawl on hands and knees, assuming they don't use CGI to ensure the episode count is reduced by 67%...

The Horta could be wearing some sort of Doc Ock contraption to do it's job.

I found this during a search for "Horta With Arms Star Trek":