Why are aliens always "diverse," but never diverse?

[JQP]

There are tons of alien species that reflect a perverse Hollywood ideal of diversity: 90% white, 5% black, 5% indeterminate. But there are almost never aliens who just look white, just look black, just look yellow, just look mestizo, etc.

Why?

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Well...there was an attempt that went very, very badly wrong.

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Code_of_Honor

Yikes.

 

[scotpens]

There are tons of alien species that reflect a perverse Hollywood ideal of diversity: 90% white, 5% black, 5% indeterminate.

I’m not quite sure what you mean. Star Trek has had aliens with green skin, blue skin, metallic gold skin, even half-black and half-white skin. And lots of funny facial appendages.

 

[You_Will_Fail]

I get where you're coming from OP, it doesn't make sense for most alien races to have the same racial groups we do. I mean black Vulcans were just silly.

 

[Enterprise is Great]

Aliens are played by human actors so of course they'll reflect the races amongst humans.

 

[Skywalker]

Makeup is expensive and time consuming.

 

[Sandoval]

Why?

So that some people on internet message boards will basically cry 'racism' where none actually exists by claiming it refers to 'perverse Hollywood diversity' blah blah blah...

 

[C.E. Evans]

Well...there was an attempt that went very, very badly wrong.

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Code_of_Honor

Yikes.

What was so very, very badly wrong about them?

 

[Deckerd]

They have a limited budget, at the time they were making most of the shows limited cgi, and they had to employ only one species to play all species. All in all they did a pretty good job.

 

[scotpens]

Aliens are played by human actors so of course they'll reflect the races amongst humans.

I had no idea Michael Dorn was black until I saw pictures of him without his Klingon makeup.

 

[Yevetha]

Did any major sci fi work with the exception of Swtor made sure that there are muticolored individuals within a species?

 

[Count Zero]

Well, there are different ethnicities among aliens in Star Trek. Granted, mostly, it just reflects the different ethnicities of the humans who played them (e.g. there were black Vulcans and Bajorans) but there were the Klingons and I think also different coloured Andorians (in the background, before ENT). So, I'm not quite sure what the complaint is.

 

[Kemaiku]

There have been green/teal Andorians in both TOS and Ent, some of the comics back during the TOS movie era had white Klingons (and made it clear that they were incredibly rare).

The Tellerites have various pigmentations (no pun intended), and there have been various skintones on Vulcans. Trills also seem to have different spots, facial structures, symbiot pouches, symbiots themselves etc

Bolians do vary in their shade of blue, the facial stirations, mouth shape etc

And then theres the sexual dimorphism of the Andorians 4 genders, the Hydrans 3 genders, some asexual races and so on.

 

[marksound]

As I recall, the Xindi were pretty diverse.

 

[Kemaiku]

True, 6 distinct sentient races forming on one planet from a common ancestry, even if one of them did go extinct before Enterprise arrived.

 

[Deckerd]

Weren't they genocided?

 

[nightwind1]

I get where you're coming from OP, it doesn't make sense for most alien races to have the same racial groups we do. I mean black Vulcans were just silly.

I hope to heck you're joking...

 

[Kemaiku]

Weren't they genocided?

Yup, the Avians couldn't adapt and leave on ships the way the others could so they all died when the planet broke up, the other five didn't bother to save any of them.

 

[The Wormhole]

I get where you're coming from OP, it doesn't make sense for most alien races to have the same racial groups we do. I mean black Vulcans were just silly.

I hope to heck you're joking...

Black Vulcans has actually been something heavily debated ever since folks first heard of Tuvok. Tim Russ has even commented on it in interviews, explaining why it makes sense that there'd be black Vulcans.

Black Romulans actually became something of an issue on set on TNG. In the episode The Pegasus, a black actor was cast to play the Romulan commander in that episode. However, the episode's director (LeVar Burton) was concerned that since there had never been any black Romulans before, perhaps there aren't any and arranged for make-up to make the actor's skin lighter. However, after this was done, someone pointed out that they were looking for a black actor to play a Vulcan on Voyager, and that if there are black Vulcans, there should logically be black Romulans. In the end, this Romulan had lighter skin than the actor playing him but it wasn't done to the extent that you would think he was white.

 

[JQP]

Yeah, I know about the Xindi, Andorrians, etc. But I'm talking about the almost-human species. Why are there no black Bajoran neighborhoods? And if there are alien species that look pretty much like white people, why are there no alien species that look pretty much like black people, yellow people, brown people, etc?

But I guess "why are there no black Andorrians, red reptilian Xindi, etc" is a natural follow-on question here, given some of the assumptions being exposed.

Aliens are played by human actors so of course they'll reflect the races amongst humans.

Huh? Then how do we have movies with all-black casts, for example? Shouldn't Tyler Perry's casts be 90/5/5 then?