> That Star Trek trope of "everything in the Universe is just like us with different faces" really needs to be put to rest. Budget constraints aside, Star Trek

> That Star Trek trope of "everything in the Universe is just like us with different faces" really needs to be put to rest. Budget constraints aside, Star Trek aliens were used as a prop to explore extremes of terrestrial human behaviour and culture from an outside perspective - take a human and remove emotions and have them governed purely by logic, you get a Vulcan. Take a human and exaggerate their tendencies towards violence and honour, you have a Klingon, and so on. Even in the original series there were truly alien aliens - for example the Squire of Gothos was a being of pure energy who just assumed human form, Devil in the Dark had a silicon-based creature, and the Tholians were an intelligent crystalline species who could only exist in high temperatures.