5 ms·

Societies shown in Star Trek are very homogenous. It appears that each species has only one culture each. But if you look at us, we do not have one culture. We

by kiba 12y ago

Societies shown in Star Trek are very homogenous. It appears that each species has only one culture each. But if you look at us, we do not have one culture. We have many cultures, and subculture that nests within them. That is not the case at all with Star Trek race. Even humans appeared to be made up only one culture, with no subcultures or variation at all.

adrianN 12y ago
You have to simplify if you want to fit stories into 45 minutes. You can't expect Kirk to spend years battling the governments of fifty different countries on every planet he encounters, and you can't introduce a bunch of completely different alien cultures every other episode.
jinushaun 12y ago
That always bothered me about Star Trek. You have a multi-racial, multi-cultural human spaceship, but alien species seem to all be the same culture/race.
- krapp 12y ago
  But to be fair - that's mostly because makeup and creature design costs money, and you only have so much time to tell a story with characters which will probably never appear onscreen again. The Klingons are one really good example - they were always supposed to have the ridges IIRC but all the original series could even afford was brown makeup and evil looking mustaches. They also reused mattes of alien cities all the time. They're also a good counterexample as they're supposed to be an advanced, warp-capable civilization but apparently they're all psychotic blood-knights who just happen to have spaceships.
jerf 12y ago
I... think this articles applies a degree of analysis that the work in question simply doesn't stand up to. I don't mean that as a criticism of Star Trek per se, just that when you really get down to it, it is a work produced for mass consumption over the course of decades, in several shows, by many many dozen authors, written for the needs of drama to fit into an hour, targeted at a mass audience. For instance, is the fact that Race = Culture actually a statement that Star Trek is trying to make (on any level you like, cultural, deliberate, accidentally revealing, whatever), or does it reflect the belief of the authors and producers that their audience is not looking for a lot of nuance out of the various races of Star Trek and the viewer's "novelty budget" was already spent just on having lots of different races for the viewer to keep track of? Sure, I'd contend that the last 10 years of TV have shown that TV viewers are able to deal with more than producers in the 60s-90s thought, but most of Star Trek took place in a time where TV was just... simpler. That simplicity can still lead one to conclusions about what simpler thing was chosen, but I don't think it can be used to complain in general about a lack of complexity... if that complexity had been there we probably wouldn't be talking about it because it would have just died, or at least so the producers probably believed. Oh, there are things you can draw out of the details of Star Trek, but I think a lot more care is needed to ensure that the message is actually something the show is trying to convey, and not something that lives in the constraints of the medium (including its multi-author nature), or the modern mindset of the viewer. (For instance, in particular, the Sisko example where he masqueraded as a Lieutenant instead of a Captain doesn't stand up to that analysis. Obviously, he expects that everybody in the area knows who all the local captains are, and walking around decorated as a Captain on the Enterprise is going to be a huge problem. The analysis that he didn't do it because he was black doesn't stand up to the fact that nobody except James Kirk, personally, could do it. And not just "a white man", but, James Kirk, personally, whom everybody would know.)
moogleii 12y ago
That's a very good point, but I think that would double or triple the length of any episode to delve into such details. Which is not exactly bad - one could just have less species introduced and more over arching story lines. But for their episodic style, I don't think it would have worked. I suspect any cursory mention of their alien multculturalism would be lost on the viewer, unless they always explicitly point it out. And, really, many of us do the same. People are pretty familiar with the subcultures of their own country, but many are not very familiar with the subcultures of other nations. Chinese food is a simple fast example. I suspect most people could not tell you what comes from which area/subculture. It's all just lumped together. Or when people refer to foreign government policy, and blame all the people for it, instead of just the government. Blah blah blah
Shivetya 12y ago
I always preferred Babylon 5's handling of societies, they weren't monolithic or such. In particular when Sinclair introduced Earth's belief systems. http://youtu.be/uvmtHGwRSuQ http://youtu.be/uvmtHGwRSuQ While many alien races were not always show as diverse there was enough internal strife in the majors to show major differences.
- krapp 12y ago
  Deep Space Nine managed to flesh out the cultures of a lot of alien species as well because of its arc-based format (unsurprisingly, it was accused of being a B5 ripoff when it started.) A lot of Trek fans seem not to like it for that reason, though - when you introduce complexity, you also introduce moral ambiguity, and Star Trek's utopian vision of humanity was traditionally unambiguous about portraying humans as morally and ethically unchallenged. Of course, that the aliens on Star Trek served as thin allegories for the less enlightened traits of humanity was probably the point.

by kiba 12y ago

adrianN 12y ago

You have to simplify if you want to fit stories into 45 minutes. You can't expect Kirk to spend years battling the governments of fifty different countries on every planet he encounters, and you can't introduce a bunch of completely different alien cultures every other episode.

jinushaun 12y ago

That always bothered me about Star Trek. You have a multi-racial, multi-cultural human spaceship, but alien species seem to all be the same culture/race.

krapp 12y ago
But to be fair - that's mostly because makeup and creature design costs money, and you only have so much time to tell a story with characters which will probably never appear onscreen again. The Klingons are one really good example - they were always supposed to have the ridges IIRC but all the original series could even afford was brown makeup and evil looking mustaches. They also reused mattes of alien cities all the time. They're also a good counterexample as they're supposed to be an advanced, warp-capable civilization but apparently they're all psychotic blood-knights who just happen to have spaceships.

jerf 12y ago

I... think this articles applies a degree of analysis that the work in question simply doesn't stand up to. I don't mean that as a criticism of Star Trek per se, just that when you really get down to it, it is a work produced for mass consumption over the course of decades, in several shows, by many many dozen authors, written for the needs of drama to fit into an hour, targeted at a mass audience. For instance, is the fact that Race = Culture actually a statement that Star Trek is trying to make (on any level you like, cultural, deliberate, accidentally revealing, whatever), or does it reflect the belief of the authors and producers that their audience is not looking for a lot of nuance out of the various races of Star Trek and the viewer's "novelty budget" was already spent just on having lots of different races for the viewer to keep track of? Sure, I'd contend that the last 10 years of TV have shown that TV viewers are able to deal with more than producers in the 60s-90s thought, but most of Star Trek took place in a time where TV was just... simpler. That simplicity can still lead one to conclusions about what simpler thing was chosen, but I don't think it can be used to complain in general about a lack of complexity... if that complexity had been there we probably wouldn't be talking about it because it would have just died, or at least so the producers probably believed. Oh, there are things you can draw out of the details of Star Trek, but I think a lot more care is needed to ensure that the message is actually something the show is trying to convey, and not something that lives in the constraints of the medium (including its multi-author nature), or the modern mindset of the viewer. (For instance, in particular, the Sisko example where he masqueraded as a Lieutenant instead of a Captain doesn't stand up to that analysis. Obviously, he expects that everybody in the area knows who all the local captains are, and walking around decorated as a Captain on the Enterprise is going to be a huge problem. The analysis that he didn't do it because he was black doesn't stand up to the fact that nobody except James Kirk, personally, could do it. And not just "a white man", but, James Kirk, personally, whom everybody would know.)

moogleii 12y ago

That's a very good point, but I think that would double or triple the length of any episode to delve into such details. Which is not exactly bad - one could just have less species introduced and more over arching story lines. But for their episodic style, I don't think it would have worked. I suspect any cursory mention of their alien multculturalism would be lost on the viewer, unless they always explicitly point it out. And, really, many of us do the same. People are pretty familiar with the subcultures of their own country, but many are not very familiar with the subcultures of other nations. Chinese food is a simple fast example. I suspect most people could not tell you what comes from which area/subculture. It's all just lumped together. Or when people refer to foreign government policy, and blame all the people for it, instead of just the government. Blah blah blah

Shivetya 12y ago

I always preferred Babylon 5's handling of societies, they weren't monolithic or such. In particular when Sinclair introduced Earth's belief systems. http://youtu.be/uvmtHGwRSuQ http://youtu.be/uvmtHGwRSuQ While many alien races were not always show as diverse there was enough internal strife in the majors to show major differences.

krapp 12y ago
Deep Space Nine managed to flesh out the cultures of a lot of alien species as well because of its arc-based format (unsurprisingly, it was accused of being a B5 ripoff when it started.) A lot of Trek fans seem not to like it for that reason, though - when you introduce complexity, you also introduce moral ambiguity, and Star Trek's utopian vision of humanity was traditionally unambiguous about portraying humans as morally and ethically unchallenged. Of course, that the aliens on Star Trek served as thin allegories for the less enlightened traits of humanity was probably the point.