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Star Trek Quirks
Well, I was blindsided by an email tonight that was the emotional equivalent of a hard punch in the gut, so I'm kind of at a loss about what to post about today. I don't want to talk about what was in the email, but it's pretty much keeping me from focusing about writing about something else here tonight.
So, I'll leave you with a couple of mindless observations about STAR TREK. This is about all I can concentrate on at the present time.
Has anyone ever noticed that among the regular and semi regular alien races that appear on the show, that the present and former "bad" guys, the potentially bad guys, and even the merely troublesome aliens all have dark looking home planets with crappy weather? And that all the "good" aliens have beautiful, sunny ones?
Earth is beautiful, of course. It's OUR planet. So is Betazed, Risa, Bajor, and Trill.
Conversely, the Klingon homeworld is dark and ominous, Cardassia is grim, and it's always raining on Fereginar.
The only exception to this rule is Vulcan, which is a hot, arid, and forbidding planet, yet the people are good.
Another thing is that all the "regular" planets have a completely unified planetwide society and culture, with everyone speaking the same language and all referring to themselves by the planet name. One never hears of the Klingon version of Americans, nor is there a Bajoran equivalent to Great Britain. Or Cardassian Canadians. Nevertheless, among the humans, one hears references to their homelands -- Scotty is Scottish, O'Brien is Irish, and so on -- they don't refer to themselves as Terrans or Earthlings very much.
Thoughts?
My biggest question with Star Trek is how every race speaks English. LOL
Good questions here.
Interesting observation. One the one hand, I suspect that in the writers'
imagination, planets were really the galactic equivalent of countries. They
were countries writ large, and it just didn't occur to the writers to give
them the same complexity as our own world. As for the weather, I suppose
that's just an instance of what, in literature, we call the pathetic
fallacy in another form. The pathetic fallacies has our surroundings
mirroring our emotional state: so the character is upset and it's storming
out, the character is happy so it's sunny and bright. So a basically good
race, that's mirrored by a good climate, and vice versa.
The only STAR TREK I remeber is the one where the planet was run by
children. I used to watch it all the time sitting on my brothers lap when I
was little (maybe 5 or 6). I only remeber him tossing pop corn in the air
for me to catch with my mouth. I guess it kept me from asking a lot of
questions while he was trying to watch TV.
It's been so long since I have watched Star Trek but now that you mention
it...you're right!
