# Star Trek is full of extremist one trick pony races



## Janx (Jul 5, 2012)

I've been watching ST:Voyager on netflix lately.  First time I've seen these episodes since they aired.

as usual, I have comments on and observations as if TV was real life.

Bear in mind, I like Star Trek.  I think it is mucho better than Star Wars.  The Enterprise can defeat the Death Star because Star Trek is better than Star Wars.

I realize, there might be some people who disagree that Star Wars is better than Star Trek, but this thread is about Star Trek.


I'm up to season five of Voyager and such rapid viewing makes certain patterns more obvious than when watching it 1 show per week.

The writers portray alien races as single job function extremists.  It's no wonder that Humans are better than any other race, when every other race seems to glom into a single extreme political stance or social function.

Hozari: a race of bounty hunters.  Gee, T'mee, what do you want to be when you grow up?  A bounty hunter, duh!

Malon: a race of garbage dumpers.  Even the guy who disputes, "we're not just garbage haulers, I'm an Artist!" has the corellary, "but I haul trash to pay the bills"

I imagine that on ST:TOS, this writing style was a novel means to illustrate the problem with extreme view points like hating somebody because the color of their skin was the opposite of yours.

Used occasionally, it's a useful tool.  But packed into episode after episode, season after season and then watched serially in rapid succession on Netflix, it becomes blatant and old.

If they were writing ST today, I would expect to see an episode where one of the current political parties ideals was shipped to an alternate Earth where only they ruled, and then the crew would travel there and see what was wrong with that world.

If ST hadn't bludgeoned the heck out of that tool, it might have been a decent episode and a subtle illuminating tool.  Now it would be seen as a political attack and bias by the opposing party viewpoint.

PS.  I also hate the dumb as heck way that the 24th century has to manually distribute DataPadds with information on it.  This show was airing in the Windows95 era.  You've Got Mail has been in the theatres and America is familiar with the concept of e-mail.  we can give the Okuda's credit for inventing the iThing, but apparently they all missed the point that data is TRANSMITTED OVER NETWORK, and not passed around manually.  We might as well have ensigns in miniskirts walking around with clipboards to be signed.

Here's how tech was supposed to work:  Each crewman is issued a DataPadd that is keyed to them, maybe it's DNA secured.  It has wireless access to the ship's server and thus can show them messages, task lists, act as a remote screen into the system, etc.  Neelix does not need to fracking walk around the ship handing out messages from home.

Anyway, that just about covers my view on what's wrong with Star Trek, despite the fact that I like Star Trek.


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## Umbran (Jul 5, 2012)

Janx said:


> The writers portray alien races as single job function extremists.  It's no wonder that Humans are better than any other race, when every other race seems to glom into a single extreme political stance or social function.




Yep.  But the reason for that is simple - Star Trek is not a simulation of a real, working universe.  Trek, in all it's forms, is basically a series of morality plays.  Morality plays use simplifications to get to the point.


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## Janx (Jul 5, 2012)

Umbran said:


> Yep.  But the reason for that is simple - Star Trek is not a simulation of a real, working universe.  Trek, in all it's forms, is basically a series of morality plays.  Morality plays use simplifications to get to the point.




that is a good summary of what I'm observing.

I guess the next question would be, "to what end?"

Considering Trek's target market is people who agree with Trek, while the writers might feel like they're addressing some huge social issue, the audience already agrees with them, so they are preaching to the choir.

I doubt there were any racists who saw the half-white/black people ST:TOS episode and decided, "OMG, racism is wrong, I should totally rethink my outlook on life."


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## Cor Azer (Jul 5, 2012)

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlanetOfHats

While the audience may agree with the points made by the simplification, part of the reason for morality plays is to spur action, not just agreement.


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## Lwaxy (Jul 5, 2012)

Yeah if our RPG sessions would have episodes like Voyager, my players would groan. 

I thought Neelix was doing the mailman service just as part of his morale officer job, not because he had to.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jul 5, 2012)

> Yeah if our RPG sessions would have episodes like Voyager, my players would groan.




Yeah...otherwise we'd have good, light-skinned elves living in nice forests and evil dark-skinned elves living underground, orcs would all be barbaric monsters and...








Oh waitaminiit.....


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## Umbran (Jul 5, 2012)

Janx said:


> I guess the next question would be, "to what end?"
> 
> Considering Trek's target market is people who agree with Trek, while the writers might feel like they're addressing some huge social issue, the audience already agrees with them, so they are preaching to the choir.
> 
> I doubt there were any racists who saw the half-white/black people ST:TOS episode and decided, "OMG, racism is wrong, I should totally rethink my outlook on life."




Well, my understanding is that Trek has always had a solid set of younger viewers.  They may "agree" with Trek in a general sense, but many of the individual topics may not have crossed their minds in the past.  Or, the ideas are muddled in with the rest of life, and Trek's treatment, while oversimplified, may give clarity.  And reinforcement of an idea, helping to build that idea into a culture, requires repetition even to the nominally agreeable.

Also, "we have agreement with our viewers" does not mean one isn't breaking important ground - The Kirk/Uhura Kiss being a classic example there.  

"Half a Life" and "The Outcast" didn't say things your average Trek fan would have huge problems with, true.  But they were still worth saying.


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## Mallus (Jul 5, 2012)

Janx said:


> I guess the next question would be, "to what end?"



Popular entertainment. 



> Considering Trek's target market is people who agree with Trek, while the writers might feel like they're addressing some huge social issue, the audience already agrees with them, so they are preaching to the choir.



Note that most real preachers preach, if not directly at the choir, then in the choir's general vicinity. 

The other reason Star Trek used one-trick pony aliens is a matter of simple efficiency. The show's format meant a lot of alien species being introduced in a short period of time. These races need to be simultaneously distinct, easy to grasp, and (hopefully) somewhat memorable.

There simply wasn't enough time for subtlety and nuanced depiction <insert Sten's wisecrack about summing up entire races from DA1 here>. So the writers gave each species a limp --as in the old writing adage "Give the character a limp". Serious speculation re: alien life gets pushed aside in favor of quick and (again, hopefully) vivid characterization. 

So you get races of bounty hunters. Or honorable warriors. Or logicians. Or cowards... and so on. Larry Niven did the same in print, and his deliberate shallowness yielded some of SF's best races; the Kzinti, Pierson's Puppeteers, etc.


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## renau1g (Jul 5, 2012)

Yeah I remember when I got into gaming after reading Drizzt and (of course) wanting to play a drow ranger. My DM was like drow are killed on sight on the surface, oh and they're all evil. Every single one of them. Just like orcs, or goblins, or kobolds, or 95% of the monster manual....... so my paladin just detected evil on everyone/thing and then smited it. Apparently he was a racist, psychopathic mass-murderer looking back..... never once did we try to speak with the orcs, it was kill'em all. 

Wow..... I totally just went off on a tangent there, sorry


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## Lwaxy (Jul 5, 2012)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Yeah...otherwise we'd have good, light-skinned elves living in nice forests and evil dark-skinned elves living underground, orcs would all be barbaric monsters and...
> 
> 
> 
> ...




LOL Well I don't allow those stereotypes in my games at all, with the exception if the setting demands that some races were created by evil gods (but even then they can change).


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## Janx (Jul 5, 2012)

Lwaxy said:


> Yeah if our RPG sessions would have episodes like Voyager, my players would groan.
> 
> I thought Neelix was doing the mailman service just as part of his morale officer job, not because he had to.




I think Danny covered your first point pretty well.  RPGs generally do the same racial extremism/stereotyping.

If nothing else, it's a shorthand for differentiating the races and from a roleplaying perspective, gives you a basic acting hook to protray the character.

On the latter, referring to my observation of ST's poor use of technology.  I do suspect there was a morale factor to manually handing out the messages.  But the show repeatedly fails to clue into the idea that DataPadds should be in constant networked contact with each other and with the ship's computer (the server).  You should not need to manually walk your DataPadd over to the captain to give him your report.  You should submit it to his email account, and he'll see it as a notification on his own DataPadd or at the nearest Console he is working at (after all, the ship KNOWS where you are at all times).

The tech observation was less on fancy graphics they could have shown us, merely this simple concept of accessing data from anywhere was not rocket science and was feasible in 1995 when the show started.

To me, a lot of the Tech-That-Came-True of Star Trek was that which was casually displayed and used, without a lot of explanation, and seemed obvious as an idea to the viewer.  The touch screens and DataPadds in general, transporters, TriCorders are such devices.

Seeing the DataPadds get walked around was where it sunk back to old-tech thinking with Ensigns in miniskirts getting signatures on giant clipboards.  It smacks of businesses today that adopt new technology but utilize it in the old process, rather than to its more direct functionality.


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## Janx (Jul 5, 2012)

Umbran said:


> Well, my understanding is that Trek has always had a solid set of younger viewers.  They may "agree" with Trek in a general sense, but many of the individual topics may not have crossed their minds in the past.  Or, the ideas are muddled in with the rest of life, and Trek's treatment, while oversimplified, may give clarity.  And reinforcement of an idea, helping to build that idea into a culture, requires repetition even to the nominally agreeable.




That was one of the reasons I saw as value for the show as well.  There's an army of nerds out there who learned about honor, truth, courage, and treatment of others from Star Trek.  I suspect there's worse sources to learn about right and wrong from.

A racist's kid watching Star Trek just might develop a different viewpoint than his parent.  And that might be all the difference.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jul 5, 2012)

Lwaxy said:


> LOL Well I don't allow those stereotypes in my games at all, with the exception if the setting demands that some races were created by evil gods (but even then they can change).




I know- few campaigns I've seen since 1990 have featured one-trick pony races- but I had to gig ya there!


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## Ed_Laprade (Jul 5, 2012)

We still don't have sick bay sensor beds, but someone or other has been working on them almost since the day they were first shown. Any day now!


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## MarkB (Jul 5, 2012)

Ed_Laprade said:


> We still don't have sick bay sensor beds, but someone or other has been working on them almost since the day they were first shown. Any day now!




We may not build the instruments into beds, but we're pretty much covered in terms of general medical sensors - people in intensive care often have an array of bedside read-outs that would put Trek's half-dozen dials to shame.

The really useful breakthrough would be if we could compact down the functionality of a full-scale CAT / MRI / Ultrasound scanner into a hand-held medical tricorder.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jul 5, 2012)

It'll be an app for the iPad 7.


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## TarionzCousin (Jul 6, 2012)

XP to the first person who can accurately post about "*GNDN*:"

1. Where was it seen in Star Trek?
2. What does it mean?


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## Umbran (Jul 6, 2012)

"Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing" - labelled on pipes in the Jeffries tube on the original USS Enterprise.

I believe they carried that over into similar structures on Next Gen...


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## Ahnehnois (Jul 6, 2012)

In Star Trek's defense, DS9 had a very different take on humanlike alien races and spent seven years painting nuanced pictures of several of them. A lot of things have changed since the 60's, but the rest of Trek is still very retro, for better or for worse.


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## Mallus (Jul 6, 2012)

Ahnehnois said:


> In Star Trek's defense, DS9 had a very different take on humanlike alien races and spent seven years painting nuanced pictures of several of them.



I'd say that's the direct result of having the show set on an unmovable space station, in addition to having Trek's first multi-year story arc.


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## dogoftheunderworld (Jul 6, 2012)

I recall when Voyeger came out, they had a lot of trouble making tech look "futuristic" enough because of so many current inventions (touch screens, flat panels, tiny cell phones, home networking, etc.).  Since Voyeger was supposed to take place even farther into the future than NG (if even by a few years).  It was one of the reasons the ship had living tissue "brain cells" as part of the computer system.


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## Elf Witch (Jul 7, 2012)

Janx said:


> I've been watching ST:Voyager on netflix lately.  First time I've seen these episodes since they aired.
> 
> as usual, I have comments on and observations as if TV was real life.
> 
> ...




But if they just had the data sent straight to the data pads then there would be no interaction no drama. 

TV shows can'rt exactly mimic real life because that would be boring.

I think you are right about the races they are all the same it is not like with us humans who had one world and have hundreds of different cultures. But that would be very difficult to show and to develop.

In the end you have to either accept the limitations or let it ruin your enjoyment of the show.


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## Elf Witch (Jul 7, 2012)

Janx said:


> that is a good summary of what I'm observing.
> 
> I guess the next question would be, "to what end?"
> 
> ...




Here is the thing Trek may not be able to change someone whose outlook is set in stone but it can influence someone whose outlook is not.

I love my family but they are very racist ,a product of their upbringing. I am not like them at all and I think it has to do because at seven years old I was planted in front of the TV watching the original run of Trek. 

As a teen I very much into from watching the reruns, reading the novels as they slowly came out and writing bad fan fic. 

So the simple moral stories of trek help make me the person I am today.


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## Umbran (Jul 7, 2012)

Janx said:


> PS.  I also hate the dumb as heck way that the 24th century has to manually distribute DataPadds with information on it.  This show was airing in the Windows95 era.  You've Got Mail has been in the theatres and America is familiar with the concept of e-mail.  we can give the Okuda's credit for inventing the iThing, but apparently they all missed the point that data is TRANSMITTED OVER NETWORK, and not passed around manually.  We might as well have ensigns in miniskirts walking around with clipboards to be signed.




Or, maybe they know something that you, still mired in the beginning of the electronic era, have forgotten for a moment.

The written word is about the *slowest* from of communication available to humans.  It is convenient in certain instances, yes.  But, if you actually want to communicate with another person, the best way is still face-to-face.  Meeting face-to-face builds connections, teams, and communities in ways that e-mail doesn't.  Face-to-face communication carries nuance in 30 seconds that can take pages in plain text.

So, maybe in the Trek Universe, they looked at our edition wars and stuff, and saw how lousy text is as a medium, and built their processes to be more personal.


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## Plane Sailing (Jul 8, 2012)

Janx said:


> Bear in mind, I like Star Trek.  I think it is mucho better than Star Wars.  The Enterprise can defeat the Death Star because Star Trek is better than Star Wars.
> 
> I realize, there might be some people who disagree that Star Wars is better than Star Trek, but this thread is about Star Trek.




Now, your opening post would have been much, much better without this unwarranted opening of trek/wars hostilities. It wasn't what you wanted to talk about, so why include it? 

Please don't do it again.

CorAzer kindly pointed out that I failed my reading comprehension a little sorry!


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## Cor Azer (Jul 8, 2012)

Plane Sailing said:


> Now, your opening post would have been much, much better without this unwarranted opening of trek/wars hostilities. It wasn't what you wanted to talk about, so why include it?
> 
> Please don't do it again.




Without speaking for Janx, I figured he did it to link to two rather humorous Basic Instructions comics.

If we can't laugh at our own hobbies, then we're no better than the animals. Except the weasels.


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## Goodsport (Jul 9, 2012)

There were some episodes here and there throughout all the _Star Trek_ series' that defied the "the entire race thinks and acts the same" concept.

_"Duet"_ (from the first season of ST: DS9) certainly played with that concept and then twisted it on its head. 


-G


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## Goodsport (Jul 9, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> But if they just had the data sent straight to the data pads then there would be no interaction no drama.
> 
> TV shows can'rt exactly mimic real life because that would be boring.




The same can be said for most martial arts films, particularly ones made in the west, where the fighting movements are usually _much_ more exaggerated than they would be in real life.

If anything, most martial artists would rather dispatch their opponents as quickly and efficiently as possible, which actually wouldn't necessarily be all that cinematically pleasing.


-G


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## Elf Witch (Jul 10, 2012)

Goodsport said:


> The same can be said for most martial arts films, particularly ones made in the west, where the fighting movements are usually _much_ more exaggerated than they would be in real life.
> 
> If anything, most martial artists would rather dispatch their opponents as quickly and efficiently as possible, which actually wouldn't necessarily be all that cinematically pleasing.
> 
> ...




It is the same on soap operas fans demand as favorite couple finally get together and get married. The actors often hate it because often that is the end of story lines for them. Happily ever after is boring to watch. 


It is also why in action films they only run out of bullets when it is dramatic otherwise they usually don't bother. They want to keep the action going.


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## Cor Azer (Jul 10, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> Happily ever after is boring to watch.




That's why Joss Whedon has pretty much never let a couple last in his shows.


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## Elf Witch (Jul 10, 2012)

Cor Azer said:


> That's why Joss Whedon has pretty much never let a couple last in his shows.




For the most part I agree with him though I really hated that he killed of Anya. I was hoping she and Xander would make it. 

Sometimes it works if there is a lot of other things going on like the marriage of Peter and Elizabeth on White Collar.


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## GSHamster (Jul 10, 2012)

Cor Azer said:


> That's why Joss Whedon has pretty much never let a couple last in his shows.




At the same time, always having her relationships blow up in flames means that the character stagnates, gets stuck in the same place and never gets to grow.


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## Umbran (Jul 10, 2012)

GSHamster said:


> At the same time, always having her relationships blow up in flames means that the character stagnates, gets stuck in the same place and never gets to grow.




It isn't like romantic relationships are the only avenue of character growth.  At least, not for a decent writer.

And, if you go through several relationships, they probably are not going to each leave you in the same place.  Well-written characters will crash and burn, and end in a different place each time.


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## Cor Azer (Jul 10, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> For the most part I agree with him though I really hated that he killed of Anya. I was hoping she and Xander would make it.
> 
> Sometimes it works if there is a lot of other things going on like the marriage of Peter and Elizabeth on White Collar.




For what it's worth, Emma Caulfield asked to have Anya killed off so she wouldn't be asked back for any spin-off shows; she wanted to move on to other types of roles.


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## MarkB (Jul 10, 2012)

One nice thing about the most recent series of Bones is that they'd finally got the main protagonists together as a family, and it hasn't actually ruined the dynamic or stunted the character development. It can work.


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## Elf Witch (Jul 11, 2012)

Cor Azer said:


> For what it's worth, Emma Caulfield asked to have Anya killed off so she wouldn't be asked back for any spin-off shows; she wanted to move on to other types of roles.




Bad Emma Caulfield 

I know a lot of actors like to see a character they no longer want to play killed off. I guess they can't stand the dea of someone else playing it or being tempted back to a role they are no longer interested in. Though death has never  stopped a character from coming back before on the series.


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## Elf Witch (Jul 11, 2012)

MarkB said:


> One nice thing about the most recent series of Bones is that they'd finally got the main protagonists together as a family, and it hasn't actually ruined the dynamic or stunted the character development. It can work.




I do think they did a great job of working in the actresses real life pregnancy. And they have done a great job with Angela and Hodgins marriage. 

But lets not forget the ending of this season's Bones?

The thing is that on shows like Bones the relationships are secondary to  solving the mystery of the murder that week. Since it is not front and center you have more leeway.


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## Plane Sailing (Jul 13, 2012)

Elf Witch said:


> Happily ever after is boring to watch.






Cor Azer said:


> That's why Joss Whedon has pretty much never let a couple last in his shows.





I disagree, if I may, Elf Witch. And this is the reason why (spoiler blocked just in case)
[sblock]
Wash and Zoe in Firefly. It was wonderful to see a happily married couple who were in love - and their relationship and interactions were never boring. There were even some occasions where the story was *more* meaningful precisely because of the strength of their relationship.
[/sblock]

Cheers


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## Elf Witch (Jul 13, 2012)

Plane Sailing said:


> I disagree, if I may, Elf Witch. And this is the reason why (spoiler blocked just in case)
> [sblock]
> Wash and Zoe in Firefly. It was wonderful to see a happily married couple who were in love - and their relationship and interactions were never boring. There were even some occasions where the story was *more* meaningful precisely because of the strength of their relationship.
> [/sblock]
> ...




Yet in the end they got a classic Joss ending.

I am not saying you can't have it look at Keiko and Miles on Trek but in their case it was not a regular feature and one of the things that was interesting was their fights over the assignments at DS9 then the baby drama.


Wash and Zoe had issues that brought drama to the show. Also we don't know what Joss would have done if they had went say seven seasons. 

Look at Bones now that they worked through all the drama of getting Angela and Hodgins together the actors storyline has taken a back street. Both actors have said that they missed the personal drama. 

A lot of writers will tell you that a happy couple can be the kiss of death. Because there are no real stories to write without either putting the relationship in jeopardy or bringing in the dram elsewhere. 

The whole reason they broke up Kes and Nellix on Voyager was because the writers felt there was no where interesting to with them.


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## Janx (Jul 14, 2012)

Nice job bringing it back to star trek. 

Couples as with singles are more interesting in fiction with adversity and problems to work through


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## Umbran (Jul 14, 2012)

Janx said:


> Couples as with singles are more interesting in fiction with adversity and problems to work through




adversity, yes.  Friction...

Ever see the movie, "Undercover Blues"?  Kathleen Turner and Dennis Quaid play a pair of spies trying to retire, because they have a new baby.  Of course, there has to be one last case...

Their relationship makes the movie.  But at no time are they in friction.  I suppose for a series it would be harder to maintain interest...


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## Mercule (Jul 16, 2012)

renau1g said:


> Yeah I remember when I got into gaming after reading Drizzt and (of course) wanting to play a drow ranger. My DM was like drow are killed on sight on the surface, oh and they're all evil. Every single one of them. Just like orcs, or goblins, or kobolds, or 95% of the monster manual....... so my paladin just detected evil on everyone/thing and then smited it. Apparently he was a racist, psychopathic mass-murderer looking back..... never once did we try to speak with the orcs, it was kill'em all.



Not entirely fair. Not knowing this guy, I won't say he _wasn't_ a sociopath. But, the "true evil" races have a reason for existence.

In AD&D, it gives the players a challenge to overcome without having to agonize about whether they are murderers or not. Or have to arrange for prisoner transport (which, from GMing experience is a real game-killer). Or any number of other reasons. Personally, that's one reason I tend to use undead and demons as major bad guys. Same guarantee of evil, without any complaints about being cliche.

For Tolkien, orcs were corrupted elves, IIRC. Regardless, they weren't a naturally occurring race. Considering they were created by what was, essentially, the Devil, I think it's reasonable to make the blanket statement about their alignment. Why did Tolkien make them reliably evil? Probably a lot of the same reasons as in D&D. He didn't have to have the good guys killing humans, except in a few cases on the battlefield.

Is it realistic? I don't know any actual races of sociopaths. Is it racist? Well, it's an imaginary race. If you imagine it to be purely evil, then it's pretty much true. It's flat out impossible to be racist against an imaginary race.


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## Aaron L (Jul 24, 2012)

As Mercule said, Evil races in D&D exist to give the players ad guys to kill without having to agonize over moral choices.  Tolkiens orcs were evil spirits clothed in flesh, and not an analog for any existing subset of humanity, as some overzealous moral crusaders have claimed.

As for Star Trek being full of one-trick pony aliens...  you're just realizing this now?   Trek codified the concept of funny-forehead and planet-of-hats aliens and is notorious for it.  Are ALL Klingons noble samurai-viking warriors? I've never seen a Klingon farmer.  Guess Klingon farmers and doctors are all condemned to Gre'Thor when they die (where go the souls of those who didn't die in glorious battle.)  And with Voyager you picked the absolute lowest point of Star Trek history.  While I hated Voyager and thought it was totally lame, DS9 was one of my all-time favorite shows and was MUCH better about it, even though it still had the nearly cookie-cutter Ferengi.  But even the Ferengi had Quark and Rom and Nog to show the nuances in the culture.  DS9 even gave us a Klingon lawyer in one episode!

Voyager makes my teeth ache.   That episode where the Janeway and Paris travel past Warp 10 and go to the future and evo9lve into alien lizards and mate?  My God, what cheese!

But anyway, it's all storytelling shorthand.  In the worst cases it's because the writes are lazy, but hopefully in most cases it's because they just don't have enough time to establish a full character background, and instead they can just use the shorthand of a race's culture and introduce a Klingon and you'll know "violent but maybe noble warrior-race guy" or a Romulan and you'll know "smart, scheming but maybe honorable guy."


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## Umbran (Jul 24, 2012)

Aaron L said:


> Are ALL Klingons noble samurai-viking warriors? I've never seen a Klingon farmer.




They do actually get around to this eventually, and speak of the history that brought the Klingons around to the warrior-first attitude.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jul 25, 2012)

The farmers use double-bladed shovels to turn the dirt, and prefer to punch the seeds to the proper depth into the ground.  The crops are watered with the blood of foes, and Klingon battle songs are sung to the growing plants.

Which explains their largely carnivorous diet...


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## Cor Azer (Jul 25, 2012)

Aaron L said:


> Are ALL Klingons noble samurai-viking warriors? I've never seen a Klingon farmer.




TNG "Birthright" - Klingons farming with Romulans (albeit with weapons and in a pseudo prison camp)

DS9 "Children of Time" - Worf leads a pack of Klingons in helping the descendants of the Defiant's crew sow their fields (well, they're of mixed Klingon blood).


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## Richards (Jul 26, 2012)

Plus, for a while there wasn't there a Klingon cook/chef/restaurant owner/something like that on the Promenade on DS9?

Johnathan


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