14th December 2011, 3:43 PM
Didn't Klingons just get their tech from conquered aliens visiting their world? I assumed Ferengi tricked some more naive aliens out of it.
Let's not forget that drive to DO something with your life depends on emotions. A species devoid of any would just sit around completely apathetic to everything until they starved to death.
All the same, from what I understand these species aren't completely stem to stern entirely ONE mental aspect. It's more like they're at extreme ends of a sliding scale with all the aspect of a human mind in them, just in varying amounts. That's the only explanation for the existence of, say, a klingon lawyer or a ferengi scientist.
Really though, all those alternative humans were really there as a literary metaphor for humanity, and an exploration of all the possible cultures we as a species COULD have had. Vulcans and klingons are basically just elves and dwarves... IN SPACE.
Again though, the series was at it's very best at two extremes. The first was when they deeply explored the nature of humanity directly, with the most human characters in the series (Data, Spock and... KHAAAAAN). The second was when they really got into what it would mean for a species to be both obviously intelligent and at the same time completely alien to our way of thinking. Yes, truly alien bodies are a part of that, but mainly it's those incredibly different minds that catch my attention more than whatever husk it's in. That's why the borg are the best truly alien species. Yes, they're made up of weird forehead humans, but that mind is, or was, a really alien concept that the rest of the species, stand-ins for various aspects of humanity as they were, couldn't really understand. That's why the borg queen was such a huge let down. With her, the entirety of the borg species became one very boring human stand-in personality.
Funny thing is, Next Generation actually took the time to explain WHY so many species in Star Trek are clearly frickin' apes with different foreheads. There was some epic storyline about the Great Secret of the Milky Way, which is that originally there was only ONE species that was about as "blank slate" in the forehead department as you can get, and it decided to seed countless planets with some code to guide evolution of one species to something resembling them. Granted, there's a lot of misunderstandings about how genetics works in an explanation like that, but they can be overlooked or worked around with a little creativity. Point is, it was a pretty daring revelation that the fans apparently HATED, so they seem to just ignore it in favor of turning Worf into the Predator for an episode. I wish they'd kept it, considering it would have united all those forehead species as one massive family, and the truly alien aliens would have been the actual "other" the series could have focused on.
Let's not forget that drive to DO something with your life depends on emotions. A species devoid of any would just sit around completely apathetic to everything until they starved to death.
All the same, from what I understand these species aren't completely stem to stern entirely ONE mental aspect. It's more like they're at extreme ends of a sliding scale with all the aspect of a human mind in them, just in varying amounts. That's the only explanation for the existence of, say, a klingon lawyer or a ferengi scientist.
Really though, all those alternative humans were really there as a literary metaphor for humanity, and an exploration of all the possible cultures we as a species COULD have had. Vulcans and klingons are basically just elves and dwarves... IN SPACE.
Again though, the series was at it's very best at two extremes. The first was when they deeply explored the nature of humanity directly, with the most human characters in the series (Data, Spock and... KHAAAAAN). The second was when they really got into what it would mean for a species to be both obviously intelligent and at the same time completely alien to our way of thinking. Yes, truly alien bodies are a part of that, but mainly it's those incredibly different minds that catch my attention more than whatever husk it's in. That's why the borg are the best truly alien species. Yes, they're made up of weird forehead humans, but that mind is, or was, a really alien concept that the rest of the species, stand-ins for various aspects of humanity as they were, couldn't really understand. That's why the borg queen was such a huge let down. With her, the entirety of the borg species became one very boring human stand-in personality.
Funny thing is, Next Generation actually took the time to explain WHY so many species in Star Trek are clearly frickin' apes with different foreheads. There was some epic storyline about the Great Secret of the Milky Way, which is that originally there was only ONE species that was about as "blank slate" in the forehead department as you can get, and it decided to seed countless planets with some code to guide evolution of one species to something resembling them. Granted, there's a lot of misunderstandings about how genetics works in an explanation like that, but they can be overlooked or worked around with a little creativity. Point is, it was a pretty daring revelation that the fans apparently HATED, so they seem to just ignore it in favor of turning Worf into the Predator for an episode. I wish they'd kept it, considering it would have united all those forehead species as one massive family, and the truly alien aliens would have been the actual "other" the series could have focused on.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)