Re: Monoculture Aliens, etc.

Much intersting stuff deleted...

> What is the excuse for the Centauri, Narn, Drazi, Draconians, Ice
> Warriors, Betazoids or Kazon being mono-culture? There isn't one.

Well, I didn't want to jump into this one, but what the hey!!!

I wonder what we mean by "culture"?  The Mimbari have different 
castes, and there is no reason to believe that different castes might 
not have different ways to perform ceremonies to their different 
deities (from what I remember, and I could be wrong, Valen is a 
political figure, if you will, and not a "god").

The Centauri have multiple gods, and we rarely see anybody but the 
royal family/emperor.  Other than some language variations, I doubt 
one could tell apart different monarchs.  Granted, I am working poor 
in the U.S., not European, but we have rarely seen anything other 
than the emperor's court and the military.  In addition, Centauri was 
populated by the Xon (sp?) who evolved in parallel with the Centauri. 
After a war to the death (you add your own Mollari accent here) with 
them, what was left was the Centauri.  Wars tend to bring people 
together - see the Persian Gulf/World-Iraq war and the U.S. 
population...

The Narn, well, now more than ever there is a single culture - a 
warrior culture.  Whoever thinks that Centauri occupation is good 
would have to keep quite.  I remember G'Kar had a flower god, there 
could be people who follow the river goddess or what not.

The Drazi do get into fights over colors, so you could claim their 
concept of culture is rather..., umh....  colorful! (duck!)

I think the real problem with the Alien cultures is that all these 
shows are not about the aliens, but about the Humans.  All the 
examples above are not about purple Drazi finding shameful to have 
spinach on their teeth, but considering sub-human to refuse a fresh 
plum.  (The green Drazi, of course, would believe the opposite...)

If you think about having dark skinned aliens, versus light skinned 
aliens, or different languages, or something else, well, the real 
problem is then that nobody would care.  I am not at all interested 
in watching the story of how the xontrads went to war because the 
blue xontrad got green eggs sunny side up while visiting the plaid 
xontrad's capital (blue xontrads find green eggs sunny side up an 
affront on their gender - it means they can't switch genders when the 
opposite gender is unavailable for mating...)

To bring this somewhere in the vicinity of the list's subject matter, 
when we are dealing with Sci-Fi combat (as we are), the least thing 
we are going to see is different cultures.  We might have the Oceanic 
Union Aborigene, but we aren't going to have him go into a walkabout. 
We have the Russian Babushka with the pig (PLasma Gun) and the 
Chinese sniper for  the ESU, but the one won't prepare goulash and 
the other won't prepare some Cantonese delight.  I don't expect this 
not only because they are figures, but just because they are in the 
military, which some might argue is a different culture in and of 
itself... (MRE's, anyone?)

I also have to agree with the other comment about culture 
amalgamation - Look at the Chinese "Communists" (ROTFLMFAO). Hey, 
look at me!  I'm Puerto Rican, but have been here in the middle of 
the MidWest (Minnesota) for almost ten years...  I am bi-cultural at 
best, at worst Minnesotan (darn tooting!, for those who watched 
_Fargo_)...  My children, if any, will be Minnesotans.	Bi-lingual, 
but Minnesotans...

I'll shut my trap now....

Alfredo
------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------
Alfredo Lorente 		  "End This." -- Delenn
Minneapolis, MN 		Lines of Communication
alfredo@bitstream.net	      Babylon 5