Re: Monoculture Aliens, etc.

In message <874058001.1417570.0@kryten.acs.bolton.ac.uk>
	  "Steve Pugh" <mafb90@pop.dial.pipex.com> wrote:

> Some of the 'best' aliens are monocultures and justifiably so.
> 
> The Borg, the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Sontarans, and the Cylons are 
> all deliberately monocultured. They couldn't be anything else and it 
> is an essential part of their menace. The problem is that the Star 
> Trek writers keeping on giving the Borg individuality, and the doctor 
> who writers kept on bringing Davros back.

Daleks did begin to become less monocultured over time,
with the Imperial and Renegade factions (basically, blobs,
and bionic blobs with bits on - to quote a certain young
'lady' :) ).

> For the more human alien races the monoculture thing is a bit of a 
> problem. There are two possible get outs:
> 
> 1. If an alien encountered a Federation or Earth Force ship and made 
> first contact, what would their impression be of the human culture?
> They'd get the impression that humans were essentially monocultured 

> 2. Most alien cultures are portrayed as being older than our own. 
> Look at how much western culture has taken over others in the past 
> two hundred years

Fast and easy global communication tends to break down the
barriers of language and culture, so what any race will end
up with is probably a conglomorised mess of a mono-culture,
with a few small pockets of other cultures here and there.

There will always be differences, but these differences will
be subtle. Would an alien pick up different human accents?
Probably not. Neither would they notice the difference
between one human putting his sweet wrapper in a rubbish bin,
while another puts his candy wrapper in a trash can.

Likewise we're going to be oblivious to minor differences
in hair style, bone structure, clothing and all the other
things that an alien race considers to be important
distinctions between their own cultures.

Television shows don't generally have the time to show all
the little details about a race, unless that difference is
important to the plot, so it's very understandable that they
don't bother to try (generally).

RPGS don't have this excuse of course. Also, it's not
only science fiction to blame - fantasy can be very bad
for this as well.

-- 
Be seeing you,
Sam.