What Makes a Good Alien?

[Lawrence Klaustrin]

I mentioned creativity and alien races briefly in the chatbox, but it really got me thinking about this subject a lot over the last few days. I'm curious what other people think about this subject. Star Trek, partly because of its format, and partly because of its longevity, has a lot of examples of both bad and good alien species. What species do guys like? What makes them good? What can writers do to make their aliens unique and believable?

For me personally, the appearance of the alien doesn't matter. I'm more interested the the unique character opportunities aliens present. It's a fantastic way to explore motivations, behaviors, thought processes, and ultimately entire cultures that wouldn't be possible in human societies. This is something that I think Star Trek actually falls behind other franchises in (while still being the best overall, of course). I might be biased, because I recently finished the original Mass Effect trilogy, which did this fantastically. Possible bias is also why I'm curios on other people's take on this.

Star Trek, while it does have some of this, such as the Q, or the Trill, seems to more often take an existing human attitude and exaggerate it. I admit my knowledge isn't as complete as those who have been fans for longer than I have, but as of TNG, Vulcans, Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, and even the Borg are all largely defined by a single character trait. They do this very well. The cultures are still thought out and any important people are rounded out and expanded upon, but they aren't truly alien. I argue that Worf and Spock would be just as believable coming from a different, but still human, civilization.

[Arrun Dihsar]

My feeling is a good alien race is one that highlights a part of human culture, while a bad one just has a gimmick and are solely defined by the gimmick.

So, Vulcans show a full range of culture based on the ideal of stoicism and such; while some one-off aliens like say the Gorn are rawr-rawr monsters (far as I recall). Another bad alien trait is just a skin-change of a previous race (the Kazon felt like reskinned Klingons with cruddier tech.) To be fair, the more episodes a race has the more it has to develop.

Bajorans I almost did not like when I first saw them because they just had funny noses. Then we had a whole series with them in it and got to know more and more about them. Though, more episodes don't guarantee anything. The Jem'Hadar I just could not get excited about; the warrior culture aside they were not very interesting to me (they even had spotlight episodes and still I did not care; in rewatches I skip those ones.) In TOS, one-off races did have gimmicks but somehow could be intriguing or interesting just from that episode.

So, what is it I am saying? I am uncertain myself. I suppose, like a good character, the race has to be developed; be interesting; and not be too much of a cliche.