Regarding the bridge on the Enterprise and other Star Fleet ships, wouldn’t it be safer buried deep in the ship someplace?
They’re “ships”, silly. If the bridge isn’t at the tippy-top, how will the captain see over the horizon?
In earlier phases of the franchise, perhaps, but by the time of TNG, the bridge is embedded in the top centre of the saucer. There’s a dome ceiling with skylight windows that are actual windows, but the viewscreen is a wall, behind which is more of the ship.
Though skylight windows are kind of pointless in a starship.
Additional possibility: the members of the society have considered advantages and disadvantages of using various sorts of tech, and have in some cases decided that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages and in other cases decided the reverse; so they use some technological items/techniques and not others. (As I see a couple of others have mentioned in the thread, if phrased differently.)
Another additional possibility: the society is advanced in some technological areas and not in others. While some things tend to go together, or at least appear so from our point of view, not everything does. The ancient Romans had plumbing but not firearms. 1800’s Europe generally had firearms but not plumbing.
Somebody someplace has to be making the batteries and/or the solar panels.
If the society has interplanetary trade or trade with a differently advanced society, of course, they might be trading for those items; and have chosen for whatever reason to trade for those and not for others.
I wonder if in SW there are significant numbers of quasi-sophont species, perhaps equivalent to Homo Erectus, or the Pakled, or Goons. Low-grade imbeciles who none the less can use technology someone else makes and who are useful as unskilled labor, attack dog-level guards/soldiers, etc.
In a couple of Andre Norton’s books, that was how the E.T.s viewed humans.
Come to think of it, in Star Trek, that is how Vulcans view humans.
They wouldn’t be “low-grade imbeciles” in the sense of humans who have impaired brain functions. They’d be successful members of their own species, who might not take any more kindly to being treated as “low-grade” slave or close to slave labor than lions would.
There could be good stories made out of it if come at from that point of view, however.
I can’t remember the title of the movie or book that included some low order workers, sort of smart chimp level. Eventually the concept was considered distasteful as enlightened minds considered them as slaves.
If you count comic books it’s been done a number of times. Mole men, the Marvel guys that had their own world in the Himalayas or someplace with subhuman laborers. My memory is weak today but I recall others.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?
Nope, outer space stuff with an alien species. Don’t know why I can’t remember any pertinent details.
And isn’t one of the points of the story that the Oompa Loompas are actually wiser than most of the humans? Being contented is not the same as being low order.
I think low order is the wrong term. They were subservient to humans, but intelligent. It’s driving me crazy that I can’t think of clue to find this. I think the alien helpers appeared in a series of books or short stories, and are depicted in a movie. This is not very recent, the movie might have been back in the 70s.
It might take a while, but you could try browsing here and see if it twigs:
Here’s something very specific that bothered me today watching Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Towards the beginning, the bridge gets a call that the last two passengers scheduled to beam up are delayed because one of them (Dr Bones) is refusing to teleport and going on about “being scattered into molecules” and whatnot. Kirk, Uhura, and whoever else is on the bridge gives each other knowing smiles like their old friend is up to his old tricks regarding the teleporters
Except…
Two people LITERALLY JUST DIED RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU FIVE MINUTES AGO USING THE TELEPORTER!! Apparently in a manner so horrific that the technician at Starfleet felt the need to comment how fortunate it was they whatever came back didn’t live long.
So yeah. I too might want to take the shuttle after that.
Sure. I would expect a mix of high and low tech. Maybe in ways we wouldn’t expect. Everything shouldn’t be anti-matter powered and anti-gravity. In fact, one of the hallmarks of advanced technical design is that it should be relatively invisible and unobtrusive. And some things (like a knife and fork) are probably not going to change much ever.
But you almost never see a non-Earth sci fi civilization that resembles a modern North American suburb. It’s always bamboo huts (or maybe living out of the shipping containers and disassembled husk of the colony ship) or super-high tech towering megacities. I mean why not terraform a planet to support low- and mid-density single family homes. It would probably be a lot more sustainable with futuristic tech.
The Berserker series?
Ok, I think I have conflated Skullduggery and Little Fuzzy. The creatures in Skullduggery aren’t aliens, they’re described as a ‘Missing Link’. Little Fuzzy is about sapient aliens though. I had an inkling Burt Reynolds was in the movie and worked backwards from there.
Jason Nesmith: What? What was that?
Alexander Dane: Uh, nothing.
Jason Nesmith: I heard some squealing or something.
Gwen DeMarco: Oh, no. Everything’s fine.
Teb: But the animal is inside out.
Jason Nesmith: I heard that! It turned inside out?
[the pig-lizard explodes]
Teb: And it exploded.
Jason Nesmith: Did I just hear that the animal turned inside out, and then it exploded? Hello?