I know this has probably been done many times before, but I was watching The Undiscovered Country a few days ago, and thought that, well, no wonder Klingons and Romulans always are looking to fight other races. They clearly never had to deal with living amicably with folks who look different than they do back home, because they have zero racial diversity whatsoever.
At camp Khitomer we had numerous varieties of human, while all the klingons looked exactly the same.
Again, I know this is old hat, but the weird irony just struck me. Is there any ‘canon’ material that adequately deals with this bizarre issue?
(and, for the record, I understand the logistical reasons for doing it on the show. And, look how long it took to get a ‘diverse’ vulcan. And even then, Tuvok looks like a human of African decent with pointy ears. If Vulcan is a desert planet, and most everyone has pale skin, under what conditions did dark-skinned, large-nostrilled Vulcans live?)
You have ridged and smooth headed Klingons and a wide range of (admittedly darker) complexions, from cafe au lait (K’ehylar, B’Ellana, Chang) to the normal chocolate (Worf, most other Klingons) to really dark. And the differences in hair color is there too, although not as noticeable. They might have a monolithic culture but their races are pretty varied too, especially when you consider the brow ridges, something a lot more exotic than any human race has ever managed.
I’ll concede Romulans though. Except for their own brow ridge and the one exception of Sela, they’re all pretty much identical, even down to their haircuts. Annoying, really, especially as a total Rihannsu fanboy.
It’s not a “cornerstone,” just a form of laziness writers are usually able to get away with. Much easier to tell a story where there’s only one “Klingon” language and religion, rather than hundreds of each like we’ve got on Earth.
It’s a cornerstone insofar as almost every author doesn’t bother to make the species diverse and, as a result, 99% of the novels dealing with alien races are monolithic. Or, as you said, cliche.
And that’s the real rub: when we do see diversity within a species, it usually exists only to serve as the basis for a preachy, ham-handed episode about racial/cultural conflict and tolerance. I’ve never seen Enterprise, and so I can’t comment about the Xindi, but the Klingons are one of the only species that have a diverse population, and it isn’t used as the source of some conflict.
It’s kinda a side point not really applying to the question at hand, but I thought some might find this interesting. I attended a lecture given by Carl Sagan at UT and he pointed out something very interesting about “Star Trek”.
He asked if anyone noticed that ALL the species (save one or two episodes) were basically on the same technology level? Everything was pretty much balanced, technology wise. Basically he said that in any society…a technological advantage of only 10 years will result in the more adept race dominating the planet. Imagine what a jump of 1000, or 10,000 years would result in? Interesting that all the beings that Capt. Kirk met were basically on his level for the most part… (and spoke english…lol!)
As for varying levels of tech, Phil Farrand (of the “Nitpicker” book series) made a similar observation when deconstructing the NextGen episode “The Chase”, which claimed a humanoid species had seeded the galaxy with primitive life they expected to eventually evolve into forms like themselves, thus spawning humans, Klingons, Cardassians, etc. Farrand thought this was silly, since over the 4.5 billion-year span, as little as a 0.00001% difference would give one species a 450-year headstart, and thus technical dominance.