I have enjoyed the Star Trek spinoffs, with the occassional exception, pretty much all my life. But there is just one thing that has always perplexed me.
Vulcans all seem to speak just one language. Klingons all seem to speak just one language. If the writers wanted to emphasize that they are all humanoid creatures, with a similiar biological and socio-economical evolution to humans, then should each planet speak many languages, just like earth? And shouldn’t there in fact be many subcultures to each planet? As opposed to, say, Vulcan Plomeek Soup, shouldn’t they specify which subcontinent and subculture it came from–like we would say Chinese Egg Drop Soup, for example?
Have the writers for Star Trek ever handled this subject? Or does anyone know if they may some day?
Story writers for an episode get 40 minutes to tell a story. Unless this week’s episode is specifcally about the differences between two groups of some race, then the writers probably just can’t afford to spend any screen time to flesh these kinds of details. I imagine that most scripts start off being way too long and the writer and editors have to go through it with a butcher knife hacking out material until they have the script down to something that will fit into the 40 minute show. If there is room in your script for multiple soup names, its probably not going to be an epic episode.
On Voyager we were introduced to a black Vulcan so there is the notion of subcultures on other planets. I don’t remember any episode where they expand on Vulcan ethnicity. They probably never had the time. Its just too tempting to spend time on filming big laser battles with stuff blowing up, shields down to 25 percent, routing emergency power from the men’s rest rooms, encrypt the command stream, blah blah blah.
Because all planets in Star Trek are populated by a single intelligent species with a single government, a single culture, a single language, and a single problem (that only outsiders from Starfleet can sort out, naturally). A non-human skin color and/or weird forehead are optional features.
Not to sidetrack it, but the Babylon 5 strongly implied that humans were just, for some reason, more diverse than other cultures. As in, most other races developed on a single continent or somesuchthing, and so there wasn’t as much noticeable difference. And then there’s the Centauri, who shared a planet with the Xon, all of whom were killed long ago).
Star Trek probably would describe it the same way. Also don’t forget in Star Trek we have universal translators, so if the Romulans on the other ship are speaking a different Romulan language, our characters probably wouldn’t even realize it.
I’d love to say that it was all the fault of stupid tv writers, but the truth is that _all_sf writers have been doing this since H. G. Wells wore diapers. It’s just so much easier not to have to work through language problems when you’re trying to get on with doing a story.
Nowadays, most writers - and those on Star Trek - use some kind of universal translator as a means of getting around this. Unless the writer has some special agenda for making communications difficult, doing anything else is just destroying the story.
Exapno Mapcase, reread the OP carefully. It’s asking a different question than the title might make you think.
One thing is that Star Trek was originally conceived, among other things, to tell certain aspects of the story of humans in a science fiction context. So just like humans have cross-cultural differences, in Star Trek, there are cross-species differences. Making various cultures within the species might be more scientifically accurate, I don’t think it would add to the story in any way.
But, while multiple cultures is probably more realistic, multiple languages might not be. I don’t think it’s unreasonable that species would tend to pick a single language to use as their “primary” language when dealing with other species. Kind of like how all international flights are conducted in English.
I would also add, to Wumpus’s litany, a single religion.
I can’t believe I’m answering a technical Star Trek question.
Gene Roddenberry’s original vision of the human race in the era of Star Trek was that mankind had evolved, as a society, beyond mere tribal divisions. In Star Trek, contact with aliens had instantly changed human civilization:
The world became united. Nation-states and tribes stopped fighting, and the human race was one.
The end of religion is heavily implied, which makes #1 easier.
Eventually, the end of scarcity as we know it, which also makes #1 easier.
And you might notice that all the humans speak English. Sure, Chekov has a Russian accent and Picard is a Frenchman who speak with a British accent, but everyone’s an Anglophone - which makes sense in a world united as one, because everyone would have to speak the same language in Starfleet. And since the inventor of warp drive was American, and since the Federation’s capital city is San Francisco, and since English is already a common lingue franca, it just made sense to pick English.
So maybe the unspoken assertion is that a planet can’t become a spacefaring race UNTIL they become unified, and evolve past tribal wars - and maybe that unification leads to the adoption of a lingua franca.
That whole Black Vulcan thing was just something that Aquaman came up with.
For some reason I want to say there were other vulcan languages in one of the the books I read, possibly “Spock’s World” (as that’s the only title that I can remember having read, I’ve only read a couple).
Achernar:
Making various cultures within the species might be more scientifically accurate, I don’t think it would add to the story in any way.
Unless the story had a point to labour about cultural conflict, in which case they stretched a point and had a planet with two cultures. One example was the ST:TOS episode “The Omega Glory”, and I think there others I can’t bring precisely to mind.
Anyone remember the series Alien Nation? In an early episode the human cop tries to impress his alien neighbot by referring to some character in her religion. “But that’s not MY faith,” she explained.
“You mean your species has more than one religion?” he says and then adds some equivalent of “Duh!” Of course they do. What else would you expect?
Concerning the OP: The Romulans are a subculture of the Vulcans. Sure, they’ve had centuries (or millenia) to develop their own civilization but it is still rooted in Vulcan culture. We can trace our own culture back to Rome and Greece, can we not?
Also, in one of the few Enterprise episodes I’ve seen, an emotional Vulcan sect was featured. Another subculture… maybe Sybok of The Final Frontier was a follower of it?
…and since the Federation’s capital city is San Francisco…
No… you’re confusing the miliatary with the government. Paris is the official residence of Federation President so most likely, it is the capital. San Francisco is where Starfleet Academy and, presumably, Starfleet Headquarters are located.
Also, Buckgully, as much as I love to read the books, they are not canon for the most part. There are exceptions here and there (notably… Voyager’s Pathways) but they’re almost universally disregarded. Otherwise, there’d be millions of inconsistancies.
And, for some reason, oddly enough, the Romulans can trace their culture back to Rome and Greece. All those centurions and tribunes running around expanding the empire at the whim of the Senate.
The more languages that “Star Trek” invents, the more languages there are for Uber-nerds to translate Shakespeare into. And we don’t need any more of that, do we?