Will the new Trek series end the one planet, one race, one culture Trek nonsense?

[Karha of Honor]

It would be nice.

[Nessus]

Man, I'd love it if that were to be the case. Unfortunately, I don't expect so at all. From what we've seen so far, it's gonna be either pure JJ style (flashy, charismatic, but dumb as Michael Bay), or if the behind the scenes rumors are to be believed, some self-conflicted hybrid of classic and JJ style.

Classic Trek never bothered with that level of worldbuilding unless it was telling an episode specifically about racism or war. JJ trek has no concept of themes or other kinds of depth beyond than "look at teh shooty bright lights!", and it is only ever complex as a form of incoherence.

[hammerofglass]

It's kind of baked into the franchise. TNG era Trek even applied the "one planet, one culture" thing to humans; expecting them to treat other races better seems like a stretch.

[Karha of Honor]

It's kind of baked into the franchise. TNG era Trek even applied the "one planet, one culture" thing to humans; expecting them to treat other races better seems like a stretch.

Why couldn't you use something else when making a new cake?

[GandALF]

For TOS I got the impression it was sort of like Britain with the switching between British and English/Welsh/Scottish depending on the situation like with Chekhov's sliding into his "it was inwented in Russia" shtick. Not sure how that explains the Yorkshire Frenchman though.

The monoculture stuff is good parody material at least:

[Nessus]

I don't think it's an issue with many of the major factions, more with the "planet of the week" encounters.

Federation:
We don't really see enough of non-Starfleet life & culture to make any kind of assessment. What little we do see suggests that when it comes to Earth, at least, a lot of cultures are still there, just sort of mellowed out by a couple centuries of one-world government and galactic perspective. The vast majority of what we see is Starfleet, in which case the dominate culture is naturally Starfleet culture with individual members' home cultures taking a back seat, more or less like you'd expect in a real military organization (standard disclaimers about Starfleet being a non-military military and all).

It's also worth pointing out that Earth is VERY young compared to many of the other major races/powers, even though it's the heart of the Federation. Many of the other major races/powers have been star faring for much, much longer. Often centuries if not millennia. That's a lot of opportunity for cultures to get homogenized if you consider unified government and "small world syndrome" resulting from easy travel and communication.

Klingons:
With their neofuedalism, it would make sense for there to be cultural differences between, say, fleets owned by different noble houses. Klingons are VERY tradition-bound, and have been a space-faring civilization for much longer than humans, so it kinda makes sense that when it comes to their outward facing military at least, the differences would be subtle to our eyes. Still, it would've been nice to see some distinctive variation in uniform design according to house affiliation, but I can imagine that being a MASSIVE continuity headache, especially for DS9. It's already easy as not to just assume dialect variation exists, since everything is "translated" for our benefit anyway.

Romulans:
Like Starfleet, I'd expect they enforce standardization in dialect, protocol, etc., only way, WAY more hardcore, since their government is so authoritarian. Like the Federation, there may be any amount of unseen variety back home in the Empire. Also since they're a former colony, they may not have as much variety as an indigenous species/civilization would to begin with.

Cardassians:
Like the Romulans, super authoritarian, and probably just as inclined to force cultural homogenization at home as in their outward military. There's also a lot of hints in DS9 that rejection of the idea of ontological truth is baked into their psychology to a degree that almost has to be biological (it's their psychological hat, the same way the passion/logic dichotomy is with Vulcans, paranoia with Romulans, joy in violence with Klingons, ambient anger with Andorians, argumentativeness with Tellerites, etc. ), so they take to revisionism like a fish to water, making it super easy for a dominant culture to just completely erase others.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

It's pretty easy to fall into the monolithic culture trap. The thing with alien civilizations is that they can only be so alien- you are inevitably going draw from human experiences, motivations, and cultures. Certainly with television and film and the currently preferred serialized format. The aliens that are actually "alien" in appearance or attitude is a tiny minority of what we see on screen, and those aliens still have recognizable motives. One example of an actual "alien" species is the Horta, which is part of what makes Devil in the Dark one of the better Trek episodes for me. Of course, the motives of the Horta are eventually found to be "human."

So to me, giving alien species certain tendencies to differentiate them is fine as far as it goes. I think the way TOS handled things is fine when you consider the limitations they had to deal with. In Balance of Terror we see "honor bound" Romulans (as opposed to the treacherous Romulans in the TNG era), but you don't get the sense that every Romulan has the same viewpoints on everything. The episodic nature also works in its favor, I think- different aspects of Klingon culture might be glimpsed (Mara the science officer in Day of the Dove), but Kirk is only really dealing with the military men. And those military men, while sharing Klingon values, are still distinct.

I'd say TNG is the worst offender when it comes to uniform cultures, since it's approach to the Roddenberry utopia exacerbated the problem. Everyone in the Federation is perfect, so all conflict has to come from the outside. Humans don't find glory or honor in battle, so if you want to deal with that you bring in the Klingons. Want to incorporate greed into a story? Bring in a Ferengi.

The DS9 writers did a much better job and almost could have avoided the problem entirely if they weren't trying to stay within the Star Trek sandbox. The Cardassians and the Bajorans have tendencies, but they aren't one-note.

[Karha of Honor]

I don't think it's an issue with many of the major factions, more with the "planet of the week" encounters.

Federation:
We don't really see enough of non-Starfleet life & culture to make any kind of assessment. What little we do see suggests that when it comes to Earth, at least, a lot of cultures are still there, just sort of mellowed out by a couple centuries of one-world government and galactic perspective. The vast majority of what we see is Starfleet, in which case the dominate culture is naturally Starfleet culture with individual members' home cultures taking a back seat, more or less like you'd expect in a real military organization (standard disclaimers about Starfleet being a non-military military and all).

It's also worth pointing out that Earth is VERY young compared to many of the other major races/powers, even though it's the heart of the Federation. Many of the other major races/powers have been star faring for much, much longer. Often centuries if not millennia. That's a lot of opportunity for cultures to get homogenized if you consider unified government and "small world syndrome" resulting from easy travel and communication.

No preaching please, we had enough of that In Trek.

[Nessus]

Preaching what?

Seriously, what are seeing in that that's me preaching... anything?

[Karha of Honor]

Preaching what?

Seriously, what are seeing in that that's me preaching... anything?

Not you, the show creators.