Why are 99% of Trek captains Human?

[erhershman]

(WARNING: LONG RANT. THAT IS NOW OFICIALLY ON RECORD. YOU CAN NO LONGER CLAIM YOU HAVE NOT BEEN WARNED.)


I've been a Star Trek fan for quite awhile now, and I have noticed a Trek trend of sorts: The captains of Federation starships always seem to be Humans.

Starting with the shows, I realize it would have been impractical due to the era of that show to have an alien captain on Enterprise, but would it have been SO difficult to give Voyager or even DS9 a non-human commander? With a few exceptions such as whathisname the Vulcan captain in "Take Me Out to The Holosuite" (DS9) almost all captains we've seen in the shows that play any important role are humans.

This is in other things besides the shows. The writers of the Star Trek novels mostly seem to make "also appearing" captains human. Having a non-human captain as the commander of the Excalibur was, IMHO, one of the only good things about Peter David's New Frontier novels.

And this filters right down to our humble RPGs. Almost everyone on these boards, and this is not meant to criticize or insult anyone, has a Human in command of their PC's starship or base if theirs is a Federation-focused series. Aditionally, the Archetypes in both the LUG and DecTrek books, for the Command Officer, had a HUMAN Command Officer. Not a Vulcan, Centauran, Benzite, Bajoran, Andorian, or anything else, but a Human.

So here's the question:

Why all these human captains?

My personal belief:

At least as far as the shows are concerned, the reason all the main captains are Human is because the producers/studio (doesn't matter which) feel that audiences, both Trekkies and the average TV viewing audience 'identify' more with the character who's considered the lead role if it is a human. The human captain is meant to personify the "indomitable spirit" of the human species in the 24th century.

IMHO, this is nonsense. The idea that we, as viewers, need a strong human leader to pave the way for the crew to identify with Star Trek is ridiculous, at least to me. I 'identify' with Sisko or Picard or Janeway or whoever no more or less than with Kira or T'pol or Neelix or Data. It's their emotions, actions, and experiences that help me identify with them, not their species.

END RANT. FEEL FREE TO POST YOUR OWN COMMENTS, CONCERNS, OR FLAMES.

[qerlin]

Maybe because 100% of the actors are human?

Just a guess...

[erhershman]

Originally posted by qerlin
Maybe because 100% of the actors are human?

Just a guess...

Look... if they can spend four hours putting makeup on a Klingon security officer, they can spend four hours putting makeup on a captain as well.

[AslanC]

Good rant.

I agree.

You forgot Captain Rixx.

Overall your point is well taken.

This need for us to identify is retarded, it is the same rasoning that studio execs used to keep blacks, women and other visible minorities out of leading roles for years.

Here's a little secret froms omone who works in the biz. Studio Execs are idiots. Morons. Numbleskulls.

Only a few are worth having on this planet as human beings. The rest register somewhere between pnd scum and music industry execs.

::Shudder::

[Erik Filean]

Originally posted by AslanC
This need for us to identify is retarded, it is the same rasoning that studio execs used to keep blacks, women and other visible minorities out of leading roles for years.

Not a particularly good analogy, in my opinion. Blacks, women, and so forth actually exist as real, worthwhile people in the world we all share. Vulcans, Klingons, and so forth don't. They exist in a fictional world, and moreover one in which they serve primarily to highlight particular aspects of human experience. These species and cultures can't be treated as if they were minorities with rights in our reality; at most, they are allegories for the real issues.

[erhershman]

Originally posted by Erik Filean


Not a particularly good analogy, in my opinion. Blacks, women, and so forth actually exist as real, worthwhile people in the world we all share. Vulcans, Klingons, and so forth don't. They exist in a fictional world, and moreover one in which they serve primarily to highlight particular aspects of human experience. These species and cultures can't be treated as if they were minorities with rights in our reality; at most, they are allegories for the real issues.

About a 75% good analogy, in my opinion. Although it's true that Vulcans Klingons etc. can't be compared to real people, the reasoning on why these fictional characters are not in leading roles is the same that the studios used to keep real people who were in minorities out of leading roles... in the '60s Gene Roddenberry was told he couldn't have a woman as "Number One" because people couldn't 'identify;' now they won't put in anyone from good old planet Earth because we supposedly 'can't identify' with someone who's not real, e.g., not human.

[REG]

A sad fact, but it is true.

You can try to put an alien captain (which is the obvious leading role in Star Trek) and it may something refreshing for the viewers, but the nostalgia will wear off and the show's rating will suffer.

You can try to put an alien captain with human perspective, but then viewers will question, "why not just use a human captain?"

Now if you want to turn Star Trek into a sitcom like Third Rock from the Sun which featured an alien commander of an scouting mission on Earth, giving us their perspective of our foibles, that might work for a few of us, but not to others who prefer Star Trek to remain an action-drama genre (I mean it's okay to have a few humorous episodes, but not all the time).

[Keeper]

Interestingly enough, we've never had a Human in a commanding officers' position. Our current CO, Captain Weishahan, is a Bolian; we've also had a Deltan, a Caitian, an Andorian, and a Vulcan. Any other non-human Captains out there care to step forward?

[erhershman]

Originally posted by Keeper
Interestingly enough, we've never had a Human in a commanding officers' position. Our current CO, Captain Weishahan, is a Bolian; we've also had a Deltan, a Caitian, an Andorian, and a Vulcan. Any other non-human Captains out there care to step forward?

In my new series, the cadet in command of the USS Anduril is going to be a Betazoid I think. I know he or she is not going to be a human.

[Phantom]

The Captain of the Saratoga-Vulcan
Captain Solek (I think that was his name)-Vulcan
Captain Rixx-Bolian
Mention of a Benzite Captain
Captain Calhoun
Captain Igrilon Kor- Andorian Admiral seen in the Council chambers.


How do you qualify Human? Some have mentioned in their games their Captains are Centuarns or Betazoids, are these not "human" as well. If not then Captain Calhoun can't be considered "human" either.

As you say not always front and center, but I disagree that they were 'unimportant' to the particular story they are associated with.

BTW in the online game I'm in the Captain is a Bolian.

[KillerWhale]

Huh.

No alien captains here... Mainly because we used the Discovery for the LUG TNG core book, that gave us grounds for the Crews to come.

But we have oddities: on their later ship, my PCs have a shipwide hologram that takes most of the organizational tasks and impersonates the ship's computers (a la Andromeda). There's no captain here, and the hologram is a part of the senior staff.

[Dan Gurden]

Why human captains? Simple answer.

Because without exception, every membre of the target audience is human. As you said, the captain is a central figure and the requirement is that we identify with them. This is also the reason that all regular aliens/artificials are invariably humanoid, to allow us to easily identify with them too.

This is not meant to say that we are in need of dumbing down, on the contrary, we are expected to understand this situation, and the case is made to make the show more accessable to irregular viewers. This is also the reason that the majority of the on-screen crew are human rather than an all alien crew.

However, lets not kid ourselves.
In TNG Conspiracy we see a Bolian captain.
In Emissary, we see Siskos Vulcan CO at Wolf 359.
We see the Vulcan captain of the T'Kumbra in 'Take me out...'
and can assume the aptain of the all Vulcan USS Intrepid in Kirks time was a Vulcan (although he got no screen time)
In the 60's it was a case of budget, in TNG it was a case of 'dumbing down for accesability'.
We also see numerous Vulcan, Andorian, Caitian captains and admirals during the Kirk movies, and during TNG/DS9.
And lstly, lets also not forget that Spock was captain and CO of the Enterprise for a significant time.

I do agree that we were due an Alien captain this time, although the series concept precludes this. After all the central characters were;
Kirk - First show captain
Picard - First not to be Kirk
Sisko - First 'minority' captain (and the best)
Janeway - First female captain
Archer - A Kirk/Picard hybrid...

Now as for WHY this should affect the games. Well in my case its simple, I see starfleet as mostly human, hence Most of Starfleet captains will be human, by sheer force of numbers. Which also happens to match the on-screen evidence of a human dominated Starfleet, as well as the Star Trek VI quote describing Starfleet as a 'Humans only club'.

[Kaiddin]

After watching a couple interviews something else comes to mind. ACTORS, there are a lot of actors out there that do not want to spend the time and suffer the discomfort of the make up. There is also the belief that as the human actors face becomes more covered the less acting becomes visible. How many actors that were covered in make up won any awards?

[qerlin]

Originally posted by Kaiddin
After watching a couple interviews something else comes to mind. ACTORS, there are a lot of actors out there that do not want to spend the time and suffer the discomfort of the make up. There is also the belief that as the human actors face becomes more covered the less acting becomes visible. How many actors that were covered in make up won any awards?

Yup...and when you're the lead character, you don't want to have to spend another couple of hours in the chiar in the morning.

As to the awards? Sci-fi actors never win TV awards. Looks at Stewart, and more to the point Trineer? Braga was quotes on one of the trek site as saying that with his performance, had it been anythng other than science fiction, he would have an Emmy for the season. I agree.

[AndorMan]

After DS9 had an African-American Male as captain and Voyager had a Female captain, my friends and I assumed the next thing was a Vulcan captain. While I agree with all the reasons given so far, I think that finding an actor with the skill and presense for the part would also be a consideration. The most prominent roles are the captain and the alien. On TOS it was Kirk and Spock. On TNG it was Picard and Worf (and Data - who qualifies in my opinion). Now you would need one person who could be both and take up the majority of the personal development subplots (why have an alien if you can't explore they're culture?).

In the 19 years I've been running and playing in Trek campaigns, I've seen only 3 alien captains. Two were Vulcans and one was an Andorian Captain that I myself played.

The majority of the support positions however, are filled by PC aliens.

AndorMan
In Andor We Trust