We just figured the galaxy didn't have the budget for non humanoid intelligent life.
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One head-type-thing and four limb-type-things, with only two being primarily locomotive, makes that more humanoid than not on an intergalactic body plan scale.
We are very bad at thinking up truly alien life.
I respect the constraints of production budgets. I don't expect TV aliens to look much different than people with some crap glued to their face.
Mass Effect at least branched out a little. But all of the squad mates were still basically humanoid. I expect they used mocap and similar limitations. Though it really could have benefitted from an Elcor squad mate.
"Irritated; you are a jackass... Captain. Irreverent; the cultists... Do not matter. Hopeful; bombard them from orbit and let's... Go."
I don't expect TV aliens to look much different than people with some crap glued to their face.
I mean.. I kinda do.. especially these days when CGI makes up more than half of your budget for nonsense reasons. Why don't they try harder? They could and it would cost them zero extra.
The Hooloovoo resemble a super-intelligent shade of the colour blue. One was seen in a prism for Zaphod Beeblebrox's address upon stealing the Heart of Gold. On certain special occasions, such as the aforementioned Presidential event, they refract into a free-standing prism.
his (assuming he?) existence can be compared to that of Carcinisation. some species just always evolve into crabs, some always evolve into amorphous tar blobs that embody evil.

Right right only canon shows count
For real though, there’s a reason you only see the Aquatics and the Insectoids in like two episodes of Enterprise.
and yaphit might have been a reason why orville ran out of budget and was not renewed 😆
Orville was technically never cancelled. Seth also confirmed a few months ago that the script for the newest season is written, but it's hard to find time for all the actors at the moment.
Technically.... I am not sure it means much, since writing a script is a lot cheaper than turning it into finished series.
So, this episode was in canon when All Good Things was written. Q goes through this whole speech about how the anomaly caused by Picard in the future stops life from forming on Earth, thus humans never exist. "You, in several million years." he says.
How does that interact with the "everyone is seeded from a common ancestor" plot?
Maybe it was the common ancestor that was directly stopped from existing and then by extension the other races
Or it's a plot hole
Well...how about this:
the race of Beforeians seeded inhabited worlds. So the entire biosphere happened on its own from cyanobacteria up to wooly mammoths and shit, and then the beforeians seed the planet with hominids.
If life didn't evolve on Earth, the Beforeians wouldn't have seeded it. Just like they didn't seed Mars or Venus.
My dad when this aired: dang what a good and awesome story with a good and awesome message
Also my dad: Mexicans tho
Ooo, swing and a miss.

So close.
also why they can interbreed
I kinda just forgot Spock, Torres, and Troy were half human
Life, uh, finds a way.
Fuck anything hard enough and it will breed
Klingon terraforming 101
Star Trek Enterprise explains that it involves medical intervention to allow interbreeding between species. I've always assumed that's what was going on for everyone.
"We were too busy fighting"
There's a lesson here.
Everybody was kung fu fighting
Convergent evolution. Maybe bipedal locomotion gives some sort of advantage to intelligence.
It is kind of the minimalist form to let a brain interact with its environment, You have the second lowest number of locomotion limbs but significanly higher efficiency than slithering (0) which means more energy for the brain, And 2 manipulating limbs is the minnimum neccesary to grasp items in a way that allows you to apply torque or brace objects.
Not intelligence, but tool-wielding.
Pigs and whales are smart, but neither can swing a hammer.
If you're bipedal you have free arms to throw rocks and make tools.
Yeah, this is a viable explanation, although it is dependant on life evolving mostly the same way across the galaxy. If life mostly evolves on ocean planets in the Goldilocks Zone frim the same basic elements, then sure, prokaryote, fish, tetrapod, biped could be an extremely common path. But it's entirely possible there are a wide variety of initial circumstances that can generate life, and there are tungsten-based hyper-intelligent shrimp people living in gas giants
Exactly this. Bipedal, fingers for tool making.
Maybe humans are the crabs ~~crackheads~~ of spaceflight
Any mention of the word troglodytes gets an instant upvote from me. :)
It just flashes screenshots of Number Munchers into my brain
It did come up again, it's just not many people made it to near the end of Discovery.
Hey, why do you look like a changeling?
In universe, maybe they were the first humanoid species the changelings encountered.
Realistically, they just didn't get that creative with character design.
Panspermia
I thought this was indeed brought up in the show. Am I wrong?
Ew. Wash that pan before you have guests
If she were not dead, I would kill her!