I always thought the Humperdinck episode highlighted one of my less favorite tropes in sci-fi: that the first person we see of a given race creates the template that all other members of the race must follow.
The idea of the entire El-Aurian species being “a race of listeners,” as Odo put it, always came across pretty poorly to me. Granted, they didn’t lean too heavily on that for his characterization, but it rubbed me wrong that this “racially enlightened series” still reduced a whole race to a single quality that Guinan happened to be strong in.
Got a bit more about the El-aurians in Generations including Soran, then once more in DS9 via Prince Humperdinck.
Could use a bit of fleshing out.
I don’t even recall those. Welp, an excuse for another round of TNG through DS9.
I always thought the Humperdinck episode highlighted one of my less favorite tropes in sci-fi: that the first person we see of a given race creates the template that all other members of the race must follow.
The idea of the entire El-Aurian species being “a race of listeners,” as Odo put it, always came across pretty poorly to me. Granted, they didn’t lean too heavily on that for his characterization, but it rubbed me wrong that this “racially enlightened series” still reduced a whole race to a single quality that Guinan happened to be strong in.