We can't have our heroes discussing euthanasia, but should they stumble across a Planet of Hats where everyone who gets sick is put to death, then it's okay. This way the show's characters can take a thinly disguised public stand on an issue that the network execs would otherwise consider too taboo to openly discuss. Writers love to use the hat planet to represent controversial issues in society whenever they can. Sometimes it's stated that Hattery is the natural state and it's humans that are aberrant, or rather that humanity's Hat is not having one. Defining human characteristics have included "pluck", "sheer cussedness", creativity, and sometimes even "diversity", though "evil" and "stupidity" are more misanthropic answers to the question. though many are universal enough that it's difficult to imagine a society without them. note And anthropologists have discovered many universal human traits that could plausibly fit the bill.
If anything, aliens tend to be surprised by the amount of diversity among humans.Įarth itself is sometimes portrayed as a Planet of Hats. There is no reason to suspect that alien life forms would be any different, but in media they are nowhere near as diverse as one might expect. Just for comparison, within the 29% of Earth's surface that's solid land, our planet hosts just under two hundred sovereign states, with an estimated 5,000 ethnicities and 7,000 living languages. If planets are revisited, it also provides an easy way for viewers to keep track of which planet is which and remember where the story is set.Ī Planet of Hats is a convenient way to make it so that the viewer's brain doesn't explode, but planet-wide monocultures seem a tad unlikely based off the best-known planet for Earthlings.
#Merchants of kaidan monastery series
This is especially true in episodic series where the heroes travel to a new planet each week and you have to both introduce a planet and tell a story all within a single episode. To some degree, this is unavoidable you only have so much screen time or page space to develop and explore a culture.
Everybody is a robot, or a gangster, or a Proud Warrior Race Guy, or an over-the-top actor, or has the same name, or wears a silly hat. On their Wagon Train to the Stars, our intrepid heroes come across a planet whose inhabitants all share a single defining characteristic.
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