Race vs. Culture in "Vulcan Hello"

Karanthir Tolkien has many instances of breaks with what are racial/cultural norms. The hobbits are a classic in this respect, a quiet sedentary group who like to stay at home and avoid confrontation and adventure. Legolas and Gimli and their friendship despite their races hatred of each other. He believed we could be more than our birth and culture made us.

Glenn, I played GURPS, Hero, Stormbringer, Rolemaster, Spacemaster, Star Wars, Paranoia, Call of Cthulu and Vampire. Still do when I get the opportunity. My favorite is still Rolemaster, a percentile system which can be used for any setting, very wide ranging rules. MERP had many modules for different campaigns and adventures. I have 40 of them plus the GM reference manuals.

Wow, I can't believe I missed that. All we had lying around were D&D (and variants) and some GURPS material, at least until White Wolf arrived on the scene. My players always (rightly) accused me of just trying to make them reenact The Lord of the Rings, and if we'd had MERP that might have gone over better.

Merp was produced in 1984 and was similar to the rolemaster system but exclusively tolkien there were the core game and lots of modules for it. I still have my hardcopies and many of the others on pdf about 1.3GB of data, it was a sad day when Iron Crown Enterprises closed down. It was produced under licence from Tolkien's estate and as such everything had to be historically and cannonically correct. It was a far more complex system with regard to character creation and gameplay using percentile dice systems meaning a roll produces a result from 1-100 not 1-20 as D&D.

D&D drew from many other mythologies as can be deduced by a quick look through the monster manual.

Kev, when was MERP produced? I feel like my adolescence was robbed of something awesome. Also, all this talk really makes me wish I had time for RPGs.

Karanthir, you are probably right that I'm letting TOS off the hook. Valerie and I are about to do a TOS episode, and I'll try to watch it through this lens. Also, which contradictions are more difficult to reconcile: the various components of Tolkien's legendarium or fifty years of Trek? Someday I'll pick a fandom that's not so complicated.

Glenn: On Elves, their special relationship with God is that they were created to be special and good and have a special relationship with God (likewise "Men" to a lesser extent), so I think there's a bit of a circular logic there. And on Orcs, there are several contradictory (but not necessarily mutually exclusive) accounts of how they were created, only one of which is an in-universe speculation that they are corrupted Elves. As far as I'm aware Tolkien never laid down a definitive account of their creation (please correct me if I'm wrong), and even came to regret making them universally "Evil". So again, I can't quite bring myself to agree with your interpretation. But I do think this is primarily about different approaches to world-building, and on that side of things I think you're right that Howard was more of an influence on Gygax. Also, I feel like you're letting 60s Trek off the hook a bit compared to 90s Trek. There was always a conflation of race, species and culture, but maybe it's less noticeable in TOS due to the setting being less well-defined.

kev may: I'm not sure how much Iron Crown Enterprises' understanding of what Tolkien meant by race, although both Middle-Earth Role Playing (which I can't claim any familiarity with) and D&D do demonstrate how Tolkien's races have been interpreted/understood by later generations, and how race and culture have come to be conflated to varying degrees. I'm not sure Tolkien was actually about complex characters who surmounted racial norms. I can only think of Feanor and sons who do this to any great extent, but I would love more examples to add to that list.

Again, this is only my personal opinions, perceptions and interpretations, so I'm probably missing some very important points.

Tolkien does use the term race, he uses it in reference to the different visually diverse groups, Elves, men, Dwarfs and Orcs etc. He does so, I believe correctly as his writing seems to indicate that any of them seem to be able to interbreed. He assigned differing characteristics to these races based on their cultures and training and their physical form producing certain results.

The article speaks exclusively about D&D which is not tolkien. If you are looking for Tolkien inspired role play you are looking at "Middle-Earth Role Playing" by Iron Crown Enterprises. The handbook for this states " There are a variety of races a player may choose. The race chosen affects the characters bonuses for skills, his development during adolescence, his appearance and certain other factors." This indicates that the race in tolkiens opinion was an amalgam of race and culture which predisposed a character to a certain mode, but in MERP did not totally restrict a race to a specific role. This was due to these racial modifications only being the first layer of skills adjustment after which adolescent and adult skills would be added with no regard to race. D&D is very heavy handed with these things to make it simple, MERP was more nuanced and complex. If Tolkien were alive I think he would be speaking to his lawyers about being associated with D&D's heavy handed approach and simplistic and heavy handed treatment of race. Tolkien was all about characters being complex and surmounting racial norms and preconceptions, not reinforcing them.

Sorry, by "left out the spirituality," I meant merely that Gygax and Company adopted Tolkien's notion of Elves as special and good without that special goodness resulting from their relationship with God, but rather resulting from night vision and stuff. Orcs in D&D are a unique biological species; they aren't in Middle-earth, where they are Elves whose souls have been corrupted by Satan. There's a missing link, I think, and I expect that it is Howard and the pulp writers. But I also think that the presence of this scientific racism in both D&D and later incarnations of Trek might reflect something particular to post-war America. I'd suggest that there are some interesting reception studies to be done about why Tolkien's framework is adopted in D&D but with the religious substance replaced by a scientific substance. I would also suggest that whatever it is at play there is also at play in the differences between how Trek handles race in the 60s and how Trek handles race in 90s.

I'm afraid I'm not knowledgeable enough about Tolkien scholarship or the development of the fantasy genre from Tokien to D&D to respond to your comments at length, so I can only give my personal thoughts. I think regardless of spirituality or biology or cosmology, there is a problem when most of the good guys are white and most of the bad guys are black/brown. I guess this is more of an issue within Tolkien's human "race" rather than between the races though.

I disagree that Gygax and others "left out the spirituality" though. D&D (like most fantasy settings) has its own spirituality, cosmology, morality, pantheon of gods etc. (with its own range of problems quite different to Tolkien's of course). I concede that this developed with the game and wasn't as explicit in the earliest incarnations. But then again, one of the big issues for me with Tolkien's novels is that the spirituality and cosmology are very much in the meta-narrative. There are (famously) no priests or temples in Middle Earth (even if you count Gandalf et al as "prophets" or "emissaries"). That always left the world feeling a bit flat to me, and I think that might be part of why those elements are missing from (early) versions of D&D.

For the development of both D&D and Star Trek, I'd say the problem isn't being comfortable with scientific racism or doubling down on it. Rather, the problem is not questioning it and allowing it to become increasingly ingrained in the setting. That's forgivable to a certain extent though. It's easy to take what has come before and not question it, especially when you take audience expectations into account, and when the people making the newer versions are fans of the older versions (elements that have plagued both franchises in my opinion). Not saying it's ok, just that I understand how it happens.

Finally, Star Trek has always taken a strong stance against eugenics, ever since Khan first appeared in Space Seed. I'd say they've sometimes even taken too strong a stance, when you consider that what is called "eugenics" often covers a multitude of issues surrounding genetic modification. But it's a controversial area, so I don't object to them playing it safe and saying all genetic modification of sentient beings is bad.

(Also, you should definitely send your thoughts to the author. I'm sure he'd appreciate them and might be able to offer some insight into his writing process.)

Yes, this gets at many of the questions we raised all the way back in September, so thanks for sharing it, Karanthir!

I'm a little disappointed in the treatment of Tolkien and the drawing of a straight line between him and D&D. For one, Tolkien's Elves aren't Good and Orcs Bad because of biology -- there's an entire cosmology of souls and reincarnation behind these designations that both this article and D&D ignore. The link between Tolkien and D&D needs to be explained more in terms of why Gary Gygax and others grabbed onto the notion of "races" but left out the spirituality, and why he and the other D&D creators were so comfortable with scientific racism as not to question it ... even after the Holocaust. I would ask the same question about Gene Roddenberry and the other Trek creators. Moreover, I (still) maintain that the absence of religion and spirituality in (early) D&D suggest that while Elves and Dwarves may be derived from Tolkien, the attitudes about race derive more from pulp fantasists such as Robert E. Howard. Sturtevant mentions Helen Young's Race and Popular Fantasy. I haven't read it, but the first chapter is entitled "J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard," so I'm eager to see what she says about how their opposing worldviews function when they get mixed together by Gygax.

I'm still keen to compare TOS with TNG on this front as well, and I suspect that TNG doubles-down on scientific racism in ways that TOS doesn't -- even as European scholars such as Wenskus, Wolfram, and Pohl are dismantling the intellectual constructs that formed the foundation of scientific racism.

Something that came up in Discovery after this thread had died down, is Admiral Cornwell's admonishment of Stamets for violating prohibitions against eugenics. This is straight from post-war concerns about Nazism and scientific racism, and while it's unexplored (so far), I'm hoping that we'll get more about it.

Sorry I haven't been around much recently, but this excellent article on "race" in the fantasy genre is very relevant to this discussion.

https://www.publicmedievalist.com/race-fantasy-genre/

Perhaps the writers of this series might be more exact in their use of the terms.

I would perhaps define them in the following terms.

Species: Individuals within a species can breed to produce offspring who can procreate.

Race: A visually distinct group within a species.

Culture: A group following a common set of laws, beliefs and customs.

In this case then perhaps most of the humanoids within the Trek are of the same species but different races. In this case conflicts are based on culture not race or species.

Thus the Federation becomes a Super Culture where different species and races follow a common set of laws.

At this point, I'm just guessing (guess-remembering?), but I think that the word "race" was rarely used in TOS, and used with much greater frequency the closer we get to the present. If true, I would link this to the low significance of race within the ideology of the Cold War, and suspect that the word begins to appear more as the Soviet Union disintegrates and America begins engaging in "ethnic" conflicts in the Balkans and Africa just as DS9 is coming on the air.

Glenn, could you maybe say a bit more about what you see as the differences between how this was done in TOS compared to the later shows? I'm intrigued!

Yes, this is a fantastic point. Whether or not the word "race" is used, Star Trek wants (sometimes, at least) to use its aliens to get us thinking about racial issues in our own society. That said, I still think that there is a major difference in the way this is done in the TOS era than in Voyager and Enterprise, and that this deserves some attention.

I have several edited volumes of Trek scholarship on my shelf, and I've just looked through them to find that none of them contain an article about these issues, so there is definitely room for it, as well as need.

Great question! Torres has a daughter with the human Tom Paris. I think that's the only time we ever see a half-alien have a child, but I suppose that's enough evidence to demonstrate that it can happen.

So by that logic, and based on what we learn in 'The Chase', we seem to be looking at 'races' rather than 'species' after all.

But I still have a big problem with that because as I mentioned the science of 'The Chase' is incredibly dodgy. Even if humanoid life was seeded across the galaxy hundreds of millions of years ago, I don't think that's how evolution works. But I'm probably getting unnecessarily pedantic and nitpicky now.

Based on everything we see on the show, the different aliens of Star Trek are capable of interbreeding, and their offspring will be fertile hybrids. And they're all distantly related somehow.

I have a purely scientific question/comment that will betray my ignorance of Star Trek but might be interesting to think about in the context of the show. Species is definitely a DNA/genetic term, but some animal species are next to impossible to tell apart because they are so similar. One way scientists can tell whether two animals are actually two different species, or just variations within the same species, is by interbreeding them. Animals of different species can produce offspring together (horse + donkey = mule), but those offspring will be sterile because of chromosomal issues (mules cannot make mule babies). On the other hand, animals (including humans) that are merely variations within a single species can interbreed and create fertile offspring.

So, my Star Trek question is: can half-human, half-alien beings on Star Trek make babies? Can Spok or B'Ellanna Torres reproduce? Is this something the show talks about at all?

Somehow I didn't even think about 'The Chase'. It's a weird episode; a fun story, and I can see what they were going for with the message, but it just doesn't make any sense at all! You're right that it's probably the best place to start to look further into this.

I am beginning to think that we've already thought harder about this than anyone who's ever written an episode of Star Trek has though...

Hey guys!

Glenn, you might have convinced me to switch fields. Or, you know, to start my own. Or, more realistically, just to write a poorly informed book based on my own observations while watching Star Trek. Though I suppose that's basically what we're doing here.

You've both come very close to the depth of my own knowledge on the subject, but there might be one good place to start our search for answers: the TNG Season 6 episode "The Chase", where we learn that all of the humanoid species that we know in the Star Trek world actually share the same common ancestor. A casual look at the Wikipedia page on the episode (because scholarship) throws the terms race and species around a lot.

Now that you mention it, how many times are the words 'race' and 'species' actually used onscreen in the series pre-Discovery? Are these mostly just terms we're using to discuss the show? Answering that would be a good place to start for figuring this out.

You might be right about Tolkien not using the word 'race', but he essentially invented the archetypal fantasy 'races', which don't feature in Howard or Lovecraft. So thinking about Elves and Dwarves as 'races' must come from somewhere. It might not be satisfying, but I'm inclined to say it's just a general usage thing. Thinking of them as 'species' even seems weird to me, and I'm the one arguing that's the wrong term!

Yes, I had considered Tolkien as well, but I'm not actually sure how frequently he uses the word "race," if ever. I suspect that the use of this term in AD&D owes itself more to the pulp literature by writers such as Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft. I've just done a (hasty) search on the academic internet and have not found much on this topic, so it looks like there's room for a new monograph if anyone wants to switch fields.

As for Trek's use of the term, I also wonder how frequently species are referred to as "races" in the various shows. My hypothesis is that it increases over time, that the term was not used very often for Klingons and Romulans (etc.) in TOS, more so in TNG, but most of all in DS9. If that's true (and I'm just guessing), then I think it would map very nicely onto shifting modes of othering as the Cold War raged, cooled, and then ended. Again, there's probably a book worth writing there.