The idea of non-humanoid aliens fascinates me, especially because in movies and such there's not much variety outside humanoid and occaional insect/invertebrate-like shapes (e.g. Alien, Starship Troopers, etc.).
I do like Tempest though, I have to say. He's awesome, people shape and all.
I do agree on the "omg why do aliens from other planets all look humanoid" thing, but can also see the empathy side of things. If there was a species that was made of sentient globules of mercury held together with veins of silver (those two elements probably don't go well together chemically but just as an example…), I don't suppose it'd be immediately obvious that it was alive because it wouldn't resemble anything we carbon-based creatures are familiar with. The chances of there being a planet out there with the exact same conditions (climate, atmospheric content, soil conditions, water quantities, number of asteroid impacts, planetary neighbours, sun type, etc) as Earth and at exactly the same time are so small…first of all, a sentient species has to actually evolve. Then it has to do it in the teeny-tiny window in universal time that we currently occupy, and manage to somehow find its way over here, to this one tiny planet around this one insignificant sun in one particular galaxy, in order to establish contact with us before either we or they have gone extinct and had all traces of their presence erased by time.
That said, I've got no problem with Sci-Fi stuff. I like Doctor Who, Star Trek, Farscape, etc. Red Dwarf doesn't count as far as aliens are concerned because everything comes from Earth and is therefore a human, hologram, evolved pet, mechanoid/simulant/wax droid, GELF, or anything else I've forgotten ;).
Yeah, something like that - I can't remember but that was why I didn't mentioned Star Trek much, because some uber race basically "seeded" the galaxy with the same erm...species, or something, which all of course evolved into different things. That might also explain why humans can mate successfully with Klingons and Vulcans (can't remember whether any other mixed species have had kids but those two combinations definitely have).
Similarly, there's an explanation (but not until the final miniseries, Peacekeeper Wars) in Farscape as to why the heck humans and Sebaceans appear to be physically identical (though there are some physiological differences, just not any that are immediately apparent by looking at them).
Yeah, that "seeding" of the galaxy was mentioned a bit in a TNG plot line to explain the physiology problem, as well as the ability of various races to produce viable hybrids.
FWIW, off the top of my head, in addition to Human-Vulcan hybrids and Human-Klingon hybrids, the shows/movies show various other hybrids on-screen: Romulan-Vulcan (Saavik), Bajoran-Cardassian (Tora Ziyal), Betazoid-Human (Deanna Troi), Cardassian-Kazon (Seska's child), Human-Ocampa (various kids in various alt VOY timelines), Human-Romulan (Sela), Human-Trill (that one guy in the alternate DS9 timeline where the Defiant crashes on that planet and can't escape for some reason). There are probably more, but they aren't popping to mind.
Ahh. The only DS9 episode I've ever seen was "Trials and Tribble-ations", wher they went back in time to "The Trouble with Tribbles", that episode from the original series. DS9 has never really interested me so I wouldn't know about any of the characters from that.
But I forgot about Dianna Troi and the various Voyager examples. So thanks for the reminder, lol :).
Guess I don't know enough about sci-fi shows to contribute to much but as for the "genderless" population, my friends and I assume the following genders: