Must be a full time job, and involve a certain amount of drugs.
They're 'aliens' but of course have absolutely human bodies, and every movie there are more of them and they have more and more ridiculous sh#t grafted onto their faces and heads.
For several simple reasons.
1. The probability that any non-human intelligent species would be identical to us is extremely remote.
2. Budget-wise creating and animating completely species utterly different from humans is very expensive. For a single episode or movie, its one thing. For episode after episode, everyone different becomes impractical.
3. Given that many think CGI does not produce realistic individuals, using too much of it could alienate many fans.
4. Makeup that changes only the heads/faces of different species is much less expensive.
5. The Star Trek universe has created an in-universe rational for why so many (but not all) species are variants of the human bi-pedal model.
6. This is typical for most shows. Orville has attempted to have a few more species that are completely non-human that most (Yaphit being the prime example), but even they are mostly variants of the human norm.
Would it be nice if more species could be totally non-human? Absolutely. The Star Trek novels have attempted to introduce a few more such species. But given the limitations, I, for one, am willing to accept the compromise.
I understand the money explanation but Star Trek has been consistently lazy in coming up with alien designs. Even the names, which do not depend on money. Like Vulcan sounds like a made up earthly name, compare to Alderaan, Tatooine, Dagobah.
shareLazy like the Horta? The Sheliak? The Changelings? The Salt Vampire? The Phylosians? The Vendorians? The Microbrains from "Home Soil?"
Humanoid aliens are most common because they are easier. However, Star Trek has introduced many completely non-humanoid species over the years.
Vulcan is a Roman god. Also a railway town with it's own Enterprise.
sharethe krall design seemed very lazy as well
share(cough)Species8472(cough)