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Is the humanoid appearance of most alien species in the Star Trek universe ever canonically addressed?


The vast majority of intelligent species in the Star Trek universe are bipedal, humanoid creatures. From the lot I've seen of TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise, and the movies, it seems that this coincidence goes largely unquestioned.


Metaknowledge grants that it is much easier to have human actors portray human-like beings, and so this was probably done due to budgetary/technological limitations. However, I'm wondering if an in-universe reason for this was ever given or explored?



Answer



Yes. In Star Trek: The Next Generation's "The Chase", the Federation, Klingons, Cardassians, and Romulans are all on what amounts to a treasure hunt:



Representatives of all three races are together when all the pieces are put together and it turns out to be a program that takes over a tricorder and projects an image of an ancient alien who tells them that they found the galaxy empty, other than themselves, so they spread seeds of DNA throughout so there would be other races and that the existing races would be descendants of that seeding.



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