As we reach the end of the Star Trek that started it all, I’ve decided to take a closer look at a pattern some may have noticed cropping up fairly frequently. Many Star Trek stories feature planets and alien civilizations which are suspiciously uniform. From the proud warrior born from an entire alien species of warriors, to the gangster planet where everyone and their dog answers to a mob boss, the universe seems to be teeming with one note worlds. This phenomenon is known to writers as the ‘Planet of Hats’. An entire, often suspiciously Earth-like, world where everyone wears the same ‘hat’. The cities of Engineering World 6 are magnificent. The accounts are always perfectly updated and organized on the shores of Planet Bookkeeper. Just don’t ask who maintains the sewage system or runs the hospitals.
Upon any sort of scrutiny, the worldbuilding, as well as societal structure, of a Planet of Hats would fall apart. Not only is it unlikely that an entire planet would have the same topography, let alone a planet-wide population speaking the same language, but an advanced civilization requires a diverse range of skill-sets just to function. If no one is taking care of waste disposal or food production, there would be no resources to produce higher levels of social activity, such as research and artistic culture. One can cite many things that are universal for all humans: we drink water, we need oxygen to breathe, and we will die without food, but few beliefs and behaviors are absolutely universal. This is where the Planet of Hats differs from the physical traits that would simply define a member of an alien species as being from that species. The Planet of Hats label is often applied to a consistent planetary-wide behavior or belief system. If we were to find a culturally diverse and differentiated alien species, which also happens to depend on an underwater environment, it wouldn’t necessarily feel like a Planet of Hats. If said fish people all believe in the exact same aquatic religion, with no debate or deviation, it may seem a little more ‘hatty’.
The one note, no variety, plan for all the planets of Star Trek appears to be lazy writing at first glance, and it probably is. Just as the Star Trek writers rarely bothered with a language barrier, they also did not want to be tangled up with a complex system of factions, governments, belief systems, dialects, and many more intricacies unrelated to the plot that would be expected of a fully developed planet-wide civilization. To their credit, Star Trek cannon states that planets must be unified before they can join the Federation, so we might assume one world government, and possibly the same language, but the planet-wide belief system and homogeneous set of values often depicted in The Original Series only lends itself to a lovable cheesiness.
However, the Planet of Hats model, especially in the way that Star Trek uses it, can be a strong tool. All storytelling is a form of thought experiment. It presents a hypothetical situation for us to understand some aspect of our existence, or to better understand ourselves. To scrutinize its realism is to miss the point. Consider the thought experiment where one imagines a woman trapped in a black and white room for her entire life, and everything she knows about color is what she reads in books. One day, she sees the color red, does she learn anything new? If you find yourself asking, “how does the woman get food?” you are missing the point. The little practicals of life are often ignored in fiction, as the writer’s focus is always on the question that the characters explore. Far from being lazy, a Planet of Hats can be a powerful mechanism to explore philosophical questions, because it simplifies and focuses the elements of the thought experiment. Since the earliest civilizations, people have been perplexed by questions concerning the nature of evil, the true path to happiness, or the delicate balance between freedom and security. If you could convince a select few people of your point of view for each of these things, and they followed it to the letter, would they succeed and prosper? Now imagine if the whole world was like that!
Hopeless Trekkie 