Cognisant
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From what I've heard this is going to be somewhat similar to "The Orville" which I've only seen trailers of.
Imagine a show that takes place in the background of shows like Star Trek and Stargate, where instead of focusing on some small elite team or the bridge staff (i.e. the important people) the focus is on the support staff, the important people occasionally make brief cameos just to let the audience know there's amazing exciting stuff going on but that all happens off screen. For example there could be a massive space battle going on outside, the ship is being rocked by explosions, and that's largely irrelevant. Because the focus is on the interpersonal tension between the galley chefs after some some human/alien cultural misunderstanding makes one think the other made a pass at them while that other thinks the first is harboring some kind of resentment towards them.
Why I'm interested in this is that after you come up with a premise this sitcom stuff basically writes itself, for example there's an amorphous alien who feels they're being overlooked for promotion because the predominately musculoskeletal higher ups have a bias in favor of body structures like their own. So the amorphous alien gets itself a mobility frame, basically a mechanical skeleton it can wrap itself around and cling onto in order to raise itself up from being a blob on the ground. Sure enough it starts being treated with more respect but then there's this whole discussion about whether that proves the higher ups are biased or if the amorphous alien earned their respect by learning an entirely new skill-set (bipedal locomotion) and they're just acknowledging it for the competency it hadn't otherwise proven.
Now there's the coding problem, Overly Sarcastic Productions explain this very well so I'm just going link you to their video.
I think that problem comes about by writers being lazy, unless you're intentionally trying to allude to racism or the bias against short people for positions of authority (which is almost always a terrible idea) what you can do is simply lampshade it. Have the amorphous alien speak to someone that fills them in to the known bias humans have for taller humans particularity for positions of authority and have the alien say "yeah but I'm not human so why should that apply to me, I can do things humans can't precisely because I don't have bones" and lampshade racism by having the alien consult with another alien who has been promoted to a position of authority and have them say "perhaps height is a factor but what have you done to prove your competency", "I can do things humans can't, I think I can offer a lot as a fresh perspective", "yes you have a lot to offer based on what you are but that's your capabilities not your competency, to be a leader it's who you are that matters".
By contrast the movie "Bright" alluded to racism but didn't really have anything interesting to say about it, the racism is justified by the Orcs having aided some dark lord in the past and that by itself is a great premise but in the context of being an allusion to racial tensions in the US it's fucking awful. That good premise has been castrated by being put in the context of real world racial tensions because we all know racism is bad therefore the movie can't say anything interesting about the orcs being traditionally the bad guys or reminiscing about having a dark lord to serve without being called out for misrepresenting the racism it is an allusion of.
Imagine a show that takes place in the background of shows like Star Trek and Stargate, where instead of focusing on some small elite team or the bridge staff (i.e. the important people) the focus is on the support staff, the important people occasionally make brief cameos just to let the audience know there's amazing exciting stuff going on but that all happens off screen. For example there could be a massive space battle going on outside, the ship is being rocked by explosions, and that's largely irrelevant. Because the focus is on the interpersonal tension between the galley chefs after some some human/alien cultural misunderstanding makes one think the other made a pass at them while that other thinks the first is harboring some kind of resentment towards them.
Why I'm interested in this is that after you come up with a premise this sitcom stuff basically writes itself, for example there's an amorphous alien who feels they're being overlooked for promotion because the predominately musculoskeletal higher ups have a bias in favor of body structures like their own. So the amorphous alien gets itself a mobility frame, basically a mechanical skeleton it can wrap itself around and cling onto in order to raise itself up from being a blob on the ground. Sure enough it starts being treated with more respect but then there's this whole discussion about whether that proves the higher ups are biased or if the amorphous alien earned their respect by learning an entirely new skill-set (bipedal locomotion) and they're just acknowledging it for the competency it hadn't otherwise proven.
Now there's the coding problem, Overly Sarcastic Productions explain this very well so I'm just going link you to their video.
I think that problem comes about by writers being lazy, unless you're intentionally trying to allude to racism or the bias against short people for positions of authority (which is almost always a terrible idea) what you can do is simply lampshade it. Have the amorphous alien speak to someone that fills them in to the known bias humans have for taller humans particularity for positions of authority and have the alien say "yeah but I'm not human so why should that apply to me, I can do things humans can't precisely because I don't have bones" and lampshade racism by having the alien consult with another alien who has been promoted to a position of authority and have them say "perhaps height is a factor but what have you done to prove your competency", "I can do things humans can't, I think I can offer a lot as a fresh perspective", "yes you have a lot to offer based on what you are but that's your capabilities not your competency, to be a leader it's who you are that matters".
By contrast the movie "Bright" alluded to racism but didn't really have anything interesting to say about it, the racism is justified by the Orcs having aided some dark lord in the past and that by itself is a great premise but in the context of being an allusion to racial tensions in the US it's fucking awful. That good premise has been castrated by being put in the context of real world racial tensions because we all know racism is bad therefore the movie can't say anything interesting about the orcs being traditionally the bad guys or reminiscing about having a dark lord to serve without being called out for misrepresenting the racism it is an allusion of.
