[Porsche-O-Phile]

The concept of having humanoid aliens with lots in common with us was supposedly part of Rodenberry's attempt to "explore the human condition and what it means to be human" too - I remember reading that someplace. It kinda' works and yeah, even though it's a cop-out on one level, it did make the series more "doable" and successful where it otherwise might not have been possible.

The whole "what does it mean to be human" question is one of the core underlying questions that drove Rodenberry's writing. I love the episodes that poke and prod at that question, typically.

The ones I can't stand are the ones where there's some problem ("the findibulator broke", captain!") and they come up with a bunch of contrived techno-babble to "fix" it ("well I re-phased a an anti-neutrino field inside this dildo-smegma matrix and it caused a sub-space fart bubble to emerge, fixing it!") Those are weak/lazy writing to just fill a time slot.