A fictional alien race could be as numerous as human beings or feature even greater numbers, and that’s a lot of individual characters to get to know. Luckily, around three out of every four alien species throughout the endless expanse of space have a single concept that they and everyone else can define them by.
Some tropes emerge because a lot of authors came up with thesame theoretical scientific advancementat once. Others come up as writers build on each other’s work to constantly expand outward. Still, others are just time savers that become shorthand in an audience’s mind. Unfortunately, some can subtract interesting detail and stumble into some troublesome ideas.
RELATED:The Advanced Ancient Civilization Trope In Sci-fi, Explained
The planet of hats is a general term for an entire race, species, population, or culture of beings that theoretically have individual identities, but who all share a single central characteristic. Maybe every person on the planet is in tune with nature, or maybe they’re allinvolved with organized crime, or maybe they all strictly follow the same code of ethics. Or indeed, maybe they all wear the same hat. This is extremely common in episodic fiction in which the main thrust of the narrative comes from exploring countless new planets. In real life, the one intelligent species we’re aware of has almost infinite complexity between its individual members, so it stands to reason that any alien race would do the same. That would be very difficult to depict in a single novelor episode of TV. It’s easier to just slap a label that says “hat planet” or whatever on each new culture and call it a day.
The go-to example of this trope that also happens to be the most prolific is unquestionablythe proud warrior race. These characters are defined by their strict life of battle, their need to prove themselves in combat, their aggressive competitive nature, and their air of superiority. Most long-running works of space exploration fiction feature one or more proud warrior races.Star Trekhas the Klingon, who talk non-stop about honor and solve their problems with violence.Star Warshas the Mandalorians, who hold weaponry as sacred and live by a strict code as warriors.Dragon Ball Z’s main characters are Saiyans, who are molded for violence by nurture and nature and who literally grow more powerful after dying in combat. Whileindividual characters from these speciescan shine, the idea of a culture that only exists to participate in war doesn’t make a lot of sense. Tons of real-world cultures define themselves by struggle, but there has to be more than battle to build a culture.
Proud hunters are also an extremely common hat. Look no further than thePredator franchise’s Yautja cultureto see that personified. Comedies love to subvert the idea with countless silly examples. A random episode ofFuturamamight introduce a planet of people who respond neutrally to all stimuli, or a planet of Amazonian women, or a planet of gangsters. It’s clearly a gag at the expense of other works that do the same thing. This trope likely has its origin in old Greek myth, which imagined places like Atlantis and Hyperborea. These mythical lands featured populations of humanoids with only one identifiable trait. This extends to Jonathan Swift’sGulliver’s Travels, which featured the eponymous lead character’s journey to a ton of lands of hats. The hats trope certainly isn’t exclusive to sci-fi. Old fantasy runs into this idea all the time with races like elves, dwarves, and orcs bearing one central characteristic.
There is a laziness to the planet of hats trope. Reducing the infinite complexity that can emerge within a group of sentient beings to a single marketable trait weakens them as a force in the narrative and reduces realism. Perhaps more importantly, it treads dangerously close to stereotyping races of people with single negative traits that lead to grim beliefs. In the worst cases,actual racist stereotypes are applied to fictional species, either as an example of laziness or outright prejudice. The planet of hats trope can save a lot of time, but it is inherently reductive, and it runs the risk of making something genuinely hateful.
In good examples, however, there are upsides to using the planet of hats trope. Defining a character in opposition to their role in a culture of hats makes for an interesting narrative device. A person living against the way in which their species typically behaves can be a great source of conflict in a story. The planet of hatsgags in comedic sci-fican also be very funny, examining the impossible absurdism of a group of people fully committed to whatever bizarre idea they’ve chosen. It’s a risky idea to boil a species down to a single detail, but, if well-executed, the planet of hats can be fun and engaging.
