RE: Animal Intelligence and its Implications for Alien Life Part 1: Octopi
This is a cool and interesting little write-up—I definitely think a tentacled alien like the one you mentioned would be cool, although tv show budgets might still make it unfeasible.
I love Star Trek, but can definitely acknowledge how problematic the alien races are. The Reduced Shakespeare Company has a bit in their The Bible: The Complete Word of God [Abridged] about how Ferengi are Jews in space, Klingons are Black people, and so on—each race can basically be read as a homogenized and stereotypical representation of an ethnic group here on Earth. While I like to give Roddenberry more credit than that, it has always been a little disappointing to have almost entirely humanoid aliens. As tech advances, maybe we'll get some better options in the future!
The Ferengi were intended to parody American consumerism and greed, but yeah, they were way too easily taken to be parodies of Jewish people. Similar things with the Klingons, the Romulans, the Vulcans, etc- they were each meant to be takes on various political groups, but their success was highly variable.
For sure. I tend not to focus on that too much, since I feel like Star Trek made some great political points and was generally pretty radical.