The cultural distance between almost any pair of Star Trek species is lower than that between the US and Japan for eg.
95% of pairs would have analogies within the US, and 80% could be mapped to some pair of high-school cliques.
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Some sci-fi is just terrestrial foreign tourism with all the annoying parts bleeped out. Like weird ATMs, yucky food and people with different and wrong ritual hygiene norms.
Notice how warp travel/time travel/hyperspace jumps seem *less* unpleasant than jet lag or seasickness?

