[Star Trek like] number of planets and sapients

[Flyndaran]

"Fortunately", we still know so little about the prevalence of other Earth like planets and the very origins of life here that it's perfectly plausible to reduce the thread title's number as much as one prefers.

Sure, mere life could be ubiquitous but complex long lasting life could require something odd that our system just happened to have. Maybe it needs to have had an early moon creating impact. That alone should drastically winnow down the number of candidates.