I’m a pretty big Star Trek fan. I grew up watching The Next Generation with my dad, then DS9, and I even mostly liked Voyager (awesome premise, mediocre execution). The recent movie was incredibly excellent. But one thing that’s always bugged me about the franchise is how not-at-all-alien all the aliens are.
Vulcans have green blood, but they can still reproduce with humans and make Spock? 95% of the species follow a humanoid body plan? Captain Kirk seduces women from anywhere and everywhere? It’s not just biology, but culture as well. Voyager gets flung across the width of the galaxy and meets a guy who understands human jokes? Kirk visits a planet filled with the Italian Mafia? Yeah, I know it was because there aren’t any septapods in the Actor’s Guild, and the humanoid thing was established in the ’60s and became a calling card of the show (and a source of quite a few in-jokes). It’s too bad make-up and special effects budgets for film limit the creativity of the setting.
High budget CG things like Avatar don’t have the same excuse. C’mon, the aliens were just tall blue Iroqois. Even if their wider ecosystem was pretty interesting, the Na’vi had a different body plan than everything around them, and clearly didn’t evolve from the animal stock of that world. James Cameron said he intentionally made them more human so the audience could relate to them, but with a budget like Avatar, he should be able to create truly alien aliens and let the writing create the emotional connection.
However! Look what I found. Creating what I can only describe as “truly bizarre crap”, Snaiad is a world-building project set on a colony world with an 8 billion year history of life, nearly twice Earth’s. Basically, it’s speculative zoology, exploring how life could have evolved under similar conditions to Earth, and is meant to showcase how much the end results of evolution depend on chance. There are two headed psuedo-vertebrates with carbon composite bones–for starters. I’ll let you find some of the weirder (very very weirder) things they’ve come up with.
What’s your favorite alien alien from books, film, or anything else?
Ok, call me juvenile, but can somebody tell me WHAT THE HELL is the thing coming out of the chest of the animal from this page? http://www.nemoramjet.com/sndmakingof.html
Umm. It’s a second head. According to this page, it’s the digestive head used to swallow plants or prey. The top head is used to catch things, and houses the actual genitals.
Or something. Like I said, it’s weird.
Favorite alien?
The god in the Book of Mormon who resides near the planet Kolob. ;)
At least they acknowledge what it looks like… TERRIFYING.
I’ve heard some scientists (I think) make this claim and I’ll sorta stick by it. The Blob was probably the greatest alien invasion idea because it wasn’t human or bipedal or anything. It was just a sorta amoebalike whatever that just devoured shit (though it did hunt and attack things like the trailer near the end and the projector room guy). I loved it too for that reason, there was no “connection” with its feelings or something, it was totally unknown and more interesting/frightening that way. The second Thing movie (Carpenter’s version) was also like this, it took the form of whatever it found and made strange things from it, such as a flower like thing that was basically dog tongues and canines.
Agreed about the humanoid issue. I’m glad that at least around the 80s or so people were starting to use more advanced puppeting/camera technology to get around this and be more creative in designs (it was tried sometimes before but looked ridiculous. Posters kicked ass.) I still like the Xenomorphs even though the first was essentially a guy in a suit. No humanity, no hope for connection, just unknown, unknowable, unbeatable.
My two cents.
C’mon Jon, you can do better than that. God isn’t a weird unthinkable alien. He’s just another of those advanced god-like humanoid aliens that trick less-advanced cultures that Kirk was always exposing.
Oh…alien alien. I thought that was just a typo on your part, at first. So let me revise my answer.
The “wholly other” God of Catholicism. ;)
Nah, I don’t have any good answers. All I know is that really humanoid aliens ruin sci-fi movies for me–even decent ones like District 9.
Jon (this is to Jon),
Agreed about the humanoid bit, though I’d say the first Thing from Outer Space, while humanoid, was neat because it killed the wishy washy “lets understand it!” guy, which I liked.
Also, the floating Brains from Planet Aros.
Huh huh-huh…exposed….
The most alien alien I’ve even seen in a movie is Solaris. The Andrei Tarkovsky version is amazing; I haven’t seen the George Clooney version, but since it’s about half as long it might be a good idea for a SHAFT movie night.
Favorite alien race is the one from “Aliens.” So creepy and cool.
And what that other guy said about that “thing” near Kolob.
Dogger, the xenomorphs are what the aliens from that series are called, truly amazing, brilliant work by HR Giger who designed them and the ship from the first movie.
Ash: You still don’t understand what you’re dealing with, do you? Perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility.
Lambert: You admire it.
Ash: I admire its purity. A survivor… unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.
The Thing is incredible, “Aliens”s Xinomorphs are sweet was well.
Cute, but you’re making me feel old. ;)
As a kid, I watched re-runs of the original generation with my brother. I got into the Next Generation and DS9 in college! Then I starred as “Captain Thelev” in a fifteen-episode community-cable Star Trek parody.
The DVD is sitting here in the table with me — I’ve totally got to figure out how to post it on YouTube…
Whoa, that sounds awesome and potentially embarrassing. You’ll definitely have to post it.