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You favorite alien race (my favorite is Asgard from Stargare SG1 :-) )

Pawelk198604

By Pawelk198604
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CaptainKipard

CaptainKipard

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Asgard for sure! They're a great example of the ideal that brains triumph over brawn (even though their technology led to their ultimate downfall). By the way the Asgard jerks from SGA were still a cool idea. It's always great to have multidimensional characters.

In second place the Vulcans, although I wish the writers had made them more about actual logic, rather than the colloquial "common sense" type of "logic".

As villains I like the Silence. So creepy.

lossy-page1-567px-The_Silent.tif.jpg

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Ravenchant

Ravenchant

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Aliens (from the first two films) are awesome, but their reproductory cycle breaks my suspension of disbelief :P

I'm going to go with the Hanar from Mass Effect, mainly because they actually seem alien and not just like humans with four eyes/three fingers/more body hair/less body hair/a turd glued onto their foreheads.

Edited by Ravenchant
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Helix935

Helix935

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Aliens (from the first two films) are awesome, but their reproductory cycle breaks my suspension of disbelief :P

i also love the aliens from the first 2 alien movies and just so you know they based how they reproduced from real organisms such as wasps which were the basis for the chest busters/bursting as that is how they lay their eggs and the facehuggers are based off horseshoe crabs (well not exactly, it was based of this fossil found but i can't remember what it was called but it is in the same family) and also the aliens are eusocial like ants.

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Beowolf

Beowolf

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Titans, from Varley's Titan trilogy! The Black Cloud, from the book of the same name by Fred Hoyle. Flouwen from Rocheworld. Niven's puppeteers, thrint and bandersnatchi...

IMO movie aliens are boring. They're either just humans in makeup/rubber suits, or a blend of two or three Earth animals. The best ones I can think of aren't actually "races", but special effects. The id monster from Forbidden Planet, V*ger from Star Trek The Motion Picture, etc. I loved the water tentacle and alien probes from The Abyss, but once they showed the actual alien race, meh.

In the famous Star Wars cantina scene, the Ithorian and Talz had awesome faces. But their bodies were pointlessly Earth-like and turned them into just "guys in rubber suits". R2D2 was more alien.

Don't get me wrong, I love SF movies. I just don't think the look of alien races is something they've done well. Many of Earth's deep-ocean species are much weirder looking than any movie aliens I can think of, and they're practically our cousins by comparison.

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KerbMav

KerbMav

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Titans, from Varley's Titan trilogy! The Black Cloud, from the book of the same name by Fred Hoyle. Flouwen from Rocheworld. Niven's puppeteers, thrint and bandersnatchi...

IMO movie aliens are boring. They're either just humans in makeup/rubber suits, or a blend of two or three Earth animals. The best ones I can think of aren't actually "races", but special effects. The id monster from Forbidden Planet, V*ger from Star Trek The Motion Picture, etc. I loved the water tentacle and alien probes from The Abyss, but once they showed the actual alien race, meh.

In the famous Star Wars cantina scene, the Ithorian and Talz had awesome faces. But their bodies were pointlessly Earth-like and turned them into just "guys in rubber suits". R2D2 was more alien.

Don't get me wrong, I love SF movies. I just don't think the look of alien races is something they've done well. Many of Earth's deep-ocean species are much weirder looking than any movie aliens I can think of, and they're practically our cousins by comparison.

It depends - if the aliens are just "monsters", any form is possible - but I think there are some necessities for developing, constructing and using technology like space ships - so some similarities are unavoidable.

A race of dolphin-like aliens that steers their ship by whistle-commands sounds innovative - but who built the ship - or the first tool to begin with?

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Beowolf

Beowolf

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It depends - if the aliens are just "monsters", any form is possible - but I think there are some necessities for developing, constructing and using technology like space ships - so some similarities are unavoidable.

A race of dolphin-like aliens that steers their ship by whistle-commands sounds innovative - but who built the ship - or the first tool to begin with?

Well, Titans are a genegineered space station. The Black Cloud was a sentient mass of gas and dust that evolved in space and didn't need a ship. Flouwen lived in water/ammonia oceans and humans built their first space suits. No, dolphins aren't going into space until they grow some substitute for hands.

When I mentioned deep-ocean, I mean more along the lines of...oh I'm just thinking off the top of my head, so let's say a mashup between a starfish and a manta ray, with the eyestalks extended until they become tentacles with multiple eyes along the outer side of each one. Those do the detail work, while the entire wing and tail flexes enough to do the heavy lifting and defense, with suckers along the bottom to hold onto things.

And that isn't even the spacefaring form! That's just this planet's equivalent of our lungfish, the first large creature to crawl out and live on the shore. Now we let that evolve on land for a few hundred million years into thousands of entirely different species based on that body plan just like all non-microscopic land animals on Earth are based on that lungfish. And you end up with a tool-using intelligent race that has binocular vision and a type of hands, but doesn't look or move anything like us. Let's picture them as 2 feet high, 20 feet across, and 15 feet long. Do they communicate through sounds like us, or do they ripple patterns and/or images across parts of their bodies with chromotaphores like squid do? No, I've got it! They have a little hagfish in their gene pool too, and spit wads of mucus containing memory chemicals into each other's mouths to communicate!

Now that's alien! And just imagine the first-contact, when they "talk" to us. :) Even here, I was cheating since I used Earth life as a starting point. But making a truly alien alien is hard, and this was just improv. :)

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Xorth Tanovar

Xorth Tanovar

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When I mentioned deep-ocean, I mean more along the lines of...oh I'm just thinking off the top of my head, so let's say a mashup between a starfish and a manta ray, with the eyestalks extended until they become tentacles with multiple eyes along the outer side of each one. Those do the detail work, while the entire wing and tail flexes enough to do the heavy lifting and defense, with suckers along the bottom to hold onto things.

This concept is similar to the life forms found in the novel Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward. Though they are more "amoebic" in form, the eye-stalks were necessary as well. But they were microscopic in size, given that anything much bigger would have been crushed under the gravity of the neutron star they lived on!

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Beowolf

Beowolf

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This concept is similar to the life forms found in the novel Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward. Though they are more "amoebic" in form, the eye-stalks were necessary as well. But they were microscopic in size, given that anything much bigger would have been crushed under the gravity of the neutron star they lived on!

I may have subconsciously ripped him off, as I've read that book but didn't remember remember much about the aliens' description beyond them being tiny and flat. Although I was thinking about manta rays anyway because of this Ted talk:

Edited by Beowolf
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Beowolf

Beowolf

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Dispatcher: I kinda like these beings (but are they all aliens?):

Me too! So very much!

Last time I was marathon-watching all the 1960s scifi shows, I was struck by this thought: Imagine how amazing Lost In Space could have been had it been run by Joseph Stefano (Outer Limits creator, and both producer and writer of about half the episodes) rather than Irwin Allen. Kill Dr. Smith off after the pilot, keep the scifi horror feel of the first few episodes, and have someone at the helm who cared deeply about quality instead of always looking for the cheapest way out...

...and it probably would have been cancelled after one season. I never was in-step with the mood of popular culture. :(

/Don't hate me, LiS fans! I like the episodes where they were taking it seriously. But no talking carrots, cowboys, or motorcycle gangs in space, please.

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Dispatcher

Dispatcher

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I agree with you Beowolf. From what I've read/ watched, LiS was time slotted against Batman, so Allen decided to go with the campy colors and plots in order to capture the same audience. Dumb thing to do IMHO.

Edit: if you haven't, watch an entire episode of "Outer Limits" called "Architects of Fear", I recommend doing so. Can still scare.

Edited by Dispatcher
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