Monochrome Aliens in SciFi

[Keith&Co.]

A common complaint against alien races in Trek and other SciFi settings is how they are all the same. They all speak the same language, belong to one government, reflect only one or two motivations

I begin to wonder, though, if that's limited writing or pretty much how things are going to be?

When we start making contacts with aliens, they're going to be aliens, not costumed-or-CGI plot devices used to examine the human condition. chances are, we will not really understand their motivations unless they resemble one of ours. So an alien might seek to warble with the higher strata, acquire resources to establish a nest, contact the philosophical heirs of his favorite rock plucker, and fine tune his transport's windows to filter the electromagnetic spectrum in artistic ways though not in a part of what WE consider the visible spectrum.

Most of his goals will be as opaque to us as his filtered windows. All we can really relate to is the acquisition. So to us, the species appears to be greedy materialists.

We may be completely at a loss to identify the distinctions in their government factions, their genders, their races. Or our views of the differences may jar with theirs...

In the Ringworld universe, one species reproduces by laying their eggs as parasites in another species. To the Puppeteers, this other species is considered their third gender.

So while actual races we may come to contact will have rich diversity in thought, society, politics, and music, the best we may EVER be able to do is prop up a cardboard cutout as a stand-in for our understanding of the whole species.

 

[Sarpedon]

Star wars recently added Mon Cals in different colors, but that just leads to the question of why on Admiral Akbar's ship in RotJ there was only one color. Was Akbar a secret racist among his own kind?

 

[Underseer]

There are exceptions.

The original Klingons were exactly as you say, but by TNG, we were introduced to the idea of "Houses." Through near-constant civil wars, at any time, a new House could become dominant and radically alter the course of the entire Klingon empire. This reveals that different Klingons can have different goals and ideologies. There's even an outcast group of Klingons that refuse to kill.

The Shi'ar empire of the Marvel universe can radically alter based on fratricide or attempted fratricide. From my admittedly fuzzy and unreliable memory, rule of the empire generally goes back and forth between two sisters who periodically overthrow each other through subterfuge or violence. Whenever Lilandra rules, non-Shi'ar citizens have the same rights as Shi'ar citizens (there are citizens of different species as the result of past conquests), and the empire generally avoids war with neighboring interstellar powers. When her sister Deathbird is on the throne, all non-Shi'ar citizens become marginalized second-class citizens, and the empire immediately sets about conquering as much territory from neighboring powers as they can. Clearly there must be different groups within the Shi'ar empire who have very different ideas about rule, politics, and society.

 

[Underseer]

Star wars recently added Mon Cals in different colors, but that just leads to the question of why on Admiral Akbar's ship in RotJ there was only one color. Was Akbar a secret racist among his own kind?

The writers of Star Wars never seem to think those things through.

In the original movie (episode 4), there was a clear parallel drawn between droids and African slaves in America, but then the movies never did anything with that metaphor, and anytime you think about that particular metaphor, you're left wondering why none of the heroes are trying to free the droids from bondage if they represent enslaved Africans in that particular story.

- - - Updated - - -

Should this thread be in Media & Popular Culture?

 

[Sarpedon]

Oh, do you remember the shitstorm that happened when Tuvok was black?

It's also worth noting that in Star Trek Next Gen, you had both black and white actors playing klingons, and their skin tones were highly variable. Same with Bajorans.

Cardassians are all grey, but if you can imagine any alien races enforcing skin conformity, its them.

 

[Keith&Co.]

I wasn't saying there's never diversity in SciFi, just reacting to a fairly common cimplaint lodged against a lot of scifi.
And wondering if it might turn out to be true.

Such as, to aliens, we might have indistinguishable religions.
"What do humans worship?"
"They worship invisible people who live in the sky."
"Do they ever come down out of the sky?"
"They did... LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time ago. But not much anymore."
"Hmm. Anything else?"
"Well, I guess their biosphere used to have some crazy shit. Talking snakes, flying horses, basilisks, snakes the size of the equator..."
"Used to?"
"They all went away when the invisible people stopped coming down."

 

[Underseer]

Speaking of the Marvel universe, the Xandarians almost certainly have a wide variety of ideologies animating their politics in their flawed implementation of democracy, but then again, their function in the Marvel universe is to die so that certain Marvel superheroes can arise.

Hey, did I mention that the capital planet got its population ravaged by Thanos before the infamous

Show

finger snap?

The way is technically clear for them to introduce Nova.

 

[braces_for_impact]

As I brought up in a recent thread, STNG had a clever way to explain the similarity of so many species in the galaxy, explaining that our galaxy was seeded by an early awakening species that used their own DNA as the basis for many other species. We know very little about exobiology, so it's difficult to imagine what other sentient, intelligent species might look like. Tools will have to be used, and so there will have to be fine manipulation involved, which would entail finger-like appendages or perhaps tentacle-like? Very little else seems guaranteed to my mind. Sight, hearing, smell, taste, these senses may be radically different from ours, or they may have senses we cannot hope to initially comprehend. Other variables that would certainly affect the appearance or biological structure is respiration, gravity, sexual selection (is there sex?) and so on. I admit I have a hard time imagining anything besides our form of symmetry with arms, legs and a head, just maybe in a different order of some kind. Another initial thought is octopus-like, perhaps with some kind of fine motor control at the end of the tentacle. I probably have a pretty strong lack of imagination though.

The idea that we really won't understand such an alien except as a very generic concept of what it's actually like to be one? Makes sense to me. Hell, sometimes we humans suck at putting ourselves in the shoes of other humans, and at least we all have feet!

 

[bilby]

The aliens can hardly help being monochrome, when they come from planets so lacking in diversity.

Here on Earth, we have hot, sandy deserts; Steaming jungles; Vast desolate icy wastes; A huge variety of environments, each with its effects on the outlook, behaviour and even appearance of the inhabitants.

Pity the poor aliens, who live on planets that are 100% hot, sandy dessert (Tatooine); 100% desolate icy wastes (Hoth); or 100% steaming jungle (Dagobah). They simply evolved in environments that were too homogeneous to foster diversity. Probably because the writers lacked imagination, and just scaled up the Earth and put bits of it in various places as separate planets.

 

[steve_bank]

Tje Original ST got away with dealing with 60s sensitive issues like race because it was framed in scifi. Same with Twighlight Zone. Both original ST and Twilight Zone were morality plays.


The aliens were different in ST, got more diverse in STNG, and more so in STDS9.

We see politics and culture in chimp and gorrila society. What else can scifi talk to?

The aliens of ST were certainly not one dimensional presenting a range of cultura and genetic possibilities. The ST saga prented an array of possiblities fror intelligent life that were not humanoid.

I the aliens did not speak english, then we'd have to be reading sub titles, like anoying French films. In STNG they had traslators embedded in tyheir heads....

 

[Elixir]

I wasn't saying there's never diversity in SciFi, just reacting to a fairly common cimplaint lodged against a lot of scifi.
And wondering if it might turn out to be true.

Such as, to aliens, we might have indistinguishable religions.
"What do humans worship?"
"They worship invisible people who live in the sky."
"Do they ever come down out of the sky?"
"They did... LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time ago. But not much anymore."
"Hmm. Anything else?"
"Well, I guess their biosphere used to have some crazy shit. Talking snakes, flying horses, basilisks, snakes the size of the equator..."
"Used to?"
"They all went away when the invisible people stopped coming down camera was invented."

FIFY

"... but they came back after photoshop was invented"

 

[braces_for_impact]

Somewhat related, there's been some new hypothesizing with the drake equation. I admit, I find it's conclusion somewhat...lonely.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I wasn't saying there's never diversity in SciFi, just reacting to a fairly common cimplaint lodged against a lot of scifi.
And wondering if it might turn out to be true.

Such as, to aliens, we might have indistinguishable religions.
"What do humans worship?"
"They worship invisible people who live in the sky."
"Do they ever come down out of the sky?"
"They did... LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time ago. But not much anymore."
"Hmm. Anything else?"
"Well, I guess their biosphere used to have some crazy shit. Talking snakes, flying horses, basilisks, snakes the size of the equator..."
"Used to?"
"They all went away when the invisible people stopped coming down."

This is why more people need to watch Babylon 5. It even explains religion!