if you’re going to cross vast distances to conquer humanity for the usual reasons, I doubt they would use guns and bombs. An EMP for starters, then gas. But it’s never gas. No, they walk around with guns and shoot, and in the case of “Fallen Skies,” they have stormtrooper aim half the time. In last night’s episode the aliens set a trap in a food warehouse, where they suspected the humans might go. Let’s imagine that conversation in the war room:
“Corporal Xxrtg, send a Mechabot 3bV to the trap, and wait for the humans to come for food.”
“Okay, but -”
“But what?”
“If they’re coming for food, they’re probably attached to a larger group. Why not just call in their appearance, and have the huntercraft look for their heat signature and vaporize them all at once?”
“Don’t ask me. Ask Commander Plrgb. It’s his call.”
“As long as we’re at it, why not just send in hush-snakes with the gas? They’d -”
“Again with the gas! It’s always the gas with you.”
“It’s just easier, that’s all I’m saying. Have you seen the reports? We have a 37% kill ratio because someone upstairs says we have to shoot them one at a time. And forget about the wide-radius heat ray, apparently.”
“I don’t make the rules of engagement. Now get on it.”
“Sure. And tell whoever assigned us the Mechabot 3bV that the men call it Old Stompy. It can’t take two steps without giving away its position.”
“Get moving.”
“Yes sir.”
There are two ways the series can end: humans win, or humans lose. “Win” is nice, rah us, but I have a hard time believing that the time-honored Ragtag Band of Scrappy Fighters can defeat a culture capable of space travel. It even makes “War of the Worlds” seem silly, because you have to imagine this conversation at HQ: did you remind the contractors to refit the ships with biofilters?”
(Panicked expression) “I thought that was your job.”
“Hell no. I TOLD you.”
“No you didn’t.”
Remind me to hire him for my next SF flick (which will also be my first).
[Update a while later]
This seems related, somehow: s3x with creatures from the future can be bad for your offspring’s health.
You have to remember that these Alien invasion TV shows and movies are mainly to take commercial advantage of the 8 years of no Iraq/Afghan war movies that weren’t anti-War-slam the troops films.
In the PC culture, you can’t attack anyone because they have just as much right to be, say, genocidal Islamo fascists as we have to be what ever it is we are at the moment. So Aliens and Nazi’s are the targets.
*********SPOILERS*************************
Although in “Super 8”, the Aliens get a pass – lest anyone watching out there might think we’re being too insensitive.
The expanding catalogue of they-want-to-steal-our-resources alien invasion flicks (see Independence Day, Battle L.A., etc.) bother me endlessly. There isn’t a single screenwriter who seems capable of understanding the staggering energies involved in interstellar travel (assuming no warp drive or other magic wand technologies). So they give us this scenario where aliens travel umpteen light years in ships so large that the acceleration/deceleration would consume the entire energy economy of the Earth ten thousand times over–for what? A sip of fresh water from our lakes and rivers? A nice spot to grow some alien wheat?
But let’s pretend for a moment that the aliens actually do have to relocate from their own solar system for some reason (forget the used-up-their-own-resources argument–unless they’re dropping their waste matter into their own primary, said matter is indefinitely recyclable). Maybe their sun is dying, or there’s a black hole wandering too close, or some other nearby star is about to get all nova-ish. So they use what they have left to fling themselves across the vast reaches and wash up in our tiny slice of the cosmos. Is it really the logical next move to land on an already-inhabited planet? If they want fresh water, there are some nice comets/icy moons they could melt down. Living space? Build a Banks Orbital out of Mars/Mercury. Apparently they know something about advanced fabrication and channelling enormous energies to their purposes.
The reality is that we would be almost an afterthought to an invading species looking for resources. The solar system is chock-full of unused, uncontested resources that they could use to build a living environment more perfectly attuned to their needs than the Earth is likely to be. We humans suit the Earth because we evolved in its environment. Aliens more likely to find it to be like we find Mars–theoretically inhabitable, but never truly comfortable.
The only unique thing that we humans can offer an alien species is our cultural quirkiness. We’d be the equivalent of a stone age tribe to our modern society–a fascinating glimpse of the past that can help shed light on how society develops. To me, a realistic alien movie would involve not conquerers, but alien xenologists come to study us and learn about us. Not necessarily to help us or hurt us, but simply to know what makes us tick. Maybe we’d end up with the equivalent of alien tourists coming to visit Earth the way students from the West descend upon South-East Asia; coming here to soak up our cultural authenticity. Maybe Earth is the only place in the cosmos where you can get good beer–who knows? To any civilization powerful enough to make interstellar travel as cheap as intercontinental travel is to us, we’d be nothing more that a minor curiousity in the grand scheme. In a way, maybe that’s the more discomforting thought than all these invasion scenarios.
I haven’t watched Fallen Skies (it’s on my DVR, waiting for my viewing time), but the only thing worth coming to Earth for is biological matter. Anything else you could want is available pretty much everywhere and easy to get.
A more “realistic” scenario is extortion – show up, make a suitable demonstration of your military prowess, and tell the locals “we want X amount of Y or your cities get it.” The very LAST thing you do is get tied down fighting in cities, gas or no gas.
@Chris: I’m sure the alien Sun Tzu would approve.
“Alien movies” tend to mirror the terreur du jour, be it totalitarianism, immigrants/refugees, environmentalism, or what-not. They usually make no more literal sense than an Aesop fable.
I did see a story where the trick to interstellar travel was simple but we missed it and we were invaded by aliens carrying flint-lock muskets who tested our air and biologicals by cyclying an alien rat out the airlock and used fire as their way to sterilize things.
Yours,
Tom
There are plenty of other “why we want your planet” scenarios in the Sci-Fi (or is that SyFy?) world, actually.
Stargate – Aliens have wormhole tech to shuttle around between planets similar to Earth, and used humans as slave labor until some of them overthrew their Gods/overlords. The aliens outlawed reading and closed a significant portion of the stargate system to avert their own demise, but now the aliens want revenge. (another race needs humans to help them prolong their race’s lifespan, because they’ve evolved and cloned themselves too far to be able to survive without fresh genetic code, but they’re good guys).
Stargate Atlantis – Humans are food for an alien species, and that species goes into hibernation every X years when the food supply runs low; they farm humans from planets like we harvest wheat from fields.
BSG – No aliens, per se, but the robots that were created to fight wars rebelled against their human creators, and, after a long and bloody war and armistice, they’re back for revenge. The humans are looking for a habitable planet where they won’t be found by their pursuers.
Granted, these are television shows, rather than movies, but they’re also “highly successful” shows, at least one borne from a concept in a movie.
As far as Independence Day, the commentary track specifically mentions that the storyline was built around the original story of War of the Worlds, including the method of saving the planet. If anyone wants to gripe about how movies revolve around such an implausible trope, blame it on H.G. Wells.
However, given that WotW and other themes popularly used in science fiction were written 100+ years ago, I’m inclined to cut Mr. Wells a little bit of slack about some of the scientific anachronisms in his stories… (although I’m slightly disinclined to cut slack to modern filmmakers who can’t update a story in light of current scientific knowledge)
What’s wrong with cows? I mean, aurochs used to be a bitch to take down with spears and arrows, but eventually we humans wised-up.
Or is it…that once you get a taste of that delicious, forbidden meat, you can just…never go back… /furtive glance
@Ash- Stephen Baxter’s novel Space is worth checking out for aplien races that do just that- they turn up and start mining the asteroids, complelty ignoring humanity until we show up and say hello (though on ther other hand another species are planet looters as per the trope)
I suspect the “Aliens are here to steal our resources” came from people who actually believe the U.S. is trying to steal Mideastern oil and want to say “How would you like it if others did that to US?”
As for why ETs would want to come to Earth… Maybe they’re here to study a mass extinction caused by primitive technology. Complex ecosystems can be studied elsewhere. Mass extinctions caused by comets or volcanoes can be studied elsewhere. Mass extinctions caused by advanced technology can be studied elsewhere. But this is the only place in the galaxy where DDT producers can be studied in their native habitat.
It makes at least as much sense as “they want to protect biodiversity” and it hasn’t been overdone yet.
We’ll know it’s true if they reveal themselves and issue an ultimatum: Place 1000 fast breeder reactors along fault lines or else!
Anyone done alien religious fanatics, commanded by their prophet to subjugate or convert all intelligent life they encounter? 😉
Perhaps the aliens came here to invest in long term US Treasury bonds, but when they discovered how much Obama’s policies were devaluing the currency, they decided to foreclose on us.
But the motivation for an alien invasion isn’t the only problem plauging “Falling Skies.” It doesn’t seem a credible military invasion or a credible response, or even a credible situation. Primitive Mongol hordes were better at domination than the show’s aliens, which reportedly wiped out 90% of humanity and then decided to sit back and fiddle around till they lose.
Hey, maybe Obama is an alien afterall.
peterh, David Webber has written a story on those lines, but no-one’s done the movie yet.
I don’t think John Ringo’s theme of ‘the aliens have known about us for thousands of years but have kept us out of polite Galactic society ‘cos we’re too warlike and might upset the status quo but now they need us to combat some other alien race’ has been tried yet either.
Peter F Hamilton has a pretty interesting alien in the Void trilogy which kinda explains the ‘why would the aliens come here’ question.
Then there’s Niven’s known space where the aliens aren’t that alien ‘cos of panspermia and anyway Earth was settled by protectors from the galactic core. A situation which might encourage other protectors to wipe us out ‘cos we’re not of their line genetically.
And to quote Mike O’Neil, (or was it Jack Horner), “Aliens are alien!” so they might invade us for totally alien reasons.
So many themes that just get forgotten in favour of hungry lizards. Oh well.
peterh – I think you had those in Stargate with the Auri. Cheers –
Guys, this is too easy.
The stories almost write themselves. E-mail for address when royalty check time comes around.
*Added storytelling bonus: these “aliens” cannot be fought, but must be exorcised!
Hi there friends, agimarc is right peterh, in Stargate Atlantis you´ve got that theme with the religious aliens…When it comes to the writing I also feel the same as many of you. Is it lack of imagination or simply commercial canned products or if you prefer the conspirational theory about this: “Censored” themes proposing more advanced aliens societies with other forms of governing platforms.
Personally I dont like the “invading” part. Too terrestrial for my taste. I believe writers must crunch their grey matter a bit more and start coming with more and various types of alien cultures. Agreed that via wormholes or similar the distance wouldnt mean much, but the technological effort would mean a more advanced society from a SOCIAL point of view. A society which administrates resources and everytyhing on a planetary kind of basis. I dont think we will see any aliens with stupid flags or country-like thinking. Thats really primitive. We are not a united planet. We are not in the list of contactable planets. Sorry. But for a movie it would be interesting to meet a really advanced space culture which can show us how to administer a planet with sucess and universal values. Our response would be very interesting to watch. And there you have your movie, who is with the good aliens and most important who would be against!! Start writing guys. Im on it! :))
Have fun
The aliens in Falling Skies are doing pretty good so far: the biggest weapon a battalion sized group owns is a single M2 machine gun. And these guys are scratch irregulars, lead by retired and passed-over officers. Everyone else is dead.
A reasonable answer to Lileks’s criticism is that the aliens are bloodthirsty critters who _like_ hunting people one by one, now that it’s safe to do so.
Perhaps they program their clumpy robots to sound menacing because they like the looks of panic on our cute ape faces. Ditto the bad aim. “Whooo hahh Grlonk, watch me make _this_ one wet his pants.” ZAP-POW-ZAP.
Think about it this way: the way we hunt deer is woefully inefficient and wasteful. We make hunters follow certain rules to prevent the game from being depleted and because it’s sporting.
Alan Dean Foster had a pair of novels that dealt with the “Earth people too violent for polite alien society”, “With Friends Like These…” and “…Who Needs Enemies?”
I really like the ending scene in the first one, and the aliens’ reactions to what happens with Earth.
I pity anybody who watched the entire 1st episode of “Fallen Skies”, I DVR’d & less than 15 minutes in stopped & deleted. I, of course, tho’t BSG & Firefly/Serenity were just as unwatchable.
Rooted in the past as I am, the best alien invasion movie was the 50’s version of “War of the Worlds” & the best SciFi movie is “Forbidden Planet”. FB is so good that no CGI moviemakers have been brave enough to do a remake.
An attempt to remake Forbidden Planet was undertaken a few years ago. The hardware and sets were designed by the great Syd Mead of Blade Runner and Alien/s fame. I’m sure his production designs are floating around somewhere on the Tubes. If not, I could post some scans.
The designs are cool, but just the same I’m glad the remake never happened.
After seeing Battle of LA I decided it could have one useful purpose: show it to cadets at West Point and then give them a quiz about how many mistakes the aliens made in order to lose.
Anyone done alien religious fanatics, commanded by their prophet to subjugate or convert all intelligent life they encounter?
“Earth in the Balance” 🙂
On another note…how about this idea? The aliens come, take over Sol’s uninhabited satellites, and pen off Earth as a reservation – Earth becomes the latest ledger item added to the intergalactic version of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
peterh – Death Day by William C. Dietz – religious aliens on some pilgrimage using earth to breed their next generation and using both other ‘lesser’ aliens and humans to build the necessary facilities. They wipe out most of human civilisation and then subjugate the survivors in the manner of slaves. They use their religion to justify their actions, much like christianity did with the new world.
Kevin B – one of the story lines in Gene Roddenberry’s series ‘Earth: Final Conflict’ was re-purposing humans to fight the alien’s battles on their behalf.
oh! and religious aliens taking out the human race – Halo. Not a movie – yet.
I’m surprised that no one’s done an “aliens = red goo” story yet: humanity is just a cyst to the nascent artificial life that’s colonizing the galaxy, turning it into a hyper-intelligent super-organism. “Aliens” arrive as artificial spores that repurpose the Earth, crowding-out native photosynthetic organisms and filling the world with inedible material. Humanity and everything else dies a slow, hungry death.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HowToInvadeAnAlienPlanet
Oh no — tvtropes.org is an alien plot to distract us for hours a time while they quietly invade. Not falling for it again…
I thought the Aliens came here because Earth Girls are Easy. =D
Although it’s been panned and is not exactly an invasion film the remake of The Day The Earth Stood still presents the most sensible reason for attacking us. Of course it also presents the most realistic example of the asymmetry of power between a star faring alien race and us.
Helen Benson: I need to know what’s happening.
Klaatu: This planet is dying. The human race is killing it.
Helen Benson: So you’ve come here to help us.
Klaatu: No, *I* didn’t.
Helen Benson: You said you came to save us.
Klaatu: I said I came to save the Earth.
Helen Benson: You came to save the Earth… from us. You came to save the Earth *from* us.
Klaatu: We can’t risk the survival of this planet for the sake of one species.
Helen Benson: What are you saying?
Klaatu: If the Earth dies, you die. If you die, the Earth survives. There are only a handful of planets in the cosmos that are capable of supporting complex life…
Helen Benson: You can’t do this.
Klaatu: …this one can’t be allowed to perish.
Helen Benson: We can change. We can still turn things around.
Klaatu: We’ve watched, we’ve waited and hoped that you *would* change.
Helen Benson: Please…
Klaatu: It’s reached the tipping point. We have to act.
Helen Benson: Please…
Klaatu: We’ll undo the damage you’ve done and give the Earth a chance to begin again.
Helen Benson: Don’t do this. Please, we can change. We can change.
Klaatu: The decision is made. The process has begun.
Helen Benson: Oh God.