by Don Lincoln
The format was that the Enterprise would encounter some problem at the beginning of the episode that would be resolved at the end. Thus each episode stood more-or-less alone. The seventy-eight episodes covered many of the social issues of the 1960s. For example, the episode “Let That Be Your Last Battleground,” described two Aliens, one black on the left side of his body and white on the right side, fighting another Alien from the same planet, this one black on the right side and white on the left. Their planet was destroyed from civil wars fought between these two very similar groups of people. In the end, the two Aliens headed back to their planet’s surface to continue their battle to the death. The story line was an obvious reference to the black and white racial issues playing out in the United States at the time. Critics found the message to be a bit too obvious, but it was a common sort of plot device seen in TOS.
The Enterprise was the flagship of the political organization called the United Federation of Planets (usually called just the Federation), a consortium of planets and races that joined together voluntarily. Planets that had attained faster than light technology, were peaceful, and could adhere to democratic principles in their external dealings with other races were allowed to join, although there was no restriction on any planet’s internal political and social organization. The main enemies of the Federation were the Klingon and Romulan empires. In TOS, the Klingons were very much human-like, although their features were what one might call vaguely Persian, with swarthy complexions and neatly trimmed heavy beards. The Klingons seemed to be paying an homage to Flash Gordon’s Ming the Merciless. Americans might have heard of “Death before Dishonor” as a military motto, but Klingons exemplified the credo. The Romulans were also played by human actors and were consequently human in appearance, although with pointy ears and copper-based blood. They were wily and conniving. They were collectively depicted as a combination of earthly old Roman Empire ideals with a bit of classic Ming Dynasty thrown in.
The Next Generation
Taking place a century later than the original series, the starship was now the Enterprise, model D. Captain Jean-Luc Picard led a culturally diverse crew in a series of adventures. The crew included a blend of the Earth genders and races, along with some new Aliens among the leading characters. Deanna Troi was a hybrid between a human and a Betazoid, which was a species of human-looking telepaths. In addition, the century had brought about political changes, and the Klingons were no longer enemies but allies. The security officer on the Enterprise D was Worf, a Klingon who had been adopted and raised by a human couple. In the transition from TOS to NextGen, Klingons had been reimagined, and they were now portrayed by huge humans with makeup that added a set of bony ridges to their foreheads. The change was never explained in the show but was discussed in fan-generated fiction, as well as in books approved by the show’s creators. The official explanation was given in DSN. It was an experiment in genetic engineering that went awry. The NextGen Klingons were the real ones. In NextGen, Klingons were better developed in the fictional sense. Their society was focused on honor and advancement through combat.
With Klingons now allies, new races of enemies were encountered, including the Cardassians, who played a central role in DSN, again humanoid, with a pronounced neck ridges and Orwellian culture; and the Borg, a culture of cyborgs. The Borg were not any specific race, as they incorporated all life-forms they came across. When they encountered any new species, they would broadcast: “We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. We will add your technological and genetic distinctiveness to our own. Resistance is futile.” They were a powerful culture and the species they encountered were, indeed, often assimilated. However, we only encountered humanoid Borg due to the need to contain costs and given the technology available to the show’s creators.
Another entity often encountered in NextGen was called Q. Originally apparently a single entity, we learned that the Q were actually a race of super powerful beings, with essentially godlike powers. Q could, in an instant, change reality, travel through time, destroy planets and stars, and kill or bring people back to life. It was never fully explained why Q would ever have any interest in the comparatively primitive Federation.
Other Star Trek Spinoffs
DSN, Voyager, and Enterprise introduced new races and political situations. The series were ongoing examples of how Aliens were no longer a novelty like they were in the 1950s movies, but rather were just characters to be used to advance the plot. In a sense, the various series were just a throwback to Homer’s Odyssey or Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. The races of Aliens encountered were interesting, and their differences from humanity were often the basis for the story. However meeting an Alien was run of the mill, just another type of diversity to either embrace or recoil from, but in either instance an opportunity to learn.
Without a doubt, the Star Trek fandom—nicknamed Trekkies and calling themselves Trekkers—is the most well known in all of science fiction. As of this writing, the literary empire of Star Trek is 46 years old, with another movie released in 2013. The franchise is alive and well, and I hope it will continue to, in the words of Spock, “live long and prosper.”
Star Wars
If Star Trek had a cerebral component, the Star Wars franchise was pure fun. Star Wars had a much different goal, which was to tell a classic adventure tale of a boy who didn’t realize his princely origins, a princess in distress, and a powerful and evil adversary. Star Wars is a timeless story, in a setting “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far, away.”
The Star Wars franchise began as a single movie released in 1977. The story of the film included vital plans stolen from an evil empire. These plans are for the Death Star, a mobile battle station with sufficient power to blow up an entire planet. A princess by the name of Leia was bringing the plans to troops rebelling against the Empire. Before the princess is captured by the malevolent Darth Vader, the plans are placed in a robot (called a droid in the movie), and they make it into the hands of a farm boy named Luke Skywalker. He teams up with a Jedi knight called Obi-Wan Kenobi. The Jedi were once the protectors of the galaxy, part philosophers and part warriors, keeping the peace with their trademark weapon, the light saber. Obi-Wan and Luke discover the plans and resolve to bring them to the Rebels. They enlist the help of a smuggler named Hans Solo and his copilot called Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookie, which is the first Alien main character we encounter, a 7-foot-tall hairy humanoid, reminiscent of Bigfoot and what one character called “a walking carpet.”
The group escapes Luke’s home planet, but their ship is captured and drawn into the Death Star by a tractor beam. They figure out a way to neutralize the tractor beam and escape. However, prior to the escape, Obi-Wan Kenobi engages in mortal combat with Darth Vader and loses. In addition, Luke’s group realizes that Princess Leia is on the Death Star and free her.
The spaceship escapes the Death Star with the remaining occupants. They bring the plans of the Death Star to the Rebels, but a homing beacon that the Empire had surreptitiously placed on their spaceship brings the Death Star to the base to destroy it. An attack on the Death Star by small Rebel fighters is ultimately successful and the Death Star is destroyed.
The amazing thing about Star Wars is that the Aliens are not called out as being particularly alien. They are just simply characters. Chewbacca’s “alienness” is never a concern. There is an iconic bar scene in which the patrons, entertainers, and workers are essentially all Aliens and they’re just there for color. Alienness is essentially identical to our concept of race … something there, but little remarked upon, at least among the more cosmopolitan and liberal among us.
If the original movie could have easily stood on its own, its commercial success guaranteed that there would be a sequel. The second movie was called The Empire Strikes Back (1980), followed by Return of the Jedi (1983). These two movies were really one big movie split in half, and they described Luke’s coming into his own and realizing that his father was Darth Vader. The E
mpire Strikes Back introduces Yoda, a Jedi master who has hidden from the Empire. Yoda is definitely an iconic Alien, known on sight to adults and children alike for more than 30 years. These three stories tell of the overthrow of the Emperor and the Empire, as good triumphed over evil. The story spawned hundreds of books that were very popular with young readers and avid science fiction fans.
The franchise received a reboot in 1999, when George Lucas decided to tell the origins of Darth Vader. The movie The Phantom Menace began with Luke’s father, Anakin Skywalker, as a young boy and how he encountered the Jedi and subsequently became one of the most powerful Jedi knights. The two subsequent movies Attack of the Clones (2002) and Revenge of the Sith (2005) tell the tale of Anakin’s mastery of Jedi powers and his slow corruption and change to evil, culminating in his becoming Darth Vader.
Many Aliens are encountered in the Star Wars story arc. As we have said, Yoda is a short green Alien, while Chewbacca is essentially Bigfoot. We meet Jabba the Hutt, a member of a large slug-like species. The Hutt are essentially gangsters, although it is not clear if this is a characteristic of the species or just the family we encounter. The Gungans are an amphibious species.
In The Phantom Menace, we meet Aliens who are obvious stand-ins for common earthly stereotypes. These stereotypes are not the politest and most admirable and the filmmakers have rejected any claims that they intended to incorporate stereotypes. Still, the Gungan have been criticized as being recognizable caricatures of African-heritage Caribbeans. There are also caricatures of Asians of the sort commonly seen in World War II movies—a sort of Fu Manchu—in the character of Nute Gunray, a Neimoidian. The character Watto is a Toydarian owner of a secondhand store and has likewise been criticized as a caricature of an Arabic or Jewish shopkeeper. (Personally, my impression was not of a Semitic individual but rather of a classic movie-depiction of a shady, nonmobster, recent immigrant Italian.) It is possible to accept the filmmaker’s protest of innocence and instead simply see cowardly or greedy or bumbling characters who have been historically portrayed in movies with specific, recurring characteristics.
We can go so far as to say that the fact that Aliens are associated with Earth stereotypes at all is a testament to their evolution in the minds of the public. It actually highlights just how nonalien the Aliens of Star Wars really are. We readily identify their forms as alien, but their behavior is actually quite familiar to moviegoers, and we can recognize the classic Hollywood stereotypes, even if they don’t have the right visual cues. This says a lot about the degree to which Aliens have been accepted in our culture and the degree to which the Star Wars filmmakers have incorporated commonly used Hollywood caricatures. This movie franchise has amassed over two billion dollars (four billion when adjusted for inflation), suggesting that a movie in which Aliens are accepted as “just folks” will be commercially successful and can perhaps shape the public’s viewpoint that Aliens will be much like us. This is likely to be factually incorrect, but that’s not the story that Hollywood is telling us.
Alien
If the Star Wars franchise presents Aliens that are recognizably human, the movie Alien depicts something very different. The Alien in Alien isn’t named, but it is called a xenomorph. It is unclear if the Alien is intelligent in the commonly used meaning of the word. It is a eusocial species, essentially structured on the idea of a wasp colony. Their “society,” for lack of a better word, consists of a single, egg-laying queen, along with a caste of warriors. The movie Alien was released in 1979, with three subsequent sequels: Aliens (1986), Alien 3 (1992), and Alien Resurrection (1997). Two additional movies bridged the Alien universe and another series called Predator.
The Alien movies have only the most modest of plots. The xenomorphs are supreme hunters, and humans are simply food or organisms that facilitate xenomorph reproduction. The Alien queen lays eggs, which contain a crab-like form of the alien that grabs a human’s face and implants an embryo through the mouth. The face-hugging form falls off, and the embryo grows. Eventually the embryo burrows out of the human’s chest, killing it. The xenomorph grows into its large form, which captures humans and brings them to back to the eggs to gestate additional Aliens (figure 4.1).
That unarmed humans are no match for the xenomorphs is a central theme of all of the movies. The entire franchise is an extended nightmare, with tremendous carnage. A single female human protagonist named Ripley is the heroine who we root for throughout the series, and she successfully defeats the enemy in each movie. While the Alien franchise is clearly a movie about Aliens, it is really just a horror film and taps into the same sort of fear as the movie Jaws. Movies in which humans are helpless victims are just plain scary.
FIGURE 4.1. The Alien in the movie Alien is humanoid because filmmakers of that era did not have access to today’s computer graphics technology and therefore the Alien had to be played by a human actor. However, the behavior of this Alien is not at all human-like. Instead it is a ravenous monster from mankind’s dark psyche. 20th Century Fox.
Stargate
The Stargate juggernaut consists of both a movie and an extensive television franchise, with a couple additional movies that were released only on DVD. On television, shows that were inspired by the original movie ran for about 14 years, with three distinct series.
The premise of the original movie (1994) is that archaeologists find a large “Stargate” in Giza in 1928. The Stargate consists of a large hoop with glyphs running around the perimeter. It takes until 1994 before it is understood that this hoop is actually a bit of Alien technology. It has been moved to a U.S. military. base located at Creek Mountain and powered up. Nobody has any idea what it really does until an archaeologist deciphers the glyphs and realizes that the hoop must be turned in a specific sequence like the combination lock of a safe. When done properly, the Stargate is opened, connecting our world to another Stargate on another world.
A military team is sent through the gate with the archaeologist, and they encounter a world that is much like ancient Egypt, desert and sandy. They find a powerful Alien who once lived on Earth as the Egyptian god Ra. He has enslaved humans to serve him, and it becomes clear that the culture of ancient Egypt began because of a visit by this immortal Alien. The military team is able to initiate a rebellion among the slaves and Ra attempts to escape in a spaceship that is easily recognizable as an Egyptian pyramid. However, the military team had brought with them a tactical nuclear weapon to detonate if they encountered a situation that was deemed dangerous to Earth. They were able to put the weapon on Ra’s spacecraft, and it exploded as the spacecraft was leaving the planet’s atmosphere. The military team returned to Earth through the Stargate, leaving behind the archaeologist.
The idea that Egyptian culture was influenced by ancient Aliens is a familiar one, made popular by Erich von Däniken. It is unclear how successful this franchise would have been, had the public not been primed by such books as Chariots of the Gods.
The original movie was commercially successful, bringing in about $200 million. This led to the television shows. Stargate SG-1 (1997–2007) had 214 episodes, Stargate Atlantis (2004–2009) had 100, and Stargate Universe (2009–2011) had 40. In the various shows, the creators had ample time to expand their vision of the Stargate universe and the inhabitants found within it. The plot line was somewhat like Star Trek in that the episode of the week involved going somewhere, encountering some problem, and solving it. In doing so, the protagonists encountered a dizzying panoply of Aliens. It is quite impossible to cover all of the species and their various interconnections. Let’s look at two races closely, as they involve archetypes we have encountered before.
The Goa’uld are Aliens of the type found in the original movie. It turns out that Ra, who was a somewhat androgynous human, was merely a human host for the real Alien. The Goa’uld are snakelike parasites that can attach themselves to a brainstem and control the human host. This symbiotic connection confers long life on the carrier, at the expense of losing the c
arrier’s personality. The Goa’uld are compassionless and are bent on galactic domination. They are noteworthy in our context, as this particular variant of Alien was supposedly on Earth in our history, as suggested by von Däniken (although von Däniken was very light on the details). According to the show’s mythology, humans would not have been able to build the pyramids without the technology of the Goa’uld.
FIGURE 4.2. The Asgard of Stargate have many of the characteristics of stereotypical Alien Grays. MGM Television Worldwide Productions.
Another important Alien from the Stargate universe are the Asgard. The Asgard are a declining species who have lost their ability for sexual reproduction and must clone themselves to survive. Although in the distant past they were human in appearance, the repeated cloning has led to degradation in their form. The Asgard now are the canonical “Gray” Aliens of the type seen by Betty and Barney Hill (figure 4.2). The Asgard visited Earth in the prehistory of early Nordic tribes, including the Vikings. In fact, one of the main Asgard characters in the series is Thor, the original Norse god of thunder. The Asgard are technologically advanced and fight the Goa’uld. The Asgard are also under attack by another Alien species called the Replicators, a race of robotic Aliens that attack and assimilate other species’ technology. The Replicators are somewhat like the Borg of Star Trek.
Many, many Aliens are encountered in the Stargate universe, with the bulk of the story lines having to do with how they shaped Earth’s history. In a later multiyear story arc of the series, an Alien species is found to be responsible for the legend of Merlin in King Arthur’s saga. The Aliens of Stargate have motivations that are generally recognizable as being pretty human. Conquest, aggression, strife, and defense—we can relate to these characters because they are motivated very much like we are.
