Most Cliche'd Alien

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2005-05-09 11:36am

What do you people think is the most cliche alien race out there? The one that we groan at each time it's brought up (or brought up badly) on a sci-fi show, movie or book?

Personally, I'm rather annoyed at the extreme proliferation of Greys, Asgard, Sectoids, Vree, Arilou'laleelay, etc. The exact same race each time, just a different setting and name. Ooh! Look! Big eyed technologists with space ships. Mostly saucers!

Ender · Post by **Ender** » 2005-05-09 11:39am

human/cat aliens. Hate the damn things. Only there to serve as wankoff material for furries.

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2005-05-09 11:41am

Ender wrote:human/cat aliens. Hate the damn things. Only there to serve as wankoff material for furries.

You mean like 'Warrior Cats'? Like... Kilrathi, Kzinti, Orions, Mrrshan?

Ender · Post by **Ender** » 2005-05-09 11:47am

Nephtys wrote:
Ender wrote:human/cat aliens. Hate the damn things. Only there to serve as wankoff material for furries.
You mean like 'Warrior Cats'? Like... Kilrathi, Kzinti, Orions, Mrrshan?

Yep. And about the 7 different types in SW, and the one that cropped up in ST, etc. I hate the things.

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » 2005-05-09 11:58am

I just hate the warrior races, as though war is the sum total of an entire civilisation's cultural history. The Klingons fit this bill especially, but they're not the only ones. They're just the most obvious. The Cat races Ender refers to is more of a symptom of this stereotype than the foundation. It just bugs me. They also almost always have some kind of 'honour' system that allows them to slaughter innocents and otherwise be fantastic fuckheads to other people.

PeZook · Post by **PeZook** » 2005-05-09 12:14pm

The insect-like, hive-minded gloopy organic kind. With a queen. Somehow superior to everyone else, and always bigger, stronger, faster and generally deadly.

I. Fucking. Hate. Them.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2005-05-09 12:35pm

Body snatchers.

Do it just a little and it can be effective, but it's been done all the time so it has almost no impact whatsoever, except for seeming cheap.

Good example would be the alien bounty hunter/super soldier/whatever guys that showed up in almost every episode of The X-Files that was part of the "Conspiracy" storyarc. I fucking hated those bastards because they weren't interesting at all.

Shroom Man 777 · Post by **Shroom Man 777** » 2005-05-09 12:39pm

My particular sci-fi universe has a lot of these cliches. We've got a alliance between insects and mollusks and they use organic tech. And we've got evil Bear aliens that wage war and kill lots and lots of things. And we've got fancy Grey aliens.

The funny thing is:

The Grey aliens are not benevolent, but arrogant and laugh at humanity for all the stupid shit we've got. They're still peaceful though. And they got their advanced assess nearly driven to extinction by the Bear aliens, who use shitloads of nukes and diesel powered tanks and fission powered spaceships. The Greys ditched organic "crystalline armor" as soon as the humans started selling them scrap iron.

The situation is similar to the insect organic tech aliens. They're buying scrap metal from the bear aliens. And they often use bear-alien starship chassis for their own ships. They've got some fancy tech, but they're not superior.

The dominating races here are us, humans. And the bears. We're still crazy as we are today. There are fundies. Scientology has become a dominant religion. There are candies that cause orgasms. The bears are communistic, led by an Imperator, and most of the people love the Imperator. They've got a shitload of soldiers, but not honorable warrior types. Soviet conscript types. And they've got SS-type special forces. And big diesel powered tanks. And lots of rebels. And the Imperial citizens of these folk are all lovably deluded and lovingly love their lovable Imperator (restaurants even have menus with quotes from the Imperator).

Yeah, this is shameless plugging.

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EmperorChrostas the Cruel · Post by **EmperorChrostas the Cruel** » 2005-05-09 12:43pm

Logical aliens that are better off with a dose of Earthman's Superstitions. (We have something BETTER than logic, FEELINGS!)

Decadent aliens that have lost the "scrappy, can do" attitude. Their pessimism is self fufilling.

Truly Godlike aliens that even notice, much less care about us. Like Q. (In a comic parody mix of Dr. Who meets ST TOS,and they both meet. ST TNG, Q is described by Riker as "an omnipotent god with the mind of a six year old."

Ancient races that have evolved beyond violence, and are thus helpless against robots or barbarians. Implying the need for barbarians/Earthmen to save the evolved ones.

Junghalli · Post by **Junghalli** » 2005-05-09 01:21pm

Stofsk wrote:I just hate the warrior races, as though war is the sum total of an entire civilisation's cultural history. The Klingons fit this bill especially, but they're not the only ones. They're just the most obvious. The Cat races Ender refers to is more of a symptom of this stereotype than the foundation. It just bugs me. They also almost always have some kind of 'honour' system that allows them to slaughter innocents and otherwise be fantastic fuckheads to other people.

Oy, the warrior cat people! Man, everybody and his uncle has a species like that in their universe. Then again, it's kind of hypocritical of me because I used to have precisely such a species in my own universe and ditched them mere weeks ago.

[shameless plug] The closest thing I have now to an "honorable warrior race" is a reptiloid species that are humanities' primary antigonists in the setting. They're not "honorable" though, they have more of a Neitzchean-type belief system, thinking victory goes to the strongest. So culturally they're sort of like super-Draka, only minus the continuous uncontrollable hard-ons and general cheese factor.[/shameless plug]

Civil War Man · Post by **Civil War Man** » 2005-05-09 01:23pm

Cat aliens and warrior aliens (almost all of the former is part of the latter) have been mentioned.

I'll add shapeshifters, who seem almost to the person to be either criminals or black ops. I want to see a Chameloid bartender or used spaceship dealer for once.

Post by **Coyote** » 2005-05-09 01:38pm

I dislike shapeshifters and uber-psions. The only shapeshifters I found marginally acceptable were the Star Wars ones, because they couldn't totally "change shape" but only manipulate their appearance. Even so, I'm not too enamored of that.

Psionics are just a cheap ass way of bringing magic into sci-fi in a way that is 'acceptable". Feh.

Junghalli · Post by **Junghalli** » 2005-05-09 01:43pm

PeZook wrote:The insect-like, hive-minded gloopy organic kind. With a queen. Somehow superior to everyone else, and always bigger, stronger, faster and generally deadly.

B10T3K!!!!!!111111<splooge>
I don't mind hive-mind species so much though. I have one in my universe. They use regular inorganic (aka practical) technology just like everyone else though. And they don't have a queen.

Shroom Man 777 · Post by **Shroom Man 777** » 2005-05-09 01:46pm

What'd be better is if they'd just ditch b10t3k and switch to practical materials once they found resource rich worlds or something. That's what I did. Slap in the face.

Wicked Pilot · Post by **Wicked Pilot** » 2005-05-09 01:52pm

I hate aliens that would pass as humans is they didn't have some trademark feature such as pointed ears, ridged forehead, spots, six penises, etc.

Post by **Coyote** » 2005-05-09 02:01pm

Wicked Pilot wrote:I hate aliens that would pass as humans is they didn't have some trademark feature such as pointed ears, ridged forehead, spots, six penises, etc.

Not a big fan of the "Star Trek Forehead-of-the-month-Club", huh?

Wicked Pilot · Post by **Wicked Pilot** » 2005-05-09 02:08pm

Coyote wrote:Not a big fan of the "Star Trek Forehead-of-the-month-Club", huh?

I can understand the financial limitations imposed on TV sci-fi so I can tolerate it to a degree. But when Star Trek, especially TNG and beyond, comes up with a new "Forehead-of-the-month" every week, and then revolves half their story plots around them, it kind of sickens me.

Darth Sephiroth · Post by **Darth Sephiroth** » 2005-05-09 02:12pm

I only don't really mind the human look with a distinguishing feature if there is something that can actually explain why that's so inside the universe itself. One explaination I do like and it has been used before is that humanity had expanded millenia ago, or at least some form of humanity, and evolution continued after that civilization collapsed.

speaker-to-trolls · Post by **speaker-to-trolls** » 2005-05-09 03:17pm

Shroom Man 777 wrote:My particular sci-fi universe has a lot of these cliches. We've got a alliance between insects and mollusks and they use organic tech. And we've got evil Bear aliens that wage war and kill lots and lots of things. And we've got fancy Grey aliens.

Who are these B10t3k!!!!!1111 guys?, I can't find any reference to them on the Omniverse zero SOTS archive.

I can't think of a particular archetype that annoys me, but one consistent trait aliens have that does annoy me is their habit of pointing out how violent and uncivilised we are. Yeah, like you don't have skeletons in your closet. I even read a story where a Kzin did this, a fucking Kzin!.

Shroom Man 777 · Post by **Shroom Man 777** » 2005-05-09 03:29pm

speaker-to-trolls wrote:Who are these B10t3k!!!!!1111 guys?, I can't find any reference to them on the Omniverse zero SOTS archive.

The insects and mollusks are yet to be fleshed out in my universe. The Grey aliens with fancy crystal armor are the Apexai. The bears are the Bragulans. Check the 'Sovereigns of the Stars'.

I can't think of a particular archetype that annoys me, but one consistent trait aliens have that does annoy me is their habit of pointing out how violent and uncivilised we are. Yeah, like you don't have skeletons in your closet. I even read a story where a Kzin did this, a fucking Kzin!.

Pheh, most people who wrote that are those fancy 'boo-fucking-hoo, humanity is all bad! my gothic poetry rocks!" kind of guys.

In my 'verse, the only habit (some) aliens have is pointing out how fucked up some humans are. Humans like Jack Chick and other weird shit people do, like getting ginormous breast implants and the like. My aliens, the Apexai in particular, also like to laugh at human movies. For some reason.

Dahak · Post by **Dahak** » 2005-05-09 03:39pm

I go with the Bumpy Forehead of the Week-crowd...
After a while, it really gets ridiculous...

Junghalli · Post by **Junghalli** » 2005-05-09 04:04pm

Darth Sephiroth wrote:I only don't really mind the human look with a distinguishing feature if there is something that can actually explain why that's so inside the universe itself. One explaination I do like and it has been used before is that humanity had expanded millenia ago, or at least some form of humanity, and evolution continued after that civilization collapsed.

Yeah, it's not so bad if you have some way of explaining it.
What pisses me off about Trek isn't neccessarily that a lot of their aliens look like humans so much as they don't really seem to have any true aliens at all. Everybody's just some guy with rubber taped to his forehead, set up as a cultural stand-in for some aspect of human society the producers want to examine. At some point the show stopped being man vs alien and started being wanky "enlightened" TNG humans vs other forms of human with rubber stuck on their heads. That I think is what gets to most people more than just the aliens looking too human.

speaker to trolls wrote:I can't think of a particular archetype that annoys me, but one consistent trait aliens have that does annoy me is their habit of pointing out how violent and uncivilised we are. Yeah, like you don't have skeletons in your closet.

I see it as kind of a backlash against the ST:TNG habit of painting humans as halfway to being angels and virtually everyone else as complete assholes.

Zor · Post by **Zor** » 2005-05-09 04:08pm

Greys. They have been done to death you lazy ass writers, Come up with something new and make the consept artists happy!

Zor

Shroom Man 777 · Post by **Shroom Man 777** » 2005-05-09 04:10pm

What's wrong with Grey dudes?

Zor · Post by **Zor** » 2005-05-09 04:15pm

Shroom Man 777 wrote:What's wrong with Grey dudes?

They have been done to death, Simply put. I should note that this thread is about Cliched aliens, not wicth ones we hate.

Zor