Most effective alien infiltrators?

[Srelex]

Watching the TNG episode 'Conspiracy' lately, I was wondering what are the most effective and intelligent alien infiltrators in science fiction, from Genestealers, the Thing, or otherwise--which has the most effective method of infiltration and which is the most successful? Just curious, and hopefully we could get some more obscure ones here.

[Solauren]

The Gou'ald are very effective infiltrators. They take over the host like the conspiracy TNG episode aliens, have complete access to memories, and all the other bonuses the Conspiracy aliens dd, but don't have the memory issues the Conspiracy aliens did, and can't apparently act 'completely normal'.

They might even be able to let the host 'behave' as it will, until it's time to strike, like a sleeper agent.

After that, I'd have to say Changelings (Star Trek - DS9).

[Chaotic Neutral]

Chaos, they are able to make entire planets rebel even under a huge police state with many redundancies.

Though arguably, they do cheat. I suppose genestealers might count also, since they don't cheat.

[Stofsk]

The Alien Bounty Hunter from The X-files was pretty good. Highly competent, virtually indestructible (could only be killed by penetrating the base of his neck with a projectile or spike - if you shoot him anywhere else it doesn't stop him and his blood is toxic and causes people to die unless they get quick treatment IIRC), and of course, the ability to assume any persona by changing his appearance.

The changelings from DS9 also have the ability to assume anyone's appearance, and had variable success (they successfully destroyed the Obsidian Order and at least damaged the Tal'Shiar as a result of their infiltration; they succeeded in damaging the Klingon-Federation alliance by impersonating a top-tier General, but this wasn't permanent; they almost succeeded in having the Federation start a war with the Tzenkethi, but their damage to the Federation wasn't nearly as effective).

There was also a film about body-snatchers which take over a military base. The body-snatchers kill the original and replace it with a facsimile. They have no emotions so you can pretend to be part of them by simply being nonchalant - apparently that's beyond the means of most protagonists in these stories. (how many times has the body-snatchers been remade?)

[Batman]

The Goa'uld turn into good infiltrators once they've got their asses handed to them often enough. Baseline, they're begging to be terminated (which isn't particularly hard even with modern day technology most of the time) because they just love to blow their cover with the 'I am your God, bow to me or else' arrogance and one of the main reasons they get away with it is the SGC not wanting to/not being in a position to/ being ordered not to Maverick them and go 'I'm taking 'else''.
Heinlein's Puppet Masters. They blended into the population, they blended into the wildlife, they actually understood infiltration.

[spaceviking]

The aliens in V were pretty good, in the new series some of them had like 30 year covers.

The cylons were also very good in bsg, given their ability to integrate across human society, and place themselves in key positions.

[adam_grif]

The one shot aliens from SG-1 with the holographic belt thingies weren't too bad I suppose.

[Marcus Aurelius]

There was also a film about body-snatchers which take over a military base. The body-snatchers kill the original and replace it with a facsimile. They have no emotions so you can pretend to be part of them by simply being nonchalant - apparently that's beyond the means of most protagonists in these stories. (how many times has the body-snatchers been remade?)

Three "official" remakes, one mockbuster, a couple of parodies, and of course there has been somewhat similar stories in other movies. I think the one you are describing is Abel Ferrera's 1993 second remake version.

Do alien infiltrators have to be malevolent? Because the Culture Special Circumstances has pretty good infiltrators. Or perhaps they would not count as "alien"?

[Patrick Ogaard]

One particularly obscure bunch of alien infiltrators would be the telehypnotically controlled pawns of the Frogs, the alien menace from the relatively old and very short-lived German SF TV series Raumpatrouille.
http://www.orionspace.de/ww/de/pub/english.htm

The aliens have even more trouble than the Signs aliens with Earth-normal environments, since oxygen is lethal to them, and people might become suspicious of a sparkling, elongagted humanoid column of lights trying to pump them for information. Thus, the aliens field a system that allows them to remotely--though still at very limited distances--fundamentally change the loyalties of their victims. Intelligence, memory and personality are unaffected, the victim simply becomes undyingly loyal to the alien invaders. Obviously, it's best when the victims are in important positions (like Colonel Villa, the head of the Galactic Security Service and member of the Supreme Space Authority's crisis management group).

[Sinewmire]

Spear, the possessed mirror psyker assassin from warhammer 40,000 nemesis novel was pretty good. When he kills he can mimic his victims completely, from phsyical biometrics to personality - he literally allows a portion of their psyche limited dominance, and he can go about his tasks as if he, Spear, was one of his victims, up to the point where the victim actually believes they are themselves, not a trapped memory in an assassin's body.

[Lord of the Abyss]

The Modhri of Timothy Zahn's Quadrail series is good. It is a sentient, telepathically linked coral group mind, the leftover biological weapon of an extinct species. If anyone touches the pretty coral they are unnoticeably injected with what will develop into a colony of polyps that hide undetectably at the bade of the brain. And it can induce people into touching it by "thought viruses", lingering telepathic suggestions that make all sorts of things seem reasonable, like touching that pretty piece of coral. The result is called a "Mohdran walker", a mobile colony and puppet of the Mohdri. The sneaky thing is, almost all of the time the walkers act perfectly normal; they have no idea anything is wrong, they just go about their lives with the Modhri subtly influence their behavior to serve its agenda. That makes them very hard to detect. It can take over completely and use them as puppets, but it avoids doing so since long unexplainable blackouts are too revealing.

And when some government agency realizes something funny is happening, the Mohdri is waiting for them. It infects the agents sent to find out what is happening, who then go back to their superiors to report. Who are in turn targeted for walkerhood as well, and so on. This lets it rapidly insinuate itself right to the top of the government, while at the same time taking over the very groups that suspect something is wrong first. It takes over the rich and powerful and uses them to quietly spread itself; such as by making owning a display of coral the newest fashion among the rich set. It takes over a society from the top down. And when neighboring empires get a little suspicious something is odd, they send their investigative teams - and the cycle starts over. By the time the story opens the Modhri dominates almost all of the significant governments in the galaxy and almost no one knows it.


I'm not sure if this next one qualifies since it wasn't alien, but the OP wanted obscure and interesting so I'll throw it in. Frank of the old story Let's Be Frank. Frank lived a few centuries ago, and seemed normal until he had children and discovered that he telepathically shared consciousness with them; one mind, multiple bodies. He hid this of course, and his child-selves went about acting exactly as children would. And when they grew up and in turn married and had children, it turned out that the mutation was dominant; all of his children were Frank. As were all of his children's children, and so on. So Frank set out to spread himself, marrying non-Franks so that all their children would be Frank; always playacting like he was a multitude of individuals instead of just one. By modern times Britain was nothing but Frank; all the newspapers, television shows, arguing politicians and so forth were nothing but a huge play designed to convince humanity that there was a nation there and not just Frank. And in the end of course, he wins, and we're all just Frank. The story at the end turns out to be recounted by a Venusian who is grateful for being a genetically incompatible alien.

[Xon]

The Goa'uld turn into good infiltrators once they've got their asses handed to them often enough.

They where rulers of the Galaxy for something like ~10-20 thousand years, a little cultural decay is to be expected

[Solauren]

The Goa'uld turn into good infiltrators once they've got their asses handed to them often enough.

They where rulers of the Galaxy for something like ~10-20 thousand years, a little cultural decay is to be expected

Given the Tok'ra were also doing that for a long time prior to the SGC (they are a Gou'ald offshot after all), and we see an Gou'ald pull the infiltrator route on Jonas's Homeworld, I'd say there were good at it.

Besides, what's the quickest way to take out a civilization? Have a few dozen Gou'ald take over it's leadership, point the civilizations guns away from the Gou'ald, then bomb the living crap out of them.

We also saw numerous Gou'ald infiltrators during the course of SG-1, prior to Season 7+. i.e the Ashrek.

[NecronLord]

Chaos,

Can be discounted aside from the proper aliens (Loxatl, etc) who work for them.

Of course, if you want a 40K one, C'tan are pretty damn good.

[Rossum]

I'm going to toss in the Cybertronians from the new Transformers movies and the Autons from Doctor Who.

The cybertronians can transform into any object like a car, tank, CD player, or a cellphone. Frenzy (the annoying little decepticon in the first movie) was able to sneak onto air force one byturning into a boom box and then from their hacked into the military database (or whatever). In Revenge of the Fallen then another decepticon was able to disguise itself as a college girl while still being able to turn into its robotic form and using its built-in weaponry.

I'm sure that security measures could be taken to defend against decepticons disguising themselves as human (blood tests or metal detectors and all that) but an enemy that can disguise itself as inanimate objects or bits of technology while still functioning as that device (and even turning back into their robotic form) could have a pretty big advantage in infiltration. Just disguise yourself as some guys bluetooth, go through security with him, then discretley hack into the computer system or just record every conversation he makes. If your cover gets blown then scurry off somewhere and transform into the next thing that's roughly your mass.

Or do the same thing with a tank or other piece of military hardware. Somehow manage to replace a tank that the enemy is using, have them drive you back to base, then either covertly monitor their radio waves or whatever or just start trashing the place from the inside. Any car or electronic device could be a transforming robot... or the metal detector you're using to make sure your fellow humans aren't secretly robots could be one too.

Though they do seem to have the disadvantage that they need the All-Spark or Energon to make more cybertronians. So its not like they could covertly take over a factory and start churning out SUVs that are all secretly robot warriors or something.


Also the Autons to a limited degree because they are basically plastic objects animated by the Nestene Consciousness. Their plans have mostly consisted of taking over plasctic manufacturers and then creating plastic objects that can be animated later. If they do something like make the plastic casing for military computers and the plastic casing could 'listen in' and transmit information back to the conciousness via psychic energy or something then they could gather quite a bit of information. Then, any bit of plastic could animate itself and even if it can't actually attack anybody then it can still cause damage to equipment.

One of the Doctor Who novels 'Autonomy' takes place in a big company that the autons infiltrated and they were able to work their living plastic into fashion clothing... particularly the false leather boots that a news reporter was wearing. Apparently the boots were able to stick her to the floor, cover her whole body and then suffocate her to death. I'll admit that its a pretty weird and situational power but if the autons can work their freaky plastic into enough bits of clothing and conceivably kill people with them then add another advantage to their infiltration techniques. (Actually, that reminds me of a scene in a Red Dwarf episode where an emotion eating Polymorph disguised itself as Listers underpants and tried to wedgie him to death)

Basically, an alien race that can disguise itself as seemingly harmless objects could have a big advantage over those that disguise themselves as people. Nobody expects their own cleephone, car, or clothing to be covert alien invaders and once they do have evidence to believe that might be the case ten the implications would be paralyzing.

[NecronLord]

The Goa'uld turn into good infiltrators once they've got their asses handed to them often enough. Baseline, they're begging to be terminated (which isn't particularly hard even with modern day technology most of the time) because they just love to blow their cover with the 'I am your God, bow to me or else' arrogance and one of the main reasons they get away with it is the SGC not wanting to/not being in a position to/ being ordered not to Maverick them and go 'I'm taking 'else''.

This is wrong. There were highly effective goa'uld infiltraitors in the series as early as season 2, when the goa'uld rule of the Milky Way was essentially total. We see one (an Ashrak) in 'Line of Duty' another (admittedly among the Tok'ra) in The Tok'ra. Ma'chello's wife was made a host decades before the series began to infiltrate his group, it's a standard tactic.

Adrian Conrad's goa'uld was very effective, and could not have had any knowledge of the new Tau'ri (He matured in season five, a symbiote takes seven years to mature, thus he was conceived before the series began). Similarly, that goa'uld's clones in Nightwalkers were able to run a rather efficient operation.

There is no reason to think their skill in infiltration during later series was a consequence of their military defeats, rather, it is an option they employ when overt (safer) means are denied to them.

[wautd]

Watching the TNG episode 'Conspiracy' lately,.

Is that the one where they get brainwashed by some computer game?

As for the one I know, I have to say the nBSG Cylons. Pretty much impossible to tell the difference between normal humans and their sleeper agents didn't even know they were Cylons. As for their effectiveness... all human colonies got nuked in the pilot. That's pretty damn effective.

And while not technically and alien, I'll be damned if the T-1000 isn't mentioned.

[Srelex]

Watching the TNG episode 'Conspiracy' lately,.

Is that the one where they get brainwashed by some computer game?

It was one with the purple maggots taking over Starfleet Admirals. You know, the gory one with the quasi-chestburster thing at the end.

[wautd]

Watching the TNG episode 'Conspiracy' lately,.

Is that the one where they get brainwashed by some computer game?

It was one with the purple maggots taking over Starfleet Admirals. You know, the gory one with the quasi-chestburster thing at the end.

Hmm don't think I've seen that. Unless that's the one where Picard had to conquer his basic instinct fears or something. Looooong time ago and my memory is pretty hazy

[Rossum]

I think it was one of the really early ones. The aliens in question were little bugs who burrowed into peoples necks and had little tube things that stuck out so they could breath. Had a scene of the infected people eating meal worms with Picard apparently just to freak him out and reveal that they were totally aliens.

Apparently killing the 'queen' caused all of the other ones to conveniently die of shock and nothing was ever mentioned of it later on. Of course, it was revealed that the high ranking members of the federation had been infected so who knows... maybe some of them survived in high-ranking people and covered up a whole bunch of stuff and went on to weaken the federation through discrete acts of strategic incompetence for the next couple decades.

during the Dominion War:
Star fleet Officer: Wait, we're fighting against a race of shapeshifters. They might try to take over our government by taking the place of high ranking government members.
High-Ranking Government member (enjoying a bowl of mealworms): Oh that's absurd, if those shapeshifters tried anything like that then we would know about it.

[xt828]

Wasn't that episode originally written as an attempted military coup which got Roddenberried?

[Lord of the Abyss]

Actually, as I recall it was originally meant to lead to the later encounters with the Borg, who were originally imagined as being insectile until special effects limitations killed that idea. That's what the mysterious signal at the end of the episode was supposed to be about.

[spaceviking]

Wouldn't the borg as a race of people with bugs burrowed in their heads be cheaper then the borg? We would not have to actually see the bugs regularly.

[Rossum]

Wha?!

Those bugs were originally supposed to be the borg? The borg were bugs? The borggle buggie... *head asplode*

Actually, it makes perfect sense now. Those nanotubes that inject stuff into peoples necks, the way the borg all died in First Contact when their queen did... they are all acting like those bugs from that one episode but with wires glued to their pasty faces. Except even stupider.

[Uraniun235]

Wouldn't the borg as a race of people with bugs burrowed in their heads be cheaper then the borg? We would not have to actually see the bugs regularly.

I think the problem was likely as much one of believability as anything else - would they have been able to construct and operate a big insectoid that didn't look utterly ridiculous within both the budgetary and time constraints of the series? I know Babylon 5 had something like that, but I don't think their insectoid even walked or moved around.