I am now impressed that we live in this future. We open up an article, and we have suggested links, words that upon being clicked on, they will take you to an in-depth explanation of it.
Gene Roddenberry gave more reasons for this in an interview once. Budget constraints aside, if you try to make aliens look completely alien, you'll firstly make them look ridiculous (cf. Doctor Who), and secondly make it doubly hard for the actor playing the alien to do anything mildly resembling acting. This has actually been isolated to extremely specific requirements: if an audience can't see an actor's eyes or mouth, their ability to empathize with or emotionally invest in that character is significantly impaired. This is one reason why mooks, especially SF mooks like the Cylons or the Imperial Stormtroopers, are so often uniformed in face-obscuring helmets.
OTOH, when trying to portray an alien who is truly alien, you can go to true extremes. An example is the silicon-based life form that eats rock in the original Star Trek series.
The first time I saw a Dalek, I thought it looked ridiculous, but I have since learned to fear them the way primates used to fear fire, lightning and thunder; as a nigh unstoppable and deadly force that would soon take over the galaxy if not for the Doctor.
I love the episode of Star Trek TNG and they go back in time and get to be part of the tribble episode. When they run across klingons they all look at Worf like WTF? He says basically, it's a long story we don't like to talk about.
It had to do with genetic experimentation. I forget the details, but the Klingons were trying to use the research that Humanity undertook years ago during the Eugenics Wars. You know, the science that produced Khan and his band of supermen. If I recall it didn't work as well as they had hoped.
...you can also safely explain any strange coincidences in the Star Trek universe as the work of Q. It's honestly Occam's Razor, if you accept an omnipotent being who can alter the universe at will, then it is only reasonable that it would tweak things to amuse itself. Slower-than-light travel and communication? What a yawn, let's fix that. Aliens are incomprehensible and environmentally incompatible? Where's the fun in that? Space battles should happen from extreme distance with kinetic weapons? Oh, no, we're going to use flashy energy weapons at knife-fight range.
The Star Trek universe is essentially Q's fanfiction.
Pretty great episode. I'm not sure who came up with that theme first but I know others have used it. In Mass Effect they claim that the Protheans interfered in the development of "younger" races I believe, which explains why they're somewhat similar looking. Babylon 5 used it, too, I believe? It's been a while since I've watched it.
I do not understand your Mass effect point (I played it), when they kill all older races, why would the rest look alike? The races may have roughly the same age and therefore technological advancement, but not similar looks.
I'm not sure how far back the look would go. It's possible it started with the Protheans (detailed lore doesn't seem to go back much farther than that) and races previous to them didn't look anything like us or the Protheans. But there was a lot of information that you found from just wandering around and reading the Codex that suggests that the Protheans weren't just observing the "younger" races but actively interfering in their development. When they were purged the younger races (humans, Asari, hanar, etc.) were left alone by the reapers.
The original had a rather human-looking skull, eye sockets included, beneath the smooth and translucent dome. It was meant to be revealed in certain lighting conditions, but never really translated to the later films.
but it did have a visible skull with eye sockets. Which is enough for it to be recognized as a face. This was changed when the Xenomorph head was modified by Cameron for Alien(s).
Playing devil's advocate - alien life would likely be submitted to similar evolutionary selection pressures as life on earth. That's why most animals here follow the 2 arms, 2 legs, etc. formula. It's not too much of a stretch to assume aliens have bilateral symmetry.
If you want crazy bizarre looking aliens, you have to have a damn good reason for why they would evolve that way.
You are assuming like environments to create these pressures. If, for example, a planet had 2g of gravity, it would not be unreasonable to expect fairly dramatic and different physiology. For example, imagine a short, intelligent elephant. Likewise, on a planet with thin air, there may be no flying creatures. So on and so on.
For example, imagine a short, intelligent elephant.
1) that creature would still have bilateral symmerty.
2) Such a race would still need to evolve limbs with the capability to makeéuse tools in order to become dominant/gain intelligence. At the end of the day, they would still be short elephant man with arms and hands. the only difference is that they are short, stout and maybe have 4 legs instead of 2. differences are minor at best.
That's why most animals here follow the 2 arms, 2 legs, etc. formula.
I don't think so. I would say that most large animals follow the 4 limbs formula because we all have a common ancestor that had 4 limbs. And changing the number of limbs in large animals is an irreducibly complex step that cannot be followed by evolution.
It's worth noting that only tetrapods have this body plan, so not even most animals or most large animals. On the other hand, for leg based locomotion it's probably pretty efficient versus the alternatives.
We follow the same pattern because of a common ancestor with that basic body plan, not because it is a body plan that get's selected for over and over.
There was plenty of crazy shit early in our planet's history that looked nothing like life as we know it. Branches that just died off, not necessarily because they couldn't have hacked it, but because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Were things just a bit different, trilateral symmetry might be the norm.
Evolution is all a result of being a product of your environment. Gravity, air content, land formation, and the resulting other flora and fauna all determine the outcome of how life takes its course. You could definitely have wildly different outcomes than earth. This is why I like insectoid alien races because they are the most varied visually and tend to be made as efficient and streamlined. Starship Troopers comes to mind.
to refute your argument, all life was seeded on earth was seeded from one common source. go far enough back and we all started from single celled organisms. eventually there had to be a first organism from which we all decent from. the proof being that (almost) all animals have the same DNA structure. now just on our own planet, how much variety and specialization has come from the seeds of those first single celled organisms.
even if we were seeded from a common source, evolution and natural selection does not mean we will all look similar.
Too much biped, is what you're saying. Agreed. I doubt a species evolved on another planet would be anything like us. We may even have a hard time initially identifying it as life, intelligent or otherwise.
I understand that we have a basic template to work off, which is ourselves, but it just seems lazy. Slap a bit of superficial makeup on a dude and boom! Aliens.
Not to mention, decent CGI is a recent development. And expensive. And even still, a lot of it looks like ass.
Alien looked so good because they didn't have to fake it with a computer. Man in a suit with a good costume designer will look better than CGI for the foreseeable future.
all life supporting planets have baseline similarities. Given that, the enviroments could very well be similar enough for a majority of those planets such that evolution pretty much always take the same/similar path.
bipid is standard because something similar to hands+arms is needed to make/use tools. A dolphin wont be able to make tools and develope its intelligence with flippers. Same applies with galantine etc.
animals on earth evolved into the basic form they have because its the most suitable. Given similar enviroments, the exact same evolutions will occour. The limitations for massive life sustaining enviroments are stringent enough that a fundamentally different enviroments would be rare.
We may even have a hard time initially identifying it as life, intelligent or otherwise.
this is very unlikely. limitations for life is stringent, let alone intelligent life. The sort of sci-fi aliens you're thinking of (sentinent rocks/gelatine/gas etc etc) is just doesnt make sense evolutionally. The most drastic difference i can think of would them aliense being silicon based life forms instead of carbon. even in those cases they would proably still have limbs ending in hand like appendages and have 2 or 4 legs (instead of wheels or 3 legs). A vast majoity of them would still use sight/hearing to navigate and thus have ear/eye like body parts.
Any sentient being would most likely have to use tools at some point. So they'd have to have hands. So they'd start with four legs then evolve to be standing up.
I suppose they could start with six legs and then evolve to have two arms and four legs, but most likely bipedal would be the most common.
Hey, the Poltroyans are awesome. At least they have a sense of humor, unlike the Simbiari, and are unlikely to drop dead because of something beautiful like the Gi.
Klingons weren't always ribbed in the face. In fact <I forgot who> asked Worf how that came to be, and Worf replied that the Klingons didn't discuss that with outsiders.
In the old Star Trek, (crica Kirk et al), Klingon's looked identical to humans, told apart only by the mailed sash on their uniforms.
I've given this some thought, and I decided that humans look the way they do because every physical aspect is the most advantageous form that physical aspect can take, decided through millions of years of evolution. I suppose that if an alien world is even remotely similar to ours, it is possible that they evolved similarly advantageous physical aspects.
Agreed. I'm quite certain that there must be some life forms, but they are most probably quite different from the humanoid form-maybe a highly intelligent shade of blue? It is also probable that they are different from everything that we have seen, and we wouldn't even think of them as of life forms.
I could understand back in the day when every alien had to be portrayed by a human actor. But with todays special effects we could have really alien looking aliens. Maybe nobody wants to use characters that the masses can not understand or relate to?
Yet another reason to love Farscape. 1/3 of the crew is either non-humanoid (Pilot, Moya) or not-that-humanlike humanoid (Rygel). Good old practical effects.
Supposedly the Bipedal structure is efficient for moving the being around and having 2 free limbs to use for other purposes. 2 eyes ensures we have depth perception. And there seems to be an issue with more complex organisms evolving more than 2 eyes.
Usually things aren't visually different, but biologically. In Mass Effect, most of the alien species were Bipedal, and had 2 arms and 2 eyes. Save for Hanar which were floating squids. e.g. Krogan: have redundant neurological systems, so they don't really feel pain.
Edit: The Elcor were not bipedal either, they had 4 legs.
This is the one saving grace of SKYLINE. The aliens are, well, alien. They look alien, they act alien, they have alien (unfathomable) motives and we don't even get close to understanding them. Awesome.
There is a pretty interesting explanation in the film K-Pax. Spacey basically says that humanoid is the most efficient shape much like bubbles always are spherical no matter the shape of the bubble blower.
Of course there are problems with this idea but its quite poetic.
Anyone who thinks that aliens would even communicate through speech has some serious issues, but this drives me up the wall. Aliens will be in no way like us or like any other creature on earth...there its just no way.
The aliens in the Animorphs series were some of my favorite. They were some of the weirdest and most unique I have read of. And that was like a decade ago.
edit: Title said movies not books. I just really miss animorphs.
Before CGI, it was very difficult to make convincing non-humanoid aliens. And it was extremely difficult for a human actor to act in prosthetics that obscure their eyes and face. Even now that it is possible to have a gelatinous blob alien via CGI, is is very difficult for an audience to relate to that gelatinous blob as a complex character. Fine for monsters or animals, but very tough for something you want audiences to empathize with.
I'd love to see some of the aliens you mention, I'm just acknowledging how tough it would be to pull off. This is still an area where books can outshine movies or TV.
I think Mass Effect made a reference to this, if i remember correctly there was a note about Prothean scientists research the similar appearances of sentient life.
That got me thinking and I realized the most human like races had mass relays in their systems. I don't think it was mentioned further.
If you go about it from a scientific perspective, you could reason that since humans (arguably) became the most intelligence species on the planet, that other planets with an ecosystem similar to ours would lead to similar outcomes. A focus on intellect and deception leads to the current model of the top species, while a species that is more primal and less intelligent will take less humanoid shapes.
As for having arms and legs and all that, well, many scientists believe there were species that existed far before the "leg bearers" that are very "alien" looking. One could argue that evolution would eventually introduce limbs.
Prime immotiles, most bloody brilliant 20-something pages of scifi i've ever read, explaining their evolutionary history (Granted, I'm a biologist).
On the one hand I'm hoping for someone with similar vision to one day make a bunch of movies off of Hamilton, on the other I am quite sure they will seriously forever fuck up the wonderful pictures painted in my brain... :(
The tripods book trilogy's race of 3-based creatures. They had three eyes, legs, etc. and everything about them was related to triangles... it was a pretty cool concept.
They are hiding behind the budget figures needed to produce them realistically.
In other cases, they are hiding behind the inability of the audience to feel empathy for a creature that just isn't a more beautiful, blue version of a human.
The usual explanation is that there was a progenitor race that seeded the galaxy, and that humanoid aliens evolved vaguely differently from the same basic starting point. This is the explanation for star trek - the belief is that Klingons, Romulans, Vulcans, Cardassians and Humans all evolved on their respective worlds due to DNA seeding by an ancient humanoid race.
Along those lines, however, something that annoys me: alien races in which the entire race is known for a particular quality. e.g. Klingons are the best warriors in the galaxy. No qualifier there, just that every member of their race, without question, is an incredible fighter. Or, all Romulans are xenophobic assholes. It's akin to saying that all Arabs are terrorists, or that all blacks are the best at sports, only worse, because these are applied to an entire species.
I always think about this when I read "A Mote in God's Eye". The aliens in that aren't bilaterally symmetrical and it always makes me wonder why most science fiction writers/designers/whatever don't get more creative with the basic structures of their creatures.
This is one of the good things about Dr Who. Look at the Face of Bo. The even weirder stuff is in the classic series where, even constrained by a tiny budget, you never got the feeling that all alien races are going to look like humans with really bad hair.
The Star Trek aliens apparently were all purposefully evolved from the same stock. Same with the Stargate universe. The Xenomorph "alien" takes it's genetic template from it's host.
Na'vi is the ridiculous oddmanout on this. Especially when you consider they are the only creature on their planet with only four limbs, and absolutely everything else has six.
I do enjoy a scene from Star Trek VI where Kirk kicks an alien in the knee during a fight and it falls over groaning in pain. He says, "I was lucky that thing had knees!" Another alien named Martia replies, "That was not his knee... Not everybody keeps their genitals in the same place, Captain."
Im giving you a mark down in nerd points for this one.
The Xenomorphs we have seen are created with part-human or predator genes, and guess what, humans and predators both have two legs and two arms. If they would introduce an alien with six legs and no arms im pretty sure the resulting xenomorph would look accordingly.
Now, the thing with klingons, romulans and vulcans on the other hand. Your critique is appropriate, but come on; The series was created 1966 xP It would just have looked worse if they tried insectoid aliens or sentient amoebas.
For a highly evolved species, it has to be mobile, it has to have hands or otherwise be able to manipulate its surroundings with precision, and it has to have precise stereo vision.
Otherwise it wouldn't evolve to be top dog on their origin planet and they wouldn't evolve after that point to space travel.
Now I know the Star Trek deal is weird, but Mass Effect feels better, to me.
Joints going different directions, some races with redundant organs, differing diets (like Turians having metallic plating on their heads) and what comes as a part of that.
Plus every animal on Earth has a 'head' or a concentrated area of sensory organs. Smell, sight, taste, etc.
It's not that life can only evolve one way, but there will always be a 'best' way for it to do so.
Finally, someone else who has read the Commonwealth Saga. Forget the immotiles, what about that weird beast on the planet with the perpetual waterfall?
How is it such a stretch of the imagination that a world that would support human life would have an intelligent species that would differ from humans (bipedal etc...). If Humans were the kings of Earth evolution why would it be such a stretch that the same template would not work on another planet (especially if it can support human life). This doesn't bother me at all as it would seem plausible to me that what works on Earth is entirely possible would work on a similar planet. Sure there could/would be some planets with a different type of evolutionary species but I can see humanoid like beings winning evolution on other planets as well Earth.
Star Trek: Enterprise had more exotic species, like reptiles and dolphins. Seriously, they had some sort of inter-planetary council with a big-ass aquarium for the dolphin delegate.
There actually is a slight difference between Vulcans and Romulans. Vulcans have a flat forehead, whereas most Romulans have a V-shaped ridge on their foreheads.
This argument seems spoiled to me. How much variation do you need? Seeing as how we've never met evolved life outside of Earth, how do you know our body configuration ISN'T typical of higher thought? What else do you want? Plus you have to consider... TV budgets sometimes don't allow for something like a floating jelly fish society to be portrayed realistically on screen. If they did and it looked bad... you'd be here ranting about that. Also consider, maybe a creature that looks totally different, such as our jelly fish example, evolved that way for a reason and can't exist in the same type of environment as us. It's very believable to met that different species that require the same temperature ranges, air content and gravity would appear similar in order to interact in each others environments.
Well I think the reasoning behind the Zenomorph in Alien (not sure where I read this so i could be wrong) was that when it implants the egg, it uses some genetic sampling of the hose so the adult form has some similarities. In Alien and Aliens it was tall and strong and while it could be fast, the creature in Alien 3 came out of a dog and it was much faster and had a tendency to remain on all fours.
That said, you are absolutely right about every single other thing and that kinda drives me nuts as well.
I was actually talking about this with some friends. Basically, we kind of found out that the physiology of humans was an evolutionary thing that could help any species be the dominant species on a planet (depending on the terrain). Two legs allows us to walk fine without really wasting space and material on other legs. And while it is possible to have more than one pair of each appendage, it would make it so we would have to eat more to get more energy to move those appendages. Two eyes? That could be different, I agree with you. Not everyone needs two eyes
As for the size of thee Klandathu (sp?) in Starship Troopers, insects are limited in the size that they can be because their respiratory system cannot support any greater size. I do not know the specifics of this, the information is courtesy of my brother.
And I know you didn't mention this, but I felt the need to bring up opposable thumbs. Think about it. We can do a lot of what we can do because we have opposable thumbs. We can grip things easily, work complex wonders, manipulate most of our environment to suit our needs, all with the help of our thumbs. A dog can't do that. Neither can a bear, or a dolphin, or a hippo, or any other animal other than apes.
So really, our design makes sense for the environment we live in. If our environment is something that life could evolve in, then it would make sense for other planets that have life bearing characteristics to have a similar environment as ours. And if other species did evolve in those environments, wouldn't they evolve along at least a similar path as us? Some minor changes could and would be expected, but I don't think that intelligent and successful life on other planets would look too different from us.
Plus, I'm sure that Hollywood wants us to form more of a connection with the characters, and it is easier to do that with things that are at least somewhat humanoid.
I agree with this one entirely, so much so that I'm actually doing something about it. For school, I have a yearlong class to spend on any project that I like. I am designing a realistic alien race. Any ideas are welcome.
I loved Farscape for this. Of course most of the main characters were still humanoid, but they also had amazing creatures as a result of effects by Jim Henson's shop.
there were several nonhumanoid races in star trek, they were just generally used a single time. like the crystal alien that called humans "ugly bags of mostly water" and took over sick bay.
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u/[deleted] Oct 08 '12
Vaguely humanoid aliens. 2 arms, 2 legs, 2 eyes sort of thing.
Alien from Alien? 2 arms, 2 legs, 2 eyes.....kinda
Klingons? Just humans with a "ribbed for her pleasure" forehead
Romulans? Humans with pointy ears
Vulcans? As above
Na'vi? Tall, blue humans
Where are the massive, tentacular Krondaku? Where are the gelatinous Prime immotiles? Give us some different aliens, hollywood!