Favourite alien(s)?

[Trollheart]

Whether on TV, in movies, in books or videogames (and real life of course).
Nobody will be surprised to find that I have a soft spot for Kang and Kodos

and in the same vein, Lurr from the planet Omicron Persei 9 (Futurama)

but in terms of non-cartoon/animated aliens, one of my favourites has to be Star Trek's Ferengi. Just such a well-thought-out species, with plenty of scope for digs at human consumerism and capitalism, and almost always funny. Yoo-mawns, eh?

[Meatwad]

Alf.

[Meatwad]

The Mooninites

[SGR]

How bout The Thing from "The Thing"? It was so menacing largely due to how little you see of it, and how it can take different forms...it let your imagination do much of the work, as so much of the best horror does:

"Kinda gross body horror"

[close]

[Psy-Fi]

"Doctor Smiiith"

[Trollheart]

Knitted aliens: Got to love the Clangers.

[SGR]

All time best alien though has to be the Xenomorph

[Mindy]

[Psy-Fi]

The original 'Outer Limits' TV series had some of the most memorable aliens. High-octane childhood nightmare fuel...

Iconic Aliens & Creatures From The Outer Limits (1963), Season 1

[tristan_geoff]

my favorite alien is probably myself

[tristan_geoff]

these fuckers are pretty awesome

[Auroras In Ice]

Kinda have two sets, one super pretentious and the other more fun.

I really like depictions of aliens that are just that; alien. Beings whose forms and motivations are so different from our own that it's hard to comprehend or even recognize as an intelligent lifeform. My scientist brain thinks this would more likely be the case rather than the anthropomorphized ideals that we mostly use as fictional reflections of humanity. A splash of Lovecraftian cosmic horror, and I'm a sucker for it. Told you this was pretentious lol

Spoilers ahead.

The heptapod aliens from Arrival.



They randomly show up all around the world with no apparent motivation at all with a language that you need to break away from thinking with linear time to comprehend because they don't really exist in time as we understand it. I think it's a great way to show that beings that are more "advanced" than us likely wouldn't just have snazzier tech, but may perceive reality itself in fundamentally different ways and have motivations and reasoning that is not comprehensible to us. Another cool thing about how they were depicted in the movie is that we only really saw the bottom quarter of them relative to their original design which flips things around because their full form starts to look more human-like.



The alien from Annihilation.



(a bit caked up there... jussayin)



This one is neat because its true form is some weird undulating fractal blob which implies it exists across multiple dimensions and interacts, destroys, and colonizes our reality by imperfectly mimicking our entire ecology and biology in strange ways. The only parallel of relation we can have with it is through its weird mimickry of us which tells us nothing about it and we may not even be a concern for it at all since it does the same for everything else from plants to other animals. We may just be another feature of the environment to it and not even recognized as notable or intelligent. It's also an allegory for how cancer infects the body.

The Andromeda Strain virus.






An intelligent alien virus. No spaceship or tech needed, just a blob of goo on a space rock. No comprehensible motivation or reasoning beyond infection, no way to communicate with it, and it deliberately and rapidly mutates to outflank efforts to cure it (differently than earth viruses.. watch the movie to understand lol). It's also some sort of crystaline thing and has no DNA or RNA, so it's an intelligent lifeform completely apart from anything we can relate to or have here. Love that concept.

Less nerdy and pretentious list in another post later lol

[Trollheart]

No comprehensible motivation or reasoning beyond infection, no way to communicate with it, and it deliberately and rapidly mutates to outflank efforts to cure it.

Sounds like Trump!   

Love these examples. Is that Annihilation the War of the Worlds one? I saw that but I don't remember that alien, if it is that one. Speaking of WotW, how incredible an imagination Wells had to conceive of aliens who were basically huge brains. Totally different from the "little green men from Mars" we'd be subjected to throughout the latter half of the twentieth century. FYI, always one for a plug, I am, but if you check my journal on the history of science fiction and fantasy, there's a decent article I wrote about invasion movies. Might give you a laugh. I think my favourite (!) was .... TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE! Oh god no!   

In terms of aliens who are, well, alien, and do things that are, um, alien, Star Trek the Next Generation did a decent job on the "Crystalline Entity" (perhaps not so great on the name) - though let's be honest: it's just a huge snowflake in space innit?

And I always liked N'Grath from Babylon 5

[Auroras In Ice]

Is that Annihilation the War of the Worlds one?5[/i]

Nope, it's a whole ass movie called Annihilation (2018) and even if I've kinda spoiled it here, it's well worth the watch though I'm not sure it's everyone's cup of tea. Very surreal and great visuals.


Mars Attacks! (1996)



Ack ack ack ackackack ACK?! Ack ack ackack ack ack ackackack. Ack ack (ack ack ackack) ACK ACK ACK! Ack ack... Ack ackackack ack

[Trollheart]