19-January-2008, 12:37 AM
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Senior Member
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Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 9,992
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Abbadon_2008
Here's a few things that keep getting overlooked by makers of film, TV, and many books....
--Aliens we see as 'hostile' might be acting in a way that insures their own survival, rather than being implicitly 'evil'. Every race requires resources, land, etc...In stories like 'Independence Day' and 'War of the Worlds' and 'Wing Commander', we see shallow, greedy, bloodthirsty criters who want us dead. Period.
But aliens with different physiology might not think as we do. They might not possess the same emotions or perceptions we have of life and the universe around us. If the aliens are fundamentally different in physiology, then their brains might be fundamentally different as well.
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I don't really care about defending Star Trek, but some of these things have been dealt with to an extent. For example, in this case, the Sheliak.
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In a collective hive, for example, such creatures only think of the welfare of their species. They wouldn't think of war as killing, per se. It's only the acquisition of whatever they needed. Diplomacy as we think of it, might not be in their lexicon.
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The Borg, definitely.
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--Aliens with fundamental differences, as stated above, might not live in an environment not even remotely similar to ours. Though we breathe a mixture of oxygen and other gases, they might breathe methane or something toxic to us. They might also live in a world with radically different gravity, higher radiation levels, and perhaps liquid ammonia instead of water.
They might be extremaphiles (SP?) by our definition.
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Tholians, Horta, Breen.
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That in mind, coexistence might be extremely problematic, even if they were interested in peaceful coexistence. What could you trade with such a race? How difficult would it be to have a face-to-face meeting?
Yes, in fiction, we use the Bumpy Foreheads to create characters rather than monsters. But 'realism' must often give way to 'practicality' in some instances.
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Right, given the time constraints, and honestly, limits of what a viewing public would accept, most stories have to be pretty conventional. I tended to like the stories more where they did interact with creatures that were physically or mentally more alien.
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