Tribbles.

__________________
"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." - Douglas Adams

But how were the starship troopers bugs particularly earthly-buggish? exoskeletons? articulated limbs? These don't seem like things that would be surprising to see evolution pop out elsewhere, they've evolved more than once on Earth.

True, they are called "bugs" but they are fundamentally different than Earth insects. They have many multi-jointed legs, and an exoskeleton, but those are the only similarities to Earth insects. Their hive structure is completely different than that of Earth insects. Their body proportions do not match any terrestrial arthropod I am aware of (massive head and legs, very small body, at least in the drones).

__________________
I met this wonderful girl at Macy's. She was buying clothes and I was putting Slinkies on the escalator.
-Steven Wright



My Website: The Black Cat's Web Page

In Galaxy Quest, the aliens (when they weren't using their "appearance generators" to look like humans) looked like very large squid. The "pig lizard" that the captain fought in that film was also interesting.

__________________
Yes, they laughed at Einstein, but only because of his silly hairstyle; no one was actually laughing at his science.

To Quote Frank Zappa, a sci-fi B movie fan, circa 1973/1974

"It Conquered the World. The monster looked like an inverted ice cream cone with teeth around the bottom."

__________________
Round...everything is always round!

I've thought the Moties were kind of interesting. And the creatures from Wrinkle in Time although I suppose they're supposed to more good and evil personified as opposed to alien creatures.

You missed my explanation: "Alan Dean Foster described it as a hulking humanoid monster in his novelization. He went out of his way to say it was the creatures primary form."

So it was humanoid. If you disreguard Fosters novelization, then your correct. We don't know what it's primary form looked like although we do know what it's shape was from the hole in the ice and the general size of the ship they found. Hmmmmmmm....was there a ship in Cambel's original story? I am going to have to read it again if I can find it.

Addendum: On a side note. Unless The Thing was sucking up extra mass to make itself large or ditching mass somewhere to make itself into a dog shape it would either be too heavy or too light in certain forms. The conservation of mass and all that.

__________________
Why did the cat fall off the roof?
Because he lost his mu.

I just destroyed the periodic table. I only recognize the element of surprise.

I saw one movie called "Invader" on TV once. The alien was sent to Earth by Martians on a retrofitting viking 2 lander. It then went through a bunch of metamorphases. One stage was humanoid, but the rest weren't. It looked like a slug at one point, turned into a humanoid, then ultimately turned into a 4-legged, 2-armed creature. The creature was also interesting because it was not really hostile (although everyone assumed it was), and each baby creature is born with all of its parent's memories (they reproduce asexaully). The movie wasn't great, but it wasn't all that bad either.

__________________
I met this wonderful girl at Macy's. She was buying clothes and I was putting Slinkies on the escalator.
-Steven Wright



My Website: The Black Cat's Web Page

Someone mentioned "The Blob."

I saw the Blob given as a realistic Alien on some science show on PBS.

__________________
Why did the cat fall off the roof?
Because he lost his mu.

I just destroyed the periodic table. I only recognize the element of surprise.

Sometimes theres an excuse for them looking like humans.

Example: The adult xenomorph from the alien series apparantly takes on the characteristics of its hosts (how it does this requires quite a leap of faith though, there is no reason for such a creature to evolve but it may have been engineered) so its ok that they look humanoid when they come out of humans, or quadripedal when they come out of dogs.

Also, the goa'uld in the Stargate TV series. The actual parasites are quite alien, but they get alien characters they can actually interact with by having them take human hosts.

The plant from "Little Shop of Horrors" was pretty weird

__________________
here we go, the world is spinning
when it stops, it's just beginning

sun comes up, we laugh and we cry
sun goes down, and then we all die

Touched by his noodly appendage

What about the aliens from "The Faculty"? They were kind of like squids with big teeth.

__________________
I met this wonderful girl at Macy's. She was buying clothes and I was putting Slinkies on the escalator.
-Steven Wright



My Website: The Black Cat's Web Page

I thought the Aquatic/Xindi species from ST:ENT were cleverly done.

__________________
[Dr. Horrible]___________________________[Penny]
Listen close to everybody's heart________And you believe there's good in everybody's heart
And hear that breaking sound_____________Keep it safe and sound
Hopes and dreams are shattering apart____With hope you can do your part
And crashing to the ground_______________To turn a life around

Actually, I did not miss your explanation. I found the novelization irrevelant to Campbell's written and Carpenter's cinematic vision of the alien.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Goes_There%3F

Dave Mitsky

__________________
Chance favors the prepared mind.
De gustibus non est disputandum.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Utter Cheepnis...
here it is, in all its glory...
http://www.monstrula.de/filme/itconq...ld/still11.jpg

__________________
Orion's Arm . The Starlark . Voices: Future Tense . OA Flickr set

A creature could use tentacles. Octopus are quite good with their tentacles, they can open jars. By many measures, raccoons have better hands then we do, they use them to open shellfish. (and garbage cans). For that matter, have you ever watched a squirrel eat a nut? They aren't bipeds, and yet I suspect a sufficient intelligence using squirrel hands could do anything we can. Lots of rodents that aren't quadrupeds have pretty good "hands". For that matter, if a creature has more than 4 limbs, two could evolve into hands and stll leave 4 or more for walking.

I personally like aliens based on animals. There are lots of interesting animals on this planet, and it's interesting to try to extrapolate what they would be like if they evolved intelligence. Most of the time when people don't use animals as a base they come up with things that seem unlikely from an evolutionary standpoint. Of course, you can't keep the aliens too much like the animal they are based on. We changed a lot in the course of evolving intelligence. My problem with planet of the apes is we know EXACTLY what apes that evolved intelligence would be like. Us.

That's one of my problems with a lot of sci fi aliens. Their societies are a caricature of one aspect of some human societies. They seem a little "monochromatic" and unlikely. I have particular problems with the space barbarians that are portrayed as pure warrior cultures. Who cleans the toilets? Who invents the lasers and spaceships and recycling equipment? I have trouble imagining some of these species building a city and a railway system, let alone a starship. Behind every human warrior culture their have been farmers, housewives, and/or slaves to do the dirty work. That's why I really liked the Enterprise rationalization for Klingon society.

In _ Broken Time_ a human serial killer started killing aliens from a race that was physically much faster and more tecjnologically advanced than us. When a character asked how, she was informed "we've only ever interracted with that race's military" and he mostly drugged his victims.

Non-humanoid (or animaloid, or insectoid) aliens in movies? Let's see...

Solaris.

Many of the monsters in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (although there were also some definitely humanoid ones).

Hrm.

The eponymous ship in Event Horizon? After it's return from... wherever it went.

And while we're on the subject of "artificial" life, what about the Monolith, in 2001 and 2010?

The Virus.

Hrm.

Okay, I'm stumped.

Farscape had some unusual alien critters in it - probably made possible because Henson produced it and had the resources and abilities to do something more than put bumps on an actor's forehead.

Cool creatures. Nobody named them , apparently. But they seem (it's hard to really describe them, because they were always seen in fleetng glimpese in shadow) to be bipedal hammerhead pterodactyl-like things.

Props to the designer for creatvity.

__________________
Angel of the Abyss
-------------
"I am Ripper...Tearer...Slasher...Gouger. I am the Teeth in the Darkness, the Talons in the Night.