Same Plot, But Who Did It Best?

List follows, and I'm sure we can add to it.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

There are variations on the Cassandra Plot, where someone has absolutely vital information but is not believed (until 3 seconds before doomsday).

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

There really are only about 36 different plots in all of literature, if you boil them down far enough, so it's not surprising that science fiction repeats itself.

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

Romeo and Juliette gets repeated a lot. Then, there's the knight rescuing the princess from the dragon, even when the dragon turns out to be Darth Vader. hmmm...has Goldilocks and the Three Bears ever showed up in sf.....

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Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

Sure. Rendeszvous with Rama is very like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The humans intrude on Rama and mess things up a bit, then leave at the end. The Ramans even do everything in threes.

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

I'm surprised that the "taken over by an alien entity" plot wasn't covered. I think that one came up at least five times on SG-1 alone, as well as in other sci-fi.

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

The "Meet the Double" and "This is all a dream" has been done by every type of fiction. Whole shows, "St. Elsewhere" and the "Bob Newhart Show" have been wiped-out by the dream theme.

I think the most popular theme that is specific to sci-fi or fantasy is "My body has been taken over by a alien or supernatural entity" theme.

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Never let the facts get in the way of a good story, people want to be entertained.

Drats, you got there first.

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Never let the facts get in the way of a good story, people want to be entertained.

Maybe you're caught in a "having deja vu" theme.

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

Alien-possession is very common in Sci-Fi. From classic Trek alone we have "The Return of the Arhcons" (Sulu gets "absorbed" into "the body"), "This Side of Paradise" (alien spores make everyone in the crew "chill out"), "Operation Annihilate" (Spock gets infected and tries to take over the ship), "Metamorphosis" (Nancy Hedford is possessed by the Companion), "Wolf in the Fold" (various people are possessed by Jack the Ripper), "Return to Tomorrow" (crew members possessed by an ancient people trying to build themselvse new bodies), "Is There In Truth No Beauty" (Spock mind-melds with the Medusan ambassor), "The Lights of Zetar" (Scotty's girlfriend gets possessed). And "Turnabout Intruder" has body-switching.

That's 9 episodes out of the 79 - more than 10%.

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

Forgot the superior being or race encounter theme.

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Never let the facts get in the way of a good story, people want to be entertained.

If they've had longer to develop their technology, how's this a theme, as such? Unless one posists in a story that we're the most technologically advanced species in the Local Cluster, or that all interstellar civilizations are pretty much equally advanced (extremely improbable) then there have to be encounters with superior beings. It's part of the game, like love in a romance novel.

Now if you mean, say, beings like Star Trek: TNG's Q, whos power isn't technology-based (at least obviously so), then I agree.

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I never think of the future, it comes soon enough.-Albert Einstein
The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.-Tom Waits
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo.-Enoch Root, The Confusion
When I was a kid, if someone brandished a shrink gun he'd get a little bit of respect!-Myron Reducto, Harvey Birdman

here's an oft-repeated theme. I'm approximately paraphrasing Asimov in one of his essays:

the monkeys are locked up in the zoo and mistreated by the evil zookeepers. Despite the evolutionary advantage and high technology of the humans, the monkeys with sticks and stones manage to break out, defeat the humans and live happily ever after without evil humans bothering them again.

Asimov mentioned this in saying that War of the Worlds was one of the first alien invasion stories that didn't follow this hard-to-believe formula, but had to be defeated by pure bad luck on their part.

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Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

If you just mean main characters taken over, otherwise the whole premise of the show fits, at least in the earlier days. (Goa'uld)

The most evolved being is what I meant, "The Organions", The God Apollo, the piano playing energy child and a couple of others from the original Star Trek. Q, of course; the Traveler and the being who killed an entire race with just a thought from Next Generation, dozens of others from other shows.

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Never let the facts get in the way of a good story, people want to be entertained.

Surely one of the most threadbare plot ideas which goes back over nearly two centuries is:

Lone Mad Scientist invents/creates/discovers something which is intended to amaze the world and bring him fame and wealth as well as final recognition from all his past critics that he is not "a crackpot" after all. Only to find what he creates become uncontrolable and nearly destroys every thing before finally turning on him.

The from Frankenstein all the way through to Jurassic Park cliche, used time and time again by people with unscientific minds to try and warn scientists off from messing with things that the common folk think should not be messed with.

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Yes, I meant the main characters being taken over by some entity apart from the Goa'uld. I seem to remember it happening a number of times on SG1.

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

My bold:
It was pretty much the first alien invasion story of any kind, wasn't it? Unless you include things like Greek myths that may have the same theme in different words (can't think of any examples, sorry).

Oh it goes further back than Frankenstein (which was subtitled "the Modern Prometheus," by the way). Try Daedelus and Icarus or the Tower of Babel. Stories about men who over-reached and were destroyed by their creation are just about as old as mankind.

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

I recall Asimov mentioning examples of alien invasion stories predating WotW, and he included some ancient myths, but some more modern as well. I can't recall a single modern one though. WotW was probably the first popular alien invasion story in modern times.

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Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info