Re-watching Doctor Who, and having recently re-watched Stargate SG1 and Star Trek TNG and VOY, I'm wondering why there aren't more attempts to portray more non-humanoid aliens. I don't know about CGI or how expensive it is as opposed to makeup, but surely it'd be a draw for those of us who aren't under the delusion two legs and two arms and a silly meaty casing is the best design?

So, are there any aliens that are original in film or television? As in, not humanoid or derived from an Earth animal?

The only one I can think of off-hand (someone will likely post one that I'll kick myself for not thinking of) is Q from Star Trek... which is kind of a cheat since though he can appear however he likes we only ever see him as a human... =/

EDIT: Oh, and the alien from Alien.

yeah, cgi has only been a serious alternative for about 5 years. before then it was expensive and looked fake. at points it still does. that leaves prosthetics and makeup as about the only options available, and makeup is STILL cheaper than CGI, not to mention how much more useful it is on set.

as for inhuman aliens, the Daleks are essentially squids in salt and pepper shakers

Hollywood is alien racist, they only deal with a handful of alien varieties.
Humanoid (Predator), Insectoid (Starship Troopers), and Bacteria/Shapeless ooze (Evolution).

If you're looking for something outside these archetypes goodluck.

I seriously doubt you could find any alien that's not somehow influenced by an earth animal/humanoid/anything else we have on earth.

While it's certainly true that we are extremely biased by our experience (given the fact that we have never ever encountered life from another planet and therefore have nothing to base a realistic depiction of said life on) I think the scientific minority is a bit too quick to jump on the whole 'anything we come up with is entirely implausible' argument.

I mean, if you've seen some of these discovery channel specials or anything like that, the alternative seems to be creatures that have forms of locomotion so entirely out there that they approach abstraction. It seems to me that life under similar conditions would evolve along a similar pathway, and while life under extreme conditions would have to evolve in ways that appear extreme to the life-standard, the majority of life in the universe would have developed with fundamental principles in common.

Therefore, while it's certainly true that not all (or even the majority) of life would be polypedal or plantlike and instantly recognizable as life to us, as people from Earth who have only seen things from earth, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect some or even much of the life that we encounter while looking for life (in environs similar to those found on our own planet) to be similar in at least some ways to our own.

Hell, since one theory about life in the universe postulates that it's all derived from one or several common origin points, distributed over millenia by asteroid impacts stirring up bacterial, viral and fungal spores that shell over and lie dormant for millions of years until ending up somewhere conducive to their reawakening, I wouldn't be particularly surprised to find out that the vast majority of life in the universe follows a pattern similar to our own.

Anyway, in tv shows and films, the more complex an alien creature is, the more difficult and expensive it is to have on screen whether it's a prosthetics, puppet, animatronic, or computer generated form. Since some methods are cheaper than others, you see them more often, and since basic makeup seems to be the least expensive it's the one you see the most. Personally I prefer the minimalistic approach in films because it lends itself to better storytelling, forcing the writers to do clever things instead of just getting their way all the time.

@ Brewbeard - makes sense. I've always wondered why some scientists insist life is impossible without water. Seems odd to decide that based only on that we haven't seen examples of it yet.

Silicon based life is certainly a possibility (even by scientific standards), Si behaves much like Carbon does, just reacts much slower with higher energy thresholds to react.
But not impossible, most likely wouldn't use water either, since the energy levels needed to get silicon to react with any kind of speed would probably thermolyse water anyway.

It's just easier to find the path of least resistance, and in humanity's limited experience, that means carbon based life. (speaking of aliens: the documentary series "extra terrestrial" (I think it was by National Geographic) has some very interesting takes on various forms of life, mostly non-humanoid too)

brewbeard:
*snip*

I completely agree. Especially when you consider a highly evolved species, you will often see similar traits across a wide variety of species. And besides, how could a quadruped with paws control (or build for that matter) any kind of machinery? Our intricate usage of tools has influenced the evolution of our hands to allow for more complex and more efficient interaction with tools and machinery. The chances that you will see a species without any discernible limbs have advanced technology is highly unlikely, to the point where I would even call it impossible.

Along with the evolutions in our brain we also evolved limbs to better allow us to interact with our surroundings. We evolved these limbs based on our higher intelligence.

Now with a series like Star Trek: The Next Generation (they've actually done some research on how evolution could affect a species from another planet) you sometimes see a space faring creature that doesn't rely on technology at all. These are special cases. In some cases these are creatures that have evolved to live in space. There is even one case in Star Trek: Voyager where they found a species of animal that lives in dark matter nebulae.

This begs the question, how much more efficient is evolving and intelligence and limbs capable of developing technologies when compared to a purely biological evolution? The key comparison would be Human versus any Space Faring creature.

It's just easier to find the path of least resistance, and in humanity's limited experience, that means carbon based life. (speaking of aliens: the documentary series "extra terrestrial" (I think it was by National Geographic) has some very interesting takes on various forms of life, mostly non-humanoid too)

The documentary was done by Discovery channel, although it might have been a joint project with National Geographic. They discussed creatures that didn't evolve a higher intelligence. Essentially they discussed the Dogs, Lions, Elephants, and Birds of an alien planet, but stayed away from intelligent species like Humans.

The documentary was basically following a fictional probe's (guided by artificial intelligence) journey on an alien planet. I am assuming you are referring to this documentary.

tijuanatim:
Hollywood is alien racist, they only deal with a handful of alien varieties.
Humanoid (Predator), Insectoid (Starship Troopers), and Bacteria/Shapeless ooze (Evolution).

If you're looking for something outside these archetypes goodluck.

Didn't evolution every single type of alien ever?

SuperFriendBFG - Which episode of TNG had a living being in space? I don't recall, I want to watch it.

I think I remember one of the few episodes of TOS having an episode about that too?

Star Wars had a cut-price attempt at an original alien species by having them use biological solutions to what we need technology for, the Yuuzhan Vong. It failed miserably. Then again, it was kind of a nice change from having the Imperials as the Big Bad every single time...

Molikroth:
SuperFriendBFG - Which episode of TNG had a living being in space? I don't recall, I want to watch it.

I think I remember one of the few episodes of TOS having an episode about that too?

Star Wars had a cut-price attempt at an original alien species by having them use biological solutions to what we need technology for, the Yuuzhan Vong. It failed miserably. Then again, it was kind of a nice change from having the Imperials as the Big Bad every single time...

One of the earlier episodes with the so called Crystalline Entity. It was in the first season that much I remember. I couldn't name any other specific cases of such creatures but I do know other episodes dealt with them as well.

There was one episode where a creature had latched itself onto the hull of the enterprise. It was essentially a child sucking on it's mother's breasts for food. The creature was draining the ship's energy and they had to figure out a way to force the creature off without harming it. To do this they returned to the nebula where they picked the creature up and reversed the hull polarization (what they described as "Souring the milk"). The creature let go of the ship on its own volition and proceeded to its real mother.

Crystalline entity sounds familiar, there was a sequel to that episode seasons later, right?

Neosage:

tijuanatim:
Hollywood is alien racist, they only deal with a handful of alien varieties.
Humanoid (Predator), Insectoid (Starship Troopers), and Bacteria/Shapeless ooze (Evolution).

If you're looking for something outside these archetypes goodluck.

Didn't evolution every single type of alien ever?

Yep, remember the bits in the cave and the dinosaurs etc.

brewbeard:
Hell, since one theory about life in the universe postulates that it's all derived from one or several common origin points, distributed over millenia by asteroid impacts stirring up bacterial, viral and fungal spores that shell over and lie dormant for millions of years until ending up somewhere conducive to their reawakening, I wouldn't be particularly surprised to find out that the vast majority of life in the universe follows a pattern similar to our own.

I must say, my good man, I never thought about that theory. I know that the spermatogenesis theory of the origin of life is a pretty popular one, but I never thought about the fact that that would mean that there would be at least one other instance with a common species.

If you want really good non-humanoids, you still have to look to books in my opinion, where the creators are unfettered by the constraints of technology. My personal favorite is the Cerebrelith from the D&D Psionics Handbook.

Neosage:

tijuanatim:
Hollywood is alien racist, they only deal with a handful of alien varieties.
Humanoid (Predator), Insectoid (Starship Troopers), and Bacteria/Shapeless ooze (Evolution).

If you're looking for something outside these archetypes goodluck.

Didn't evolution every single type of alien ever?

Yea, but it all started as the bacteria, and then it all....well...evolved...

Also it was the first (read: Only) movie I could think of that used the bacteria type of Alien.

And as Corroded pointed out it did end with a huge amount of variety in the aliens...

Honestly the best variety of Alien you could find could come from Spore....if that counts.

tijuanatim:

Neosage:

tijuanatim:
Hollywood is alien racist, they only deal with a handful of alien varieties.
Humanoid (Predator), Insectoid (Starship Troopers), and Bacteria/Shapeless ooze (Evolution).

If you're looking for something outside these archetypes goodluck.

Didn't evolution every single type of alien ever?

Yea, but it all started as the bacteria, and then it all....well...evolved...

Also it was the first (read: Only) movie I could think of that used the bacteria type of Alien.

And as Corroded pointed out it did end with a huge amount of variety in the aliens...

Honestly the best variety of Alien you could find could come from Spore....if that counts.

I don't think one movie that uses it counts as an Archetype of Hollywood aliens.

It's almost impossible I'd say, but the closest I'd say would be many of H.P. Lovecrafts aliens, many of which are strange geometric shapes at impossible angles. However, I wonder if that is just making their forms relate to mathematics rather than biology. Hence, people can still relate to them, just not in relation to their own selves.

Anyway, as said:

Insectoid: Xenomorphs(Alien), the Bugs (Starship Troopers etc.)

Humanoid: Klingons, Grey Aliens etc.

Para-Humanoid: i.e. Aliens that take the form of a, or what can be described as a body part, i.e. The Thing, Floating Brains/Brains in a Jar

Amorphous: The alien lifeform as it is at the end of Evolution, The Thing at certain points, The Horta. Basically anything that can be described as a 'blob' or 'gooey' type creature. A Shoggoth would be another good example.

Animal-Like: Various stages of evolution in Evolution, the Rancor from Starwars. So basically, any animal like aliens.

Abstract: Aliens that basically form strange geometries, the Mi-Go, The Elder Things etc.

Energy & Colour: Aliens that possess a form more aptly described as 'energy', this can be anything from radiation to color to dust particles, the Color out of Space or Nyogtha a being composed of shadow would be examples of these.

And then of course these can all mix and match in between. For example:

A colony of alien insects can often be seen in films to form shapes to form a larger being, or in the case of an alien virus, convert a hapless human into any of the types listed above, from simply causing the victim to collapse into a fleshy blob, to mutating them into simply more hideous form.

SuperFriendBFG:
I completely agree. Especially when you consider a highly evolved species, you will often see similar traits across a wide variety of species. And besides, how could a quadruped with paws control (or build for that matter) any kind of machinery? Our intricate usage of tools has influenced the evolution of our hands to allow for more complex and more efficient interaction with tools and machinery. The chances that you will see a species without any discernible limbs have advanced technology is highly unlikely, to the point where I would even call it impossible.

Now hold on there friend you are forgetting that an alien would have an alien environment which could facilitate life without limbs.
An alien filled with inflatable pouches which it could use to collect and feed of bacteria shooting out of vents, could funnel the gasses into appendages needed to build things using other resources in the environment.
But when we attack their ships because that's what we do; we would find a crew of balloon things that explode in a cloud of disease.

The only one I can think of off-hand (someone will likely post one that I'll kick myself for not thinking of) is Q from Star Trek... which is kind of a cheat since though he can appear however he likes we only ever see him as a human... =/

Uh you watched Stargate and failed to spot that all THREE of the big bads in the show were of non human design? The Goau'ld were parasitic beings that took humans as hosts. Yes they used humans but they were no where near human. The replicators well that's a tough one. They were built by a humanoid robot but the original few series that saw them they were most certainly not human, they did however later take on human form. The Ori, started life as the first evolution as Humankind and then ascended to non human form. You also had the Re'tu (Show and Tell), the crystal life forms (Cold Lazarus), the micro aliens from (Message in a Bottle) and the Giant aliens from (Crystal Skull). These are just a few of the non human Aliens in SG1.

Combined:
I seriously doubt you could find any alien that's not somehow influenced by an earth animal/humanoid/anything else we have on earth.

Creativity doesn't happen in a vacuum, after all, you have to get the components from *somewhere*.

I defy anyone to come up with an idea for an alien that can't be described based on anything on Earth. (And I mean anything--it has to be completely foreign to any and all human experience.)

Can't do it, can you? There you go.

The most original aliens I've seen in a while were the Elcor. Those guys were awesome. They should have had more of them. If they could have made those stupid elevators a little bigger, you could probably have one as an NPC. Imagine it, Shepard hiding behind a barrier with his/her little blue alien strumpet, pinned down by Krogan, saved suddenly by Manfred, the Elcor short-order chef, who bounds in from the side, his incredibly dense muscle mass allowing his limbs to smash through the Krogan armour, while he uses a back-mounted, brain-operated mass driver cannon to take out those pesky Geth snipers.

JMeganSnow:
Creativity doesn't happen in a vacuum, after all, you have to get the components from *somewhere*.

I defy anyone to come up with an idea for an alien that can't be described based on anything on Earth. (And I mean anything--it has to be completely foreign to any and all human experience.)

Can't do it, can you? There you go.

Moties.

They're the aliens in the novel The Mote in God's Eye, by Niven and Pournelle. The aliens are asymmetrical and caste-based cyclical hermaphrodites, and their psychology is weird. They have two dextrous arms on one side, and one extremely strong arm on the other; they're bipedal but their leg structure is completely different from terrestrial species; they don't have spines, but rather a big rigid central bone (like a thicker femur) that fits into a socket joint where a humanoid would have hips.

You can't venture too far from "guys in suits" in movies and TV, but in novels the mind's the limit.

-- Steve

PS: and then there's the Cheela, from Forward's Dragon's Egg, nearly-microscopic creatures made of collapsed matter living on the surface of a neutron star...

Anton P. Nym:

They're the aliens in the novel The Mote in God's Eye, by Niven and Pournelle. The aliens are asymmetrical and caste-based cyclical hermaphrodites, and their psychology is weird. They have two dextrous arms on one side, and one extremely strong arm on the other; they're bipedal but their leg structure is completely different from terrestrial species; they don't have spines, but rather a big rigid central bone (like a thicker femur) that fits into a socket joint where a humanoid would have hips.

I'm hearing "arms, legs, this instead of a spine". Still using elements found on Earth. Yeah, the whole package isn't found on Earth, but you could say the same thing about a dragon or an aurumvorax.

Art is fundamentally about people, anyway, so the only reason to have aliens or elves is for comparison/contrast and some of the Issues that come up. It doesn't really matter just *how* they're different.

If you want outlandish things, read some Lovecraft. In the first story I read, At the Mountains of Madness, the first alien creatures the cast comes across are so alien and bizarre that the characters don't know whether to classify it as a plant or an animal.

There's also the Star Child from 2001... not really an alien in the movie, but more so in the book.

Anyhow, the reason that aliens are always basically humanoid in movies is partly because it's really difficult to come up with believable alien designs, partly because CGI has only been avaliable for a few years, and partly because no matter how good your CGI is it's still several orders of magnitude more expensive than costumes and makeup.

Aardvark:
The most original alien thing I've seen in a while was the Elcor. Those guys were awesome. They should have had more of them. If they could have made those stupid elevators a little bigger, you could probably have one as an NPC. Imagine it, Shepard hiding behind a barrier with his/her little blue alien strumpet, pinned down by Krogan, saved suddenly by Manfred, the Elcor short-order chef, who bounds in from the side, his incredibly dense muscle mass allowing his limbs to smash through the Krogan armour, while he uses a back-mounted, brain-operated mass driver cannon to take out those pesky Geth snipers.

O_O Must. Be. In. Mass. Effect. 2.

I really liked those tentacly fish-like bastards from The Faculty. Did look awful lot like shrimp, though - which is why I've become wary of shrimp, as of late.

Anyway, this is sounding suspiciously like a Spore creature editor contest in the works!

Also, what about those things from Pitch Black? Those were pretty creative.

The new Dr. Who has some pretty good ones. Some things that are beings of light. The Vorlons and the Shados from Babylon 5. Tribbles from Star Trek, or Changelings from Star Trek.

PatientGrasshopper:
The new Dr. Who has some pretty good ones. Some things that are beings of light. The Vorlons and the Shados from Babylon 5. Tribbles from Star Trek, or Changelings from Star Trek.

*cough* Vashta Nerada *cough* :)

I'm not really 100% but I'd be willing to bet that theres some non humanoid in Hellboy 2 somewhere, and as for the CGI vs older methods I plan (hope) to get into the movie making buisness and pay attention to things like that in movies and the best SFX master is the director of hellboy 2 Del Toro and he (aswell and I) despise CGI characters. Nothing is worse then some crappy actor looking 10 inches away from where the character allways is and CGI just looks fake. The best way to do it is costume, make-up, puppets assisted by CGI to add some tenticles or w/e. Like the Faun in Pans Labrynth was allmost all real, the only thing CGI on him was his legs and it makes for a much more real and belive able character.

i cant remember what movie it was in but i remember an alien taking a vaguely floral form, kinda like a Venus-fly trap.

The aliens from Crysis were unlike anything I'd ever seen before. I think they're pretty
original.

EDIT: Oh, and the daleks, can't forget them. I know they've been mentioned tons of times already, but I'm mentioning them again.

Eipok Kruden:
The aliens from Crysis were unlike anything I'd ever seen before. I think they're pretty original.

They were just ordinary humans in alien masks. Your PC just isn't powerful enough to render them properly.

/me runs

2001: A Space Odyssey

Solaris (Stanislaw Lem: "As Solaris' author I shall allow myself to repeat that I only wanted to create a vision of a human encounter with something that certainly exists, in a mighty manner perhaps, but cannot be reduced to human concepts, ideas or images.")

Animorphs had a lot of non-humanoid aliens, the yeerk slugs, the giant Taxxon Centipedes, the blue centaur Andalites. The problem with these sort of creatures is making them cheaply and believably. We can't really have a sci-fi series with Power Ranger Monsters after all.