Alien Encounters – Television's Memorable Extra-Terrestrials

Anna, the face of the Visitors - V

With the upcoming launch of "V",  it makes it the perfect time to reminisce about our favorite aliens of yore.   The extra-terrestrials who land on earth seem to come in three varieties:  aggressors, refugees, and observers.   But whether they have come to Earth with world domination on their minds, or they simply want to study the local ugly giant bags of mostly water, they almost always seem to stick around for a while.

So click-through and check out some of TVOvermind's favorite, and not so favorite aliens on television.

AGGRESSORS

We've got a pretty nice planet here.  And they want it.  They want our resources; they consider us to be lower life forms and want us to supplement their food supply; they just want us dead.  No matter how you slice it, we are going to have a fight on our hands.

Some claim to come in peace.  We'll find out next week what the true motivations of the Visitors are.  The last time they showed up they set up fake factories in order to steal our fresh water supply and abducted and flash-froze humans by the thousands to use as entrees.  I don't think a single fan of the original series will ever forget the cheesy horror of the scene where the visitors' true nature was revealed when one of them opened his snake-like double-jointed jaw and swallowed a hamster whole.  I doubt that they'll be a whole lot friendlier this time around.

From the Steven Spielberg mini-series - Taken

Aliens don't have to have a lot of screen time in order to scare the holy hell out of us.  A duo of X-Files writers gave us Space: Above and Beyond where humans were well into a war with invaders.  We didn't need to see them; their ships were enough.  In Steven Spielberg's Taken, three families suffered for generations after aliens abducted and impregnated various members in a decades-long experiment that finally resulted in hybrid child that may be the key to their future.  This mini-series wasn't the first to cover this idea but it was definitely the most disturbing version to come out in recent years. These guys were not E.T.  Human experimentation was also the premise for The 4400, but that series dealt mostly with the after-effects and the aliens themselves didn't have a real role.  Mulder's Roswell Greys were a threat from day one in the X-files but they were seldom physically present although their impact on our civilization had been tremendous over the decades.

Marvin the Martian versus Bugs Bunny - Looney Tunes

Some aliens have the same failings as we do – a big ol' ego being at the top of the list.  Why bother experiment on us when they can arrive and simply rule?  Of course, ego does not always equal intelligence, as Marvin the Martian found out in his running attempts to dominate Earth in various Looney Tunes incarnations.  Marvin first appeared in 1948 and hasn't succeeded yet.  He shouldn't feel badly; that wascally wabbit has a tendency to outwit humans too.

The war at home doesn't always have a visibly alien enemy.  Both First Wave and War of the Worlds had enemy combatants in human form.  It's much easier to identify them when they run around in impenetrable armor or have lizard skin.

I suppose when should be flattered that the Borg felt that we were advanced enough to be assimilated.  When they first appeared in Star Trek – The Next Generation, their unstoppable threat was impressive.

The Borg - Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager

Unlike most televisions aliens, like Stargate: SG-1's Goa'uld, Ori, and Replicators, the Borg were never decisively beaten in battle.  Humans (okay, all of Star Fleet) won skirmishes.  They blew up individual cubes.  In one epic battle, they even managed to blow up a transwarp hub.  But the Borg remained a threat that was too widespread to destroy.  Although regions of space were freed from their influence, the knowledge was out there.  We may have proved that resistance is not futile but we certainly didn't will the war.