For me, television science fiction has always been handicapped by its lack of inspiration in designing alien species. Part of this comes simply from budgeterary constraints. Its a lot easier to show knobbly headed humanoid aliens then anything truly unique. The Scarrans (pictured here) are among TV's best efforts at creating a truly unique looking alien. I think Babylon 5, Farscape, and Doctor Who (in both incarnations) have done the best at creating strange species, both from a psychological and biological perspective. Babylon 5 had the most detailed alien cultures of any show, particularly the Minbarri and Narn (admittedly humanoids). It also presented the wonderful Shadows, the first non-bipedal species to play a major role in a science fiction story arc. Farscape usually featured bipedal aliens, but wonderfully strange ones, like the Scarrans, Luxans, Hynerians, Pilots, etc. The cultures may not have exactly been detailed, but there was a wonderful sense of adventurousness in the design of these species. Star Trek has not been as successful, though there have been some wonderful species shown even in that series: the Horta and the Borg being both alien and well thought out. Doctor Who, however, is unique in its ability to create aliens that consistently defied the bipedal humanoid prejudice, even if they looked incredibly corny. The Daleks, for instance, though descended from a humanoid species, are one of the most startingly original creations in all of science fiction television.
Now what I would really like to see is Larry Niven's and Jerry Pournelle's Moties on sci-fi TV. That would be something to see.
you forgot moya and talon in Farscape. watching trek you think that every intelligent alien race is humanoid and on the exact same scale as we are. I understand that the limitations with special effects made this necessary when the series was starting out.
ReplyDeleteIs it Talon or Talyn? I can never remember. Yea, I think the original Trek was actually fairly creative . . . the Excalbians, the Horta, the Gorn were all fairly unusual. It's STNG that got pretty dumb. It was a possessed human or bone-ridged villian every week, whereas Doctor Who in the eighties was still trying to do real "aliens" and real "monsters"
ReplyDelete