History BlueAndOrangeMorality / LiveActionTv

** House Greyjoy consider raiding and pillaging to be outright pious acts in their religion.

*** This may be more LawfulStupid, since the whole reason they took the hospital in the first place was to comply with jurisdiction rules.

*** This story ends with further moral inexplicability, as the Doctor decides [[spoiler:that the nanobot Vardies constitute a sentient species, and the colonists have to live with them forever, with no hope of explaining to the nanobots that death causes unhappiness.]]

* A sideplot in ''Series/BabylonFive'' episode "[[Recap/BabylonFiveS02E03TheGeometryOfShadows Geometry of Shadows]]" revolves around Ivanova trying to understand Drazi politics before the conflict between Purple and Green [[CycleOfRevenge spirals out of control]]. [[spoiler:Aside from colors, Purple and Green are wholly abstract concepts with no defining characteristics like ideology or regional identity.]] Drazi foreign policy is quite understandable by humans, though.

*** The Borg were a lot like this originally, before eventually being somewhat humanized by the addition of the Borg Queen in the movie ''[[Film/StarTrekFirstContact First Contact]]''.

* ''Series/The100'': In Season 3, we are introduced to A.L.I.E., an [[ArtificialIntelligence artificial intelligence]] whom Jaha is helping to shepherd the citizens of Arkadia to the "City of Light," a rumored promised land. To enter, a person must swallow a device that hardwires the brain into feeling absolutely no pain, physical or otherwise, wiping entire sections of memory and essentially turning people into drones for her. As an artificial intelligence, she has no human emotions or human understanding of right and wrong and is just following her core command, which is to "make life better for humanity." She takes drastic measures to accomplish this, including wiping out most of mankind before the events of the series to prevent a potential overpopulation problem. It is later revealed that her purpose for the City of Light was to [[spoiler:"save humanity" from a coming nuclear deathwave that will irradiate the ground in six months' time. Taking away pain was an attempt to give people happy lives, and after the end came, [[BrainUploading their minds would have lived on]] in the city,]] but as a machine, she couldn't understand what exactly was wrong with the violent ways she went about getting people to enter.

*** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS35E1TheMagiciansApprentice "The Magician's Apprentice"]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoS35E2TheWitchsFamiliar "The Witch's Familiar"]], it's shown that [[spoiler:the Doctor considers his murderous archenemies the Master and Davros to be his friends, to the point that the Doctor still entrusted the Master with the Time Lord equivalent of a last will and testament. The Master/Missy also claims that, while the Doctor cares about his companions, he sees them like humans see their pets.]]
** While the Daleks are mostly ScaryDogmaticAliens with heavy [[ANaziByAnyOtherName Nazi]] overtones, it's noted that they regard hatred as so fundamentally beautiful that they are unable to destroy especially pure examples of it, ''even when it's in their best interests to do so''. It's subtly implied that part of the reason they have not yet defeated the Doctor may be that [[NotSoDifferentRemark they're too in awe of the hatred he has of them]].
*** Similarly, to a Dalek, maintaining racial purity overrides everything else, including self-preservation and even ''killing.'' In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E3VictoryOfTheDaleks Victory of the Daleks]]", three Daleks immediately and willingly allow themselves to be killed by a new, "purer" strain of Dalek. In "[[Recap/DoctorWho2021NYSRevolutionOfTheDaleks "Revolution of the Daleks]]", a new strain of Daleks built and cloned by humans manages to take over the Earth with little resistance. The response from Skaro is to come to Earth and kill them all for impurity, [[VillainousRescue freeing the Earth,]] and ignoring the human population completely until the new Daleks are extinct.

*** The ExpandedUniverse anthology ''Twelve Angels Weeping'' notes that [[VillainsNeverLie Daleks have a "psychotic honesty" to them: they never use stealth tactics, never encrypt their communications and rarely use tricks.]] On the other hand, the main character (a Time Lord fighting against the Daleks in the Last Great Time War) also grimly observes that psychological warfare tactics are utterly useless against them. Detonating a sun to destroy every Dalek ship in its solar system merely summoned more Daleks to take over the empty space.

* Sweet Tooth in ''Series/TwistedMetal'' is a deranged, serial killing clown, but he'd rather be insulted to his face than lied to.

* ''Series/KamenRiderExAid'' has the Bugsters, who are effectively video game characters brought to the real world. As such, they have a very different set of values from normal people, valuing skill, challenging opponents and fulfilling their "role" above all else, and putting very little value on human life since they're so used to respawning with little to no consequence, which comes across as especially shocking to a cast primarily comprised of doctors. The series later gets unusually literal when the protagonist discovers one of the main villains to be his EnemyWithout, and the one who's secretly been controlling one half of a form that was previously assumed to split him into two bodies, one orange and one blue. This leads to a fight between the two halves.

*** The Cardassians, specifically their justice system, wherein [[KangarooCourt the verdict is announced before the trial begins]]. The trial only happens to explain why and how the crime was accomplished and justify the initial verdict. The system is justified by the Cardassians' attention to detail and their perception that they cannot make a mistake (although it is proven wrong in ''Star Trek'' multiple times), in addition to taking pride in their ability to enact "swift justice". This extends to all aspects of Cardassian culture, with "Enigma" (mystery) novels always end with everyone being guilty: the mystery lying in who is guilty of what. Starfleet people are shown to be unable to understand that system. Similarly, Cardassians don't understand human literature. For example, Garak considers ''Theatre/JuliusCaesar'' to be a poorly written farce because a leader should never trust anyone enough to be betrayed like that.

* ''Series/SpaceAboveAndBeyond'' has the Silicates. These AIs originally served mankind until they were infected with the "take a chance" virus. Now they see everything in life as a gamble. This leads them to do things like killing an entire family on the result of a coin flip and playing a game of Black Jack to determine the fate of people they have captured and could kill immediately.

*** The non-humanoid [[Recap/StarTrekS3E22TheSavageCurtain Excalbian]] race view such concepts as "good" and "evil" as being so foreign that they decide to test them experimentally by staging a battle between representatives of the two.
*** In the episode "Empath," the aliens torture the Enterprise officers in order to awaken the title character's compassion.

---->'''Locutus''': Why do you resist? We only wish to raise the quality of life.
*** The entity Nagilum in the episode "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS2E2WhereSilenceHasLease Where Silence Has Lease]]" traps the Enterprise in a strange NegativeSpaceWedgie, kills a RedShirt, and decides to kill a good portion of the rest of the crew to fully explore the concept of death. It seems to truly have no idea that the crew might not be wild about this idea.
*** "Liaisons" had ambassadors from a race that lacked the concepts of antagonism, pleasure and love. One of them studied antagonism by being a jerk to Worf, one of them studied pleasure by pigging out, and one of them tried to learn about love by stranding Picard on a planet and taking the form of a human woman.
*** While Q is portrayed as being an adversary of humanity, he might embody this trope. In the episode "True Q", he even claims his race has the right to decide whether humans live or die because of their superior morality, a characterization with which Picard disagrees, to put it mildly.
*** Although Q is a particularly malicious member of his race. While the Q Continuum do fall under this trope, Q himself is particularly sadistic and condescending compared to the others, and isn't the best comparison for how his species thinks (the Continuum once kicked him out and turned him into a human for being an embarrassment).
*** Malicious perhaps, although it's not hard to make the case that every time Q shows up (on ''TNG'' anyway), he does the human race a favor -- even if it's a lesson or warning that costs lives. He really seems to like humanity, but is happy to make liking him back nearly impossible. Which makes him perfect for this page.
*** In the series finale, he actually saved humanity indirectly by dropping hints about what the Continuum was doing so that Picard could stop it. In an earlier episode where he was acting as their agent, he admitted the Q as a whole considered humans to be a possible future threat.
*** In the extended canon novel ''Q&A'', it is revealed that Q's tests had a point all along... turning Q into a case of ValuesDissonance. [[spoiler:A race known as Them have returned to decide the fate of the entire universe. It turns out They created our universe (the Q included) and, like many others they created before ours, They are now going to destroy it... because They are no longer entertained by it. The Q knew all along and had essentially given up. Q, however, (yes that one) had tested countless races and decided on Humans, Picard in particular, to prove the worth of keeping our universe around. It works. Picard convinces Them to let the universe remain... by ''laughing'' at the absurdity of the situation. All along Q had been teaching Picard to have a sense of humor about things that were out of his control just so he would have exactly this reaction when the time came.]]
*** And then you [[FridgeLogic begin to realize]] that the fans of Star Trek are essentially [[spoiler:Them]]... what with the recent drastic decline in the franchise's popularity. [[FridgeBrilliance EPIC!]]
*** In the episode "Allegiance," Picard is whisked away to a strange prison with three strangers and replaced by a doppelganger on the Enterprise. When he figures out the experiment he and the others have been unwittingly participating in, his captors (a group of previously unknown aliens) reveal themselves and return him to his ship. They explain that they sought to understand command structures, which do not exist in their culture. When Picard tells them that what they've done is wrong, they claim not to understand the "primitive" concept of morality. But it's clear, when Picard gives them a taste of their own medicine, that he doesn't entirely buy their alleged Blue And Orange Morality, and that maybe they're just ''assholes''.
*** Another example is the Klingon concept of honor, which doesn't track exactly to any human honor system. For instance, hiding in a debris field to ambush anyone who comes to rescue survivors is considered perfectly honorable, and you can officially strip someone of honor for political reasons. Worf is unusual in that his honor is a code of behavior understandable by humans, more like a KnightErrant than anything, but it confuses the hell out of other Klingons.
*** Note that Worf's code of honor is TECHNICALLY the same as the other Klingons, the difference being that he stands by it while other Klingons often tend to interpret the "honorable" thing as being "whatever gains them glory." The other Klingons he encounters tend to believe that he will also do what serves himself first, then get surprised and offended when he declares that he will follow through with his promises and oaths.
*** Fridge brilliance to be found here: Worf was raised on a human colony (and later Earth). Even though he's well read in the facts of what constitute honourable and dishonourable ''acts'' for a Klingon, he has very little firsthand experience with the Klingon expression of it (where it's practically [=EXP=]), and instead expresses it like a human (a state of mind).
*** In the episode "Suddenly Human", the ''Enterprise'' crew discovers a human teenager amongst a group of stranded Talarian teenagers. They soon learn that he was the son of a Starfleet officer who died in a Talarian attack, the Talarian captain took him in as his son since according to Talarian tradition, he is allowed to claim the son of a slain enemy after he lost his own son in a Starfleet attack.
*** The episode ''The Ensigns of Command'' features, who are discussed as being this, with them even being ''able'' to be communicated with by more human-like species being remarkable. This having been said, while part of their mindset is claimed to be that they are exceedingly detailed with their treaties and sticklers for the letter of them, the one we see has a very human-like immediate "you can't do that!" reaction when Picard turns it right back at them (from the ''human'' perspective the Sheliak were acting as unreasonable, selfish assholes) and invokes a clause of the Federation-Sheliak treaty that creates a ''longer'' delay than the one he was asking for under the negotiation clause of the treaty.

*** The episode "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS01E06CaptivePursuit Captive Pursuit]]" was all about this trope. The first alien from the other side of the wormhole, who calls himself Tosk, makes friends with O'Brien and is revealed to be the prey of another species, and both that species and Tosk view the hunt involved to be ancient and honorable for all involved. Tosk even refuses asylum on [=DS9=], even though he will be turned into a zoo exhibit for the rest of his days, the most dishonorable outcome of the hunt. O'Brien is especially troubled by this, and actually subverts the trope a bit by making a compromise between the two moralities: he frees Tosk so that he and his pursuers can have the hunt they desire, and so that Tosk has an opportunity to live the way he deems most honorable, all while allaying O'Brien's conscience about Tosk's fate.
*** The Cardassians, specifically their justice system, where the verdict is announced before the trial begins. The trial only happens to explain why and how the crime was accomplished and justify the initial verdict. The system is justified by the Cardassian's attention to detail and their perception that they cannot make a mistake (although it is proven wrong in Star Trek multiple times), in addition to taking pride in their ability to enact "swift justice". This extends to all aspects of Cardassian culture, with "Enigma" (mystery) novels always end with everyone being guilty: the mystery lying in who is guilty of what. Starfleet people are shown to be unable to understand that system. Similarly, Cardassians don't understand human literature. For example, Garak considers ''Theatre/JuliusCaesar'' to be a poorly written farce because a leader should never trust anyone enough to be betrayed like that.
*** Garak is an example of this trope to other Cardassians in addition to humans. When told the tale of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, he's [[WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids utterly disgusted that a child's tale involves a child getting eaten by a wolf]] but when he's told the lesson is "If you always lie, no one will believe you" he concludes that Humans got the lesson wrong... it should be "never tell the same lie twice". We never know what he was exiled from Cardassia for, but it has something to do with a man who says he is his father, a deed that would seem noble to humans while serving in the Bajoran Occupation involving saving his friend, and [[IntimidatingRevenueService failure to pay his taxes.]] To Garak, these are all equally true statements and falsehoods about his past, and you should believe every one of them, especially the lies. He even lies to get the local law enforcement involved in investigating his assassination.

*** In the episode "Starship Down", the Karemma, a ProudMerchantRace from the Gamma Quadrant, are shown to have this dynamic with the Ferengi: Ferengi morality is centered around the pursuit of profit at any cost, up to and including lying, swindling, and cheating. The Karemma, on the other hand, believe in honest business: the prices they set for their goods are based on the value of the materials and the labor that goes into manufacture, nothing more and nothing less. They also scoff at the idea of gambling, with one Karemma stating that "Only a fool would risk what he has to chance", while Quark dismisses the Karemma's business practices as simply bartering. By the end of the episode, however, both races are shown to be [[NotSoDifferentRemark alike in many other ways.]]
*** The Jem'Hadar are a [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Proud Warrior Race]], but their sense of morality differs greatly from that of the Klingons and the Federation. The Jem'Hadar live by the maxim "Victory is life", and all that they do is in service to the Founders, for whom they show UndyingLoyalty, going as far as to walk into certain death to appease them, murder Vorta handlers that would not act in what they think are the Founders' best interest, or even commit suicide if they allow one of their gods to die. For them, battle is simply a matter of course, in sharp contrast to the Klingons' BloodKnight tendencies and their love of glorifying their victories. In one episode where the Federation and Jem'Hadar are forced to [[EnemyMine contend with a mutual threat]], a brawl breaks out between Worf and a Jem'Hadar Second. The Second is killed by his commander, the First, for insubordination, while Sisko only confines Worf to quarters while off-duty. Sisko calls out the First for killing his subordinate in cold blood, while the First argues that he was acting in the best interest of his team and eliminating a soldier that would only drag them down. The First, likewise, calls Sisko out on not killing Worf for his insubordination, to which Sisko argues that killing Worf would rob him of the chance to learn from his mistake and cost him the loyalty of his men.
*** The Prophets exhibit a lot of this, especially in Ben Sisko's backstory. They are StarfishAliens to the extreme. They are EnergyBeings that exist outside of normal space-time and, because they do not experience the passage of time, they have a lot of issues understanding the human experience. They possessed Ben Sisko's mother and ensured that she married his father and gave birth to Ben. Once you know what happens there is a degree of Squick involved, because it amounted to rape in the end (although it wasn't Joseph's fault because he didn't know that his wife was being controlled and the relationship wasn't her desire). The Prophets never understood that there was anything wrong with what they did, and indeed the Prophet that possessed Ben's mother uses her appearance in his mind when communicating with him for the rest of the series.

*** The Mari are telepaths who prosecute thoughtcrime. However, they are in no way fascist (indeed, the laws have made the police almost obsolete and there are very few left) and the head constable is genuinely trying to do the right thing. While their laws are draconian and lead to the episode's problems, the fact that they have laws regulating thoughts is presented as a logical consequence of a telepathic society.
*** The Hirogen. They are a race of hunters, only they have no problem hunting sentient beings (and sometimes eating them) and do it as a way of life. Though they have a moral code about respecting difficult prey and are perfectly willing to hunt prey that doesn't have to be killed or can be revived, as long as they prove to be a challenge.

*** An early episode had the crew being continually attacked by a mystery ship for no apparent reason. T'Pol points out that not every species out there necessarily behaves in a way that would make sense to humans. They never find out what the aliens' motivation was, but they did successfully test their new weapons on them.
*** Denobulans have some odd priorities by human standards: for example, Phlox won't treat a patient without their consent even for a lethal condition, but has no objection to sharing medical information or supplying drugs to crew members, and at one point argues that it's okay to refuse to treat a genetic disease, even if it's rendering a species extinct, because [[InsaneTrollLogic something about "evolution."]] (Admittedly, it's downplayed in the episode with the last one, because Archer agreed with him, leading to Trek's chronologically first case of negligent genocide.)

--->'''Rios''': They are treacherous, violent, ruthless and subtle. Their concept of honour is rooted in their skill at deceit.

*** Present-day John and Sarah invented the 'stop Skynet' mission, so they're able to define how that mission operates, including setting limits on killing people who might interfere with that mission. (This is compared to the 'protect John' mission, which they cannot interfere with...Cameron will do anything to protect him, period, regardless of what he wants.) However, John never ordered her to not put people in danger or to help them escape danger, just to not ''kill'' them.

*** Similarly, to a Dalek, maintaining racial purity overrides everything else, including self-preservation and even ''killing.'' In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E3VictoryOfTheDaleks "Victory of the Daleks",]] three Daleks immediately and willingly allow themselves to be killed by a new, "purer" strain of Dalek. In [[Recap/DoctorWho2021NYSRevolutionOfTheDaleks "Revolution of the Daleks",]] a new strain of Daleks built and cloned by humans manages to take over the Earth with little resistance. The response from Skaro is to come to Earth and kill them all for impurity, [[VillainousRescue freeing the Earth,]] and ignoring the human population completely until the new Daleks are extinct.
*** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E6Dalek "Dalek"]], Henry van Statten assumes that the Dalek rampaging through his bunker can be reasoned with, but the Doctor points out that you can't negotiate with an OmnicidalManiac who thinks [[AbsoluteXenophobe anyone different should die]].

** The Cybermen at least started out as having a morality which felt alien to humans, thanks to their emotionless logic. In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E2TheTenthPlanet "The Tenth Planet"]] they intend to destroy Earth. When one human character screams out that they are killing people, the Cyberman merely points out how illogical her outburst is, as people die all over the world constantly, and the human does not display any distress over that. The Cybermen were not even actively malicious in the story. Their survival simply meant that Earth had to be destroyed, so they set about to do that. They even offered the nearby humans that they could continue their existence as Cybermen, which seemed like a perfectly reasonable proposal to the Cybermen themselves.

** The Eternals in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS20E5Enlightenment "Enlightenment"]]: they think nothing of kidnapping human seafarers to crew the ships in their race, and aren't too bothered by their deaths -- after all they're outside of time and technically don't die, but "Ephemerals" (beings inside of time) live such short lives. All that matters to them is winning the race and the eventual prize, the "Enlightenment" of the title. They're not even bothered about sabotaging each other's efforts -- it's not against the rules, technically, just not terribly sporting.
** AntiVillain Morgaine from [[Recap/DoctorWhoS26E1Battlefield "Battlefield"]] thinks nothing of slaughtering people who tick her off, but [[spoiler:insists on paying for a round of drinks that her son ordered in a pub. She pays for them, by the way, by ''curing the barmaid's blindness''. She also won't fight in graveyards as to not dishonour the dead. She also held a ceremony honouring said dead- dead people on a planet she cared nothing of- and informed the Brigadier (a leader of her current enemies) that there would be a truce for the duration of said ceremony. These dead fell in battle = They deserve honour.]]
** The Judoon have a pretty strange concept of justice. In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E1SmithAndJones "Smith and Jones"]], they don't hesitate to pronounce and carry out a death sentence on a man for breaking a vase over a soldier's head, even though the soldier was fully armoured and completely unharmed, and when the hospital appears about to explode they depart without any effort to stop it. But when their leader takes an unusually long time verifying that Martha is human, he insists on giving her "compensation" in the form of a piece of paper in an alien language (it's never clear what it is), and [[spoiler:when the hospital doesn't blow up, they send it back to Earth]].

** The nanobot Vardies from [[Recap/DoctorWhoS36E2Smile "Smile"]] were originally designed to make sure human colonists were happy, which typically meant they had enough water, oxygen and food. Unfortunately, the Vardies then decided to expand their definition of "happiness" out into complete and total contentment with ''everything'', which backfired the moment [[spoiler:somebody died for the first time. When their relatives were naturally grief-stricken, the Vardies, who had no concept of what "grief" was, much less that it was temporary, interpreted it as a disease that could be spread from person to person.]] Thus, you end up with a city where [[HappinessIsMandatory anyone who's not smiling and happy about everything]] has to be euthanized before they can spread it to anyone else.

** AntiVillain Morgaine from [[Recap/DoctorWhoS26E1Battlefield "Battlefield"]] thinks nothing of slaughtering people who tick her off, but [[spoiler:insists on paying for a round of drinks that her son ordered in a pub. She pays for them, by the way, by ''curing the barmaid's blindness''. She also won't fight in graveyards as to not dishonour the dead. She also held a ceremony honouring said dead -- dead people on a planet she cared nothing of. They died in battle = They deserve honour.]]

* ''Series/GameOfThrones'': House Greyjoy consider raiding and pillaging to be outright pious acts in their religion.

** ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'': The non-humanoid [[Recap/StarTrekS3E22TheSavageCurtain Excalbian]] race view such concepts as "good" and "evil" as being so foreign that they decide to test them experimentally by staging a battle between representatives of the two.

*** In the episode "Empath," the aliens torture the Enterprise officers in order to awaken the title character's compassion.