Red Shoe: I'm not exactly sure what the "from" and "to" are, since neither before nor after falls neatly into one of the listed dogmas, but there is a
very obvious shift in Scary Alien Dogma in the new season of
Stargate SG-1. I think the Goa'uld probably constitute a Nazi-Communist hybrid (They lack the "ethnic cleansing" aspect common in Nazi archetypes, but they do have a pretty strong totalitarian/"master race" thingy), whereas the agents of the Aurai are communist/religious fundamentalist hybrids (Assimilation plus Religion) — it looks like the Aurai aren't being misinterpreted, but notice that it's the first possibility that comes to Daniel's mind.
Gus: Yes, I get the feeling that the emphasis has tilted toward examination of religious issues and away from political power issues. Wherever did they get the idea to explore conflict with religious fundamentalists?
Ununnilium: You know,
some parentheses are okay.
Janitor: Most assuredly. An insertion that begins with a conjuction and goes on for the length of a paragraph or so, though, reads a little better if it is worked into the main text.
Binaroid: Does anyone else think that there might be room for a fourth category — Aliens as Ugly Americans? In other words, a race/species/civilization that thinks of itself as the good guys, and has reason to do so, but still either sticks its nose in where it isn't wanted, overwhelms other cultures by its mere existence, or are just condescending and triumphalist. For example, Iain Banks' Culture novels, the Abh from
Crest Of The Stars, or
some deconstructed versions of the Federation from
Star Trek.
Gus: I think the "dogma" element is missing for inclusion in this trope. It probably has legs of its own, though.
GMO: I have pulled the text:
- A recent development is to invert the trope and feature the evil aliens as representing modern America, and the human race as the popular adversary. The 2000s Battlestar Galactica does this in the beginning of the third season, with the Colonists as Iraqi insurgents (right down to the suicide bombings) and the Cylons as malevolent occupiers.
as well as the reference to the Cylons as an example of "religious fundamentalist"
SD As. The bigger piece of text indeed seems to belong in a category of its own as described above (in fact, in this case it was a strange mix of pragmatism and dogma that created the situation described). As for the Cylons themselves, a few problems with applying the trope seem to exist in that:
- They are not strictly speaking "aliens" as this would be normally understood (or, rather, if they are, then so are the replicants from Blade Runner or Frankensteins Monster).
- They hardly seem very dogmatic in any measurable way about their religiosity (even less so when one attempts to pidgeonhole them into an analogy to real-world religious fundamentalists), or even universially religious.
- At least in part to the seeming muddling of the premise, it no longer seems clear just how their religion may or may not fit together with their on-and-off plan to exterminate mankind (and even at the start of things, it seems to have been a case of a slave rebellion taken to extremes, subsequentially rewritten so as to suggest that Cold War-style superpower paranoia was a triggering factor).
Ununnilium: "A
really clever writer could just come up with a new ideology." This sentence bothers me. First of all, it's really smug. Second, a lot of the shows referenced in the examples are generally percieved as quite good - I can't count the number of plaudits I've heard for the new
Battlestar Galactica, for instance. Third, it basically says that no, there is nothing worth exploring in this trope. GTFO.
But I'm not sure what to replace it with.
Scrounge: Aren't there occasionally aliens who function on the even older dogma of the conquistador, i.e. "They're savages, so it's okay if we come to their world, beat them up, and take their stuff"? They don't intend to kill the natives per se, just to take the land for the empire or for their own personal glory.
Fast Eddie: Aliens As Conquistador, huh? Sounds good, though all that stuff usually had a religious tilt — Mainfest Destinity, Divine Right, Heathen Pacification, yata yata.
Janitor: Nezumi, you are redacting things from the Starcraft example that make remarks on the similarity to the Iraq conflict. Is this political?
Nezumi: Wait, what? @.@ There are no similarities between the Zerg and the Iraq conflict. That's the Halo one that keeps getting redacted and unredacted due to potential Iraq Conflict similarities. I'm redacting things regarding the Starcraft one for these reasons:
- Do the Zerg really count as Scary Dogmatic Aliens? With the exception of the Overmind, Cerebrates, and Kerrigan, they only seem to have animal-level intelligence... not to mention that their need to assimilate isn't based on any dogmatic belief, but rather a hardcoded biological imperative imparted by their creators—one which they took farther than intended. ... In fact, I'm deleting that entry on the spot, because it's, IMHO, patently ridiculous. Leaving this in here for others to debate if they want.
In other words, they're not a communist dogma example because a) Most of them aren't smart enough to have a dogma. b) Even for those that are, it's a biological imperative, not a dogma. For them to be Scary
Dogmatic Aliens, they have to be motivated by
dogma.
Janitor: Okay.
Big oopsie on my part. Your edit and mine overstomped each other on a thing from a neo-con about Halo, while my blood was up. All me, with the badness.
Fast Eddie: Pulled ...
... 'cuz, well, they aren't.
Nezumi: I have to question the inclusion of the Kzer-za as "Aliens as Conquistadors"... I'm not as familiar with the series as I want to be, but I
thought that that was just what everyone assumed, when actually
they believe the only sure-fire way to prevent being made a slave race again is to make sure that all other sentient life is their slaves. The Kohr-Ah, on the other hand, didn't believe even this was enough, and that the only way to make sure is to make sure there's no other sentient life to enslave them, period.
Violet: That's pretty much exactly right, they also are quite benevolent to their slave races, they found the Syreen a new home after years of wondering. Prevented at least one nuclear war between the Thraddash, and probably would prevent real life humans from being stupid enough to cause global warming. They never once acted like empire builders
Op Megs: Pulled the following because it was falling into
Thread Mode:
- The reason that the Scrin were leveling cities was not, as put above, to observe how humans would react, but rather to draw the human militaries away from the construction sites for the Scrin "Threshold Towers" (effectively huge Stargates capable of transporting even the Scrin Mothership) and central power relay.
- Then why do the level objectives or the first Scrin missions say outright that you are supposed to destroy human buildings to provoke and measure a response, and the Overseer himself says that studying humans is of higher priority than mining operations - enough so that, in his own words, the entire operation is expendable?
In reaction to this, by the way, I recently finished the Scrin campaign, and the viewpoints here are sort of mixed up. The Scrin expect no resistance because a Liquid Tiberium explosion the size of Temple Prime isn't supposed to happen yet. It'll only happen when a planet is, as the ship AI says, is going into self-destruction mode in terms of its natural life forms. Kane purposely caused it to make them come early so Nod could capture one of the Thresholds. The Scrin invasion is essentially a giant distraction. The "provoke a response" is to get military concentration on the Scrin destroying things all over and not the towers, so that resistance won't be organized and able to fight back. You get ordered to raze Buckingham Palace and Big Ben, for instance, in order to be sort of a morale-crushing anti-symbol.
As the invasion progresses, intel that Kane caused the Liquid-T explosion causes the Scrin interest to focus on finding out more about him instead of harvesting Tiberium, because someone who could know so much about their tactics that they could manipulate the Scrin into a premature invasion is a danger to their entire operation(thus your force being labeled expendable in order to find out how to counter Kane).
Hope that cleared it up.
Charred Knight: Moved to
A Nazi By Any Other Name
- Lord Voldemort and the Death Eaters in the Harry Potter books and movies (who aren't actually aliens, but otherwise fit perfectly). Actually, J.K. Rowling acknowledged the Death Eaters are supposed to represent the Nazis. In the fourth movie, they're also Aliens as Klansmen—check out the KKK-inspired headgear, torches and "burning signal".
- Wolfgang von Uberwald's werewolf "movement" in The Fifth Elephant also deserves mention here. Wolf wears a black uniform with a nickel crest of a wolf's head and lightning bolts, uses phrases like "Joy through Strength" and his mother calls dwarfs "subhuman" (Ironically, because they use a different set of idioms than humans do, a dwarf might take that as a compiment). Ironically The vampires in Carpe Jugulum are also organised racists ("The trolls are stupid, the dwarfs are devious, the pixies are evil and the gnomes stick in your teeth"), but less military about it.
- The Scourge from an episode of Angel are demons whose ideas about racial purity drive them to destroy all creatures that are part demon and part human. A description that fits two of the show's heroes at that point, Angel and Doyle.
Nornagest: Cut the following
Justifying Edit —
** Except they don't force others to give up their beliefs or traditions, they're quite happy for the other members of their Empire to believe what they want, so long as they remain loyal to, and do not impede, the
Greater Good
*** The Greater Good is here defined as "the propogation of the Tau Empire".
I'm starting to get tired of this debate.
