"Question is... will you be able to give them their old faces back?"
— Kira Nerys, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, "Apocalypse Rising"
Our space-faring heroes must pass as alien creatures, if only at a cursory glance. Off we go to Sickbay, to be transformed into Rubber-Forehead Aliens via Applied Phlebotinum! This, despite centuries, nay, millennia of cosmetics use by humans, and the very advanced art of stage makeup and personal Special Effects developed in the late twentieth century.
Perhaps because there is no a cosmetics counters or a functioning professional theatre departments there, doctors on starships, space stations, and other Sci-Fi locales are in charge of cosmetic alterations.
One might try to justify this by appealing to the Literary Agent Hypothesis: The "real" aliens actually look more lifelike and alien. They just look rubbery on screen due to technical limitations. When this is used in espionage, it's possible this kind of biological modification is required to avoid detection by future surveillance technology used by the enemy, making this one half of an arms race in spy technology.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- In Knights of the Old Republic, Jarael disguises herself as a standard Arkanian (herself being a mining off-shot) with four-fingered gloves, contacts, and beige face paint to get medical assistance for Camper due to prejudice against offshoots on Arkania.
- In Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), Dark Legion member Moritori Rex; for years, he was able to pass as Guardian member Tobor, though to this day no one knows how he did it. Moritori and Rex were both caught in an explosion and buried under rubble, both being so badly mangled that they were unrecognizable, and the Guardians mistook Moritori for Tobor. Despite this the Guardians — due to their connection to the Chaos Force — should have been able to sense right away that he was an impostor, despite the Dark Legion's own ability to otherwise play this trope straight with surgery, being the poster children for the Hollywood Cyborg that they are. In a bit of Lampshade Hanging, villain Dr. Finitevus once captured and experimented on Moritori just so he could figure out how his disguise was able to fool the Guardians.
Fan Works
- Strange Times Are Upon Us: When the crew of the IKS HoSbatlh is transported back in time to 19th century Earth, Ba'wov and K'Gan deal with the fact that they're Klingons, not humans, by wearing native clothes and headscarves over their Rubber Foreheads. Brokosh later alludes to dealing with the fact that he's a Lethean by claiming he's a Pacific Islander who got burned in a fire. They also say that Meromi can't pass as a human because, as Norigom put it, "She's green."
Film — Live-Action
- Face/Off plays this straight and goes into detail with the procedure.
- Galaxy Quest parodies it as Alexander's make-up and prosthetics as Dr. Lazarus easily fools the Thermians... even as it starts falling apart by the end of the movie. Of course, considering how naive the Thermians are, it's not saying much.
- Star Trek:
- Handled more practically in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. The crew asked Spock what he'd do about the ears. He tore a piece off his robe and wrapped it around his head as a headband. It worked.
- Then there was the solution in Star Trek: First Contact. How to make it so they don't expose past-Earth to the sight of aliens? Send the most human-looking ones. Worf stays home. They did inexplicably choose to send the golden-skinned android in the first team, though.
- Team America: World Police has a terrestrial parody of this when Gary undergoes Valmorphanization — Transformation Sequence and all — to disguise himself as an Arab, and comes out looking like an awful stage makeup job.
Literature
- Averted in Double Star; the narrator/protagonist, being an actor, shows a working knowledge of stage makeup. The novel even throws in some speculation about what technological advancements in stage makeup might occur.
- The Myth Adventures series normally has magician characters use disguise spells to blend in when in other dimensions, but in Myth-ing Persons, while in a dimension with limited magical power, the characters are forced to use more mundane disguises which are actually more effective because the natives aren't expecting them. (They are, however, a pain in the ass to apply, since almost none of the characters have any experience with nonmagical disguises, and due to the nature of this dimension, there are no mirrors available.)
- Used a lot in Perry Rhodan, in fact every infiltrating operation use this 90% of the time.
- This becomes especially ridiculous in the TERRANOVA/Negasphere cycles, when Roi Danton (Michael Reginal Rhodan) is captured by the Terminal Column TRAITOR, the main force of the Chaotarchs. He is then cloned with all his memories, his clone is mutilated and bio-engineered into the Chaos-serving Dual-Captain Dantyren (while conscious), while everyone believes this happened personally to Roi. When he finally escapes and manages to prove he wasn't turned, he uses an enemy ship he stole to kill Dantyren, and then for the rest of the cycle(s) deeply infiltrates the enemy all the while wearing a complex (and painful) bio-prosthetic, pretending to be Dantyren.
- The tactic is also used in the new Stardust cycle to capture one of the enemy's gigantic trade stars, although the trope is somewhat subverted, as this instance of it being used is actually a plan used by the enemy that had Gone Horribly Right.
- Star Trek Expanded Universe and Novelverse:
- In Star Trek: The Genesis Wave, Romulan agent Regimol applies rubber prosthetics and simple dyes to disguise himself. It helps that the race he's impersonating is genetically related, to the point where medical scanners are usually fooled anyway. Also, in Star Trek: Stargazer, Guinan disguises herself and Picard as another race using skin dye.
- On the other hand, at the start of Star Trek: Federation, Kirk is recovering from an assassination attempt by an Orion surgically altered to look Andorian.
- Justified in the Rihannsu novel The Romulan Way, in which the protagonist stayed deep undercover for years in the fairly paranoid Romulan Empire. You really wouldn't want to nick yourself shaving and be caught bleeding red instead of green around these guys. Her controller lampshaded it a bit when reading through her file: "We're making you a disguise, not overhauling a starship!"
- Dwellers in the Crucible, another novel featuring Romulan infiltration, mentions that they can't give Sulu the green blood or the heartbeat, but they can give him sensory enhancers to mimic alien hearing and hypnotically condition him to dream in Rihan just in case he talks in his sleep.
- In the novel Prime Directive, most of the Enterprise's bridge crew is forced out of Starfleet when a pre-contact civilization is destroyed by nuclear war under their watch. As they disperse and attempt to clear their names, McCoy and Uhura set up new identities as the pirate "Black Ire" and his companion. Uhura wears bright blue contact lenses, while McCoy wears a helmet, goggles, and a breathing mask to conceal his identity.
- Star Wars Legends goes for more lo-fi options, maybe because of a lack of easily-used transformation technology (other than the Force, which some Jedi use for this).
- Defied in Specter of the Past. Luke, inspired to cut back on his Force use by feelings of unease he gets every time he goes to do some "pretty flashy stuff", eschews a Force illusion in favor of simple skin coloring and fake facial hair.note Earlier in the same book, the con artist Flim is established as being able to pull off an astonishing impersonation of Grand Admiral Thrawn, right on down to the powerful, almost regal air. It's mentioned a little later on that it wouldn't be too hard to make someone look like Thrawn, but facial surgeries leave certain marks, and his sheer presence is something a droid wouldn't be able to fake.
- Star Wars: Tatooine Ghost has Leia and Han disguise themselves as nonhumans, via skin colouring and prosthetics; since they picked Twi'lek and Devaronian disguises, they even got to hide some handy tools inside the lekku (head-tentacles) and horns of their respective guises. Other such novels also include some pretty interesting and comprehensive disguises, while requiring no actual cosmetic surgery or any such thing.
- In the New Jedi Order novel series, Mara tries to pass herself off as a Kuati noble, and gets away with it, mainly by doing things with hair, makeup, and clothes. She has an advantage in that she was trained in such methods when she still the Emperor's Hand. And the Kuati are Human.
- There's an odd variation in Legacy of the Force: Betrayal where Mara and Luke disguise themselves as impersonators of themselves. They get away with this because they had arranged for other celebrity impersonators to arrive on the same ship so they were not the only "Luke" and "Mara", and there were also some "Han"s and "Chewbacca"s and "Leia"s for them to be lost amongst.
- The MedStar Duology and the Coruscant Nights trilogy have a character who, as a member of a rarely-seen birdlike species, would be noticed everywhere he went. As he fills roles from spy to assassin to thief to gangster, that would be a problem, so he became a Master of Disguise, with a huge number of elaborate prosthetics and full-body suits disguising him as anything from a human to a Hutt. The prosthetics can move as extra limbs and non-beaked faces, and he even has the right scent and accent. The disguises failed him only once, and that was when his assassination target dodged and shot back, destroying the costume.
- Michael A. Stackpole has a bit of a field day with this. In the X-Wing Series novel Wedge's Gamble, the entire squadron infiltrates Coruscant in various disguises, ranging from fully robed body-slave to cyborg to alien disguises. His novel I, Jedi has the protagonistnote actually dying his hair and growing a goatee in order to change his appearance for a bit of undercover work. Star Wars dye is somewhat higher tech than ours involving a "metabolising agent" to be ingested and "colour targeting gel" to apply and wash off at the right time (or you could end up with green hair), but it's still a cosmetics thing. Future X-Wing books by Aaron Allston continue the practice; Garik "Face" Loran, as a former actor, is very familiar with makeup. Between the Of Corpse He's Alive routine for holographic communication and visiting people in person as Lieutenant Narol, both makeup and odd tech are used in Wraith Squadron. This escalates when the Wraiths begin The Infiltration, and Lara Nostil is also very familiar with makeup procedures permanent and non-permanent.
Live-Action TV
- Babylon 5 shows a Drazi wearing a rubber mask to look like a human (he's first played by a guy without prosthetics, then the camera pans to Ivanova, and when it pans back another actor in Drazi makeup removes a mask modeled after the first actor). And vice versa. Ivanova gets a little shocked.
- Played ludicrously straight in Kamen Rider Den-O: When the Imagin have to interact with Muggles, they dress up in ridiculous hats, veils, scarves, masks and even full-body-covering animal suits. So they pose as dudes in suits, despite the fact that an Imagin in his natural form looks unmistakably like a... dude in a suit. Deneb in particular is a master of the Paper-Thin Disguise.
- Mission: Impossible uses this in the revival. Instead of the painstaking mask application used in the original series, we get one-piece masks that can be applied in seconds.
- One episode of MythBusters focused on whether or not rubber masks of other people's faces could fool others. Not only did it not fool people who knew the original face, but it did not fool strangers either. Now imagine a human trying to pass for an alien.
- The Orville: Ed and Gordon use holographic disguises to infiltrate a Krill ship in "Krill".
- Red Dwarf uses this to comedic effect in the episode "Gunmen of the Apocalypse". They attempt to pass themselves off as "Vindaloovians" to a racist species that despises humans by placing the male Robot Maid's eyes on their chins and filming only their chins and mouths. The Simulants board the ship and discover the ruse mid-transmission.
- Stargate Atlantis: Dr. Keller makes Teyla look like a Wraith queen for an infiltration mission. The reason why Teyla is chosen is because her small amounts of Wraith DNA (the result of a Wraith Mad Scientist experimenting on her ancestors) allows her to bypass Wraith psychic checks, so with her appearance not being the main subject of scrutiny there is presumably even less need to surgically alter her.
- A staple trope of the Star Trek franchise, in every incarnation, sometimes plot-driven by necessity, sometimes fairly gratuitous.
- Star Trek: The Original Series:
- Conspicuously and literally averted in "The Enemy Within": after Yeoman Rand scratches Evil Kirk's face, he goes to his quarters to assess the damage. He applies Kirk-colored foundation over the wound from a recurring prop in his quarters to hide the distinguishing wound.
- In the episode "City on the Edge of Forever", Kirk explains Spock's appearance by saying he's Chinese and had been disfigured by a mechanical rice picker. Way to go twenty-third century racial sensitivity.
- Perhaps the earliest example is "The Enterprise Incident", wherein Kirk has his ears and eyebrows altered to pass for a Romulan.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation:
- Lampshaded in "First Contact". Riker has to pass for a near-human alien, and although he has surgically implanted prosthetics on his face, he is only wearing mittens to conceal his "alien" hands. His cover is blown when he is injured, and the doctors are baffled trying to figure out the layout of his internal organs.
- In "Face of the Enemy", Troi is transformed into a Romulan by the Romulans themselves to press her into service as a temporary spy against their own kind.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
- Subverted in "Trials and Tribble-ations", when the characters go back in time to the TOS era and assume a Klingon spy must have had massive surgery to pass as a human. This is because they don't know Klingons weren't always Rubber-Forehead Aliens. To pose as a human, a 23rd century Klingon would only need to get a haircut. Though Fridge Logic would compel one to question the quality of history education in the Federation, if nobody knows one of the most prominent neighboring species used to look totally different (an earlier incarnation of Dax was actually in Starfleet at this time).
- This trope is extrapolated and used in a Disguised in Drag situation in "Profit and Lace", in which Quark is surgically altered to become a woman. It fits this trope because they don't just make him look like a female, but he actually becomes one, with hormones and all. This is used to deliver An Aesop about equality.
- In "Apocalypse Rising", a combination of prosthetics and surgery are used by Doctor Bashir to turn Odo, O'Brien, and Sisko into Klingons (and Worf into a different Klingon). Presumably makeup alone might have worked, except the mission took place over several days and they got into costume early in order to get used to it. It's mentioned everyone but Worf also got treatments to survive the amount of alcohol they were expected to drink.
- Star Trek: Voyager: In the episode "False Profits", in order to fool two Ferengi who were exploiting a planet, Neelix (a Talaxian) was disguised as a Ferengi. Upon threat of death, Neelix ultimately confesses he's not a Ferengi. This prompts the two Ferengi to come up to him and tug on his (fake) ears. Neelix says "I don't feel a thing" (Ferengi ears are very sensitive).
- Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Nurse Chapel actually uses genetic engineering to disguise crew members, making them (painfully) physically mutate into the desired form. It doesn't work as well on Spock, leading him to mutate back in the middle of an away mission!
- Star Trek: The Original Series:
Video Games
- Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines: If you play as a Nosferatu, one human NPC after initial shock just figures you're "into the whole body modification scene" and he doesn't pass judgment on what people do with their own bodies. Honest!
- The Thin Man aliens from XCOM: Enemy Unknown appear to avert this on the surface, but autopsying them reveals that they received extensive genetic modifications to appear human. Their unmodified form is actually the Vipers from the next game, Naga-like snake people larger than a man.
Western Animation
- Jem: "Showtime, Synergy!" One occasion, this turns out to be a disadvantage as Jem is working on a movie and can't let the make-up artist touch her face without revealing the truth.
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars: In "Deception", Obi-Wan's death is faked and he's disguised as his "killer", a bounty hunter named Rako Hardeen, with very sophisticated technology so he can go undercover to investigate a plot against the Chancellor. Since his first stop on this mission is prison, he wouldn't be able to maintain the disguise with makeup.
