History Main / FirstContactTeam

Whenever there's some kind of alien artifact found, or an extraterrestrial ship spotted in space, the government will always have [[ThePlan some kind of official plan]] for dealing with FirstContact. This trope is for when there is a "team" assembled, usually consisting of scientists, mathematicians, {{cunning linguist}}s, and usually a few oddball specialties.

Whenever there's some kind of alien artifact found, or an extraterrestrial ship spotted in space, the government will always have [[ThePlan some kind of official plan]] for dealing with FirstContact. This trope is for when there is a "team" assembled, usually comprised of scientists, mathematicians, {{cunning linguist}}s, and usually a few oddball specialties.

* Played with in ''Fanfic/TheNextFrontier''; the [[VideoGame/KerbalSpaceProgram Kerbals]] can't send a full team of anthropologists, linguists and so on along on their first interstellar mission because the ship just isn't big enough, but thanks to the [[SubspaceAnsible FTL communications system]] they have the anthropology and linguistics departments of every university on Kerbin and Duna for MissionControl. The actual in-person contact team are three veteran astronauts, one engineer who helped create the AlcubierreDrive and one skilled CommunicationsOfficer who's supposed to [[AliensStealCable scan for radio and TV signals]] [[LearnedEnglishFromWatchingTelevision so they can start picking up the language]] if they ''do'' find some aliens.

* ''Series/StargateSG1'' had the main team be a pretty balanced collection in their team leaders: a military officer with sufficient authority to represent the United States to foreign powers, a physicist who can perform preliminary analysis of alien technology encountered, an anthropologist and linguist who can help with establishing friendly relations with any cultures they encounter, and an alien defector knowledgeable about the greater galaxy that Earth is stepping into. Also somewhat present in the ''Film/{{Stargate}}'' movie.

* In ''Literature/{{Blindsight}}'', by Peter Watts:
-->Who you do send to meet the alien when the alien doesn't want to meet? \\
You send a linguist with multiple personalities carved surgically into her brain. \\
You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultra-sound, so compromised by grafts and splices he no longer feels his own flesh. \\
You send a pacifist warrior whose career-defining moment was an act of treason. \\
You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. \\
And you send a synthesist - an informational topologist with half his mind gone - as an interface between here and there, a conduit through which the Dead Center might hope to understand the Bleeding Edge.

** Similar to SG-1, the team in ''Series/StargateAtlantis'' is frequently sent out on first contact missions, though they eschew an anthropologist in favor of a "native guide" in the form of Teyla.

* ''Literature/InvasionEarth Invasion: Earth'' by Creator/HarryHarrison opens with an alien spacecraft crashlanding in New York City ([[HarsherInHindsight barely missing the World Trade Center]]). A general steps out of a helicopter and announces that he's taking charge of the situation...[[RuleOfFunny and is arrested by the police captain who's actually in charge.]] The next military man to show up is the protagonist, an Air Force Intelligence officer who respectfully offers the captain some intelligence and practical advise (which is taken), then waits quietly while a team of scientists and military brass dispatched by the President argue. When it's time to enter the craft, he takes a SergeantRock with a .45 as protection, and an electronics specialist with a cable-fed camera (the cable guarded by its own team of soldiers).

* ''Invasion: Earth'' by Creator/HarryHarrison opens with an alien spacecraft crashlanding in New York City ([[HarsherInHindsight barely missing the World Trade Center]]). A general steps out of a helicopter and announces that he's taking charge of the situation...[[RuleOfFunny and is arrested by the police captain who's actually in charge.]] The next military man to show up is the protagonist, an Air Force Intelligence officer who respectfully offers the captain some intelligence and practical advise (which is taken), then waits quietly while a team of scientists and military brass dispatched by the President argue. When it's time to enter the craft, he takes a SergeantRock with a .45 as protection, and an electronics specialist with a cable-fed camera (the cable guarded by its own team of soldiers).

* First Contact Teams were mentioned in passing in VideoGame/MassEffect2 as envoys from Council space to any newly discovered species. In this instance, the species in question was [[AlwaysChaoticEvil the Yawg]], and the incident got the Yawg blacklisted and their world blockaded.

* ''Invasion: Earth'' by Creator/HarryHarrison opens with an alien spacecraft crashlanding in New York City ([[HarsherInHindsight barely missing the World Trade Center]]). A general steps out of a helicopter and announces that he's taking charge of the situation...[[RuleOfFunny and is arrested by the police captain who's actually in charge.]] The next military man to show up is the protagonist, an Air Force Intelligence officer who respectfully offers the captain some intelligence and practical advise (which is taken), then waits quietly while a team of scientists and military brass dispatched by the President argue. When it's time to enter the craft, he takes a SergeantRock with a .45 as protection, and a electronics specialist with a cable-fed camera (the cable guarded by its own team of soldiers).

** Humanity never had the benefit of First Contact teams, as we had expanded far space and ended up meeting the Citadel species by accident. Specifically, [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy the Turians]], who caught humans illegally reactivating mass effect relays, and assumed we were pirates. [[WeComeInPeaceShootToKill The ensuing war]] was brutal and brief, and made more bitter by a number of misunderstandings which nearly escalated the situation into a galactic crisis. The other Citadel species caught wind of the situation, stepped in and brokered a cease fire, paving the way for humanity to join the Citadel. The incident was a point of contention between humans and Turians for years after.

* ''Invasion: Earth'' by Creator/HarryHarrison opens with an alien spacecraft crashlanding in New York City ([[HarsherInHindsight barely missing the World Trade Center]]). A military team is quickly assembled on the basis of a plan that they assumed at the time was a case of the military being ridiculously CrazyPrepared.

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* The IISS in {{Traveller}}

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* Literature/TheJournalEntries have White's Teams, which are often based on White's Ships, named for White's Theorem: "A space-faring species' first encounter with another space-faring species is most likely to be a distress signal." This occurs multiple times both on-screen and in backstories.
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* ''Series/StargateSG1'' had the main team be a pretty balanced collection in their team leaders. Also somewhat present in the ''Film/{{Stargate}}'' movie.

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* In ''Film/{{Sphere}}'' by Michael Crichton, when an alien ship is discovered at the bottom of the ocean, the government sends a team composed of a psychologist, a mathematician, a biologist, and an astrophysicist.
** Later becomes a [[SubvertedTrope subversion]]: the psychologist who wrote the "Emergency FirstContact Plan" admits that, after having been approached by the government to produce the plan, he thought it was so ridiculous that he lazily based all his recommendations on popular science fiction.

* In ''{{Sphere}}'' by Michael Crichton, when an alien ship is discovered at the bottom of the ocean, the government sends a team composed of a psychologist, a mathematician, a biologist, and an astrophysicist.

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* Any diplomatic mission meant to travel beyond the sphere of a given ruler's sphere; to chase an interesting rumor for instance or to begin relations with a previously isolated people. These were usually sent for utilitarian rather then scientific purposes and some behaved quite brutally. Yet in fact they were a first contact team and may have been the inspiration for this Trope.

** One of the first explorers in history was a Chinese courtier sent to an unmapped kingdom which was famous for horses(which the Chinese army was short on), and rumored to have a grudge against some of China's enemies.