3 Problems

Aquans jump the shark.
Streaming in 2024?

 At the start of 2024, I imagined what it might be like if the novel Inter Ice Age 4 by Kōbō Abe were placed in the hands of Hollywood story tellers (see the image that is shown to the right and my blog post 2024). 

However, rather than man-made aquans, what I got from Hollywood in 2024 was alien invasion flicks like: 1) Resident Alien and 2) 3 Body Problem. Yes, Resident Alien was on TV in 2021, but I only got around to watching it in 2024. 

Full disclosure: I watch very little television... I'd rather invent my own imaginary TV shows. Here, in this blog post, I discuss both of these television programs in the context of my annual Search for Interesting Hollywood Aliens (SIHA).

Fucking alien - image source

 Don't Fuck With the Aliens.
I was reluctant to watch either Resident Alien or 3 Body Problem. Knowing that Resident Alien originated as a comic, I expected silliness from this television show. For example, viewers are told that the main character (an alien from a distant planet) is evolutionarily related to octopus-like creatures. 

 Baby Makes Three. However, even given the vast biological gulf between humans and these aliens, viewers are treated to an alien-human hybrid (named "Bridget", see Figure 0, below; I'll call this "problem #1" on my list of 3 problems). How is this reproductive magic possible? Viewers do not even get a hand waving "explanation". We are not expected to ask such questions. This is TV. Just turn your mind off and go along for the ride. No. That's not for me. I want my science fiction to make sense.

a 3 body solution (see also)

 Fantasy? In the case of 3 Body Problem, I had read about The Three-Body Problem after its English-language translation won a Hugo Award. Based on descriptions of the novel, I feared that it was little more than a fantasy-tinged re-hash of old Sci Fi stories like War of the Worlds and "Nightfall". 

Fantasy? Having watched the first 8 episodes of 3 Body Problem, I struggle to call it "science" when I'm told that the aliens can send a proton-sized "sophon" to Earth, a device that has the computational power of a planet-sized computer (call this "problem #2"). I'm intrigued by the idea of an advanced alien "femtotechnology", it sounds like the imaginary artificial life-form that I call zeptites. I just wish 3 Body Problem the TV program told viewers some details about this alien technology rather than present it on-screen like some sort of magic.

The 2023 SIHA.

 Old School. Here in 2024, I've also been re-watching the original Star Trek episodes (I'm watching the "remastered" version). My 2023 SIHA award was a retro-SIHA that I awarded to an episode of Star Trek (see), so I suppose the real question for the 2024 Search for Interesting Hollywood Aliens is: can a newer Sci Fi television show from this millennium top Star Trek from 50 years ago, or will I simply award another retro-SIHA this year?

 This is Some Bullshit. In the case of Resident Alien, the show runners were obviously trying to have some fun, which makes it easy to forgive much of the silliness and anti-science plot elements that abound in Resident Alien. However, in the case of 3 Body Problem, there is no fun at all and a large amount of sickening horror which does not put me into a forgiving mood.

Figure 0. Our resident comic is having fun with baby food (brain food). Little baby "Bridget" to the left.

"symbiotic implant" by Gemini

I had a discussion with the Gemini large language model about Resident Alien and the production of Bridget. Gemini suggested that the alien has a "symbiotic implant" that might be equipped with gene-processing technology that could allow creation of an alien-human hybrid. Since I could not recall such an implant from Season 1 of Resident Alien, I asked Gemini to generate an image of the "symbiotic implant". Gemini actually generated three images and one of them had what looked like human skin. The image that is shown to the left is one of the three images, but this does not look like the skin of a human. However, I do like to include Hi Tek™ endosymbionts in my own science fiction stories. It is clear that the makers of Resident Alien don't expect viewers to care about the imaginary technology luring in the background of the plot of this TV show. We are expected to just sit back and enjoy the ride. But I'm not the kind of Sci Fi fan who can shut of his brain... I want to explore the technological details.

A brain with a body problem.

 Problem #3. However, the main problem for both Resident Alien and 3 Body Problem is that I have no interest in stories about technologically advanced aliens who travel vast distances across interstellar space because they want to go to war with humans. 

That's right Sci Fi fans... according to the folks in Hollywood, life and humans evolved quietly on Earth for 4,000,000,000 years and then just when the science fiction genre is invented, aliens from another planet show up to fight with us. Such stories are not about aliens, they are about the fears and stupidity of humans and our inability to look away from the horrors of war. Yawn. 😴

Figure 1. The Corbomite Device.

 Interesting Aliens. In addition to my 2012 blog post which features "The Corbomite Maneuver" as one of my ten favorite episodes, back in 2016, I again blogged about "The Corbomite Maneuver", a Star Trek episode that turns on its head the annoying "evil aliens will kill us" plot element that is too often used in Hollywood. I like to imagine an alternative universe where there was a series of follow-up episodes about Balok and his people, but that was not to be in our universe. 😢 So, it is up to fans to do what must be done (see "The Fesarians").

Instead, we got a Star Trek fictional universe with interminable hand-wringing over Klingons, Romulans, Borg, the Dominion and other militaristic aliens who all bored me to tears. Resident Alien and 3 Body Problem continue this sort of Hollywood obsession with all things militaristic and morbid. 😛

The power of the Huaoshy.

 Dimensional Structure. I confess to having been strongly influenced by "The Corbomite Maneuver" when I was in my personal golden age of science fiction. Imagine a First Federation. My personal decades-long effort to imagine the first ever interstellar civilization led to the Huaoshy, a key element in the Exodemic Fictional Universe. 

I imagine that the Huaoshy started out as a biological species called the Hua, but after millions of years of technological advancements, the Huaoshy became an artificial lifeform that had the power to change the Dimensional Structure of the universe.

some tryp'At anatomy

 Don't Get Me Wrong. For stories set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe, I often depict hybrids between space aliens and Earthlings. For example, Tyhry is an artificial hybrid with genetic elements from her Neanderthal birth mother and the genetically engineered human variant, the tryp'At. However, the tryp'At were intentionally designed to be a telepathic human variant that was inter-fertile with Earth humans. 

In contrast, for the alien who is the main character in Resident Alien, there was no serious attempt to explain how alien genes and human genes were successfully mixed together and produced the baby alien-human hybrid that is seen in Resident Alien. I'm a fan of fictional biology, but I'm not a fan of magical biology. I suppose the typical TV viewer does not care about such plot details, but I do.

The Man Who Evolved

I'm also a fan of fictional physics. In the Exodemic Fictional Universe, I include two families of imaginary fundamental particles, the hierions and the sedrons. I also make use of imaginary "extra dimensions" in my stories. So, why do I feel so unsettled by the magical proton-sized sophons that are key plot devices in 3 Body Problem? There are some ideas in science fiction that were bad when they were first published and they are still bad 100 years later. As an example, look at the "man of the future" with an absurdly big head and a small body that is shown in the image to the right. Okay, we can accelerate protons in a particle accelerator, but that does not mean that it makes sense for aliens to magically send a proton (or a proton-sized sophon) to Earth from Alpha Centauri.

Alien nanotechnology.

 Nanotechnology. I'm a huge fan of including imaginary advanced nanotechnology in science fiction stories. However, I was completely disgusted by the horrific use of nanotechnology that was shown in 3 Body Problem. 

 That's Entertainment? I do NOT want to hear about the latest way that you have found to kill people.

 Drama? I have to congratulate the makers of 3 Body Problem for actually showing a failure of another example of hastily-developed nanotechnology: a type of "space sail". However, I don't understand the whole idea of trying to send a human brain to the aliens by means of an impossibly complex process involving the detonation of hundreds of nuclear bombs. It does not really seem like much of a failure (or very dramatic) if nobody ever thought your Rube Goldberg device had a chance of working.

Figure 2. He's purple.
generated by WOMBO Dream

 The End. In 2022, I watched the first several episodes of the Foundation television show, but I could not keep watching. The same thing happened with Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Here in 2024, I feel like I've had enough of both Resident Alien and 3 Body Problem, so I don't expect to watch either of these past their first season. 

Green Orion by WOMBO Dream

 She's Green. When I first watched Star Trek, I saw the episodes on a small black-and-white TV that was displaying a weak and snowy signal arriving at my house from a distant city. It was not until many years later that I saw Susan Oliver in all of her green glory.

 Sexual Revolution. Now, almost 60 years after Gene Roddenberry was boldly going where nobody had gone before in Hollywood, it is amusing to read accounts of how he struggled to put his fantasies about sexy aliens on TV screens that were being attentively watched by millions of nerdy kids. Often Roddenberry had to content himself with providing Captain Kirk with cute crew members (see Figure 1, above) who could tempt him into thinking about something other than his first love, the Enterprise.

Figure 3. "Shore Leave" by WOMBO Dream.
In this episode of Star Trek,
Kirk gets a back rub from Tonia
while they are on duty and on the Bridge,
but then a Ruth replicoid arrives.

I've previously blogged about how Theodore Sturgeon had pushed at the boundaries for including sexual topics in 1950s pulp science fiction magazines. In the Star Trek episode "Shore Leave" (1966), Sturgeon provided Kirk with an opportunity to move past just having his subordinate (yeoman Tonia Barrows) massage his back. Obliging aliens create an artificial lifeform replica of Kirk's "long-lost love", Ruth, and Kirk gets to spend a couple days of shore leave with that artificial woman (see Figure 3). For "The Fesarians", the sexual behavior of the main characters is integral to the plot.

 The 2024 SIHA. I nominate Balok and the mysterious First Federation as depicted in "The Corbomite Maneuver" (1966) for a retro-SIHA award. In Jerry Sohl's original story ("Danger Zone"), Balok had avian features (see Figure 2, above). Related Reading: a summary of “Danger Zone” by Jerry Sohl.

Next: a fan-fiction sequel to "The Corbomite Maneuver".

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