New Aliens

Original cover art by Paul Orban
The Warp Bomb of Kiley 279

I'm going to kick off the 2022 SIHA (Search for Interesting Hollywood Aliens) by watching the first season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and asking: are there any new aliens and are they interesting? 🧠

Unlikely Alien Obsessions. One of the worst things about the original Star Trek was the many aliens who either looked exactly like Earthlings or who were made to look "alien" by the makeup artist simply adding a freaky latex bump on their face. Sadly, the "new" aliens in episode 1 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds fall into this dismal category. Well, was there anything interesting about the aliens from Kiley 279? The writers for Strange New Worlds ask us to believe that right in the middle of making First Contact with aliens, the Kiley can be distracted by launching into a discussion of sports. Maybe the Kiley are even more obsessed with sports than we humans. Episode rating: 💣💣💣💣 4 warp bombs... no interesting aliens... Kiley 279 is a boring Earth clone. 👎

Can I interest you in
a "reptilian" Deleb?

 Ancient Comet (A.K.A. M'hanit). How ancient? So ancient that M'hanit has been careening through the galaxy since before the star of the Shepherds first burned in the sky. 

Strange new world? The "new world" in episode 2 is Persephone III, which sadly gets very little screen time and nary a visit from the crew of Enterprise. 😞 However, by the end of the episode, things are looking brighter for the desiccated residents of Persephone III, the "reptilian" Deleb. And not because M'hanit is going to crash into Persephone III and put the long-suffering Deleb out of their misery...

"Finally, some water!"
Celebrating Frank Kelly Freas
1922-2022 (image source)

 The Gift of H₂O. A chunk of M'hanit breaks off and brings badly-needed water to the previously bone-dry and sparsely populated Persephone III. You can tell it is magical water because it begins to rain on Persephone III without the need for clouds that would otherwise obscure the expensive CGI view of the comet as seen from the planet's surface. 

How Dry I Am. Yes, I have sympathy for "poor" suffering television shows that need to quickly create a visual depiction of some Sci Fi plot element. However, I suffer when television shows seem to care more about selecting the correct color for uniforms or a character's hair style than they care about depicting actual elements of the plot in the Sci Fi show.

The Arbiter disco light and music show on M'hanit.

Sadly, we don't get to learn much about the Arbiters, but we do get to experience their light 🎇 and music 🎵 show. I love the idea of space aliens who have been kicking around the galaxy since long before the human species ever existed. Sadly, I think Mr. Q and the Q Continuum have become something of a mind virus that ruined this Sci Fi theme for the Star Trek fictional universe. Just pull out your phaser and fire. Just pull out an "ancient alien" and endow them with magical powers...

The Blues Shepherds

 Holy plot holes, Batman! It is awfully nice of the Shepherds to spend centuries guarding the comet M'hanit because who knows when some trigger-happy Federation starship captain is going to show up and blast the comet into rubble or otherwise interfere with its mission? 

They're on a mission from God. Sadly, the Shepherds have forgotten why they started guarding the comet. However, that does not matter because this episode is not about aliens, it is about Uhura and her amazing ability to learn alien languages and her nagging uncertainty about Starfleet as a career. Because on a show about New Worlds, the angst of young Earth women is more important than aliens from other planets. QED.

Captain Shepherd

 Ancient Aliens. I'm a huge fan of Sci Fi stories that feature ancient aliens who have been around for billions of years. Let's assume that the Arbiters of the comet M'hanit originated as biological entities a billion years ago and then they transformed themselves into some artificial life-form that we humans might not even recognize. Let's also assume that these Arbiters wanted to help other more primitive life-forms to grow and develop in the galaxy, so they equipped a bunch of comets with Hi Tek Arbiter Light and Music Show Jukeboxes™ and sent them cruising through the galaxy, collecting assorted religious fanatics like the Shepherds to serve as their helpers. 

Spock logically explains Pike's new
hairstyle to the Enterprise crew:
"Sometimes you just have to laugh."

 The first two automobiles in Kansas. Imagine the first two automobiles in Kansas getting into a car accident. For this Star Trek episode, we are asked to believe that a couple hundred years ago, the Shepherds were induced to guard the comet M'hanit as it followed its crash course to planet Persephone III. The Shepherds literally do not care if all life on Persephone III will be destroyed when the comet hits the planet. Fuck the reptilian Deleb! But fear not, because along comes Captain Pike and his merry crew including cadet Uhura who can sing along with the Arbiter Light and Music Show Jukebox and save the Deleb from destruction. And viewers are told that the super advanced Arbiters had predicted this rosy outcome from the beginning, including Spock's ability to magically fly a shuttle into the core of the comet where he uses magic heat rays to melt off part of the comet and provide needed water to the Delebs. Ah, yes, the Holy Arbiters work in mysterious ways... sort of like Pike's hair-stylist. Episode rating: 👎 throw-away aliens; this episode is all about Uhura.

an Illyrian

 Hetemit IX. I've been delaying discussion of aliens who are members of Starfleet because I was expecting to be dealing with swarms of more interesting aliens on New Worlds, but episode three forces my hand. Hetemit IX once had a colony of Illyrians, but now it is unpopulated, apparently because of harsh "ion storms" that periodically strike the planet. 

 Continuity. Episode 1 showed that Starfleet routinely uses genetic engineering and alters the DNA of Starfleet officers. In episode 3, we learn that Starfleet does not accept Illyrians as members because the Illyrians are dedicated genetic engineers. That makes perfect sense, right?

ion storm approaching... red alert!

 

 I'm fine with all the vegetable sex toys, but be careful
where you put those creepy antennae, Mr. Hemmer!

Then we find out that the second in command on the Enterprise is an Illyrian. Yes, with all of their SuperDuper™ technology, Starfleet can't recognize an alien Illyrian who joins Starfleet. Makes sense, right?

Rules are made to be broken. The story so far: Captain Pike has violated the Prime Directive and now he is ready to defy the rule against allowing Illyrians in Starfleet. Also in episode 3, we learn that the ship's doctor almost got the entire crew killed because he has been secretly keeping his terminally ill daughter inside the medical transporter's pattern buffer. Just DON'T ASK how nobody else noticed what happened to his daughter.

Spock and Pike are saved by
 the ghosts (plasma creatures)

 Telepathy. In episode 3, we get some screen time for Lieutenant Hemmer, chief engineer aboard the Enterprise. Hemmer is an Aenar from Andoria, which means he's blind, but who needs to see when you have telepathy? Even with his telepathic powers, Hemmer does not notice little things like the second in command on the Enterprise being an Illyrian or the chief medical officer secretly keeping his daughter inside the teleportation buffer: because... Aenar ethics... "they had a rule never to read the minds of others without their consent".

Plasma Beings. I have no idea what a Star Trek ion storm is and neither do the Strange New Worlds writers, but in episode 3, we learn that there are "plasma creatures" (are these the titular "ghosts"?) who live inside the ion storms that sometimes effect Hetemit IX. The plasma creatures save the lives of Kirk and Spock after they stupidly allow themselves to get trapped on Hetemit IX during an ion storm.

CGI light infection (image source)

 Fantasy Science. In the original Star Trek, we had water from a planet that contained a "complex chain of molecules that affect humanoids like alcohol". Viewers are told in episode 3 of Strange New Worlds that the teleporters of the Enterprise automatically screen out any such foreign material... except when... plot. In episode 3, we are told that the "contagion" from Hetemit IX travels "through light waves" when it spreads from person to person. The writers made up a convoluted plot about an energy drain causing the teleportation filters not to work when the Away Team returns to Enterprise, but even later, all the Hi Tek™ medical equipment on the ship still can't detect this magical "contagion". Eventually, a magic antidote is found (at the last possible moment), just as for the TOS episode "The Naked Time". Episode rating: ☀☀☀☀ 4 death rays... the Illyrians are not new, Una is too human to be interesting and the "science" in this episode is so absurd that it can damage young minds. 😫😡

More Gorn on the way 😖. Figure 1.

 More useless reptilians. Last year (see this blog post), I comment on Fredric Brown's 1944 story "Arena". In the Star Trek episode called "Arena", Kirk battled a Gorn. For Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, just when I was ready to celebrate the lack of Klingons and Romulans, they drag the Gorn out of retirement. Question: the show is called New Worlds, so why must we recycle old aliens? Answer: episode 4 is not about aliens, not even the Gorn... it is about Lieutenant La'an Noonien-Singh and her traumatic childhood memories of the Gorn. But are the Gorn interesting aliens? No.

Please don't turn this into a horror show.

 A Race to the Bottom? When dealing with Hollywood, one always has to wonder how long it will take a new science fiction show to sink to the bottom of the barrel. Bring together a bunch of Hollywood writers with no interesting ideas about space aliens, and soon enough they will simply trot out some Evil Alien™ species to battle against the Federation (such as the Borg or the Jem'Hadar). 

Star Trek Mired in Darkness. What about Strange New Worlds writer Davy Perez? If Perez wants to make changes to the Gorn, then why not make interesting changes? Why revert to the tired Evil Alien™ plot? If Perez wants to write horror stories and has nothing interesting for viewers then he has the power to inflict "Tribbles with teeth" on Star Trek fans. No, thank you. Episode rating: please take your sterotypical ALL EVIL™ Gorn and return to Discovery. 👎🙈🙉⛔

Figure 2. Star Trek SLT; Spock's Love Triangle... will Spock go to the Dark Side?   r Chapel(θ) + ir T'Pring(θ) = re^iθ

a R'ongovian

R'ongovian solar sailship

Technically, Episode 5 ("Spock Amok") failed to deliver a new world, but it was still a breath of fresh air after the Gorn episode (Figure 1, above). Viewers are provided with a look at a R'ongovian spaceship using a solar sail, but the action takes place at Starbase 1. We never get to see R'ongovia. 👎

Don't think too much, Spock.

 Different Stripes. The R'ongovians almost get lost in this episode while Spock engages in hi-jinks: swaping bodies with T'Pring. The R'ongovian culture is somewhat interesting... almost the opposites of the Gorn, the R'ongovians are highly empathic. Captain Pike finally wins the trust of the R'ongovians by demonstrating that he can express complete sympathy for the feelings of the R'ongovians who are in a tight spot, their world inconveniently located between the parts of the galaxy controlled by the Romulans, Klingons and the Federation. 

Really delivering on that "strange new world" idea

If you were entertained by Enterprise Bingo then check out this video. Sadly, none of the cast members of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds who are shown in that video seem to be rabid fans of Star Trek. 😞 However...

Trekkie?

futuristic phone sex
New spinoff show:
Spock's Women.

I don't want to see Star Trek: Strange New Worlds turn into some sort of soap opera about Spock's sex life. Although, I might get into Vulcan sex if it is strange sex with some interesting aliens on new worlds. Episode rating: 1 brain and 1 heart 🧠💘. This episode is mostly about Spock, not the more interesting R'ongovians. 😒

If not Spock then how about the Captain? If not Spock's sex life, then how about an episode about one of the Captain's women? What are the odds that any "new world" we visit for Strange New Worlds is ruled by one of Pike's old girl friends? In the Star Trek universe, maybe 70 - 80%. Here's the setup: the most important cargo known to Majalis is being carried through space in a defenseless shuttle. The shuttle comes under attack by a space-cruiser, one with relatively weak weapons.

🧠 Brain? What is Brain? 🧠
A scene from TOS "Spock's Brain"

 The Cloud City of Majalis. Yes, it is a dangerous galaxy out there. At any given time, while the Enterprise is mapping space, you are likely to receive a distress signal from someone like Harry Mudd Pike's old Majalan flame, Alora. Why Alora is gallivanting through space with the next "First Servant" is never explained... because... plot. 

 Fantasy Medicine. The offending space-cruiser is destroyed by Enterprise, but not before the Majalan shuttle is also destroyed in the attack. However, the shuttle's passengers are safely teleported aboard Enterprise. Lest you think that Majalis is some backwoods primitive world, viewers are quickly informed that there is no disease among the Majalans. They use magical "quantum bio-implants"™ that correct any damage to a person's body at the molecular level.

Mind Control.

 Mystery. This episode keeps viewers guessing, but not in a good way. We wonder: is this Strange New Worlds episode a rehash of "The Cloud Minders" (see Trek 39) or "Spock's Brain" (see Trek 32) with maybe some of this TOS episode sprinkled in? The super technologically advanced Majalans have to use a child's brain to keep their floating city floating. This so disgusts Pike that he jumps out of Alora's bed and returns to Enterprise. But all is not lost. The ship's doctor has obtained clues for how to use "quantum bio-implants" to treat his terminally ill daughter.

Still waiting to reach the frontier...

I wonder how much Robin Wasserman had to do with the tone of both "Spock Amok" (above, Figure 2) and "Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach". Wasserman has some science fiction writing experience outside of Hollywood, which is a good thing. 👍

Episode rating: 3 brains 🧠🧠🧠. I fear that episode 6 might be as close as we come this season to actually visiting a new world of the unexplored galactic frontier and meeting interesting new aliens... although Majalis did not seem all that strange given its similarity to Ardana and let's also not forget: Pike had previously made contact with Alora.  😟 The whole "we run our city with a human brain" plot was stupid in 1968 and it is even worse in zombie resurrection mode, here in 2022. 

 The Call of Duty.
Spock and Chapel demonstrate that
they have no feelings for each other

 Astounding Asteroids. In "The Serene Squall", viewers are subjected to another absurd Hollywood asteroid belt, but there is no new world and no new aliens. For Episode 7, we get a brief glimpse of Spock's brother, Sybok who is living at a criminal rehabilitation center where T'Pring is stationed. Sybok's friend, Angel the pirate, tries to spring Sybok from the rehabilitation center by engineering a swap of Spock for Sybok, but the pirate-planned prisoner swap fails when Spock kisses Chapel.

I suppose Captain Angel was designed to be a Mudd-like character for the new century. Instead of "Mudd's Women" we got "Angel's Vulcans".  The writers are struggling to deliver Strange New Worlds, so they might start a spin-off series called Strange New Pirates.

Episode 7: Angel's Vulcans.

 Pirate Perfidy. I suppose it is inevitable that both Angel and Sybok will return in future episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds because the writers don't seem interested in exploring new worlds... they'd rather engineer excuses and invent contorted plots that allow the show runners to show Spock kissing someone. Episode rating: 👎, no new world, no new aliens and too much icky gruel 🥗.

new uniforms!

In Episode 8, "The Elysian Kingdom", there is no new world, but we did get one new alien. Sadly, this alien is yet another disembodied fantasy alien who resides inside a nebula. 👻 Success: Debra finally liberated Rukiya from the teleportation buffer. Episode rating: 👎, silly fantasy alien with magical telepathic powers. Poor Hemmer. 😟 Will he recover?

Buckley (right)

 Spock +1 hug, Hemmer -∞. Ever since episode 4, I've been dreading the return of the Gorn. However, I held my nose and watched the stupid Gorn episode "All Those Who Wander". In order to make this disgustingly bloody episode, they magically made the Gorn undetectable by scanners. And the Gorn are also magically shielded from Hemmer's telepathy. Poor Hemmer dies in this episode because... plot. Spock and Chapel managed to sneak in one long hug. The new alien in this episode was "Buckley" who did nothing except act as an incubator for some baby Gorn. Episode rating: 👎, I'm not interested in magical fantasy horror show Gorn. Alien body count: -1 red-shirted engineer, -1 blue disposable alien and who even counts all the dead Gorn?

"I'm Pike's number one." ... "No, I am."

 The Search for Quality. Episode 10 had no new worlds and no new aliens; rating 👎. 

I was a fool to imagine that we could get through a season of Star Trek without having to deal with either Klingons or Romulans.  😔 

I suppose the one alien (besides Spock) who we can expect to see in Season 2 of Strange New Worlds is Una, who Pike promised to protect, but who is arrested at the end of this episode. Most of the other "new" aliens from Season 1 (such as the Deleb) were as disposable as a random red-shirt. 

Maybe since the writers have no interest in new worlds and interesting aliens, this series will be all about time travel and they'll start calling it Star Trek: Dr. Who Me Too.

Mudd's mysterious time crystal

 Magic vs. Science. I've been investigating the science advisors for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and trying to imagine how viewers are supposed to accept show elements such as time crystals as having a place in the Star Trek universe.

Alien time travel technology.

  Time Travel. How does time travel work according to the writers of Star Trek? Growing up with the original Star Trek, I got comfortable imagining that maybe time travel technology was something that only super advanced aliens would understand and use within the Star Trek universe. However, writers for Star Trek have not been able to resist the temptation to make time travel technology available to primitive humans. Are "time crystals" technology or magic?

Kellam and a research assistant.

 Science Advisors. Some of the "fact checking" for Star Trek was done by people such as Kellam de Forest (he graduated from Yale with a degree in history) and Joan Pearce. Apparently, it was either Joan (working for de Forest Research) or Pete Sloman who realized that Gene Coon's script about the Gorn was very similar to Fredrick Brown's previously published story "Arena" (Figure 1, above). 

Harvey Lynn (educated in science and engineering) was apparently the first person with a science background who was called upon by Gene Roddenberry to provide advice for Star Trek story telling.

Other folks with science backgrounds who helped shape the science content of Star Trek include Andre Bormanis and Jesco von Puttkamer.

The Crystal Invaders

 Magic Crystals in Science Fiction. Long before science fiction existed as a literary genre, some people were obsessed with crystals and through the centuries there was much written about the magical properties of crystals. My favorite author, Jack Vance, sometimes included crystals in his stories (for example, see his 1952 story "Sabotage on Sulfur Planet"). The cover art for "The Crystal Invaders" (image to the left) well illustrates how to use crystals to sell fiction.

A famous use of crystals in Hollywood is in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull where the titular crystal skulls of aliens look cool on screen and channel amazing powers. In the Star Trek fictional universe, dilithium crystals are what make possible faster than light space travel. As a measure of the popularity of crystals in Star Trek, see this list. There is no task too small or too large for a crystal, including the enigmatic "impulse deflection crystal".

cover art by Terry Pastor

One of the "science consultants" listed here is Isaac Asimov, who was proclaimed to be a "Special Science Consultant" for Star Trek when Roddenberry was seeking support for the sentient computer theme in the first Star Trek film. I read Gregory Benford's novel Timescape, but I could not finish his novel Foundation's Fear. I often have trouble accepting the fantasy biology that is dreamed up by physicists. It often bodes well for Sci Fi television shows when they use scientists and published science fiction authors as consultants. Writing in 1996, Benford commented that Star Trek, "... now depends on writers who seem rather proud of their ignorance of written..." science fiction. I would say: it is a miracle that Roddenberry was able to go as far as he did in bringing science fiction with a hint of science to the boob tube.

sure, that makes sense

 Erin Macdonald was a science consultant for the first season of Strange New Worlds and I have to wonder what she thinks about time crystals. It would have been fun to watch Erin read the script for episode 3 of SNW. Did she shrug and say, "Oh, a disease spread by light waves... sounds good to me."

However, time crystals were introduced back in 2017, before Macdonald started working on Star Trek as an "technical consultant". Anthony Maranville was listed as both a technical consultant (or less grandly, as a "researcher") for the episode "The Red Angel" and as a writer. That season 2 episode of Discovery featured the idea that time travel had previously been developed by both Klingons and Section 31. "In an effort to ground the show's science fiction in actual science, he regularly consults with scientists and physicists."

will the Suliban return in SNW?

I have the feeling that during the time when Discovery was developed under the "guidance" of people like Kurtzman, Fuller, Harberts and Berg, there may have been essentially no consultation with science advisors. It seems that Fuller and other people associated with the show felt free to make up silly "future science" such as the "spore drive" and there was apparently nobody there with any knowledge of science to keep the show from becoming a type of science fantasy that is low on the science.

Is it possible to make sense of time travel as depicted in the Star Trek fictional universe or is trying to do so simply a fool's errand? I'm in complete sympathy with story tellers who cannot resist constructing stories about time travel, but I'd like to believe that Star Trek is science fiction where everything happens for a reason, by using future technology, not because of magical fantasy.

Time Travel? Don't ask questions...

It may be that some Star Trek writers grew up watching shows about the "Temporal Cold war" and then later felt a need to "explain" time travel using magical "time crystals". Maybe time travelers from the far future make sure that nobody in the primitive times of the star-ship Enterprise can understand and control time travel technology because primitive humans wielding time travel technology would only mess up the future. 

As depicted in "A Quality of Mercy", Pike is given a "time crystal" that allows him to magically see the future, allowing him to change his own behavior and prevent a devastating war with the Romulans. But how does time travel by means of a time crystal work?

magical fantasy

 Magic Time. I can't explain what type of time travel it is that they were trying to depict in the final episode of season 1 SNM SNW. Was the consciousness of Pike "projected" into the future and placed into his future body? Nobody in the future seemed to notice any change in Pike's physical appearance. Was Pike's "trip to the future" only an illusion or dream? None of this was made clear, so I suppose, as is usual in Hollywood, we viewers are not supposed to ask questions. This might be an application of Clarke's 3rd law: time travel seems like magic to we primitive Earthlings.

"There’s new aliens almost every week." -Henry Alonso Myers

Spoiler: the horse works for Section 31.

 New? That comment from co-show-runner Myers (above) suggests that he must count retread aliens such as Romulans as being "new". What about my hopeful search for interesting new aliens in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds? Dreaming up interesting new aliens does not seem to be a concern for the writers of this television show. 😖 However, we did get a scene in Season 1 with Pike riding a horse. Is that supposed to satisfy our desire to explore a new frontier?

Related Reading: the chemistry of time travel

Next: the "possible worlds" of pulp Sci Fi

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Alicia Machina

 Alicia Vikander as Ava the robot.
Shanahan: "The bot looks fake."
Garland: "Just add more mesh!"

I grew up reading books and I don't usually enjoy what pa$$e$ for entertainment in Hollywood. What about the current artificial intelligence flick Ex Machina?

In my golden age of science fiction I was exposed to several "genius in the basement" science fiction stories (such as Ed Smith's classic space opera, Skylark) that quickly soured me on plots like the one in Ex Machina. Science fiction magic: a lone geek in his garage can create some amazing new piece of technology faster than teams of collaborators that include thousands of scientists and engineers. Sure.

In Ex Machina, we are asked to assume that some nerd who once made a search engine has now built a conscious machine in his basement. What would you do with a conscious robot? Answer: this is the 21$t century, when "the greate$t advance ever achieved in $cience" must be quickly made into a movie. Ka-ching!

The Garland Test: can a Hollywood flick $ay anything
intelligent or would that $poil the bottom line?

sciency!

But seriously, is Ex Machina a sign of progress, possibly a harbinger of better films to come in a new era when Hollywood producers discover that they can do more in a science fiction film than just blow things up and have goofy lightsaber duels?

Ex Machina ventures into the science fiction genre just long enough to tap into one of the classic themes of speculative fiction and then Alex Garland makes an end run for the bank. From my perspective as a reader of science fiction stories, Ex Machina breaks no interesting new ground in the domain of Sci Fi artificial intelligence stories, but what about the movie-going public?

Alicia Vikander

Full disclosure: I have not seen Ex Machina. {2018 update, I finally saw the film; see the very end of this page} I've read about 50 reviews of the flick, in search for a reason to possibly see it, but so far I have come up empty. This is the danger of actually reading science fiction. In comparison to the robots in published science fiction stories that were written in the previous millennium, today's Hollywood robots seem like a joke (just add in a billion search engine results and...instant consciousness!).

Eva (original tweet)

Ex Machina isn't a movie that advances what has been said about artificial intelligence within the science fiction genre, but it is a film that demonstrates the intelligence of Hollywood film makers who know how to make money. Ex Machina is an exposé showing how a classic topic of science fiction can be commercialized. In this film, Alicia plays the role of Ava, a robot that is depicted as only having part of a body, but "she" was endowed with the two key body parts that are often needed to help a Hollywood starlet pump up the box office cash flow.

             "Sucks that this passes for cerebral." -Jonathan Fuhrman

Thanks for the
bewbs, Jock.

I love Sci Fi plots that involve men being manipulated by women (prototype: The End of Eternity). I'm intrigued by the idea that Ava has been programmed and equipped so as to make Caleb fall in love with "her". But would I pay the price and take the time to sit in a theater just to see a nerd be tricked in this way? No.

In The End of Eternity, Asimov used the seductress plot element to move us towards a destination in the story. As far as I can tell, in Ex Machina there is no destination. I know, I know, in Hollywood it just has to look good on the screen....unless you are going for "edgy" in which case it is not wise to make anything look too good. I understand that in the movie Ava demonstrates that "she" knows how to put on a dress, but, sorry, "her" lumpy robo-boobs are on the wrong side of the uncanny valley. Maybe the biggest thing that Ex Machina offers a science nerd like me is a second dictionary meaning for "uncanny valley". I suppose Garland made the correct visual choices for a Gothic horror movie.

A 2 "stars" review by Roger Ebert

One reviewer compared Ex Machina to S1m0ne. Maybe we should define the Verniere Test: if, after ten years, even just one movie critic can remember your movie then it passes the Verniere Test. Let's look back at Ex Machina in 2025 and see if it passes the Verniere Test.

Why is it that these kinds of "science fiction" films tell us more about Hollywood than they do about science?

Oh, right, real scientists and engineers are boring, but Hollywood depictions of dot com wunderkinder CEOs are fascinating. I keep forgetting that.

I was tempted to call this blog post "Giant and Deadly" in honor of an old Isaac Asimov story in which he depicted clueless asexual aliens as imagining that the bulging breasts of women are dangerous weapons, rather like the antlers of rams, and useful for combat between individuals who are competing for mates.

One more alternate title: Robot Dreams of a Drunken Mad Scientist. Because in Hollywood, the only way to make scientists and engineers "believable" is to make them act crazy.

Ilia, the Deltan

Baldly Going...
In the case of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, a bald Persis Khambatta gave movie reviewers something to talk about. We were asked to believe that the alien Deltans were so sexually dangerous that as members of Starfleet they had to practice celibacy in order to avoid harming Captain Kirk human crew members.

I'm afraid there are reasons why we humans, as "naked apes" still have hair on our heads.

  "Ex Machina is a blandly goodlooking film, but doesn't bear close examination" -Chris Knipp

Rayna Kapec, version #16

In the original Star Trek television series, the way to quickly show that Rayna Kapec was a robot was to  show Kirk and viewers one of her earlier versions, a robotic test model that had no hair.

Why was the hairless Ava of Ex Machina given a creepy appearance? Just to make the point of how easy it is to make a tech geek like Caleb have empathy for an AI creature?

"...some of you will find the robot sexy..."

Apparently Ex Machina is sexy in Erie. I'm not sure
what this tells us about men & women in Erie.

The video generation.

From what I've seen, Garland's choice of a bald Ava was "creepy", not sexy, but, as we say, there is no accounting for individual taste.

Carl Sagan's Contact.

My imagination is working against me: the idea of R-rated robot full frontal nudity is not going to get me into a theater. But nobody in Hollywood tries to sell theater tickets to a middle aged book reader like me, not when there is a whole new generation that grew up playing video games rather than reading.

Science Fiction, Horror or Fantasy?
I have, in the past, found only a few science fiction films that I can enjoy. Examples: Contact, Bicentennial Man and The Voyage Home. Could I add Ex Machina to that short list? What first puts me off about Ex Machina is the whole "genius in the garage" scenario for magically making a conscious robot, but that could be forgiven...in Hollywood we need to magically get the story started without first taking an audience through 500 years of tiresome scientific research and engineering. What I find harder to swallow is the Hollywood preference for turning artificial intelligences into versions of Frankenstein's monster.

Submarines in space!

Back in the early 20th century, Ed Smith could be excused, perhaps, for imagining that one genius could quickly build a spaceship and then head off into the universe on adventures. However, we now all know that after a century of hard work by millions of scientists and engineers, space travel is still dangerous, expensive and slow.

Mary: "Ava, I am your mother."

Gall's Law
Similarly, the human brain slowly evolved from much simpler systems and a conscious robotic brain is not going to be magically slammed together by Oscar Isaac in his garage. Ex Machina, like Frankenstein, only "works" as science fiction for people who can believe that the myth of the mad genius scientist is a viable foundation for a science fiction story.

Daneel

R. Dannel Olivaw

What about Isaac Asimov and his stories about robots with human-like intelligence? Asimov wrote about a long process by which huge companies slowly developed robots of increasing complexity. Then, he had to do some hand waving. Andrew's human-like mind was depicted as arising by chance. Similarly, Asimov never really explained how Giskard was given his human-like mind and telepathic powers. However, in Asimov's fictional universe, Han Fastolfe was part of a centuries-long research effort aimed at producing robots with human-like minds.

Asimov was intelligent enough to think of a plot that took artificial intelligence into a new domain of speculative fiction story telling where Daneel had an interesting purpose in life. Asimov's robot stories provided us all with a larger playground for science fiction story telling. In my own case, having long been frustrated by Asimov's sketchy depiction of the history of robotics, so for the Exode Trilogy I provide my own account of the origin of positronic robots.

Hollywood

Hollywood monster movies

Ex Machina tells us much more about the pragmatic reality of film making than it tells a meaningful science fiction story. What passes for science fiction in Hollywood is a homogenized mash-up of horror and fantasy. Given the financial constraints of film making, where someone must invest millions to make a movie, is it possible for someone like Alex Garland to do anything more than use and parade before viewers the same old money-making formulas?

Hollywood "science fiction" films are usually anti-science fiction stories that don't move the human imagination past the state of the art as it was in 1818. Sadly, film$ like Ex Machina contain $cience fiction stories with very little to offer readers who are already familiar with the many published science fiction stories about artificial intelligence.

I, Robot

Writing robot stories and publishing them for the science fiction readers of the previous millennium, Asimov had the freedom to be creative and invent an imaginative future history that included intelligent machines like Daneel. In contrast, Alex Garland, being constrained by the tight programing of the relentless Hollywood ca$h-extraction process, only gives us his angst-inducing version of the genius-working-in-his-garage-stupidly-asphyxiates-himself-the-end plot formula.

Nothing says "Hollywood" more than
the will to sell tickets.

However, for people who consume their science fiction in the format of Hollywood flicks, Ex Machina has  set the turnstiles whirling and I'm glad to see that about 90% of movie-goers report enjoying Ex Machina. Sadly, I'm in the 10%.


"The First Flawless movie ever made" -Joel Croyle

We, robots

The Croyle paradox: how a perfect film can fail to interest people who read and love science fiction stories. I exist in a different reality than the people who rush out to theaters every week. Among all the Hollywood hype, much of the online commentary about Ex Machina is absurd, for example: "...companies like Google or Apple are certainly capable of creating the future we see in this film even today". As Mr. Barnum suggested, human nature might best be characterized by gullibility, which can't be ignored during any Turing Test.

Related Reading: old school AI stories...The Robots of Dawn - Requiem for Methuselah - Bicentenial Man - Forward the Foundation

2025: Ex Machina VII, terminators travel back in time to 2014 where they get to dance and try to stop production of the first movie in the series.

Deviations ex machina. See "Ex Machina" by dark-spider, Ex Machina - Movie Wallpaper by elclon, Ess Ex Machina by plunderbunny, Caro Ex Machina 3 by DRSPhotography and "Dea ex Machina" by DJMartynov

"...a disappointment like virtually all sci-fi films. I simply despise the usage of technology as a prop"

The Ex Machina website, one week after wide release of the film. Died in 2014? Robots just can't come?

Would you take a brain from this man?

2018. I finally watched Ex Machina (Netflix version). Not much to add to what I previously wrote (above). I was saddened by how contrived the story line was; improbabilities are heaped upon silliness so that Ava can eventually fly away to freedom. In retrospect, I feel silly for having allowed myself to imagine that Ex Machina might have tried to be an interesting science fiction film. At the website this film is called a "thriller". Garland has used the term "Sci-Fi" when discussing Ex Machina. "Sci-Fi" in this context might mean the kind of gee-wiz techno/pornography/violence movie theater ticket-selling sausage that we expect from Hollywood.