Six Advanced Species to Stupid to Be Real, Care to Add Any?

[RubySlippers]

Six Advanced Species to Stupid to Be Real

Its in three parts on YouTube this will get you started.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_1424915729&feature=iv&src_vid=4UBj1WNeVAQ&v=gP4OchDlLHE

The list in order:
The Engineers  (Alien Series, X Files (Black Goo))
The BLAAs  (Battle of Los Angeles Aliens)
Sky People aka Humans  (Avatar Movie)
The Borg  (Star Trek Franchise)
The Prawns  (District 9)
The Kryptonians

I tend to agree largely on the list and think the Engineers should be closer to number one the Kryptonians and the Sky People down a bit more but overall his reasons were well thought out. Look at the Engineers they seemed to be to moronic to come up with biological hazard measures primitive humans use now or in our Science Fiction such as in the Andromeda Strain movie. No wonder they went extinct but I would have had it happen earlier so the aliens never existed in the first place. 

I'm thinking of some to add I'm thinking serious the Time Lords should be on the list, I mean how could they lose a Time War to a bunch of Daleks when they supposedly had the best temporal technology it should have been a slam dunk win just eliminate their home planet before it formed life and there goes the threat.

[Mathim]

But the Doctor said there were grave consequences for messing with time that much, that's why he locked Gallifrey away. So the Time Lords weren't necessarily stupid, but just not heeding the repercussions of their actions. Or maybe I misunderstood the whole thing.

What about the Predators? All that technology and they still use it for the most base and regressive of all activities? And they routinely lose to mere humans?

[RubySlippers]

Well Predators never seem to have anyone trying to kill them off in war, they might be barbaric but are vicious fighters and masters of combat in their fashion.

But one species I wanted to add was the War of the World Martians, old variety, first the book versions could be hurt my human tech but still they had advantages like flying machines this was in 1890ish. In the 1950's movie they were frankly good but didn't have the smarts to consider viruses and other threats in the air wouldn't we if landing on a planet where environmental protections and have medical teams ready to R&D cures so why didn't they however I can get perhaps they couldn't conceive of such threats. The big screen movie they clearly were here before so what was their excuses for not being ready for such threats?

[Mathim]

I guess you could tack on the Independence Day aliens too. With all their advanced technology, they fall prey to a virus from a computer system that should never have been remotely compatible with their own? And one that successfully does what it's supposed to do for such a protracted period of time? Not to mention leaving behind a crashed ship for decades and potentially allowing the humans to gain secrets from their tech in order to fight back in the first place. It's not exactly like their ships moved so slowly that they couldn't have made decent time catching up to it and begin the invasion years sooner. And then the weird plan to harvest the core of the planet in Resurgence? You'd never know that was anything resembling their intent from the first film. So artificially making them that much stupider. Among other things (I've only seen the CinemaSins video, not the actual film).

How about any society that ever created grey goo? Not only is it likely to have destroyed their own civilization in the process but it never ends up actually acting like an ambassador style herald to other planets it meets, it simply converts their entire world into more of the drones. So whatever the intent, whether peaceful communication or conquest, the originators end up assimilated and their victims/neighbors get the same treatment and there's nothing left to actually conquer or befriend.

[greenknight]

Watched the first five minutes or so of Engineer bashing. Consider for a moment that the Engineers as are as fractious as we are (a conceit is that we are them), that the Alien and Prometheus Engineers are/were opposing factions, each with its own bio-weapons.

   
• Why wouldn't the Engineers in the hologram run to unleash their own weapons on invaders? And the dropping (and beheading) door may be exactly the sort of bio-containment the author complains about.
• Why wouldn't the Engineer in stasis kill the invaders (Weyland and co.)?
• If "he" knew where they were from, why wouldn't he nuke Earth?
• Assuming for a moment that there is some kind of control device for the various bio-weapons, what if he doesn't have it, due to, "Why would you lock up the "gun" in the hypersleep pod when the awake guys need it?"
• And who is the guy they wake up. I highly doubt he's one of the bio-weapons designers. He's a pilot, and possibly a "programmed" clone himself. If they can engineer the nasties, why couldn't they engineer a specialized version of themselves, a la Tyrell's replicants? And linking to that, four year lifespan requiring a hypersleep/break in case of emergency protocol.

Anyway, too much is missing in Prometheus to make these assessments. You're better off decrying the junk science that they could direct four million years of evolution to a smaller version of themselves.

For Battlefield: LA, I'll just point out that they were probably no worse than the rest of the flick. So, yeah, he's got a great point. They're dumb.

As for Avatar, I'll just leave this as a hypothetical philosophy of the mercenary commander.

[Mathim]

What about The Thing? It's practically indestructible, able to regenerate infinitely seemingly even without needing to take in any external nourishment to do so, and every cell of it can function as an independent organism. And it has to be insanely intelligent to have its own ship (though how it crashes in the arctic circle and goes dormant for epochs is anyone's guess) and even attempts to construct a new one from scratch; yet it has a hard time fooling and assimilating a bunch of yahoos who already don't get along. And its contingency plan is to let itself get frozen again for who knows how long, possibly until the planet's sun explodes or until the entire planet's organic population is down to zero, leaving nothing to assimilate. It couldn't figure out to simply splinter into a ton of little guys and attack them with much greater speed and stealth? All it takes is one touch and they're infected irrevocably, after all. But no, it takes the approach of becoming a large, slow-moving monstrosity every time and making itself vulnerable to flamethrower fire instead of taking care of business the smart way. If it wasn't as resilient as Cell and/or Majin Buu from Dragonball Z, it would be too stupid to be real. To no credit of its own intelligence, so in that way it's kind of a cheat.

[Nachtmahr]

But the Doctor said there were grave consequences for messing with time that much, that's why he locked Gallifrey away. So the Time Lords weren't necessarily stupid, but just not heeding the repercussions of their actions. Or maybe I misunderstood the whole thing.

I like the way you think. I mean, humans know about climate change, but that doesn't mean we're going to stop polluting. The Time Lords knew exactly how potentially devastating their technology is, and they have definitely demonstrated an irresponsible attitude towards it. (And that's without getting into the "Final Sanction", etc.)

Is it required for a species to flourish in order for it to end up on the list?

If not, how about the Krogan? They built a civilization on a foundation of war, and in the end they nuked each other until their planet was virtually nothing more than an ashen wasteland with a few bits of rubble strewn about for good measure. You could argue that they never really achieved greatness though.

Another Mass Effect species that comes to mind would be the Quarians. Space-faring refugees who effectively went ahead and Skynetted themselves off of their home planet.

[Mathim]

Aw, thanks. But I wouldn't say 'humans' because a ton of people either have managed to remain ignorant of climate change or disagree that it's actually happening. Knowledge being selective is funny that way.

[Nachtmahr]

Aw, thanks. But I wouldn't say 'humans' because a ton of people either have managed to remain ignorant of climate change or disagree that it's actually happening. Knowledge being selective is funny that way.

Well, you know what I mean though. >.< I'm sure there were quite a few responsible Time Lords around, unlike the unreasonably incompetent ones we're most often introduced to.

[Inkidu]

I think he padded the list with Avatar. It's a bad movie with conflicting messages, and shoddy-at-best science. Honestly, that quote is made of awesome, and in the real world mankind would have easily taken the neolithic civilization of the Na'vi. Our weapons should have been as magic to them. There is no reality in which they should have won.

I can shoot you with a missile from orbit, you can't shoot back, I win.

[Mathim]

Well, you know what I mean though. >.< I'm sure there were quite a few responsible Time Lords around, unlike the unreasonably incompetent ones we're most often introduced to.

True. We saw the leader, Rassilon, murder anyone who questioned him, so obviously leadership was able to put down dissent even though there clearly were voices of opposition. So maybe just the few in charge going mad with power really drove the whole Time War even if the majority didn't want to or think it was a good idea. But then if they tried to stop it and had to fight among themselves, there would just be yet another dimension to the Time War instead of just the Time Lords united vs. the Daleks.

[Nachtmahr]

True. We saw the leader, Rassilon, murder anyone who questioned him, so obviously leadership was able to put down dissent even though there clearly were voices of opposition. So maybe just the few in charge going mad with power really drove the whole Time War even if the majority didn't want to or think it was a good idea. But then if they tried to stop it and had to fight among themselves, there would just be yet another dimension to the Time War instead of just the Time Lords united vs. the Daleks.

Oh, it goes way beyond the time war. If you watch the old show you'll see that Time Lord society is full of corruption and other issues. The Doctor at one point said how he only spoke fondly of them because that was how he wanted to remember them, indirectly stating that they were far from "Good".

[Mathim]

I bet there are even more races from Doctor Who that could fit this category of too stupid to actually exist.

[Hunter]

I can shoot you with a missile from orbit, you can't shoot back, I win.

"He who controls the orbitals controls the planet."   Forget where it's from exactly but it's a good quote.    Also, the biggest problem you're going to have in that situation is that it requires boots on the ground to actually control territory...which is why guerrilla tactics tend to work.  Of course, nothing like a genetically engineered plague to deal with any pesky locals left over.

The BLAA were more or less us with ray guns and space ships so it's not surprising that they lost.   Also, there's a B movie called "Alien Outpost" running around on neflix that might be of interest.

The Prawns are basically shipwrecked, it's a miracle that their biology is  compatible enough that they can survive (never mind thrive) on our planet.


About the only ones on the list that you quoted are the Borg.   Vastly superior technology (including the ability to assimilate opponents) should have made it a cake walk.  But then again, it's not going to be much of a story if some hostile super civilization appears and takes over.

[Mathim]

Anyone remember The Faculty? The aliens in that were so utterly dependent upon water they would literally dry up and turn to dust without it, in a short amount of time. The queen, who was impersonating a student, told the last kid standing (before he stabbed her in the eye with a diuretic syringe to dry her out) that the world she had come from just 'dried up'. But every host she occupied would share her complete and utter dependence upon water, and desperation for it. If she took control of even one small state, the world's capacity for keeping water clean would diminish with their consumption rates, so unless wastewater was something that wasn't a bother to them, she would have been better off just pretending to be human and occupying a single body. Besides, if she took a liking to a guy like Zeke, why would she want to assimilate people and take away their individual personalities? I know she claimed she just allowed them to let go of their restraints but then that's not really them, that's just taking the filters out.

[RubySlippers]

"He who controls the orbitals controls the planet."   Forget where it's from exactly but it's a good quote.    Also, the biggest problem you're going to have in that situation is that it requires boots on the ground to actually control territory...which is why guerrilla tactics tend to work.  Of course, nothing like a genetically engineered plague to deal with any pesky locals left over.

The BLAA were more or less us with ray guns and space ships so it's not surprising that they lost.   Also, there's a B movie called "Alien Outpost" running around on neflix that might be of interest.

The Prawns are basically shipwrecked, it's a miracle that their biology is  compatible enough that they can survive (never mind thrive) on our planet.


About the only ones on the list that you quoted are the Borg.   Vastly superior technology (including the ability to assimilate opponents) should have made it a cake walk.  But then again, it's not going to be much of a story if some hostile super civilization appears and takes over.

The point about the Borg is star fleet officers and often using outside the box ideas could beat them and one species proved superior when they engaged them so if the Voyager didn't interfere then the Borg would have been decimated.

[Mathim]

What about the aliens from Pacific Rim? They send huge monsters to wipe out the indigenous life and somehow need dozens of them to barely accomplish anything (relatively speaking) despite it taking an incredible amount of time for Earth to actually manufacture Jagers on a large enough scale to effectively combat them. Surely after each failed attempt, they could have figured out to make better and better monsters (yes, that one with the EMP to shut down Jagers was an improvement, but it took that long, and only one?) and yet their progression is as slow as the humans' was, so it seems. What kind of idiots plan a conquest with such an ill-prepared doomsday weapon, and has to leave the door open so the enemy can send their own in after them?