"WHAT IF First Contact Alien Was An Exiled Criminal(s)?" Topic

Would it make any difference to how we humans react to the news?

How would the world powers react when finding out that the Alien was a con man who did not officially represent a government or civilization?

Would this work best if played as a Cold War period scenario, or something more modern?

Dan

Dan,

OK, I'm starting to get a little concerned about your "fixation" with aliens. You perhaps, haven't been "probed" have you?

Dave(boy this tinfoil sures makes your head sweat)

Read Prison Ship by Martin Caidin

Dave

LOL. Mentally probed perhaps, by miniature figures.

I finally found my cache of 15mm Rebel Minis Greys, and want to put them to use in a non-traditional storyline. I thought I had lost those guys!

Dan

There are two alternate alien contact scenarios I think are funny:

1. The alien are actually missionaries, like young Jehovah's Witnesses -- non hostile but earnestly persistent

2. The aliens represent a galactic trade consortium looking to turn a planet into a giant Duty Free Outlet Mall

Well, if it's Zaphod Beeblebrox, we'd have a party before the Vogons arrive.

(On a side note, where the one pulling the long con is a human, and you have Alan Dean Foster's masterpiece, The Man Who Used the Universe.

You also might look at John Ringo's Hot Gates trilogy, which is not so much about a con as a crafty realization that the way to fend off an alien invasion is to find an Earth product that everybody wants and no other planet can produce… and then leverage the supply and demand and profit interests so that powerful alien factions wind up basing their own prosperity on working favorably with Earth and back the humans in the fight! (On a side note, this series was clearly written as the background pre-pre-history for Howard Tayler's Schlock Mercenary web comic.)

I do love stories like this that turn the trope on its ear. Did you have an inspirational source in mind?

Take Australia for example.

And what if the first humans to contact them were delinquent youth gangs?

link

I assume the alien would speak English, because that is what I see in the movies. Also, we can easily tell if the Alien is a bad guy because all bad guys in the movies, as in real life I assume, have a British accent. So I don't think the alien would get very far if it landed in Iowa, where all Aliens like to land. We'd spot him pretty quickly.

Now if it had a Canadian accent, then it gets really interesting.

So to be a true con man, it would have to have a Midwestern accent, but no Jimmy Stewart thing, otherwise it becomes a comedy.

what if we are quarantined.

Zanti Misfits?

I problem could arise if the police perusing a criminal thought we were cooperating with him.

x42

X42: "A problem could arise if the police pursuing the criminal thought we were cooperating with him"

That would be VERY bad for us.

If they let us live, they might confiscate everything we have, including our planet and ourselves.

Dan
PS. I always felt that the 1990 Sci Fi film "I Come In Peace" could have explore that scenario with their Alien narc "cop".

"So I don't think the alien would get very far if it landed in Iowa, where all Aliens like to land."

They usually die after getting lost in the corn mazes up there… ;-)

link
Aliens show up and are greeted by a New York street gang. Hilarity ensues.

Aliens would be so much more "evolved" than to have any criminals !

Like having Harvey Mudd on the away team?

Zanti Misfits were criminals.

The Earth people were sending a criminal to an alien world in The Mice, another Outer Limits ep.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
Bunker Talk blog

Ah, I lived through the Mariel Boatlift. Been there done that. Good times.

I was thinking the same thing … there were a lot of "criminals" in that bunch ! Just watch Al Pacino's Scarface !

If you ever saw the TV series 'Seven Days', there was an episode that covered this.

-SPOILER ALERT FOR 15 YEAR OLD B-TV SHOW-

The time machine in the series was based on technology from the Roswell saucer now kept at Area 51.

The grey aliens were in a lab, presumably dead until one woke up. It played the heroes of the show for sympathy, until it was learned the saucer was a prisoner transport on the way to a penal colony.

The grey alien became less … friendly … after that.

If you want to see a "small scale" version of the your idea, Dan, blow the dust off your VHS tape of "The Brain From the Planet Arous."

Alien criminal arrives on earth, occupies body of leading man, and does bad guy things until the Alien cop arrives to catch him.

Pretty awful, very low budget, but at least Ed Wood didn't direct it!

TVAG

KHANNNNN!

Don't you mean:

CONNNNN!!!!

Is there any question for which trash cinema has no answer?

YouTube link

Ron

Wasn't this an Outer Limits episode?

Yes, IIRC they looked like big ants !

The Alien Nation film (and later TV series) had the aliens as a group of escaping slaves. So far as I know (I never saw the film or watched the series), they never explored the possibility of what might happen if the original owners came looking for them. But something like that might have some similarities with the "criminal aliens" scenario.

There was a Star Trek: TNG episode that revolved around the idea of a con man from a more technologically advanced society trying to fool the inhabitants of a planet into believing that he (or she; I can't remember) was a legendary figure from their past who had saved the planet, and been offered its ownership in return.

Eumerin

In the series some of the Overseers became leaders of organized crime.

Also, after the series canceled one of the movies did explore the possibility of a ship coming for their missing slaves:

link
YouTube link

Dan
PS. In the original film, and in the intro to each episode, the slave ship looked like a saucer (just like the Prawn ship in District 9). In this movie the ship looks completely different.

I did like both the film and series/movies … I thought the one alien main character was pretty attractive. For an alien and all … I think the actress was Teri Treas ? Not the wife of the main alien character but the cop's neighbor, IIRC ?

Admittedly those big bald heads might be hard to get used to ? But I'd be willing to try. I'm almost bald now ! And have a big head … So …

"I come in peace" was released as "Dark Angel" down in the colonies.

No relation to the Jessica Alba tv show that came around a bit later.

Roger Smith.

Striker, you are thinking of "The Xanti Misfits" and that is a stunningly good episode of "The Outer Limits". Funnily enough, not only does it have CC's basic scenario, it also includes Jakar's idea as well . . . And turns out to have a very unpleasant twist about the Xanti civilization's view of humanity.

Of course, some theorists believe that if sufficiently technically and socially advanced, an alien wouldn't have to have criminal or even malign intentions to destroy human civilization if it arrived on Earth – In the same way that we have no murderous impulse or hatred towards bacteria that land on our skin and are then slaughtered wholesale by our immune system.

Any one of our politicians would fit the description to meet the alien.

We have plenty of those. Just send them in one by one. One of them might eventually make it back. Maybe.

Dan
PS. Each one of the politicians that we send in should be bugged, just in case they make a side deal with the aliens to sell us out.

Depends on 'criminal' means in their civilization.

It could be a disbelief in the 5 tenets of Zon.
If could be the refusal to accept script as money.
Imported conflict dilithium.
It could something we wouldn't call a crime but is unacceptable to them.

Well if they wrote bad check, didn't pay child support, fraud, gambling, drug dealers, petty thieves, etc. … they might just fit in …

And would they be considered "Illegal Aliens" ?

Or just could they just say they were seeking asylum ? From, e.g. someone like Darth Vader, Galactus, etc. ?

@Mobius, good points.

There is a story by IIRC Frederick Pohl called "The Lovers" ( NOT the Philip Jose farmer one ), in which humanity is contacted by two aliens who the mass of people sympathise with as it appears that they are very much in love with each other. However, the authorities on their own world come and demand them back, with not so subtle threats that humanity has little choice but to acquiesce to. . . . Only later do humans discover why the pair are in so much trouble.

And it's to humanity's credit that most of them continue to regret capitulating.