Borg for me.
I wonder if there’s any psychology behind responses to this question… While I genuinely love the idea of becoming a cyborg, the thought of becoming part of a collective that thinks as one is kinda horrifying to me as someone who works in a creative field.
Who did the Borg assimilate before they met the humans? Every Borg looks like an assimilated human.
Every sentient species looks like a human into body modification.
And yeah, there is a storyline about all sentient species being related.
It’s something that really winds me up about scifi shows, and I know there are always budget restrictions… but it just feels really lazy to me, for aliens to be simply humans with plasticine on their foreheads.
I’m reading one of Iain M. Banks’ ‘Culture’ series of hard scifi books, the depth and variety of not just alien species but ‘post-human’ modification is breathtaking. ‘The Culture’ is a far-flung hyper-technological society, no money, all wants and needs provided for, there are no drugs because everyone has their own drug gland. If you decide you want to try changing sex, off you go, the nanosuite will take care of it within a matter of days. Sick of being a humaniform? No problem, now you’re the bush-like bundle of tendrils of your dreams. Bored with being a bush? Maybe you want to download your consciousness into a drone, or the solar sail drive of a starship? Again, no problemo!
Hyperion explored that a bit. An incredibly wealthy character in the book makes himself into a Satyr. We are Legion (We are Bob) also has some really fun stuff with android host machines. The Bobs can be anything they want to be. The movie Arrival did an amazing job depicting non-humanoid aliens. But yes, most sci-fi is very lazy with the aliens.
For some reason, I only got the alert for your reply today!
I adore the Hyperion Cantos, it’s one of my favourite scifi book series ever, and I hope one day it gets the TV treatment it deserves. Always felt it would make an amazing show.
Yeah man, some of the coolest concepts I’ve ever read were in that series. The crusader’s ship that fucking demolishes their bodies from hyper acceleration and then rebuilds them during flight, all without their knowledge, was wild! My biggest fear about it being a series is that idk if there’s a way to create the Shrike in a live action recreation without making it look cheesy. The Shrike definitely benefits from the fogginess in the theater of the mind.
Yeah they’d have to do a LOT of R&D to make sure the Shrike looks suitably terrifying. The speed of it wouldn’t be a problem, they could get all the people who worked on The Flash!
I’ve been pleasantly surprised with TV versions of late. I didn’t watch Foundation until S02 dropped, I just saw no way they could do a show set over aeons. They’ve taken a lot of artistic license and I’ve heard from many who loved the books saying they’re unhappy with that, but I really enjoyed it. Three Body Problem season one was also fantastic, so fingers crossed that gets a second season (apparently it was very expensive to make so S01 may be all we get unfortunately).
I don’t know how exploding consoles didn’t make the list, but they would be a distant second to Rick Berman.
I came here to say this. I get that they use fucking plasma in their electrical systems, but you’d think some step-down transformers and circuit breakers could be installed. And why the hell do the defense systems feed back into the main power grid? Why isn’t there a capacitor bank to dump feedback into for reuse in the weapons or something?
I saw someone say a good reason for the consoles exploding all the time is that they wouldn’t have I clouded breakers, because, in a red alert situation, the console staying on and responsive is more important than it not exploding
Pretty sure the real reason is because it looks spectacular on TV.
