io9
Why do space explorers always wind up meeting some crappy pantheon? It never fails. You're cruising along, fighting monsters and bedding your crewmates (or vice versa) and then all of a sudden some annoying guys in tunics are talking Big Talk and rewriting reality to suit their moronic whims. As Crichton from Farscape says, "Godlike aliens! Man, do I hate godlike aliens. I'll trade a critter for a godlike alien any day." Amen, Crichton. Amen. Here's our round up of the most annoying space gods, with only one example from Star Trek.
The Organians (Star Trek.) Okay, so Trek is chock full of annoying space gods, from Squire Trelaine all the way up to Q. But the Organians are the worst. For one thing, they're totally passive-aggressive. They're like, "Oh, hurt us, we like it." And then when you get too feisty, they turn around and burn your hands off. And they literally wear tunics and have crappy beards. But worst of all, they're gods with ADD. It's like, "We forbid you and the Klingons to fight ever again. We're going to be WATCHING y— hey, is that a quarter? It was shiny! I think it rolled that way. Where did it go?" And then you never see them again, except for one prequel appearance on Enterprise.
The Guardians (Doctor Who.) They're color-coded deities with birds on their heads: the white one's good and the black one's evil. And they send the Doctor on the wackest quest in history, then come back and pester him. They keep changing the birds on their heads, so the Doctor can't tell which one is good and which one is evil. Oh, and they're all-powerful, but they can't intervene, so they have to recruit cowl-headed skull guys, schoolboys and pantomime pirates to help them. Lame. Here's the Black Guardian, pimpin: 
The New Gods (DC Comics.) Yeah, I know, Jack Kirby invented paper, and he is the comix god. But the New Gods weren't among his better ideas. They're a weird fusion of superheroes and mysticism, with a healthy dose of 70s hippie stuff thrown in. You have the evil leader, named Darkseid (pronounced "dark side," I think) and the good leader, named Highfather. Death is personified by a shadowy guy on skiis named the Dark Racer. Everybody faces the "camera" and makes lots of weird speeches about good and evil and the Source Wall and the Anti-Life Equation. It's demented in a good way, but also a little too spiritual for that type of comic-book silliness.
The Hybrid (Battlestar Galactica: Razor.) The echo-y voice, the weird pretentious mutterings about "my children," the mystical-ish mutterings about the apocalypse and how all this has happened before and will happen again. Basically, he fell asleep in the bath and totally lost track of his sponge. In general, there are wayyy too many prophecies on Battlestar. My eyes glaze over any time someone mentions the Scrolls of Pythia or the bathroom graffiti of Hermes or whatever.
The pilots (Dune). Okay, so the idea that drinking worm barf could mutate you into a being who controls space and time is kind of silly. But are they gods? Let's ask famous SF author Norman Spinrad. Here's what he says intro to Dune:
Paul Atreides passes through these three ascending stages on his way to finally employing the drug to achieve the ultimate level, to become the Kwisatz Haderach, the fully Enlightened One, able to view the conventional realm of space and time from the outside, as Einsteinian four-space, a consciousness rendered therefore prescient up to a point, an Enlightenment that turns out to be both a godlike power and a tragic curse.Another Herbert novel, The God Makers, is even more along the same lines: a human becomes a god by focusing the "psi-forces" of his worshipers.
Jodie Foster's daddy (Contact). Jodie Foster zooms through a beautiful sweaty wormhole and then finds herself in the midst of a lovely, lovely, lovely, gorgeous nebula thingy that makes her go on an ecstasy trip. And then she's floats down onto a beach, in a mid-air fetal position. And then her dad shows up, wearing a really dorky dungaree-type outfit, and gets all condescending, with the "that's my scientist" crap when she asks questions. It gets really sense-of-wonder-y until you feel like you're getting a marshmellow enema, and the god-daddy gives a speech about how amazing humans are, withour beautiful dreams and our icky nightmares. "In all our searching the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other." Barf!!!! And then he condescends some more, when she tries to talk sense to his new-age crap. You can see why Penn Jilette hated this movie. Oh, and here's a pukey clip:
The obelisk dudes (2001: A Space Odyssey). An alien monolith comes to Earth during prehistoric times and helps the apes to evolve intelligence. Later, at the turn of the millennium, Dave encounters another obelisk orbiting Jupiter, and goes on a trippy-ass journey to a whole seven-ages-of-man diorama, until he turns into a super-fetus in space. It's zoomy and spiritual, and leaves you with a whole guided-by-divine-ish-beings feeling.
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Dreamworks 4 salinity-purifiers
Charlie, with "Beautiful sweaty wormhole" and "super-fetus," you sir win the award for greatest descriptions of the day.
"And they literally wear tunics and have crappy beards." I could just about hear Eric Cartman's voice coming out of my laptop screen. Awesome.
But I think you should cut the word "famous" from the Dune bit, because while he may be an incredible writer, who the fuck is Norman Spinrad???
Didn't they retcon Squire Trelaine into being one of the Q? For some damn reason that sounds likely.
Hee. Nice article. I hated the Hybrid too.
Ok, Obelisk dudes rocked. Paul never became the Kwisatz Haderach, he tells the reverend mother exactly that, he says "I am something else." More powerful, more terrifying, and in more control. Sure in the movie he becomes the Kwisatz Haderach, but seriously, Lynch was on some spice himself there. And I don't think CHOAM space guild people were all that godlike, they could only do one thing, fold space, that's it. They sat locked in a frelling glass tube full of spice otherwise. Leto II was the godlike being, though he didn't feel like one. And in Contact he wasn't godlike, he was just, a more advanced alien who was being nice to Ms. Foster, as those who came before were nice to his species.
Oh, and as for Farscape and "And they literally wear tunics and have crappy beards" when they met Moya's deity, he didn't have the beard, but everything else fit. The only good part of that storyline was Zha'ans reaction to it.
What about Xenu?
@Gyrus: So spake wikipedia:
"Q-like behavior
It is suggested by some Star Trek fans (and at least one Star Trek Expanded Universe novel, Q-Squared by Peter David) that Trelane is a young member of the Q Continuum, a race of near-omnipotent beings who harass, in various ways, beings much weaker than they are.
Like Q, Trelane viewed humans as playthings, appeared in many guises, could instantly rearrange matter and energy, and even subjected Kirk to a mock trial. He initially relied on a machine to assist his self-described "instrumentality," but after it was destroyed he displayed even greater feats. When Kirk asked about this, Trelane responded, "Did you really think that was the only medium of instrumentality at my command?" At the end of the episode Trelane is revealed to merely be a child of his race-this may explain his partial reliance on the machine.
Peter David's novel attempts to resolve the apparent discrepancy by suggesting that Trelane is (in essence) developmentally disabled relative to other Q; the machine analogous to crutches or a wheelchair."
Looks like he was never _officially_ retconned.
@BloggyMcBlogBlog: Enjoy your lawsuit for mentioning him. :P
God like? So is that just anyone with such good technolgoy that it is indistinguishable from magic? I would guess so. I would like to nominate Veeger (Voyager), a truly God-like being in search of its creator.
Rodenberry had a weekend to turn "encounter at Farpoint" into a two-parter. So he apparently threw in Q at the last minute after watching "The Squire of Gothos". That's the same weekend he wrote in the totally pointless scene where Picard strolls through engineering, because he knew if he didn't get an engineering set built for the pilot, he never would.
"until you feel like you're getting a marshmellow enema"
HAHAHA! I feel exactly like that during any sanctimonious but metaphorical speech given by a god-like alien/being in almost every movie or t.v. show. Blech.
@Jeff-Minor: we could literally be here all weekend listing dumb space gods from Star Trek.....
@elizabethm: Yay I'm so glad you liked that!
@zenpoet: I'm not a sir, but thanks! Glad you liked it!
"Basically, he fell asleep in the bath and totally lost track of his sponge."
Hilarious. Thank you for this.
Weren't there space gods on the orignial Battlestar Galactica too?
Your article is nice and witty, but doesn't live up to the title. First, the Contact "contact" - wasn't god-like. It was an alien. It may have been too daisy-tripping or too marshmallowy, but it's not a good case in point for dumb space gods. Secondly, mentioning that your eyes glaze over during Battlestar prophecies shows your bias quite a bit - BG one of the few shows that seems to actually deal intelligently with the tension of religion vs science, faith vs fact. It doesn't "prove" either side, but leaves it as a continual point of uncertainty in the show.
Most sci-fi either portrays their godlike figures as petulant vindictive children, as flowery soft-spoken hippies, or as control-freak power mongers. This speaks a lot about sci-fi writers developmental run-ins with institutional religion, but doesn't do much except present a hollow caricature of people of faith.
Kirby may have mis-stepped with the Eternals, but his enigmatic Celestials are "thumbs up!"
The New Gods...the Eternals...what's the difference? Oh. Oops.
Disclaimer: I haven't read the book 2001, but I saw the movie, and the monolith ain't no obelisk.
Also spracht Wikipedia: "An obelisk (Greek ὀβελίσκος [obeliskos], diminutive of ὀβελός [obelos], "needle") is a tall, narrow, four-sided, tapering monument which ends in a pyramidal top"
@Macloserboy: Yes, and THOSE were lamer, though when I was 12 they were AWESOME, and when they brought Apollo back to life, I was so happy! (please note: 12)
Nice Crichton quote.
@ignatzybanjo: I like to think of Death of the Endless as Neil Gaiman's little way of saying, "Hey, Jack -- Death would be much cooler if he wasn't skiing around in a bank-robbing outfit. Just sayin'." I'm sure he didn't mean it that way, but that's how I *interpret* it in a literary sense.
@JennaW: Everything is cool when you're 12... ah, 12....
I vote for The Guardians. Let's overlook the ridiculous costumery -- what were they thinking? Did the whole quest have a point, really? Why couldn't they just do it themselves? Talk about getting lazy.
@CrispyShot: Well, when you read all the books in the series, you get the point eventually. The Monoliths were simply machines, left behind by their creators to look over the experiments they left behind. While they have awesome powers (turning Jupiter is a pretty good trick), they're pretty much dumb machines. Strangely, Contact's transportation system seems to bear some resemblance to the pod-ride Dave Bowman took in the movie.
@NefariousNewt: Personally, I liked the Cosmic Key story arc. I thought it was the best storyline of the Baker era. The point of a quest for an object of ridiculous power? Dunno. Let's ask Arthur...or Jason...or Gilgamesh. Heroes are often set on off on their quests by beings of superior wisdom or power (cf. Dorothy and Glenda) who are easily more capable to complete the task. I reckon the point is (and dubiously obtained in the Cosmic Key storyline) is personal growth in the hero, yeah?
@ignatzybanjo: Yeah, Key to Time was great (Romana!) Also the nice twisty moral gotcha at the end of it was a cool touch.
The trouble with the Guardians is that, the Key to Time is such a definitive part of the Doctor Who series, the exception to make the rules. But the Guardians themselves get a much better payoff later on in the run of the show.
@JennaW: mmmmm Romana.
Sorry, but New Gods and EVERYTHING else Kirby did rocked. And Fuck Gaiman! His Endless were a bunch of Emo Goth poncing twits! Hated them. Kirbys Sandman. Gold. Pure crazy straight out of the subconscious gold. Like everything thing else Kirby did. Only Warren Ellis comes close.
Kirby's New Gods may be goofy, but Darkseid was the best thing to come out of it. He's the ultimate villain: immortal, immensely powerful, and very ambitious. Unlike other baddies who want to destroy mankind/universe/superheroes, Darkseid's goal is to remove free will from the universe (via the anti-life equation). And he's extremely difficult to stop, as evidenced in an episode of the Justice League where he bitchslaps Superman.
Plus, Death on skis is actually Black Racer.
@spudzill: *snort*
You know, I think the differences come from the fact that Kirby was an American. So his stuff had all that Hard-boiled, fightin' and drinkin' full speed ahead feel to it. I get the same feling when reading detective fiction of the same period. The English made Miss Marple and all those genteel locked room mysteries, but in America we had the Hard-Boiled school of detective fiction like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Mickey Spillane. In fantasy the English had Tolkien. In America we had Robert E. Howard. Oddly, in comics, the dynamic seems to have reversed somewhat, where American writers are full of conservative, gentle, feel-good stuff and the Brits are are making with the crazy. I wonder if that is a function of Empire?
they should do a New Gods animated series, and have it released right when Lucas sets his TV-bomb off.
@spudzill: Dude. Neil Gaiman's Sandman: Elegantly interlocking multiplot epic commenting on, among other things, the meaning of story and art, the nature of personal responsibility, and the power of hope. Not to mention the sheer genius of using a variety of illustrators to tap into the shifting imagery of dreams.
Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan: A hackneyed, tossed-together plot about a Hunter S. Thompson stereotype who's angry at the Man. To make matters worse, the Man actually is that bad of a guy, which is of course not at all simpleminded and a keen reflection of how good and evil really work in the real world.
@moff: Oh, and of course, Gaiman also made Sandman a Shakespearean tragedy to boot. While working Shakespeare himself into it. Good craftsmanship, that.
Whatever. Gaimans stuff was like reading someone who had read Joseph Campbell too much. Wasn't even that imaginative. Unlike Kirby. Scott Free and Orion, or even the Surfer was a much better version of Shakespearian tregedy than Sandman. Transmet was truly awesome, sorry but it was. and if one were to read the book Political Ponerology (from the Greek poneros=evil) Evil really does work like that. And Spiders rant about religion, oh yeah.
Azazoth, The Monstruous Nuclear Chaos, sounds pretty dumb to me, in a literal non-judgemental way.
I dun think BSG is the show for people who don't like prophecy kind of things, seeing as some of its deepest questions revolve around that very issue.
Just sayin'.
But I agree that a badly done godlike being is fail.
@spudzill: I can only assume that you are either trolling or commenting from some mirror universe where words mean the opposite of what they mean here. In case it's the latter, to recalibrate you, let me share with you something that "wasn't even that imaginative": A famous reclusive writer who can't stand people but loves the masses! He misses deadlines! He fights with his editors! He drinks hard and drugs harder! He isn't nice to women, but they can't help wanting him! Above all, he may seem like a jerk, but he is motivated by a sense of justice -- and when evil strikes, he stops it...with typing. Just like in real life.
As for his feelings about religion, I just remember my eyes kind of glazing over at that point, since most of us have heard it all before, starting in high school with the kids in Iron Maiden T-shirts offering their pithy analyses. Yup, yup, opium of the masses. Very revolutionary. Check.
I have not read the book you mention. I may someday, although I have to say it doesn't bode well that the first result that comes up from a Google search of the title is this one, which also links to "The Truth about Hyperdimensional Beings and Alien Abductions."
And as for Scott Free and the Surfer being better examples of Shakespearean tragedy, um, no they're not, even if they are kind of tragic. Know why? Because in Shakespearean tragedy, the hero has to die, dude. For good. They don't even qualify.
@spudzill: Can't type! Laughing!
@Huxleyhobbes: Neighbor, speaking tautologically, most things badly done are fails.
Well, I disagree. And Transmet seems highly realistic in its treatment of people. I'm not a big fan of Gaimans stuff okay? The Book Political Ponerology was written by a man who suvived both Hitlers Germany and Communist Poland. I think he might have some insight into human evil. It's on that sight because, in America, the UFO community was the first in America to embrace the concept that the U.S. Government isn't always acting in the best interest of the people.
Contact... such an awful, awful movie.
Of course the book was a charm though.
@spudzill: *koff*CivilWar*koff*