• Spock: Not only could Spock serve as the poster boy for the entire half-human/half-something else universe, but they also worked his background into several episodes of the show, and the plot of a couple of the films. Plus it gave them the opportunity to write lines like "All right, you mutinous, disloyal, computerized half-breed. We'll see about you deserting my ship." Which Kirk said, and not Bones, who relished in taking digs at Spock's dual heritage. He also helped carve the way for other Stark Trek halfsies, like Deanna Troi (half Human/half Betazoid and Worf's son Alexander, who is 1/4 Human, 3/4 Klingon and 4/4 whiny.
• Doctor Who: Everyone knows that Doctor Who is from Gallifrey, right? Well, not the writers of the 1996 Doctor Who television movie. They had the 8th Doctor be half-human "On my mother's side," which opened up an enormous can of worms in the continuity, amongst the fans, and pretty much throughout space-time. The 10th Doctor later revealed that Time Lords can rewrite their DNA to imitate alien species, which seems like a stopgap effort at fixing that particular problem.
• Ripley: In Alien Resurrection (shudder) Ripley was brought back as a clone with half-human/half-alien DNA, with an alien queen embryo implanted inside her. The military scientists extracted the embryo, but decided to keep Half-Ripley alive. Which, of course, turned out to be a mistake because her human side is imbued with "kickass." Her resulting offspring was also a mix of Alien with Human traits. In fact, the original design for the creature featured very prominent male and female genitalia, which they finally removed in post-production. According to director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, "Even for a Frenchman, it's too much."
• Elizabeth: This half Alien/half human child from V: The Final Battle was the resulting offspring from the climactic ending of episode two of that miniseries. When Robin gave birth to those two babies, one a girl with a forked tongue, and the other a boy who looked like a lizard, it was one of the most shocking moments of the show. It was probably only topped by the fact that the Visitors were reptilian aliens. Elizabeth ended up having strange magical powers that saved the day in the end, plus the bacteria that killed her brother but left her alive was developed into a weapon called "Red Dust" that the humans used against the Visitors. Looks like cross-species sex pays off after all. Just ask the Cylons, and while you're at it find out what the hell is happening with the whole Hera subplot, especially now that we have Nicky and Hera: dual Cylon offspring.
• Robocop: Okay, in all fairness, he wasn't really half human, since most of his body had been replaced by robo-parts, but he still had a human brain and a human face. In fact, I'm not sure why the bad guys didn't just target his lower jaw whenever they were out fighting him in public. Looked fairly vulnerable to me. Still, he did have to power down from time to time (so he could dream and further the human plot points) and he also ate that strange sludge that tasted like baby food, so he had enough human workings going on in there. Thank you for your cooperation.
• Mariner: Kevin Costner's Waterworld flick has been popping up on cable every time you blink lately, and I have to admit that this film isn't as bad as I remember. Sure there are some dorky moments, but Costner's Mariner character as a half Human/half fish combo leads an interesting life. Rather than seeing him battle Dennis Hopper and his cronies, I'd like to see a Discovery Channel-esque special that just followed him around on his trimaran and showed us what his life was like. After all, at the end of the movie he returns to the waters to do... who knows what?
• King of the Land of Half: Did you know there was an entire land dedicated to Halves? Everything in the entire land was split into different halves, and was presided over by a king who wore half kingly robes, and a half suit of armor. His crown was made up of two different halves, and his breakfast bowl was made up of try different types of bowls, perfect to hold his Quaker Halfsies cereal in. This rice/corn combo cereal came and went in the early 1980s, but not before Jay Ward of Rocky and Bullwinkle fame could animate this Half King/Half King wonder. He might not be scifi, but the cereal featured Nutrasweet, which is certainly space-aged and likely to turn us all into mutants. And speaking of mutants...
• Kuato: Technically he might be a mutant, but he sure looked like a half Mutant/half Human to us. After all, he couldn't get around very well without the lug whose belly he was growing out of walking around and feeding him and all that jazz. What was really special was that no matter how fucked-up you thought Kuato looked, he was the real brains of the operation. You sure hope that poor guy never got punched in the stomach, plus it probably made shopping for clothes a real interesting experience. I just want to know where Kuato "went" while he was tucked up inside the guy's guts. Was it like regressing back to the womb? Check out the clip below that shows what he might have been like at parties.

The Eugenics Movement
The most famous example of eugenics in action is Adolf Hitler's forced breeding program, in which SS officers systematically impregnated women deemed to be appropriately Aryan. The children, bred in a program called Lebensborn, were supposed to be the beginning of a new master race. Hitler's evolutionary intervention also involved genocides of "undesirables," because while you're building a new race, why not get rid of the supposedly undesirable ones too? The Eugenics movement didn't start with Hitler, though. It had a long, rich history that began in the nineteenth century and was very popular in the United States. Early twentieth-century country fairs in the U.S. often featured eugenics contests at country fairs, with awards going to the most "genetically sound" white families. Below, you can see a group of girls from a 4H club who won in a genetic fitness contest circa 1925. Nicolae Ceausescu's Decree No. 770
In the late 1960s, Romanian dictator Ceausescu decided that the population of his country needed to grow much larger to provide strapping workers for industrial labor. First he tried to reward women who had several babies, but that program didn't work quickly enough. So in 1966, he outlawed abortion. Women were forbidden from using contraception, and underwent fertility checks at work. In 1967, the birth rate in the country doubled. The children born that year were called Decreteii, or children of the decree. Many suffered or died young because they were unwanted or had been born under adverse circumstances.

Chinese 1 Child Per Couple Policy
To cut back on its population, the Chinese government in the early 1980s mandated that each couple may have only one child or suffer penalties. There have been widespread reports of couples choosing to abort or abandon girl children. In some areas of the country, this breeding program has turned homo sapiens into a species whose male population exceeds its female population by 163.5 to 100. Apparently the UN recommends a "normal" ratio is no more than 107 to 100. Clonaid
Clonaid is a company that purports to be engaging in human cloning, specifically to change the human species. They were embroiled in scandal when it was revealed that many Clonaid "scientists" were members of the Raelian cult (or religion, depending on how you feel about it) that believed humans were descended from cloned aliens. Scientists from Clonaid claim to have cloned a human, though they offer no concrete proof. So far, they have had zero impact on human evolution, but get points for trying to achieve evolutionary intervention via publicity.

Fertility Treatments and IVF
Two years ago, 3 million babies had been born world-wide thanks to IVF and other fertility treatments. In a scenario of pure, wild Darwinian sexual selection, none of those babies would have been born. Those 3 million plus babies represent a dramatic shift in human evolution that we are only beginning to understand.

The Wussification of Kate. Kate starts out as a tough girl on the lam from the law. She's ready to run into the jungle, face down boars, and crawl into hatches at the drop of a hat. Dressed in jeans and tee, she's prepared for anything. But when she is captured by the Others, she's forced to wear that filmy dress. Ben wants Kate to "look like a lady." Is this because Ben's messing with her mind, or because the writers want to tailor Kate into a more "feminine" character? In other words, is the the above clip about Ben finding a way to shame Kate or the show titillating viewers who want to see Evangeline Lilly in a skimpy frock? It's probably a little of both, but I fear it's weighted towards the latter. In any event, the moment when Kate stares at her new self in the mirror is way too "Very Personally Yours" for this writer's comfort, especially when Zeke whistles at her, then adds an ominous, "He's waiting." (For men, or women too young to have encountered VPY, it was a menstrual education pamphlet that told schoolgirls about the wonders of womanhood and Kotex pads.) The fact that the scene gives me the heebie-jeebies speaks to its effectiveness, yet it leads right into another criticism of the show.

Women=breeders. "He's waiting." There's something ominously sexual about that statement. Ben and his band of followers are obsessed with reproduction, given that the island seems to have rendered its inhabitants infertile. In order to follow that storyline, the female characters are either new mothers (Claire), pregnant (Sun), possibly pregnant (Kate, after a little caged delight with Sawyer), or working on getting women pregnant (Juliet). Um, hello? Some of us believe that biology is NOT destiny and would like some strong female characters who aren't defined by their breeding status. Or at least let us have the old Kate back. She may be wearing pants again, but she's gone all wimpy, locked as she is in the Jack/Kate/Sawyer soap opera triangle (or quadrangle, now that Jack and Juliet seem to be an item).
In fact, I'd prefer less soap opera and more smoke monsters across the board.

My nomination for worst episode: "Stranger In A Strange Land." I know that everybody loves to hate on season 3's "Exposé" ("Razzle dazzle!"). But while Lost's proclivity for introducing characters just to kill them off can be annoying, wasn't it satisfying to see Paulo and Nikki buried alive? When I first saw "Stranger in a Strange Land," I thought that my beloved Lost had jumped the shark. After all, the major point of the episode seems to be watching the fugtastic Bai Ling almost fall out of her clothing. Add whiny, annoying Jack to the mix, and I came very close to reaching for the remote. (There may be a gender divide here; when this episode came on during my friend's season 3 marathon party, three women suggested fast forwarding, while the male host frantically shushed us.)

My nomination for most annoying character: Juliet. Yesterday, somebody commented that he and his wife did a little jig when Charlie died. I disagreed with that, but if Juliet bit the big one, I'd do the same. She's a smarmy, smug uber-mom who calmly tells you what's best for you even though you're old enough to take care of yourself. She gets on my very last nerve every time she's on the screen, though I did enjoy seeing her husband get run over by a bus. Now, if only she did. Honorable mention: Jack.

A week from today, I'll be reviewing the season 4 opener. In the meantime, tell me about your hatiest Lost moments.