ID this SNL skit w. soldiers and aliens

[Horatio_Hellpop]

For the SNL scholars, I dimly remember a skit from about 20 years ago, possibly based on a Harry Turtledove short story. A platoon of modern US soldiers encounters a spaceship full of belligerent aliens. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that the aliens didn’t develop this ship, they just found it and don’t really know how to operate the weapons systems, and in fact are cowed into surrendering when an Army officer (Michael McKean?) fires a few rounds from an M-16 into the air.

Can anybody tell me the season, episode, cast or name of this scene?

[batsto]

damn, I thought I was the only one who remembered this. They kept telling the humans to “not lose the book” they gave us, and it turned out it was because they hadn’t invented movable type yet. They told the humans to tremble before their muskets. Damned if I can remember who the host was that night, but I was in high school when it aired, so somewhere between 1987 and 1991 is the best I can do.

[pinkfreud]

The skit was called “Target Earth.” Script is here.

[Horatio_Hellpop]

@pinkfreud

The skit was called “Target Earth.” Script is here.

Judging from the cast (Randy Quaid, Robert Downey Jr., Nora Dunn), I’d guess it was from the 1985-86 season, and the Harry Turtledove story (“The Road Not Taken”) came out in 1986, so I’m suddenly unsure which came first. The sketch also featured Jay Leno; maybe he was the guest host?

[Horatio_Hellpop]

Feb. 22, 1986. Host Jay Leno, Musical guest The Neville Bros. 11th show of the season.

[Loach]

The Turtledove story may seem similar but it has nothing to do with aliens finding a spaceship.

[Horatio_Hellpop]

@Loach

The Turtledove story may seem similar but it has nothing to do with aliens finding a spaceship.

It refers to “hyperdrive” as something that numerous alien races “find,” not something they develop, so it’s a little unclear how they got it.

[Loach]

@Horatio_Hellpop

It refers to “hyperdrive” as something that numerous alien races “find,” not something they develop, so it’s a little unclear how they got it.

It’s right there in the title. Hyperdrive is a simple concept that most races find before their industrial age. I think you are misremembering the story.

His speech, of course, was not that neat or simple. He had to backtrack, to use elaborate
circumlocutions, to playact to make Hildachesta understand. She scratched her head in the
gesture of puzzlement he had come to recognize. She said, “We have known all these things
you mention for hundreds of years, but we did not think anyone could walk – damn, I keep
saying that instead of ‘travel’ – faster than light. How did your people learn to do that?”

“We discovered it for ourselves,” he said proudly. “We did not have to learn it from some other
starfaring race, as many folk do.”

“But how did you discover it?” she persisted.

“How do I know? I’m a soldier; what do I care for such things? Who knows who invented
gunpowder or found out about using bellows in a smithy to get the fire hot enough to melt
iron? These things happen, that’s all.”

Ebbets said, “Once you see it, the drive is amazingly simple. The research crews say
anybody could have stumbled over the principle at almost any time in our history. The best
guess is that most races did come across it, and once they did, why, all their creative energy
would naturally go into refining and improving it.”

“But we missed it,” Hilda said slowly, “and so our technology developed in a different way.”

“That’s right. That’s why the Roxolani don’t know anything about controlled electricity, to say
nothing of atomics. And the thing is, as well as we can tell so far, the hyperdrive and
contragravity don’t have the ancillary applications the electromagnetic spectrum does. All they
do is move things front here to there in a hurry.”

“How is it they have all these machines and we don’t, or any race we
know of? They must be wizards, selling their souls to the demons for knowledge.”

Ransisc’s nose twitched in disagreement. “I asked one of their savants the same question. He
gave me back a poem by a human named Hail or Snow or something of that sort. It was
about someone who stood at a fork in the road and ended up taking the less-used track.
That’s what the humans did. Most races find the hyperdrive and go traveling. The humans
never did, and so their search for knowledge went in a different direction.”

As a short story it really doesn’t have to explain the hyperdrive at all. That is not the point of the story.