With the new Star Trek coming soon, the Trek cast has been in the news. This thought popped in my head.
I think the answer is yes, but wanted to put it out for the Dope. The case for Spock: he is a cultural icon. Live Long a prosper, the hand greeting, “logical” the pinch, and those ears. Everyone immediately recognizes those bits.
I’m not even sure any other character is close.
For the sake of discussion, let’s exclude “aliens” from say Tatooine, like Luke Skywalker. Chewbacca is an alien. Luke is just a human from another world.
Chewie is probably my distant #2, but I’m sure some Dopers will jump in with some solid answers.
Bonus Question: Who is a bigger part of pop culture fame: Spock or Kirk?
Don’t forget Jabba. I have referred to a certain someone at my office as Jabba more than once, and nobody, sixty year-old woman or twenty year-old stoner, missed the reference.
Does anyone who wasn’t alive when ET came out know who ET is? He had one movie 20 years ago. Seems unlikely that he could compete with the mammoth marketing engines behind Star Wars and Star Trek, and their continual stream of new content.
Superman’s a good answer, but I think he’d fall under “human from another planet.” Yeah, yeah, he’s not technically a human, but he’s physically indistinguishable from one, and was raised entirely on Earth. There’s very little about him that’s “alien.”
Except for being able to leap tall buildings, being super strong, being able to catch bullets and shoot heat vision from his eyes and being able to use X-Ray vision. But other than that, he is just like most of my friends.
Definitely Superman. He’s human looking, true, but everybody knows he’s from Krypton. Besides, if you get past the ears, Spock is half human and doesn’t really look particularly alien either.
Luke Skywalker can parry laser blasts and lift spaceships with his mind, but he was still specifically excepted in the OP.
And the green skin. But he also acts alien. He has a distinct non-human viewpoint, beliefs, and mannerisms. Superman’s just an over-grown Kansas farmboy.
And Spock is only half-alien and raised by only one alien parent; if there’s quibbling to be done on Supes, Spock isn’t exactly distinguishing himself there. Also, Spock is just an elf in sci-fi cosplay.
